Facing My Personal Nemesis

I hate yoga.

There! I said it. The truth is out!

Now, let me explain what I mean by "the truth:"

Yoga is my bugbear, my demon.. call it what you want — it's really hard for me! Even though I've trained in the martial arts for years and years, I'm physically very tight. My muscular flexibility and joint range of motion are two areas that I've constantly struggled with. And so I've avoided working on it — for years and years!

Downward dog? My mortal enemy!

Now, the truth is that I know how GOOD yoga is for me, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually... I admire the art, it's practitioners, and all that yoga has to teach me. I subscribe to Yoga Journal. I even host yoga classes at my dojo. But the fact is I find it very challenging to face (and work with, and accept) my own physical limitations when I'm on the mat reaching for my toes and/or twisting my spine.

I've made significant improvements in recent years, but I've got a long way to go to get to where I'd like to be. And somewhere deep, down inside, I know that my physical inflexibility is probably a manifestation of a mental state. This is something I need to work on, a barrier I need to break through!

What better opportunity for growth could I ask for? I've added weekly yoga training to my UBBT.

Trying to not compare myself to others

I want to help develop "artists of life" and help people achieve their personal goals, AND I want to grow my martial arts school into a viable business! It can be done!

Since part of my personal UBBT challenge is building and growing my school (can I double our student membership by the spring?), I've been working very hard at improving enrollment for my next adult karate beginner's session, which starts on 9/29 by posting craigslist ads, pushing student referrals, placing listings in the community news sections of local papers, etc. I'm printing up new flyers to distribute, and I'm collaborating with one of the local adult ed organizations.

I spent all of last Sunday with Master Chris Rappold at his business development seminar. Ever seen his dojo? Holy cow, it's beautiful! And more than that, it's full of students. I'm trying not to compare myself with Chris and the others in attendance (mostly multiple-school owners with hundreds of students), but it's hard not to!

Seeing and sitting with other successful dojo operators was a motivating experience... talk about seeking out masters! There's no reason why I can't be as successful as the others at the seminar... the only thing holding me back is ME!

Chris gave all of us some good suggestions, which I'm trying to wrap my head around and implement. I've been training like a wild man, too — going to a tournament in Canada at the end of next month, and competing for the first time in about a decade!

On Acts of Kindness

Okay, I admit it: I haven't "exactly" been tracking my acts of kindness. Now, don't get me wrong, I've been doing them, I just haven't been writing them down every day (like I'm supposed to be doing). But I'm pretty sure I get at least three AOKs in during the course of each day.

There's one AOK that I do every day: Each and every time I go into the park across the street from my house — and I'm usually in there two times a day — I pick up some trash. Sometimes I pick up a lot (like the other day, when I cleaned up a full barrell of garbage that someone knocked over on purpose); sometimes I pick up an empty soday can, or a plastic bag, or some broken glass.

It's a never-ending battle, and sometimes it seems uphill. Every day I pick something up, and every day there's something new that wasn't there the day before. It's frustrating, but I know my efforts are worth something. It reminds me of a passage I read recently in the Tao Te Ching:

What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?

What is a bad man but a good man's job?

If the teacher is not respected

and the student not cared for,

confusion will arise, however clever one is.

This is the great secret.

In the end, I simply try to leave the park a little bit better than it was when I walked in. My daughter sees me doing this, and I know I'm setting a positive example.

Sometimes I pick up newspapers off one of the park benches, even though I know they served as a blanket for some homeless person who spent the night sleeping there. Even in my cleaning I feel a pinch of compassion.

This week, I picked up a small notebook for writing down my daily AOKs. And in the back, I've started a list of things to be grateful for. "A bed to sleep in every night" made the list today.

Anger Management, Meditation Centers, and the Tao

Another busy week. At Coach Tom's suggestion, I've enrolled in an online Anger Management course. It's not that I have an anger problem, but as a self-defense instructor, I have a role to play in helping people recognize when destructive anger is rising in them, and also to give them some tools to manage their anger and express it constructively. This course will help me be a better, more informed, and more empathic teacher. What a great concept! And yes, every once in a while, I get angry. Everyone does. I'm sure that through this course, I'll learn a few new skills myself!

In further exploration of meditation practices, I spent some time at The Center at Westwoods this week. It's an amazingly peaceful place dedicated to individual inner growth and healing. I sat in meditation by the "moss pond," enjoyed the cool silence of the "goddess cistern," walked the grounds and gardens, and spent some time in the library in the main hall. I'm currently reading from Wayne Dyer's new adaptation/interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, titled, "Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life." I've read the TTC before — I have several different translations of it in my dojo library — but this annotated version has been extremely interesting and educational. Each of the 81 verses of the TTC is accompanied by an essay for study, contemplation, and meditation.

Next week, I begin teaching karate to 4th and 5th grade children at the Gardner Extended Services School as part of their enrichment curriculum. I'm looking forward to teaching — and learning from — the kids. The classes I'll be teaching will have a particular emphasis on building character, discipline, self-confidence, teamwork, and leadership ability. Each class will include physical instruction in traditional karate — using equipment as appropriate — as well as short, informal discussions ("mat chats") on character, self-defense, and other related subjects. I have some interesting ideas to try out, including seeking teacher and parent involvement to ensure that the behaviors and attitudes that are expected during the karate class are being satisfactorily demonstrated at home and in the classroom. Wish me luck!

Trying to grow the school, too. I've written a short article, "Learning to Punch Like a Girl," about the women who train at my dojo for a local online magazine called Misstropolis. It's already live on my "Martial Musings" blog, but I hope the additional exposure on this new website will result in some new inquiries! I've made up about 1,000 new dojo flyers and will distribute as many as I can over the weekend.

Still pushing hard on the physical side, too. I've got to total all my stats and see where things stand. On an interesting note, I bumped into my neighbor, who read about my participation in the UBBT in the local paper. She mentioned that her kids have seen me in the park in the mornings, doing my push ups, crunches, and kata repetitions in the park. Yikes, I'm being watched...!

Good! PLEASE HELP KEEP ME HONEST, EVERYONE!!!

Relationships Come First!

As I continue to plug away at my UBBT tasks, it has become suddenly and painfully apparent to me that keeping everything in BALANCE is an important part of this test. We cannot afford to be martial artists in a vacuum! Even though I'd love to live a life in which I trained and studied martial arts 16 hours a day (I know many of my UBBT teammates understand this level of passion), I've come to the realization that we need to be come Artists of Life — in the REAL WORLD.

Now, I know that this point seems obvious to anyone reading this post, but it's true — and I don't understand why or how it wasn't glaringly obvious to ME:

Building, maintaining, nurturing, and strengthening our RELATIONSHIPS is far more important than building our muscles, our skills, our knowledge, or our schools.

For what happens if I "pass" this Ultimate Black Belt Test and satisfy all the requirements, but have no one to celebrate with? What happens if I fail this test (perish the thought — I WILL NOT FAIL!), and have no one to cry with? Victory or defeat, what a hollow feeling that would be!

From this point forward, relationships come first. If I can focus on this point and honor it every day of my test, every other requirement will be a piece of cake.

(Special thanks to my wife, Joy, for pointing these things out to me. You are a great teacher. Thank you and I love you!)

What A Week This Has Been!

I took an hour out of the office to attend a meditation seminar by Shivabalananda, a meditation master from India. I went in very skeptical, mostly due to my unfamiliarity with the Indian culture, I suppose. The session had a strong spiritual theme, too, which I was a little uncomfortable with, but open minded about. You see, my personal meditation practice has always been very informal and VERY private, so sitting still and silent with my eyes closed in a room full of strangers (most of whom were dressed in traditional Indian garb) was more than just a few paces outside of my comfort zone. (Did I mention the vibhuti (sacred ash) that Shivabalananda's assistant placed on everyone's forehead?) When I meditate, I usually sit for no more than 10 or 15 minutes at a time, so a full 45-minute silent meditation was definitely a stretch for me, both physically and mentally. With the longer session, I went through a fairly intense period of "rejection" that must have lasted for about 25 minutes. But after that, my body FINALLY found a comfortable position, and my mind stopped wandering and resisting the silence quite so much. Once I settled down, I felt very peaceful — and free to explore my mind with curiosity. (I'd call it a "mental safari.") I definitely learned "something," but I'm having a hard time articulating exactly WHAT. There's more to explore here, for sure.

I taught a self-defense class for a group of blind young adults at the Carroll Center for the Blind on Wednesday evening. Amazing! This was absolutely one of the most personally rewarding things I've ever done — a personal victory! The students (ages 14-20) were the most energetic, positive, enthusiastic, appreciative, and polite group of young folks I've ever been around. And with a little training, MAN can they hit! It was a challenge to adapt my teaching methods for the audience, but everything fell into place in short order. I know the students left the training with a little more confidence. I left the training on CLOUD NINE. I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity, and I hope to do more training at the center in the future. WOW!

My physical training has been going well, although I think I somehow sprained my wrist. I've had to cut out doing push-ups this week to give my injury time to heal. I'm sure there will be other bumps and bruises that I'll have to deal with — this is a pretty minor annoyance that's hardly worth mentioning, except that I've started to see and feel results from my efforts, and I don't want to backslide! I've signed up for noontime yoga classes at work, too. They start next month.

Cleaning Up My Diet

This past week, I sat down with Jill Braverman, an acquaintance of mine who is also a holistic health counselor. As part of my initiative to clean up my diet during my UBBT, I talked with Jill about diet and nutrition and my eating habits. Jill introduced me to the concept of "primary and secondary foods." According to Jill, primary foods include love, hugs, meditation, self-expression, tears, nature, downtime, close friends, and play. These things all feed our souls and our hunger for living.

Primary foods are things that feed us, but they don't come on a plate. Secondary foods, on the other hand, are the things we actually put into our mouths to chew and swallow.

According to this theory, the more primary food we receive, the less we'll depend on secondary food. The opposite is also true: the more we fill ourselves with secondary food, the less we are able to receive the primary foods of life. This certainly puts a new spin on the way I "eat!"