2.54/3.1

 Since the online banquet is this Saturday and not the previous one, I will consider this my last Rat blog but also my first Ox blog. The year of the Rat was a big difference from my first year as a Pig, but that wasn't necessarily for the worse. The lockdown in March was a complete change of everything, and with it came a new life style basically. A lot more free time to do with as I wanted. With the way we switched over to online classes almost immediately, I found that it was easier to be motivated than if the switch wasn't as quick. Then the summer came and everything started to open up again, and it was a nice feeling to be back in the kwoon. Then the second shutdown came and now here we are. At the end of the year. This year should be easier in the aspect of it already being a pandemic, and we know what to do instead of last year where it started normal then changed shortly after. This year will also be one of the most difficult years for me because I will be working as hard as I can to train in preparation for my Black Belt grading. This year I will also be changing how I record my numbers. Instead of recording them in a physical book that can be forgotten somewhere, I will be using Google Sheets, which I can access anywhere at any time. I look forward to seeing how this year goes!

2.53

 I have started to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance lately, and I now realize what people mean when they talk about how different it can be. I find myself going back a paragraph or two very often just to better understand what I just read. This is what I spent most of Friday doing, as I didn't have school.  I will definitely have to read it again once I'm done, maybe even once again after that. I haven't really formed any thoughts or opinions about anything in the book or anything that deals with the book yet, but I most likely will soon as I keep reading.

2.52

 The end of the Year of the Rat is approaching fast and bringing the Year of the Ox with it. There's less then a month until Chinese New Years, but I still don't know what my hand form will be. That isn't a great start. I also need to finalize my personal requirements still, but one thing I do have is my weapon. For the Year of the Ox I will be making my own sword form. This should be interesting as I don't have much experience with swords. No matter what, I need to be at level 10 for the entire year if I want to successfully grade for my Black Belt. That's all I have to say for this week as I continue to think about my forms.

2.51

When we were doing Da Mu Hsing in class on Tuesday I found that changing my starting direction or spinning in circles before didn't affect my ability to do the form. I have always found this to be the case for every form that I do. I've never based my forms on visual landmarks but instead I based them on how my stances felt. The way my stances feel during a form can change due to many things. If I haven't warmed up yet then they'll be a bit more shallow and a bit taller. If I injure something then I won't go as deep to prevent further injury. If I'm warm and feeling good then I do what stances feel right for the situation. When doing forms at home, I step in different ways than what I would do in the kwoon to keep my stances feeling good while in a tight space. For example, in Da Mu Hsing 3 I find myself stepping backwards into the Open-X stance instead of breaking my flow by taking a few steps and then continuing the form. I still try to avoid doing things like this by doing my form in different ways whenever possible. Combining all the directions helps me keep all parts of the form normal while helping me adapt to my surroundings.

2.50

Doing Lung 1 & 2 for this past weeks challenge has reminded me of somethings that I had forgotten about due to a lack of consistency with my form "schedule." The biggest thing is how you don't need to be very active in the traditional sense to be actually exercising. I got reminded of how being slow and precise with deep breaths is very similar but also the complete opposite of being fast with not very precise techniques and quick breathing. They can both produce the feelings of "that was a good form, and I found some things to work on" and "that was an okay form but I didn't find anything to work on." This upcoming week will be quite different from the last with Hseih Chen and Hung being the weekly forms. It should be interesting!

2.49

 While doing last weeks challenge, I found that it was somewhat easy to float through some parts of Da Mu Hsing. my mind wasn't in the learning mode it should have been in, instead it was just trying to get some reps done. This only happened a small amount of times, but never for a whole form. Sometimes I would start with an intent in mind, but lose it halfway through, or I would start thinking about what I was doing halfway through. This is what I'll be doing my best to avoid this week and I'll try to catch myself earlier in the lack of focus when I can.

2.48

Before writing this blog, I looked back at my blogs from this time last year. The amount of change that has happened since I wrote them almost makes me chuckle. I was saying how excited I was for the banquet and for the new year, and that I would feel the same way this year. It's safe to say that isn't completely true. While I am glad that it is a new year, it's not quite the same feeling that it was last year. A main part of it is the lack of a banquet, but that wasn't exactly our call to cancel it this year. I'm also starting to go into high gear for the year of the Ox, because I don't want to change from Rat to Ox overnight, instead I'm trying to smooth out the transition as much as possible.