What I did on my summer vacation

I was here. It was good. Seriously, vacation was much-needed and it's too bad that it couldn't have been a bit longer. However, there is only so much time one can spend with one's family before one gets really agitated. I spent Tuesday through Saturday of this past week at this amazing lake house with my entire family. We go there every summer at the end of June. This house sleeps at least 30, so there's plenty of space, but three crazy kids and six crazier adults can make for an exhausting time. Don't get me wrong, folks, I had a wonderful vacation. We had one solid day of rain and the rest was sunny and partly sunny. Not bad for early summer in Vermont. I was also able to attend a karate class (man, I just can't let it go, even for one darn week....) at the mother dojo. It was so amazing. The class was a toughie and focused primarily on kihones, especially kage uke along with sebake and sudiash and following through with a seiken tsuki. We then translated that while receiving a punch to the head, using the kage uke and striking with mawashe tsuki to the temple, jaw or carotid artery. I lucked out and worked with Sensei Morallo, and it was so worth the time. He showed me how to root down with my rear leg and send the chi shooting up through the leg, up the back, along my scapula, down my arm and through my fist. The result was an effortless punch that packed a huge amount of power. This was the first time I was actually able to get it to work. I rocked the Sensei, yay me! Now I know how this man can send another man flying across the room with apparently no strength. My plan is to go to this same class every other week so that I can train with him in order to supplement the training with my Sensei. The two together will add so much to what I'm trying to learn before I move. What was so wonderful about this experience is that I finally "got" how to translate hara into my strikes and not just my movements. It was just a simple twist of the knee and hip, that's all it took.