“One box at a time”……

This last week has been pretty hard on me, which is why I haven’t been blogging much this week. My mother’s lung surgery didn’t go well this past Monday (they had to abort the surgery because her blood pressure dropped too low and her other lung collapsed…she almost died). That sure laid alot of worry and distress on my family.  In addition, I found out that I had to move out of my condo this weekend (instead of next weekend) as well as run my business and take care of lost documents for Escrow.

 

Mom got the surgery finished successfully this past Thursday and is now in the recovery process at the hospital (Hooray, no chemotherapy or radiation therapy!), and my rush-move to my new home was successful also (thanks to the help of a great bunch of students).

 

Its funny how stress works…when your mind gets all caught up in the whirlwind, its easy to get sucked up into the vortex and it becomes really difficult to see anything clearly. When you’re moving really fast in that vortex, everything goes by so fast and you get hit with other debris in the whirlwind……

 

Gay, the wife of James, (a taiji student) gave me some great advice as I was looking at the incredible mountain of belongings stuffed into the family room of my new home……. "One box at a time", she said.

 

At that point, I realized that over the past week, I had "too many boxes open" in my head. I was trying so hard to keep everything straight while I was multitasking waaaay beyond my capability.  In the middle of the week, I reached a point where I was so overwhelmed that I drove around aimlessly one night until I ended up at Golden Gardens park. I parked, and just cried. I actually asked myself "What the heck is it that the Universe can teach me through all this?"  I felt alot better after that, and I went home and actually slept (I didn’t sleep well at all for about 3 days).

 

"One box at a time"………maybe, just maybe…if I can master the "one box" technique, I won’t allow myself to run such a pattern as I did this past week.

 

Maybe that is what the Universe was trying to teach me….

 

What is that saying?…"What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger"  ???

 

Okay….where’s the first box???

 

 

 

Speaking of boxes….. click here to see pics from moving day http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=50546150&blogID=277430939&MyToken=19ed4783-1565-4306-871e-7b48934bcf9c   click "woo hoo! moving day was a success!"

Thought for the day….

One of my MySpace buddies sent me this, and I thought it was a good thought to chew on….

 

 

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.

Makotokugi~

“Absorbing what is useful”

We’ve heard the quote "Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless", right? (made notable by Bruce Lee)

Well, I’ve found that in the last few weeks, I’ve competely turned the quote around, and I "absorbed what is useless, and discarded what is useful".

Alot of stuff has fallen on my plate as of late….alot of stuff happening at once, and I’ll admit, I’ve been stressed out. With my Mom going in for lung surgery, making a huge mistake in balancing my accounts (that resulted in a loss of revenue that I thought I had) , and a bajillion other things has turned things all topsy turvy. Turns out that I’ve been so self-absorbed in my own whirlwind day-to-day life, that on numerous times, I’ve failed to put things in perspective….

I lost my "center" a few times in the last few weeks…..it got so bad that I was forgetting rescheduled teaching appointments and losing track of time. It didn’t help that feeling bad about missing appointments made me worry more, and in turn made me forget other appointments. I scheduled appointments right on top of previous ones. I was absorbing anxiety and negative energy, and discarding the useful concept of "flowing" with the Tao….in fact, I was trying to swim upstream against the Tao!!

Ironically, it took a stressed out student of mine, to reel me back into perspective, and allow me to shift myself back into "normal" mode. Yesterday, a student was speaking to me about wanting to find another job…she was not happy with the way that school and her job was working out, because it made her miss out on kung fu classes for a couple of months. "It’s not going the way I had planned, so I’m going to look for another job". Her voice held alot of worry and stress, and it snapped me back to "right now".

I said "So, you’re going to quit your job, just because your plans didn’t work out for only 2 months? Is that what you’re telling me?"

"Yeah. I’ve missed alot of classes".

"Correction, you’ve missed only 8 classes. You sound like you think you’re not going to make it to class for a whole year! How do you know this?"

"Well, I don’t. Work has been shorthanded for about 8 months though, which is why I’m working alot."

"Doesn’t matter" I said. "The kung fu and Taiji classes will still be around. You need to slow down, and take a look at this from outside your little box…"

*click*. Duh. That’s what I needed to do for MYSELF!! Right at that time I my Counselor/Healer friend, Reggi, called. (wow, what timing, eh??). Sort of annoyed, I told Reggi about my brief conversation with my student. Reggi commented, "Seems like this student hasn’t heard the concept of flexibility and focus. She gets so caught up in her own junk that she can’t shift out of it". I laughed to myself, because I too, was losing track of flexibility and focus.

That night, during Taiji class, I made the point to share exercises in "grounding", "centering" and "outside-looking in". At the end of the class, I felt "normal"….no anxiousness in the pit of my stomach, no scatteredness. Just peace and just "being". I had found my center again.

But, as Reggi had also commented ……as long as I realize that I’m running funky patterns, I can usually shift out of them readily.

On a cool twist though, my student came up to me after my conversation with Reggi, and she said "Sifu, you’re right, I’m just not being focused…I’m going to think this out….I feel better now…". That’s funny, because I never really said she was lacking focus. I thought it, though!

So, I thank my student for putting things into perspective for me….and kudos to Reggi for reminding me that "center" is always there…I just put myself on wierd orbits sometimes, that’s all. But each time I return from a wierd orbit, my center seems more stable…more rooted than before.

Good Qi to all of you……

Jiayo!!