Life Like Water

I can punch through boards.

Today was the big board breaking for charity event at my dojang. I never really got the breaking boards thing until today. Oh man it is fun. It’s one thing to kick a pad and do forms but when you really let loose and put your fist or foot through a chunk of wood you get a total high off it. I’m probably sweating 90% testosterone at this point.

I’ll have to see if any of the pictures turned out.

It seems that every time I think that I’ve the body trained enough to work (well at least to get by if not perform at the level I want) without getting too sore, we do something different and I find a whole new set of muscles that haven’t been doing a damned thing for the last decade.

Last night we did some sparring and I took a shot right in the shin splint which is a whole universe of pain but following that we did escrima. Since I’d never done it before I didn’t get to spar with them but I got to practice the basic heaven six drill. I’m not used to having both arm up and swinging like that but I did get going pretty well with the gentleman who was teaching me the drill. So of course this morning my shoulders are both sore as hell. Fun though. I probably enjoy swinging a weapon more than trying to limber up and train my stiff old frame to be one. Which means, of course, that I need to focus more on the latter.

On a totally different note, my wife got me the zen day calendar for Christmas. I’ve had one page that I saved sitting on my desk for the last two months so I thought I’d put it here as well just so it doesn’t get lost:

Refraining from all evil, not clinging to birth and death, working in deep compassion for all sentient beings, respecting those over you and pitying those below you, without any detesting or desiring, worrying, or lamentation - this is what is called Buddha. Do not search beyond it.

Dogen

When I first read this I got stuck on the respect/pity part but, after thinking about it for a while, that is probably a reaction to how we frequently conflate pity with superiority rather than simply recognizing pity as sympathy and sorrow for the pain of others. Similarly there shouldn’t be resentment in admitting that there are people with a clearer view and greater compassion than my own any more than I would resent admitting that there are people who are better at math.

So apart from a nasty case of the flu I’ve been going to TKD pretty regularly. I’m totally wiped out when I walk out of the dojang but at least I’m not crippled by sore muscles. Jyllian says I look like I’m losing weight which is one of reasons I love her: she lies.

No, having made my way through the tortures of sore muscles I had about a week before my body decided to again remind me that I was fast approaching middle age. It started out small, just two little sore spots on the fronts of my shins. Just enough to make me think “that’s odd, I didn’t know I had muscles there to make sore”. And over a week it blossomed into feeling like leprechauns with baseball bats were trying to knock their pots of gold out of my pant legs.

Skipped a few times and have just done push-ups, sit-ups and kicks at home and I’m about ready to go back on Wednesday. I’ll just have to take it easy with the jumping rope until whatever I tore up has a chance to rebuild.

Well not really. I didn’t even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. What I did do, however, is start taking Taekwon-Do at one of the local dojangs. The Bean has been learning taekwon-do for a few months now and I wanted to both get a little more exercise and provide a good example for her to make it easier for her to stick with it.

I’m really in a lot of pain though. The first day was actually yoga because the school has a new yoga instructor and wanted everyone to experience yoga if they already hadn’t done so. I have and I mostly enjoyed it but it was just a little embarrassing to know most of the postures but to not really be able to hit a single one of them. The Saturday class was my first real martial art instruction in about fifteen years. I didn’t do too badly but I was literally starting to gray out after an hour of jumping rope, crunches, doing kicks up and down the dojang and learning the basics of the first form (Chon-Ji / Heaven and Earth).

So I’m still really sore but I’m still stretching every day. I realized that I’m about as flexible these days as your average steel girder so I’m also doing some basic stretching every day. Once I can walk without cringing I’ll add in some time every day to work on forms.