The Wannabe Shaolin Family

It’s not unlike me to get all carried away with making big plans. Often the instigating factor is a cool news article, a message board discussion, or a Youtube video. One time I saw something about making your own soap. That’s not a huge deal, right? But within minutes, it wasn’t just a bar of soap I was envisioning. I was envisioning my own line of soaps. Then there was the time I wanted to be a polyglot after watching videos of Tim Ferriss speaking about a half dozen languages. This is me we’re talking about here, so of course I zeroed in on the most difficult language ever. I watched one video lesson for Mandarin, and got so anxious over the enormity of learning such a difficult language, that I abandoned the idea. I’d still love to learn Mandarin, just not right now. We are already learning Greek, Latin, and Korean in our homeschool, but those don’t inspire nearly as much anxiety in me as Mandarin does. At least they’re all phonetic. And then there was that time when I joined Flylady’s housekeeping email list, only to burn out by day two. I haven’t entirely abandoned Flylady though. I just found her book much less anxiety inducing than all of those emails I was receiving.

Now lest it be assumed that I have absolutely no stick-to-it-tiveness, that’s not the case either. I do stick with things that matter…like the homeschooling, which I’ve been committed to for eleven years. For a lot of other things however, I think I’m part magpie, getting perpetually distracted by anything shiny. Whether this new plan we’re envisioning really matters enough to me, and to us as a family, or whether it is just another shiny thing to distract us, is still to be determined. That said, it’s something the kids say they want to do as well (read: it’s not just my idea), and I feel good about it. And that’s not exactly the feeling I had with all of the soapmaking- polyglot-Flylady stuff.

It all started as a discussion with the kids over working on improving ourselves, stemming from an earlier discussion we had had on Lent. We talked about leading a lifestyle that would focus on improving our bodies, our minds, and our spirits. The more we thought about it, the more our ideas started to resemble a simplified, hybrid form of Benedictine monasticism replete with Shaolin conditioning. It’s so funny that my kids are sometimes so much like me; it’s crazy. We all seem to be attracted to the idea of asceticism. We find the idea incredibly romantic. Now of course, I don’t mention asceticism here to suggest that that is our intention. That would be a way bigger plan than the one we had envisioned. In reality, our plan is simply to find our balance—a healthy balance. One that would help keep us focused on things that already matter to us. The key here is simplicity.

We figured that we already had the “mind” aspect covered, what with homeschooling already being such a large part of our days. Granted, there is always room for improvement. Autonomy on all things school related continues to be an issue. While I can trust my teen to work well independently most of the time, the younger two still need a bit of prodding along. My presence has an almost magical effect on their output. If I’m as far away as the next room, they’re less productive. The plan is to schedule well-organized time blocks, and set clear initiatives and goals to meet each day.

The “spiritual” aspect has had a bit of a spike in recent weeks, thanks to it being Lent. There has been more stuff going on at church, and more related discussions about relevant spiritual issues at home. But as with the “mind” stuff above, there is still ample room for improvement here as well. I’m thinking more time spent on meditation and reflection on the rosary, the stations of the cross, the Divine Mercy chaplet, etc. More silence would definitely be welcome as well. I figure that at the very least it would be an exercise in self-control, for all of us! Our plan here is to start the day simply, with a Morning Offering, and then move on from there.

The “body” aspect of this glorious plan of ours is quite possibly the part that needs the greatest overhaul. We’ve already been striving to eat healthy, cut our sugar intake, and avoid overly processed foods while out of the house. Our fitness levels, while better than they were once upon a time, are still lacking. On our Kung Fu nights, we do okay, but our days off are primarily spent on sedentary activities. The plan here is to incorporate more Kung Fu. We would want to include daily conditioning (my son is petitioning hard for iron body training), as well as stretching, stance drills, and forms. Tai chi and Qi Gong would work best in the morning, while the other higher intensity work would fit best in the early afternoon.

The kids and I brainstormed ways on how to fit it all in, and while we have a rudimentary idea as to how our schedule would look, it hasn’t been put into practice yet. It doesn’t look crazy or outlandish, or even all that difficult to follow (I think). I’m sure that many families do a lot of the same, with some subtle differences. I’m envisioning a Catholic family that sends their children to school, where they also partake in sports as an extra-curricular activity. Their children would already be getting a lot of what I describe above, so in that sense, this is not a novel idea at all.

I’m thinking that after a bit of tweaking, next week will be our first full week trying this out. We’ll either feel healthier and stronger in body, mind, and spirit, or we’ll burn out. I’m hoping for the former. If not, it’s back to the drawing board. This is not an idea I’d want to just abandon.

Date Denial

I can't believe it's already the end of August. Seriously? What? Unreal.

This entire summer has been a blur. I think it will forever go down in the annals of summer history as the summer Mother Nature went all mental on us. Between the hotter-than-hot heat waves, an earthquake that rattled us (read: "me") in more ways than one, and Hurricane Irene, I'm fairly confident that I'm about done. And yet I'm concurrently wishing a milder, less eventful version of it would continue. Indefinately. There were no vacations or day trips. My husband didn't have summer hours this year, something to which we always looked forward, providing him with every other Friday off. But hold it... Lest it be thought that I've been moping around, lamenting the lack of these things, the truth is that the summer flew by so quickly, that I barely noticed what we hadn't gotten around to doing i.e., until I wrote it out just now.

So what have we been doing? Um... Well, there's been some kung fu. We haven't been in as often as we would have liked, particularly due to my husband's "anti-summer" schedule. We attempted several outings on foot, all ending a few minutes later with the kids swooning from the heat, begging to re-enter the air conditioning. Lightweights, they are. And we've spent lots of time doing low-key stuff like watching videos, playing Scrabble and chess, and puttering around, from room to room, discovering stuff.

Acknowledging that it's already the end of summer however, really provides the incentive to just plan something "summery," and my husband must be feeling the same way now, as he's announced he'll be taking a few days off this week. We're so excited about that. We still don't know what we'll be doing, but it may or may not include a trip into Chinatown. The kids have been clamoring to return since Chinese New Year, and I admit that I've been looking forward to that as well. Of course, while they're looking forward to just sight-seeing and visiting some of the video stores (Asian films are a hot commodity at our house), I'm looking forward to buying some Chinese herbal stuff—tinctures and liniments. Boy, do I feel old! But when you are prone to eyesores like this:

And this:

…the desire to purchase liniments claiming to heal bruises faster becomes a matter of vanity, and a sincere desire to keep people from thinking my husband’s a batterer. He’s not. It’s all due to the kung fu, of course. Oh, and the pictures don’t even do these justice. No pain, no gain, right?

Off to have a cup of tea, and work on some more planning for school. That will be another post.

Weakness Leaving the Body

Yep, that's me. That photo was actually taken several months ago, shortly after having earned our orange sashes. And now just last weekend, we all earned our blue sashes. It feels like it's all going by so quickly.

The benefits have been many. For starters, I've lost twenty pounds! I was kind of disappointed for a while there, as I seemed to plateau with the weight loss, but I know that I'm also building muscle, so I'm trying not to get too discouraged.

Some other benefits...

My breathing. I think the tai chi especially has helped with that. I feel that the deep, steady breathing has increased my lung capacity. Obviously, I can't say for certain that this is the case, only that it certainly feels as if it is.

My strength. I just generally feel stronger. You know that heaviness you feel when you're getting out of a pool? Well, I used to experience something similar to that just going up steps and getting out of bed in the morning. I can't remember the last time I've felt that.

My back. For about a year or two before starting Kung Fu, I experienced mild, intermittent lower back pain. This kind of freaked me out, because back problems seem to run in my family. Up until I started feeling the aches myself, I thought I had been spared. When I started Kung Fu, the pain just gradually dissipated. It got to the point that I had completely forgotten I had ever had it, that is until I got sick and missed an entire month of training. It's alarming how quickly one can fall out of shape. When the aches came back, I realized just how much I had improved with the Kung Fu, and it kind of renewed my resolve to stick with it.

My stamina. It hadn't occurred to me how this had changed until I spoke to someone else, who expressed disbelief over my having taken several back-to-back classes. It was a Saturday, and we had all taken a record five classes, four of which were taken in a row. We're usually at the school all day on Saturdays, so it just makes sense to take advantage of all of the available classes while there. It didn't register with me at the time however, that just one short year ago, I had trouble making it through just a third of a single class. Progress!

And last but not least, I can't articulate how fun it is to be involved in all of this with my family. Really, I never even fathomed our finding one common activity we would all enjoy this much, especially now that the kids are getting older, and that their interests and hobbies have become so varied. We always have willing practice partners, so that's just an added bonus. Because we're able to practice so much, I really feel we're all getting the most of this experience. And while our tiny apartment is over-run with sparring gear and practice weapons (five of everything!), it's been more than worth it.

Black and Blue

No, I didn't fall down the stairs. Yes, I'm looking all battered, but I bruise like a peach anyway.

All of the contact stuff in Kung Fu and Kali, etc. pretty much ensures that I'm forever sporting huge black and blue eyesores. Thankfully, it's still too chilly around here to go out in short sleeves. I don't think I'll be wearing many of those anyway this year if my arms don't develop a tolerance to the strikes. I read that Dit Da Jow, a Chinese liniment, is supposed to work wonders on bruises, so I'll have to give that a try. Despite the pain, there is value in training this way. After all, it's not like a potential aggressor is going to take it easy on me just because I'm a woman. If you don't train hard, or "with intent," as our Sifu says, then you're not preparing yourself properly for when you may need to use what you've learned for legitimate self-defense purposes. Not to mention that training with intent, and in earnest, is all so cool! And fun!

I'm really excited, too, because we just started learning Long Fist, a Northern form. The name is very appropriate, as the motions are long and extended. Most Northern forms involve long, extended motions, as the region to the north of China offered lots of wide open spaces. In contrast, the Southern forms are more grounded, and involve shorter extensions, presumably because these styles were practiced in more densely populated areas. Long Fist One, the form we're learning now looks so graceful and fluid, yet the hidden self-defense applications in the form are direct and effective. It's amazing to me how with Kung Fu, a smaller, lighter person, can gain advantage over a larger and stronger attacker. It's all about not meeting force with force, but rather "going with it" and using an attacker's momentum against them. It makes sense, and it works.

Here's a video of a woman doing the form I mention above.



There are only very slight differences in the way we do it. This is something I've noticed since we started Kung Fu. There are so very many variations, often depending on lineage, or varying from school to school. The methods and applications however, are all sound, so the variances aren't a major issue.

Every day our Kung Fu / Martial Arts repertoire keeps growing. We've learned so much in the short time we've been training. It's hard to believe that we only just started in June of last year. So far, we've touched upon a number of styles, forms, methods, weapons, etc. These are Spring Legs (or Tan Tui with applications), basic blocks and self-defense, Ba Bu Chuan, a monk's morning energy drill, stances (horse, empty, crane, drop, sitting, dragon, etc.), Chin Na (a method of subduing your opponent via joint/muscle locks), Wing Chun (Sal Lim Tao - a Southern style, with applications), Kickboxing, Tai Chi, Qigong, Kali (a stick-fighting Filipino martial art I've posted about before--so far we've learned some drills, disarms, applications, w/ and without knives), straight sword (Jian form and applications), and we've only just started learning Long Fist and Xing Yi with the three quarter staff and empty hand. Xing Yi, along with BaGua (which unfortunately, I do not take, but my husband does) and Tai Chi, make up the three internal Chinese martial arts--all focused around the spirit, mind, and energy (qi or chi). Of these, Xing Yi is the hardest hitting, and it's also the most linear. BaGua is more circular, and Tai Chi is more meditative in nature, although it is a martial art, and as such has countless self-defense applications as well.

We're having so much fun with this, it's crazy. Just over a year ago, I never thought we'd all be taking up martial arts. And just this past Saturday, we were all promoted to our green sashes. A sash or belt system is not common to Kung Fu. Traditionally, there is no ranking system in Kung Fu, but more and more schools seem to have adopted this system. It does make it easier to see at a glance where everyone stands in terms of ability.

One Stick, Two Stick

Nope, this isn't going to be a post about knitting, although you will likely see knitting posts from time to time.

When we all first started taking kung fu, there were certain things we expected to learn at some point during our training. We knew that eventually we would learn traditional forms, fighting applications, and well, we hoped that at some time we'd get to learn how to use weapons. We expected those to be the tai chi sword (straight sword), the broad sword, and my husband's most anticipated--the long staff. My husband had taken kung fu for a brief time several years ago, so he had an idea of what was to come. As for me, the only kung fu that I knew came from what I saw in Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li films. Over the years, we would regularly all gather around the computer screen while my husband went from one video to the next on traditional kung fu forms and styles. It was through those videos that I became acquainted with the traditional weapons used.

Imagine our surprise when we started learning kali (also known as eskrima and arnis). This is a Filipino martial art that uses sticks as weapons. There's more to it, in that eventually you can use improvised weapons in the same manner, and like most martial arts, the applications are endless. In any case, this was not something we ever expected to learn, thinking that we probably wouldn't stray far from the traditional weapons used in Chinese martial arts. I have to add that this is a testament to how wonderful our sifu is. He sees the value in teaching us a broad curriculum of styles and applications, and his enthusiasm is infectious. We've been learning kali for a few months now, and I'm greatly enjoying myself with these sticks. While I've had the opportunity to use the straight sword, so far I feel more "at home" with the sticks. The sword is a beautiful weapon that I'm looking forward to using more often, but it certainly doesn't feel as instinctual for me. The stick and arm movements seem infinitely more natural. The footwork however, continues to be a challenge. My husband believes that I find it generally more natural because I used to be a majorette years ago, and therefore feel more comfortable with a stick weapon I can "twirl around." This is not to suggest that batons are weapons of course, although when one cracks you on the head after you fail to catch a toss, you may just think otherwise.

Kali has definitely become something I greatly look forward to every time I go to class. I think it's funny for my husband to see just how invested I am in this whole kung fu and kali experiment seeing as I was so reluctant at the very beginning. It was only supposed to be about the kids and getting them involved in a martial art. And yet here I am, enjoying it all as much as they do. I'm so glad I tagged along that first day.

Probably the most famous name in kali stick fighting is Dan Inosanto, who was one of the three men Bruce Lee certified to teach his own style of Jeet Kune Do. I've spent inordinate amounts of time watching videos of Dan and other kali practitioners on youtube, and find myself getting more and more excited about this martial art. But the funny thing is that really, there hasn't been a single thing I've learned that I haven't enjoyed.

Click here to watch Dan Inosanto in action. It's a shame the video cuts off at the end, but it's the most recent, and best quality one I could find on youtube.

Incapacitation via the Hindu Squat and Other Such Things

Just the other day, in an effort to supplement my current weekly exercise routines, I went onto youtube and started viewing instructional workout videos. I stumbled across one for the Hindu squat. My interest was piqued. It seemed like a good idea, that is until the next day when I found myself nearly incapacitated. 

Once upon a time, long long ago, I was a fairly physically active person (well, "active" in the broadest sense). I didn't necessarily seek out this physical activity (seriously, I'm like the least athletically minded person on the planet). Rather, it was just organic to my lifestyle at the time. I'd describe it all as purely situational. I worked in the city, and my days started off with a long brisk walk to the office after a lift in on the bus. My lunch hours included nice leisurely strolls, often time spent window shopping, and then later at the close of the day, another nice walk back to the bus station. Sure, it was low impact, but it was consistent, and I felt great. Once my children were born, I did the regular running around involved with toddlers, and while by then, I was officially a full-time stay-at-home parent, I got enough of a workout to keep me at least somewhat fit. It was right around this time that I became interested in Pilates, and started following the Fit for Life diet, so I was a practicing vegan, too. In the meantime, I sought to make some extra cash by taking on occasional freelance work--nothing steady at all. It wasn't until I found a more steady gig, working as a researcher, that things began to change. I found that the only times I'd get out and about, were when I was getting the kids to their extra-curricular activities. Most of my time was spent on homeschooling and working. Even my hobbies, when I could get to them, offered no outlet for physical activity. My life went from just barely active, to primarily sedentary. The Pilates was placed on the back-burner, and I grew tired of cooking two separate meals for every days' lunches and dinners. I didn't expect of course, for my entire family to follow my diet, hence the extra time spent in meal preparation. And yes, I got lazy.

Falling out of shape took no time at all. In a matter of weeks, I started to feel sluggish. Walking up a flight of stairs was enough to get me out of breath. As my work schedule became more demanding and I was spending even more time seated in front of my computer screen, the pounds started piling up. I found myself getting into cooking ruts, making tons of pasta and rice dishes which were quick and easy, and of course, that didn't help at all.

In the meantime, I was intent on keeping on top of the kids' levels of activity. It's funny how I was so hyper-focused on their keeping physically fit and active, while dismissing my need for the same. The girls had been involved in dance classes for several years, but I had yet to find something for my son, who is very physically active anyway. He's the sort of child that has to move to think. He needs frequent breaks from his schoolwork to stand, walk around, jump, and run. Yet despite his high levels of physical activity, he wasn't particularly interested in sports. He was however, very interested in pursuing martial arts, especially kung fu or jeet kune do, thanks to his love of Bruce Lee films, brought along in large part by my husband's love of the same. I set out to find a kung fu school which proved much more difficult than I thought. There are karate and tae kwon do schools seemingly everywhere, but kung fu lessons were much more difficult to find. Thankfully, before too long, I was able to find a place not terribly far from home that offered a free introductory lesson for my son. We all tagged along and the sifu insisted that we all take part as well. Yes, even me. This was definitely not my intention in going, but I figured, I may as well give it a shot. Not fifteen minutes later, I found myself quite unable to move. Every muscle in my body ached. Even just lifting my arms to adjust my glasses, was painful. It's funny to me now, but right then, it all became a major epiphany for me. I quickly talked things over with my husband, and we all decided to enroll. It is one of the best decisions I've made for myself and my family in a long while.

The past few months have made such an amazing difference in my life. Not only have they tested my will in so many ways, but I am sharing this new journey with my family, and what great motivators they have proven to be. Just a few short months ago, I could barely make it through fifteen minutes of training, and here I am, able to do that and more. Granted, the Hindu squat experiment has shown that I have a long way to go, but I'm less disheartened by that realization now, considering how far I feel I've come already. I will from time to time, update this blog with my progress in this area, and as I discover new aptitudes and challenges along the way. Until then, in the words of Bruce Lee: "There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." I hope to do just that.