Wow.

This week has been spectacular.

All of my numbers are looking fantastic, and I feel that I progressed more than I had expected this week. I've had a lot of 'me time,' more than anticipated and I feel great. I haven't felt this way about my training in a long time.

I got to see my grandmother this week. She's 87 and just moved into a seniors home in Saskatoon. I love sitting down and talking with her. She's always so happy and seeing her this week made me think about how lucky I am to have her in my life. I love her with all my heart, and she teaches me how to be the most loving, and nurturing person that I can be.

That's all for now.

Spring Break

It's finally here.

I love spring break haha. With no kids classes and no school, it gives me a lot of time to focus on myself more so than everything else. I can expect to get a boatful of my numbers caught up by the end of this weekend. I'm staying in Saskatoon this weekend with my cousin while my mom takes me baba an hour from Saskatoon out to Quill Lake to see everyone out there. I'm there until Tuesday, and i'll be home by myself at my grandma and grampas house while she's in school.

It should be a good week.

A Really Slow Week.

I don't have much to blog about this week. We have a shortened week in school so I have no classes tomorrow, but I am for some reason absolutely wiped out. We have a realtor coming in to look at our house on Monday so we've been cleaning... a lot. Haha. It's been quite a bit of work. My physio therapist cracked my back for me today to loosen everything up and it's really sore. I'm going to take it easy tonight so that I can come back swinging tomorrow.

As far as my numbers go,

I've been getting a lot of my kilometers done in physio because he puts me on the bike to warm my knees up, so I'm pretty happy about that. Same with my squats. Those numbers are soaring.

I really need to work on documenting my acts of kindness though, I should probably start carrying my book around with me...

Sifu Wonsiak

Bullying.

People often ask me why I preach about bullying so much when I teach the kids classes. My answer to them is simple,I have been bullied off and on since grade 6. I know what it feels like to by threatened, pushed around, the subject of rumours, publically ridiculed and cyber bullied. I don't believe that I would have the confidence that I still have today if it weren't for my Kung Fu. Kung Fu teaches you two very important things besides self defence... Discipline, and respect.

I cannot tell you enough how hard it is to walk away and ignore someone that is publically humiliating you when you're standing
four feet away from them, and not to mention keep calm. But, Kung Fu taught me the strength and the courage to do exactly that.

Now, I'm not saying that every person that is enrolled in Kung Fu has been bullied. Neither am I telling you that that is the reason that I was enrolled in Kung Fu. There is certainly a good chance that most of us have been bullied at some point, whether it be as a kid, or as an adult. The question, "well sifu, I've never been bullied, or a bully, so why do I have to learn about what to do when you're being bullied?" Comes up once in awhile and my answer to that is simple as well. This is one of the ways that I can teach someone empathy in a very simple way. By learning about bullying, and being educated about the effects about bullying, it's not very hard to put yourself in the shoes of the guy that's being picked on at the bus stop, or excluded from playing a game. It makes it way easier to be his or her friend;
and not be tempted to be peer pressured into becoming a bully yourself.

I believe that this is an essential part of my identity as a black belt, and has drastically changed the way that I approach my teaching in Kung Fu.

For our orange belts in the kids classes, we started the new green stripe requirement of them having to create a multimedia presentation on bullying, which will eventually be displayed on the monitor in the school. The picture I included in this post was one from a project that one of our orange belts handed in. There was my chuckle for the day. =)

Sifu Wonsiak

Making Adjustments...

I had my first physio appointment this morning. I have what's called Patellofemoral Syndrome. My knee cap doesn't track properly because some muscles in my leg are too tight, and some aren't strong enough to create a balance. Also, with much surprise, I have an issue with my lower back putting pressure on a few of my nerves which is apparently a huge contributing factor to this.

So along with some pain, we've got a healing plan worked out, and six sessions booked. He did recommend that because my forms and tai chi cause the most swelling in my knees, that I'll have to take it easy or it might disrupt the healing process.

Although this is going to be very difficult for me (I do A LOT of forms and tai chi) I want my knees to get better quickly. Some adjustments are going to have to be made...

The title of this post pretty much sums it all up.

Last night, I wasn't paying attention and I ended up missing a step going downstairs to the kitchen resulting in me falling down 7 hardwood steps. After lying on the ground for a bit, I realized that I wasn't hurt, and I *thankfully* didn't knock myself out on the way down. I'd like to give a shout-out to my Kung Fu for this. The many minutes of laying flat on my back and holding my head off the ground really payed off for me. I was able to subconsciously tighten my neck muscles and keep my head up while I was falling down the stairs. I truly think that the fact that I didn't even have to think about doing this was awesome. I walked away with only sore neck muscles and what we think to me a minor concussion.

On a lighter note, I've been given an opportunity to develop one of my personal requirements tomorrow afternoon. I was asked to help photograph the dress rehearsal of our school production of Seussical The Musical. This is extremely exciting because I will be able to use one of our schools hi-tec cameras and all of our editing equipment. Since one of my personal requirements for the UBBT was to create my own photography portfolio, I will be able to use some of these pictures to kick start this little project. I am extremely excited as I've never gotten the chance to photograph theatre before, and I believe that there's a lot to be learned tomorrow and I'm excited for every chance that I get.

Cheers! :)

Just An Update

I do have a certain blog post that I want to put up, but I have to think about it for a bit longer. So stay tuned.

But, I felt that It was time to put up another little update on how my training has been going.

First off,

I'm really excited about the get together between all of the I Ho Chaun members tonight after the kids classes. I've missed the last two, being sick and such; but today I feel the best that I've felt in awhile. I think I've finally beat this cold thing I've had for quite awhile. Needless to say I'm back into action.

One of the weapons that I've decided to focus on are the Sais. I've decided to try to create a 'rough draft' of an original form. I really struggled with this at first, but now the creative juices are starting to flow, and It's finally starting to look like something. Yay!

We have yet another short week at school, and we can all tell that the teachers are starting to stress a little bit. We've been getting tones of homework, but I haven't started falling behind, and I don't plan on that ever happening. So far I've been able to maintain all of my averages at around the 90% mark. Which is really good, considering my personal requirement was at least 80%.

My training has been going really well, and I haven't quite started to badly fall behind on my numbers yet. I've been booked to start physio on the 2nd of March for my knees, so we will see how that goes.

Cheers:)