The last time we spoke was January 30th and I was really looking forward to my girls getting back from China and completing or handing off a number of responsibilities. So here it is February 24th and I am back to being the safety officer/gopher at the office, my babies are home from China, we completed the last of the big reno (painting the upstairs) at 11:30 pm on Feb. 11th the night before the girls arrived back from China. All is right with the world, at least my tiny little portion of it.
As you no doubt noticed and I stated in the title, I dropped the ball on my requirements these last couple of weeks, but all is not lost I have picked it up again. Poorly focused I may be, but lazy or uncommitted I am not.
One of the things I have come to appreciate about this entire process is that even if I am falling behind in some areas I am still accomplishing way more than I would have if I had never tried / participated. So starting and stopping and restarting and so on ... is better than not starting / participating at all. So no matter how badly it is going or perhaps you haven't even started yet it will always be worth starting or restarting.
To bring you up to speed on my requirements, the situps are easy, maybe too easy, I will be talking to Master Brinker to maybe change that ... the push ups are getting done but they are NOT easy. Still behind in my requirements for Tai Chi. I will have to do the long form 20 times to catch up on my numbers, but now that I have so much more time I am expecting that this is do-able.
Took some extra dance classes with the senior instructor at the dance studio and improved significantly in a number of different dances. Same as with Kung Fu forms alot of the detailed techniques carry across through the whole style, for example all latin dances or all smooth dances. We started learning our solo Foxtrot routine for the big Dance Extravaganza in May (after the dragon challenge event). At this point it is just a bunch of steps with alot of styling and fine tuneing required.
One odd thing about taking both dancing and Kung Fu is that I heard alot about maintaing your centre (popular opinion is that in dancing your centre is maintained in your chest --- this is totally incorrect --- it is in the hips the same as kungfu) so dancing has actually helped with feeling and maintaing my centre no matter if I am doing Kung Fu or dancing. The issue that I have come across as a major difference is that in dancing you are required to straighten your leg to the point of locking the knee, something you NEVER do in Kung Fu. So after 10 years of Kung Fu conditioning, I am so far unable to change this for dancing. I will keep working on it.
Failed totally to get started in any significant way on the development of my form for the tiger challenge. So this and the Tai Chi Long form are top priority for the next little while.
I am lucky enough to have seen Sifu Brandi Beckett and Sehing Melanie Beckett practicing forms and other stuff that they learned over in China ... hopefully they will have the opportunity (before they go back to China to continue their study) to teach us some of what they have learned ... it looks pretty cool ...
Best regards ... talk to you next week.
