An extremely entertaining clip

So I just finished watching the movie "Equilibrium" starring everyone's favorite Batman, Christian Bale. The end fight scene was fantastic and I found it on youtube (what can't you find there these days!). It's a great movie, with a "gun kata" included. Enjoy!

How karate changed the way I feel about my body.

As I was paying for lunch today and chatting with a friend, the woman taking our money said, "Oh yeah, I recognize you, you're that karate chick." I was taken aback, mostly because being recognized as someone who does karate doesn't happen to me very often. It made me feel proud. The next words out of her mouth were, "You've lost a lot of weight." That made me feel a bit funny on the inside and is the reason I chose to write about this very topic today. Ever since my body became "womanly" I've harbored resentment towards it: too short in both stature and torso, my belly was always a bit poochy and sometimes more than a bit, my legs were too stocky. Those awful feelings of sadness and embarassment are still around to this day and I often find myself staring at my middle and thinking, "Man, will I EVER have a flat tummy", and "should I really care about having a flat tummy?!" Images of Buddha show him with a full tummy, laughing, not a care in the world. This is how I want to be, how I try to be. It is how I feel when I do karate. Those body image issues virtually melt away in the dojo. Yes I catch myself staring at how I look in my gi, how my belly doesn't really show, but then I let it go. Karate gave me a boost in how I look at my body and more importantly how I perceive the way I look. I look strong, my stances are low, I can do push-ups with little difficulty (okay, most of the time and depending on my energy level), I look STRONG. Karate has given me an outlet for those resentful feelings, which are not at all productive. The remark about me having lost weight really got to me. I never try to lose weight because I don't believe in dieting. Diets get you no where unless you change the way you eat for good. Most of the time I eat a fantastic diet of mostly organic foods. There are a few days during the week when I indulge a bit too much (hey, I'm from Vermont, home of Ben and Jerry's...) so the next day I eat better and lay off the crap. There has never been a time in my life when I felt the need to starve myself. There was a friend in junior high school who used to throw up. She got me to try it, and it was disgusting. How anyone can do that on a regular basis is beyond my realm of understanding. All in all I worship my body, I push it to higher and higher limits. There's just this middle of me that I wish looked differently. Perhaps I'll never get over that, and perhaps one day it will just vanish completely. What is comes down to is this: love your body for where it takes you, love your body for what it gives you, love your body for how far you can push it, just love you body. It's our locomotion, our vessel. Treat it with respect and kindness and it will last you a lifetime.

There are times in class when I just want to drop. The sweat is dripping into my eyes and I can barely breathe. So I breathe more deeply into my belly, expanding it instead of sucking it in. Once I do that I can breathe easier. I absolutely love those moments. I've always pushed myself, it makes me feel good on the inside. My goal for this month is to do one handstand push-up. Just one. Yesterday I tried to do just that and what happened was I pushed awfully hard into the floor and nothing happened. Today I tried it again and I felt lighter, but still only pushed into the floor. Tomorrow I'll try it again. I will do one handstand push-up by March 31. It's not about how you look, it's about what you can do with the body you've got.

Oh the aches....

And I don't mean from training. I've contracted the plague and it isn't pretty. So, no karate this week at all for me. Time to rest and get well. No work for me, either, which I'm not all that upset about. I have a "flu-like virus" which is sending me into coughing fits so hard I have to hold onto something. If I don't take ibuprofin my body aches and aches. It will pass, at least it better by this weekend. Saturday is my 36th birthday! I plan on getting a girly facial and hubby and I get to go out the night before. His birthday is on Monday and he gets some tattoo work. That's how we met. Eric, the man who did my recent tattoos, is his best friend and one day he was working on another dragon on my upper left shoulder and G walked in and sat down. We locked eyes, the rest is history. The big 4-0 for him. I don't think he's amused about that....

I'm hoping to resume training next week and perhaps ramp it up a bit. Recently I purchased "Combat Training" by Matt Furey. Interesting and I actually do the exercises. They are all based on body weight training: push-ups of all kinds, back bridges, crab walking, bear walking, hindu squats, one-legged squats, etc., all stuff we used to do during gym class. A weight traininer I am not. I find it incredibly boring and hard to make into a habit. These exericises I can do in-between clients, a plus since there really isn't any time to be made for me to go back to the gym (where the dojo resides) and lift weights. I've come to accept that and have moved on. Doing the Matt Furey exercises makes much more sense and when it's warmer and not snowing and icing I can start doing hill sprints and yardage sprints like we used to do for field hockey. To me that is so much more fun and I'm more liable to do them. I'm also not a runner. My body just isn't built for that kind of pounding. I enjoy sprinting, just not the long distance running. Maybe if I were tall and slender, which I am not. Short and stocky, Austrian and Irish ancestry, you get the picture. I will miss training this week. I will miss my comrades. It's so much about the family unit of the dojo for me. If you don't like and trust who you train with it's not a very nice place to be. We have such a great unit at our dojo. Everyone helps everyone else and there's not much ego, a little maybe, but nothing out of control. If Sensei senses an ego out of control he has this wonderful way of nipping it before it grows any further with no harm done. Now that's talent.

Weapons!

Perhaps this is what I feel like: a samuari with lots of confidence. Last week and the beginning of this one was all about weapons: sword, bo, escrima sticks and canes. The sword was amazing. This was only the second time that I was shown the sword form for our system and it felt so good. I do like the bo, but it really makes me focus and I get all "up in my shoulders". Mind you that isn't a bad thing, to be uncomfortable, the sword just felt so much smoother. But it's smaller, although my forearms are still talking to me since I used a real one (which was rather heavy...). The escrima sticks make me nervous since your hands are so susceptible to being hit, that is if you're not paying attention or only placing your focus on the stick itself and not the target (which can be a difficult thing to do when you're first learning). I'm also nervous about hurting my hands since they are the main source of my work. Anyway, I love weapons and wish we did them more often. Maybe a day devoted just to weapons. I have my own bo and now plan on purchasing a bokken and perhaps some sticks to practice with. The bo I can only use outside, and being that I live in Vermont that isn't always possible but I take advantage when I can. The bo is becoming more an extension instead of this foreign piece of wood in my hands. I have this annoying tendency to over-extend, but am focusing on being aware of where my elbows are: if they are out I over-extend; if they are in I do not. Pretty simple, right? I'm not sure why I have this tendency, but it happens in kata as well and I'm always aware of keeping my strikes to the point and not over the point.

Ugh, it seems I've been in a bit of a slump lately with my training, meaning there has been some difficulty "getting" it lately. It will pass as it always does, but when in the moment it's frustrating. I desire more time for practice and don't always have it available. Work, family, you know. My only practice space (for doing kata and weapons) is outdoors. My house is very small, so in it I only work on strikes and kicks and my stances. I shouldn't be so hard on myself and need to change that perception. There is so much available to me anywhere

Fresh ink

I had these tattoos in my head (to go on the underside of my forearms) for when I passed the Shodan test and last Friday I finally had them done. The kanji under the tiger is fire and the one under the dragon is wind. The other two, earth and water, are on my ankles and they are from "The Book of Five Rings". Someday I'll get the one for the emptiness chapter. I'm not sure where I want it to go. I
























Normally I can handle getting tattooed, but these really tested my endurance. Breathing was key, but there was a point where I had to say, "You know, I think we can do the scales some other time on the dragon." I was done, finished, no more pain tolerance. However, that's all a memory and I'm left with these beautiful tattoos that represent my training, my willingness to endure. They are also my guardians.

Sometimes they just don't get it...

I've had this interesting exchange today over at justathought. People who have no experience in the martial arts cannot begin to "get" just what it is that keeps those of us who do in the martial arts. With the last comment I wanted to write back, but it just wasn't worth my time, or the author's for that matter. It's very difficult for some of our closest family/friends to understand why it means so much to us. Yes there are those out there who sacrifice too much for the martial arts and that can be very detrimental to their lives. There's this special balance that needs to happen. I may be exaggerating, but it's the truth. To me martial arts is about growth both physically and mentally. There are times where it doesn't fit and times when it's all that fits. I don't consider myself a disciple but a practitioner. Disciples give up their lives for what they practice, I don't. If that were the only way for me to be a martial artist I would let it go because that's not the way I want it to be. John Vesia just did a great post about this very subject. Devotee? Not me.

Seminar and Go Dan

So the black belt seminar went very well. It was all the black belts (and a few invited browns) under Sensei Morallo, Sensei Moe (pronounced moya) and Sensei Bottomms. Huge class!!! We took up the entire dojo. Mostly we worked kihones and focused on working the obliques and serratus anterior in our movements and not so much the hips. Keep a solid horse stance and move from hara, like a whip. Lots of tenken stepping and a bit of kote nage, which I really loved. Need to practice more of that. Then a bit of grappling, which is very new to me. We've only done a LITTLE here and there in our dojo, but that's not what our dojo does. The Rutland dojo has aikijutsu, which is really quite amazing. Maybe someday, in all my spare time, hee, hee, hee.

Then came the Go Dan test. Sensei believed that he was only going to be showing us kata, however Sensei Morallo had a different plan. Sensei Bottoms proceeded to do at least half an hour straight of ippons, with the uke being all of his belts that had attended the seminar. It was amazing. He just had mushin, pure and flowing. Truly an amazing martial artist.

The next seminar will be on fighting and I'm looking forward to that. However, I may be pregnant at the time (cross your fingers!!!) and will have to be happy with observation.

Overall training is going very well and I've found myself a groove, finally... I'm going to look into taking a Ba Gua class in Burlington. I'm not feeling it with Kempo. The sensei is great, as are the students, but I don't have the excitement around it, which is important to me. Plus I'm headed in the internal direction anyway and this is a good place to start. We shall see.