More Kung Fu stuff

Today at Kung Fu I had one of the best times ever, mostly because I can, on occasion, be a total attention whore, and once someone starts to feed that, I can't seem to stop.

Lao Shir is still out on vacation, and attendance has been low. Saturdays are always very small classes (part of why I like them,) and today it was just me, purple belt Chris (who is 38) and green belt Chris (18 or so--and I've mentioned this kid before, the one whom I both envy and respect for his wicked mad skillz, yo.) So, warmup was informal today, we ended up skipping a few warmups and adding a few new ones just because Wednesday was so brutal and everyone was still sort of achy.

Now, I'm not strong, and not as fast as I used to be, but I mentioned this hypermobility of mine in the last post. It's not limited to my arms, though. Green belt Chris decided to do half a backwards wallwalk to stretch his back, and I was surprised to see that he only went halfway down. I said, "hmm, I haven't done a back stretch in a while. I think I'll give it a go." And then I just did your basic backbend, you know, you throw your arms over your head and sink down until you've got a bridge. So there I am doing the bridge and Green Belt goes, "Damn! How the hell do you do that?"

Uhh... huh? I can do something that someone else maybe can't? Oooh. That's nothing. Watch this! Extra high arch! Backwards wallwalk all the way down! Bending backwards in half and grabbing my ankles! To my delight, both Chrises going "Holy crap!" "Doesn't that hurt?" "You must have strong back muscles!" "Where'd you learn that stuff?"

Well, that I always knew how to do. But this! This I learned in belly dance! Then I do the knee-hinge drop, with your ankles and calves at right angles to the floor, hinged at the knee and down in slow motion until your head, back and thighs are parallel with the floor, otherwise known as the Matrix Bullet Dodge move. ^_^ "Whoa! Did you ever see Kill Bill? That's the same move that one woman did. You should try that with two swords, that'd be awesome!"

And the one that makes most of the boys cringe: sitting between your feet and then lying back on the floor. You've seen little kids do this all the time. It really stretches out the knee ligaments on the sides, too. "Ouch! Just watching that hurts!"

I swear, I must have giggled through the entire class.

Then we moved on to roundhouse kicks, one of my favorites. For this, I was sparring with both of them, mostly to practice balance and weight shifting. Purple belt Chris really taught me a lot today about sparring in general. Then after class, we talked a lot about martial arts and the class itself in general. Lately I've been getting the odd flash intuition that there's something else up with Lao Shir aside from vacation, and I brought it up. Chris mentioned her knee and back problems, which got us onto the subject of this sort of thing. Lao Shir had the same surgery that I had, but then she had about three more surgeries after that, too. And Chris, he's got a severe hip tendon problem, too, so we discussed ways to learn around things like this, and to overcome them.

He also said that part of the problem was the strain put on our teacher by a high turnover rate, which goes all throughout martial arts. People tend to join martial arts for either two weeks, or six months, and then decide that they don't want to do it anymore. This results in a lot of frustration for teachers who end up teaching beginner students over, and over, and over again, and only seeing a small handful of people advance. Everyone else gets left behind and that's frustrating to the teachers. He said, "And don't think I mean you, because you have been advancing." He asked me how long I'd been there and I said almost six months. He said that was about the time that most people left and I told him, hey, I'm paid up to green belt, no worries. ^_^

Then, he also told me that I should always feel free to ask any senior Kung Fu brothers or sisters if I had any questions or needed any help, and when he phrased it like that, it was so similar to the Hula spirit that I just had to smile. I've got more brothers and sisters than I can shake a stick at these days. Or shake a kala'au at, maybe, or a staff. Anyway, he told me that he thought I had been doing well in class, too. And then I got that sense of belonging to a group with a common aim, just like in Hula, and I like that feeling.

A few years from now I'll read this and think back on how little I knew, and I'll just have to roll my eyes over it. But for today, the whole thing was way too cool.

Moving on! shikei_and_cz tagged me for this meme:

Not because you have to, but because you WANT to! Things you enjoy, even when no one around you wants to go out and play. What lowers your stress/blood pressure/anxiety level? Make a list, post it to your journal... and then tag 5 friends and ask them to post it to theirs.

Weekends, for sure. Knowing I don't have to get up early the next day.

Watching a movie at night on my sofa, with a cup of chocolate soy or maybe strawberries or some other snack. That's bliss, yo.

Going to the movies by myself. This is a weird one, I know, but I love the freedom of just driving to the theater, sitting my ever-widening butt down in the seat and then doing nothing more than being entertained or inspired.

Swimming on a really hot day, and then sitting by the pool or at the ocean with a book I'm really into and just being warm.

Gardening. Not so much the gardening itself, which can sort of be a pain, but the end result. Flowers really, really do it for me. In fact, the honeysuckle is in full bloom right now and it's driving me to distraction.

Kung Fu workout. No matter what else is going on at work, or even knowing that I have a lot to do when I get home, that feeling is total peace.

Here I would love to say "Hula" but that just isn't so anymore. It's not because of Hula itself, but because of problems and stress within the Hula group. You know how it is. And I resent the hell out of that, because Hula used to be first on my list of joy and freedom from stress. This isn't right.

Girls' night with my two best girl friends. Just hanging out, watching a movie, having pizza and talking the entire night away. That's what we did Thursday.

Sitting down for a few hours with a really engaging video game. I'm a geek and there's no way around it.

I'm sure there are a thousand more, but I can't think of them right now.

I tag everyone on my f-list!

And in the meantime...

( Chicken hat: )

That ain't right.

More Kung Fu stuff

Today at Kung Fu I had one of the best times ever, mostly because I can, on occasion, be a total attention whore, and once someone starts to feed that, I can't seem to stop.

Lao Shir is still out on vacation, and attendance has been low. Saturdays are always very small classes (part of why I like them,) and today it was just me, purple belt Chris (who is 38) and green belt Chris (18 or so--and I've mentioned this kid before, the one whom I both envy and respect for his wicked mad skillz, yo.) So, warmup was informal today, we ended up skipping a few warmups and adding a few new ones just because Wednesday was so brutal and everyone was still sort of achy.

Now, I'm not strong, and not as fast as I used to be, but I mentioned this hypermobility of mine in the last post. It's not limited to my arms, though. Green belt Chris decided to do half a backwards wallwalk to stretch his back, and I was surprised to see that he only went halfway down. I said, "hmm, I haven't done a back stretch in a while. I think I'll give it a go." And then I just did your basic backbend, you know, you throw your arms over your head and sink down until you've got a bridge. So there I am doing the bridge and Green Belt goes, "Damn! How the hell do you do that?"

Uhh... huh? I can do something that someone else maybe can't? Oooh. That's nothing. Watch this! Extra high arch! Backwards wallwalk all the way down! Bending backwards in half and grabbing my ankles! To my delight, both Chrises going "Holy crap!" "Doesn't that hurt?" "You must have strong back muscles!" "Where'd you learn that stuff?"

Well, that I always knew how to do. But this! This I learned in belly dance! Then I do the knee-hinge drop, with your ankles and calves at right angles to the floor, hinged at the knee and down in slow motion until your head, back and thighs are parallel with the floor, otherwise known as the Matrix Bullet Dodge move. ^_^ "Whoa! Did you ever see Kill Bill? That's the same move that one woman did. You should try that with two swords, that'd be awesome!"

And the one that makes most of the boys cringe: sitting between your feet and then lying back on the floor. You've seen little kids do this all the time. It really stretches out the knee ligaments on the sides, too. "Ouch! Just watching that hurts!"

I swear, I must have giggled through the entire class.

Then we moved on to roundhouse kicks, one of my favorites. For this, I was sparring with both of them, mostly to practice balance and weight shifting. Purple belt Chris really taught me a lot today about sparring in general. Then after class, we talked a lot about martial arts and the class itself in general. Lately I've been getting the odd flash intuition that there's something else up with Lao Shir aside from vacation, and I brought it up. Chris mentioned her knee and back problems, which got us onto the subject of this sort of thing. Lao Shir had the same surgery that I had, but then she had about three more surgeries after that, too. And Chris, he's got a severe hip tendon problem, too, so we discussed ways to learn around things like this, and to overcome them.

He also said that part of the problem was the strain put on our teacher by a high turnover rate, which goes all throughout martial arts. People tend to join martial arts for either two weeks, or six months, and then decide that they don't want to do it anymore. This results in a lot of frustration for teachers who end up teaching beginner students over, and over, and over again, and only seeing a small handful of people advance. Everyone else gets left behind and that's frustrating to the teachers. He said, "And don't think I mean you, because you have been advancing." He asked me how long I'd been there and I said almost six months. He said that was about the time that most people left and I told him, hey, I'm paid up to green belt, no worries. ^_^

Then, he also told me that I should always feel free to ask any senior Kung Fu brothers or sisters if I had any questions or needed any help, and when he phrased it like that, it was so similar to the Hula spirit that I just had to smile. I've got more brothers and sisters than I can shake a stick at these days. Or shake a kala'au at, maybe, or a staff. Anyway, he told me that he thought I had been doing well in class, too. And then I got that sense of belonging to a group with a common aim, just like in Hula, and I like that feeling.

A few years from now I'll read this and think back on how little I knew, and I'll just have to roll my eyes over it. But for today, the whole thing was way too cool.

Moving on! shikei_and_cz tagged me for this meme:

Not because you have to, but because you WANT to! Things you enjoy, even when no one around you wants to go out and play. What lowers your stress/blood pressure/anxiety level? Make a list, post it to your journal... and then tag 5 friends and ask them to post it to theirs.

Weekends, for sure. Knowing I don't have to get up early the next day.

Watching a movie at night on my sofa, with a cup of chocolate soy or maybe strawberries or some other snack. That's bliss, yo.

Going to the movies by myself. This is a weird one, I know, but I love the freedom of just driving to the theater, sitting my ever-widening butt down in the seat and then doing nothing more than being entertained or inspired.

Swimming on a really hot day, and then sitting by the pool or at the ocean with a book I'm really into and just being warm.

Gardening. Not so much the gardening itself, which can sort of be a pain, but the end result. Flowers really, really do it for me. In fact, the honeysuckle is in full bloom right now and it's driving me to distraction.

Kung Fu workout. No matter what else is going on at work, or even knowing that I have a lot to do when I get home, that feeling is total peace.

Here I would love to say "Hula" but that just isn't so anymore. It's not because of Hula itself, but because of problems and stress within the Hula group. You know how it is. And I resent the hell out of that, because Hula used to be first on my list of joy and freedom from stress. This isn't right.

Girls' night with my two best girl friends. Just hanging out, watching a movie, having pizza and talking the entire night away. That's what we did Thursday.

Sitting down for a few hours with a really engaging video game. I'm a geek and there's no way around it.

I'm sure there are a thousand more, but I can't think of them right now.

I tag everyone on my f-list!

And in the meantime...

( Chicken hat: )

That ain't right.

(no subject)

A minute ago, I wrote these words:

End of Book One

O_o

Which means that I'm only just truly beginning hardcore revisions, really, but still. Whoa.

(no subject)

A minute ago, I wrote these words:

End of Book One

O_o

Which means that I'm only just truly beginning hardcore revisions, really, but still. Whoa.