I’ve been having difficulties in Da Mu Hsing when I do spins and this causes the following moves to lack connection. I found I would throw off my centre and then I was falling into the next moves.
Is my foot position wrong? Am I spinning too fast? Am I raising my centre? Are my harmonies working together? When I focused on one, others would fall apart.
As I talked with Sifu Brinker, he emphasized that I need to contract and then expand at the end. This is changing my whole intent. As I focus on the contraction/expansion, I no longer worry about my feet, speed of spinning, or my centre yet these are all fixed by changing my focus.
This is my first big “aha” moment where one action groups in a whole bunch of others. Can’t wait till that next one comes.
This blog is about my weight struggles throughout these last 3 years. Before I started my treatment program I was 145lbs, the lowest I’d been in years and that was due to my blackbelt grading year and the years leading to that. At that time, I was in the best shape of my life although I knew I could still improve. That was my mindset.
I really don’t know what my lowest weight was but there was a time that I was given nutrition by IV as I was failing to thrive. I hadn’t eaten anything in many days and I couldn’t keep anything down. That was probably my lowest and it wouldn’t surprise me if I hit 130 or even lower as I had also lost all muscle mass.
The first year, all they want you to do is take in lots of protein and calories. Added to that was a super strong anti rejection medication and 9 months later I was at the highest weight I had ever been at, including my pregnancies, 199 lbs. That is over 70 pounds in 9 months. My medical team would always say “we worry about weight after year 1, keep doing what you are doing” so I wasn’t really worried until I got off my immunosuppressants and the weight didn’t just drop off. That is so mean! Mentally I struggled with my weight gain, decreased self image, hating to buy clothes, wanting to go on a quick fix diet but knowing it was wrong. I had to ignore the scale and really focus on doing my exercises and to keep being as active as I could. Every couple of weeks I would check with the scale to make sure I was on the right path.
Yesterday I weighed 171 and I know 8 weeks ago I broke the 180s because I was so excited about that. I am coming up to year 3 and still I am fighting with each pound. I was going to wait until I broke the 170s to blog but I want to rejoice in the small win because I am almost there and I know that this blog will help me be mindful of the food that I eat and motivated to continue the exercises that I do. This is still not a healthy weight but it is in the right direction with the right momentum and so I will take that win!
Today was the first day in 10 days that I finally feel better. Numbers really suffered but got a few in.
Well this baby immunity is finally being tested. It came on strong Wednesday evening and I was in bed all day Thursday and Friday and most of Saturday. Sore throat, fever, aches, and not able to keep anything down. I thought I was feeling a bit better yesterday afternoon as I finally had a bit of food that stayed and my fever had broke but by supper my fever had again taken control. At least the meds are now helping and I have the energy to blog but my balance is really off so I will do my beta forms later. At least it’s not demo day 🤣.
My numbers are very poor this week but here they are:
This weekend a friend helped me. It was something that she normally gets paid for but she would not accept anything from me. I understand why she did that but it is hard sometimes to accept acts of kindness when their kindness meant so much. I fought for a while to figure out how to show her and then it came to me. I planned some quick healthy meals for the week and bought the groceries. I sent her the recipes and the groceries. She sent me a video saying she would always work for veggies 🤣. This way I accepted her act of kindness and yet was able to show her how much it meant.
We talked about how lucky we were to meet each other and become friends. Just like how I feel lucky to be studying a traditional Chinese martial art in Stony Plain with all of you. I like when choices bring you down paths that feel so right.
Sometimes when I am doing forms I lose track of what my body is doing? My go to was to videotape myself and then dissect the video. What do my stances look like, how are my transitions? When Sifu Brinker and I chatted about this, he reminded me we are doing 2000 year old forms. Our past masters did not have videos so what did they do? They had to listen more to their body for that reflection. I’ve been focusing on harmonies, relearning, and building muscle but now I want to add more self awareness of how my body feels and then evaluate. Is the feeling correct, should I be lower, am I raising my Center, where is the power coming from, am I grounded? Once I get to the point it feels right, then I can video to validate or correct.
I made good progress on my numbers this week and kept up on reading blogs so I am pretty happy about that. Still behind but I have a path to catch up. First is four weeks of hitting my numbers (to gain that consistency again after vacation) and then I will add 10% and reevaluate on my weekly blogs.
