I decided to take a break.
From my training, my job, from everything. I can’t explain why. One morning I simply woke up. I couldn’t take another day of it. So I didn’t.
I thought maybe I would write, but I haven’t. I thought I would conceive a grand plan, but I won’t. I thought I would long for Soo Bahk Do and miss it terribly. I didn’t.
My belt is sitting, folded up on my dresser. I have been wondering at the meaning of it. In the past, I’ve had many things to say about rank, about this uniform. Lately, I am rendered speechless. Something about the belt scares me. I have not had the courage to put it on.
I saw others training. I wondered why they were doing it. I thought the clothes looked silly, I felt uncomfortable at the idea of wearing them. I didn’t know anymore if I liked the people I trained with, or if I was just comfortable in my training. I saw those clothes, those people, and I thought, Is that who I am?
My physicality was so human. Flawed, limited, frustrating, stagnant. I was so human. The more human, the more imperfect, the smaller I was, the smaller I became. Just the futility of life. Of breathing. Of creating.
I fell
asleep.
Or had I been sleeping the whole time?
I feel like an impostor. To call myself a writer, a musician, or an artist. I don’t know what it is I do. Really. My whole life I’ve been worried about how little time I have and how meager my contribution, just wishing I could learn to focus on less than seven things. Get more done. Have discipline. Work harder.
I have never been what others believe of me. Every time I take the pedestal, I fall atrociously. For years I’ve been running after some perfect moment. Myself, at eighteen. Charmed and fearless. It all comes undone. Everything I’ve ever wanted. The whole of my imagination.
The rank is not meaningless or it would not taunt me from a drawer I no longer open. It bears a weight. I could no longer carry it for the time. I felt that somehow I had become smaller and the weight much larger. The scale fell out of balance. How can I wear this belt when I am barely grasping at my breath, falling asleep at the wheel? How can I wear this belt, with all of its implications, and be anything less than controlled — assured, certain? I become a fraud, a joke, a false hope.
I needed to reevaluate everything about my perspective. I didn’t know when the day would come that I felt ready to work again, I only had faith that it would come. I’ve spent many silences, these beautiful fall days, closer to peace than I have in years. Learning to let go.
My training, my life, is something I must define myself. Work for, myself. Create. Myself.
And that is the task I begin to claim.
I know this is not directly related to martial arts, but…
She turns. ON HIS HEAD.
Choi Sa Bom Nim always says that the purpose of his training is to discover your body awareness. I find it interesting how many of our kinks and “blockages” in life can appear in our practices.
As I wrote before, I have been learning the cello this past year. Recently my teacher pointed out to me that on my left hand I over-pronate, meaning I turn my fingers sideways too much and my hand needs to sit more centered on the strings. I find it an awkward thing to adjust and I’ve been focusing a lot on it in my practice sessions because I know that if I don’t consciously work on it, I immediately revert to the more comfortable, wrong position.
As a result, I suddenly realized that when I type I have the same problem. I’ve noticed this for some time, chiefly because when I was in school and writing 12+ hours a day, my hands would start to get tired and cramped up. I fleetingly grew concerned I was going to give myself carpal tunnel and tried to watch my typing posture. I noticed then that my right hand holds itself comfortably in the correct posture: Fingers curved, wrist straight, not too saggy, etc. But my left hand has this tendency to cave. After many hours typing, that hand can feel the pressure. I try to correct it but have found it very difficult to maintain. Focusing so much on correcting my over-pronation in the cello I also realized that the reason this “caving” happens in my left hand is not because of strength (which was my original suspicion) but because I have a tendency to kink my left wrist as I type. This causes my last two knuckles to sag and my hand to turn slightly sideways. This tendency inhibits the free movement of my hand. Because fluidity in the left hand is so important in playing the cello, I became acutely aware of what I do with that hand to create the best sound and most mobility. When I was able to pinpoint something wrong with what is my most natural hand position, I discovered this kink appearing in all aspects of my life! It appears in my typing, my piano playing, and in Soo Bahk Do!
My left hand has never been as dexterous as my right — it is not my dominant hand. In piano, I find it much more difficult to control my left hand. My right hand plays through runs with ease and is even more rhythmic than my left. In fact, my left can often feel slightly disconnected from the signals I’m sending to it. In Soo Bahk Do, Master Steyer is constantly correcting my left wrist and believes that the kink in the wrist effects my posture & technique when I am standing on that side. This bend in the wrist also causes my elbow to open up on the left side, exposing my ribs to many side kicks. I have even noticed it in my knuckle push ups (Choi Sa Bom Nim once pointed out that I sag my left shoulder when I do push ups, probably for the same reason) and of course my punches which are much more uncomfortable on my left side. Obviously, I have also noticed my poor typing posture and even as I type now I am trying to correct it but finding that it is taking all of my concentration, this bad habit is so thoroughly ingrained in me. I can feel the tiny muscles in my wrist straining to adjust and have to rest more often.
The correct and healthful position is incredibly uncomfortable to me. I imagine I must have been like this most, if not all of my life. It is such a small thing but it impacts the whole balance of my body. Just a slightly kinked wrist makes my shoulder sag, causes my hand to turn, and impacts my posture. If I just straighten my wrist, I will free up so much stagnant energy and become a better musician and martial artist, not to mention protect myself from straining. In martial arts training it is often said that you want to stand up straight and hold proper alignment so that Qi can flow freely through your body and you can have greater control and power because your body is able to move efficiently. Something as small as a kinked wrist blocks this energy, even if just on a muscular/skeletal level. Instead of everything moving in a straight path, the muscles must work much harder to work around a bend! This results in more muscles working which means more messages to send and that creates slower movements and reaction times. I would be willing to hypothesize, that this, in fact, may also affect a blockage on the spiritual level. The more total control we have over our bodies, the more total control we have over ourselves and consequently, our environments. Why make everything so complicated?
What is interesting that even though I have been aware of this deficiency for a long time and experienced it on many different levels, I wasn’t able to make the connection until it became a focus of my cello practice. My body has conformed to this habit and it will require a diligent transformation of my musculature from as far as my shoulder, possibly even the alignment of my hips, to correct this one impediment. It is strange how one small thing can point back at core issues and likewise, how core issues can often resolve the small things.
This is the true process of training as I believe Choi Sa Bom Nim wished to convey. By practicing mindfulness, whether it be in training, music, or every day life, we are constantly reinventing ourselves. This is what makes the practice meaningful. Our evolution is life itself.
As artists, we must be fearless. This is what makes art provocative and worthwhile. We cannot be afraid of what our art says and does behind our backs (though I admit, this can be the most terrifying thing about art from the artists perspective), but I think, more importantly, we cannot be fearful of our desire.
A little over a year ago I took on the daunting task of learning the cello. I played piano classically for sixteen years and even went to music school for a year. I stopped playing because the anxiety surrounding performance had become too much. After taking up cello, I find myself feeling anxious about practicing while my roommates are home because the instrument is so loud (I have only now started to figure out how to control the volume, and even still it is loud!) and my playing is so terrible. I’m not used to sitting down at an instrument and not being able to rattle off The Pathetique Sonata with my eyes closed, and with the cello, there are so many more challenges.
While not as shrill as the violin, the many factors involved in producing a mildly pleasant sound take quite a bit of diligence to learn. You need strong fingers in the left hand in order to put as much weight as possible on the string or else the instrument will not resonate. Learning how to comprehend the structure of a stringed instrument was difficult, as well. I have never played guitar and it never really made sense to me how all these differently tuned strings were supposed to interact with each other. After I had that all sorted out (actually the least difficult part of playing, though I still don’t have it fully), it has become a daily struggle in every practice session to train my ear and my hands to play in tune. I still have not managed to sit down and play a scale in tune on the first try, it always takes me a few warm ups to find the “frets,” and it gets even worse when I am shifting. Then, in the right hand, you have a bow. To create a good sound, the bow needs the right amount of pressure. Too much will make a horrible scratching sound. Too little will make another kind of horrible scratching sound. You move the bow at different speeds for different kinds of sounds, but it always needs to be moving — difficult, at times, when you are trying to figure out what the hell note to be playing with the other hand. In addition to all of this, you need to pay attention to the way the bow is “supposed” to be moving in the music. You can’t just wing it. The music has very specific slurs, separated notes, down bows and up bows and if you get it backwards, you’re doing it wrong.
Playing this instrument is exhausting, physically demanding, and angering. I concentrate so hard when I practice that I bite indentations into my upper lip and my face hurts. And even after all that work, I still am barely able to play the two line songs I’m assigned every week.
I have been considering purchasing a cello. I mull it over and over in my head simply because renting one is so expensive. Not that buying one is cheap, but I’ve begun to see the limitations of my rental and it would be nice to have a higher quality instrument I can use for many years, if not the rest of my life, and within a few of those years, no longer have to pay for it. I start to think to myself, “Oh, but I’ll never be very good at it anyway, and who knows if I will quit in a year. Is it really worth it?”
But yet I started to play the cello because I wanted to be able to play beautiful music on the cello. I knew it would take years before this was really possible, but I committed to it anyway. I wanted to see where it would take me in the hopes that it would bring music back into my life.
Sometimes I look at all of the things I need to learn to become a better musician and just want to crawl back under my covers and die. Especially as a pianist, I am now trying to break free of my rigid classical training and improvise, but even the thought of it scares, overwhelms, and even disgusts me. It bothers me that I can’t create to the height that I wish to and at times feel I cannot express myself because I am so limited in my abilities. I’m always scattering my energy all over the place, how am I ever supposed to survive my life, much less remain an artist? So many other people get by with just one thing, and they all create beautiful, imaginative work that far exceeds my technical abilities in all of the fields I dabble in. I am jealous of these people for having that ability to focus their desires.
My brother just started taking Karate with a friend of his in New York. I, ironically, just started taking yoga — which was his long-time passion. So we have been texting about it. He said that his forearms are sore, but he is learning good counter-techniques. I told him he would be able to beat me up in no time!
“I doubt it. This stuff is really challenging. I feel like I have terrible fighting strategy that I am unlearning,” he wrote.
I told him the most important thing is to trust your instincts, and said to him, “You don’t need a lot of techniques. You just need a strong presence and fearlessness.”
I will probably struggle with my music every day, as I will struggle with my training, every day. I will never be satisfied with what I come up with, I am sure of this. I will only try to do my best with what I have, and that is the part which requires a profound amount of creativity. In martial arts, I will always be a 5′4″ 120 pound girl. There is nothing I can do to change this. I will never be six feet tall or a heavyweight. However, it is likely I will end up sparring against, or even defending myself against people twice my size. How I deal with this conundrum is not a matter of strength or skill, really, it’s a matter of knowing myself and what I have. I happen to be trained, so I have body awareness. I have met opponents in conflict situations, so I have some concept of strategy. But even still, some good talkers have talked themselves out of conflict situations just as easily as I could wriggle and kick my way out.
We create because we desire it. Because we want to be better for ourselves. Fear only holds us back from what we want, uselessly. Sometimes I sit down at my cello and I am astounded at my own dexterity and the ease of the sound. I am grateful on these days that I have met the challenge of playing it, because it makes those moments possible. If I am unwilling to pursue playing the cello for no other reason than because it is difficult, then I will never one day be able to share my art with another person. And dwell, for just a moment, on the tension between hesitation and the truth.
I wrote this many years ago about a completely different time in my life. I was searching my archives today for another piece of writing but I found this instead. I am struck by its enduring relevance. I don’t believe it is a coincidence I should find this now.
October 7, 2006
Sometimes I make choices against my better judgement to stretch my own boundaries. I am a person of structure, merciless with even my own rules. I know myself well. I know why I keep the principles that I keep. I know, even, why I break them. To test their foolhardiness. To test my own.
Sometimes, I fancy myself an insensitive person. Sometimes, I think I just wish I were. Today my spirit has been challenged. The choice that I made was with clear eyes, I do not regret it or assign blame. I do not feel I did anything wrong. Simply, I am reminded of the unconditional importance of standing strong for who I am. Even–especially in the face of my own self.
Today I went to class to be with people that care about me. To find again my spirit, my morale, my strength. I wasn’t up for talking. I wasn’t even really up for training. It was just a place I needed to be. In these times of great reckoning, Soo Bahk Do is sanctuary. Is a reserve from which I can draw. The people I have known in Soo Bahk Do – the way they stand me up, the way they never turn their backs – are the hands that hold my ankles firm when all my body wants to do is run. My gratitude for them is too often left unspoken.
This has been a time unkind to me and you have been there to show me through my moors. With your energy and compassion, I have myself sought and uncovered my mislaid worth. I am indebted to you, for you have selflessly shouldered me through a difficult time. Above all, this is what my Dan Bon means to me.
A few years back, Master Steyer asked me to design a poster for the Boston Classical “storefront.” Needless to say, we got distracted…
John said, “I like a lot of your main design concepts, but I’m not sure how I feel about millions of tiny martial artists crawling all over the sign.”
Some shots of the school that I would like to share.
- Many afternoons, the children could be seen bunny hopping up and down the stairs.
- Traditional Dojang.
- Cuckoo clock & calligraphy by Choi Sa Bom Nim’s monk.
- Women hanging about in the locker room with a giant fruit basket. For the record, this picture was taken completely by accident. I had no idea that fruit basket was about to round the corner.
- Sa Bom Nim’s windows
- My Dad in the lobby, 2005.
I wrote this two years ago (and amended it a few times since) in the hopes of getting it in the paper, no such luck. But I got a good grade on it in my magazine class. Figured since it has become so out of date it’s ridiculous, I can simply give up and blog it now. Master Choi got his last promotion (which I touch on in the article) this past spring. This is the massively abbreviated story of his fascinating life, which he was so kind to share with me for the article.
Cultivating Spirit
Master Eui-Sun Choi sits, back straight, on the edge of a folding chair in the office of the Korean Martial Arts Academy in New Milford, Connecticut. His hand rests on the handle of a pot of boiling water, which sits atop a kerosene heater. He drops a few sticks of cinnamon into the pot.
“I think is boring, my life,” he says. He speaks carefully and with a deep, guttural Korean accent. English is his third language. “I am here. Only present matters.”
When he leans back in his chair, his heels don’t touch the floor. Dressed in his white, pressed uniform he is intimidating in spite of his small stature. He stands at a mere five feet with his belt tied snug around a tiny waist. Time doesn’t concern him, nor the long silences he leaves between thoughts. Choi (pronounced “chey”), 45, a former Buddhist monk, French citizen, and martial artist fully recovered from a broken back, is far from ordinary.
Choi is a master of the little known Korean martial arts style, Soo Bahk Do and the owner of two Connecticut studios. In February of 2009, the Grandmaster awarded Choi with his 7th Dan rank, making Choi one of the highest-ranking members in the organization. Well deserved, because in addition to over thirty-five years of training, Choi endured an eight day promotional test in the mountains of South Korea to be considered as a qualified candidate. The test is unusual to Soo Bahk Do and requires practitioners to endure a rigorous training program as well as work together on creative projects to further the organization’s mission and expand its philosophical grounds.
Just two years after the opening of his Danbury location, Han Dol Martial Arts, Choi’s students new and old gathered to celebrate his achievement. Choi, who opened his New Milford school in 1999, runs both schools full time for all ages with the help of Master Frank Tsai and his senior students, many of whom have been with him for nearly ten years. Students are drawn to Choi because of his traditional teaching, rigorous training, and charisma – but there is a depth to Choi that goes beyond a good workout.
Born in Seoul, South Korea, Choi was raised in a Confucian family where it was typical for children to learn traditional literature, games, and arts from a young age. At five, Choi was enrolled in Soo Bahk Do, then the most well known martial art in Korea. For his first six months, he learned only the most basic techniques and cleaned the studio floors.
“At the time was very hard, the training. Sometimes I asking by myself to stop because it is so hard, but my parents guide me to continue,” he says.
By the time Choi was ten, he had received his Cho Dan (1st degree black belt). His instructor, Lee Chang-Yong, left to train the king’s guard in Malaysia and introduced him to the Grandmaster, whose studio he trained at from then on.
“After Cho Dan I realize there is a lot of difference between Soo Bahk Do and the other martial arts because it is so hard to be a Cho Dan in Soo Bahk Do and I was proud what I had through hard training,” says Choi.
Pride and hard work are clear themes for Choi, who even at rest appears deliberate and collected. His studio, which is carefully decorated with carvings, calligraphy, and rice-paper windows he made himself, is like a slice of Korean culture, undisturbed, like Choi, by its American setting.
Student John Sotherland, 19, says Choi’s attention to detail has taught him nearly as much as his grueling training. “He made me realize that all of the little things are component of who we are,” he says. “I value things I would have otherwise overlooked.”
By eighteen, Choi received his master rank and enjoyed training in Soo Bahk Do but hadn’t considered it as a life path until after he entered the military at twenty.
“That time my life totally change,” he says and laughs at the understatement.
Military training in South Korea is compulsory, but due to Choi’s participation in protests against the military dictatorship, he was arrested and forced to leave his university early. In lieu of going to prison, Choi was trained as a low altitude paratrooper. Choi’s life took its major turn when a senior officer beat Choi into a coma and broke his back. He was not expected to live, but to the doctor’s surprise, Choi woke up. Though he was paralyzed and unable to walk, Choi diligently practiced walking and during the night reviewed his Soo Bahk Do forms in his mind.
“One day I feel my spine,” Choi says. “The muscle has the feeling and I start to stand. I was so surprised by myself. I was so happiness – I am alive.”
Although the doctor said it was a miracle that Choi could walk, his body would never be the same. Persistent, Choi began stretching and practicing Soo Bahk Do. “[There was] a lot of pain. Sometimes I didn’t have the feeling in my right leg or arm. But I was fight, and I get up.”
Choi’s belief that discipline is a source of spiritual freedom not only ensured his survival but profoundly influences his teaching.
“In Western countries, we like thinking we are free person,” writes Elodie Mollet, 32, a former student, in an email from Paris, France. “When we practice physical activities, we cannot easily imagine it as a way to educate yourself. Being Master Choi’s student to me means: you always have something to learn, every moment of your life.”
Choi’s days as a paratrooper were over, so he finished out his military duty as a Tae Kwon Do instructor and returned to society at twenty-four as an instructor at the US military base and headmaster at Soo Bahk Do headquarters in Seoul.
Unable to return to school, Choi passed time aimlessly until one day he was approached by a Buddhist monk, who asked him to be his disciple. At first, Choi refused, but the monk insisted, challenging Choi to block his kick.
“He was so fast I couldn’t even move my hand,” says Choi.
Choi lived with the monk at the monastery doing nothing but hard training for one year. Then, in 1989 Choi made a sudden, one-way departure for Paris, France.
In France, Choi lived with the homeless until he discovered a Karate school where he lived and taught until he established his own independent school. He stayed in France for ten years as head of the European Soo Bahk Do Federation and moved to the States in January of 1999, where he opened his first studio in Connecticut that November.
Choi has had an enduring impact on his students in France and the United States. Mollet, a student who trained with Choi in France still practices and teaches Soo Bahk Do and remains loyal to him. “I recently heard someone saying Master Choi teaches not only technical and physical exercises but also a way of life,” she e-mails. “I agree with that. As his student you cannot feel it immediately. You need time to realize it.”
“[Choi is] invested in his students,” says Sotherland. “He’s very quiet, but there’s more to his quietude than not saying anything. He gives real opportunities [for his students] to grow just by showing us how to do it. He teaches by example.”
“I think I’m mostly loyal to the others,” Choi says. Many of his most dedicated students stay with him for many years and he is touched by his students in France and Korea who don’t forget him. “They have no reason to be loyal to me.”
“Whenever Master Choi talks to anybody he doesn’t ever say, ‘my student.’” says Master Dae-Kyu Jang, longtime friend, of Santa Barbara, CA. “The first time he introduced me to his students he said this is my daughter, my son. Everyone was like, ‘WHAT? Is Master Choi married? What does he mean?’ They think he’s making a joke but he is really serious. That’s how he sees his students – as his children. He means that very sincerely. I think this shows a very warm spirit.”
With two modest Connecticut schools, Choi strives for success through sharing discipline. “Discipline means to become human being,” he says. “Uncontrolled person has no wisdom. The person who has no wisdom doesn’t have concentration. The person who doesn’t have concentration has no peace. That person has no happiness. If somebody uses Soo Bahk Do is become very violent, but when you make control is become beauty.”
“He’s a model,” says Jang. “What he says his spirit exactly matches. He just wants to share an art with feeling. It’s obvious.”
As soon as Choi steps out of the studio he breaks his brooding demeanor. With a big smile on his face he razzes the children coming in for class, holding a small boy over his head with one arm and talking cordially with parents. To Choi, Soo Bahk Do is a way to find happiness, and it is this sentiment that seems to cheer others.
“Well is a lot of study [my life], eh?” says Choi. “Boring, eh?”
Master Choi, photo courtesy of L'Association Soo Bahk Do France
I remember the first day I walked into the Korean Martial Arts Academy. My Dad took me to meet Master Choi before our father-daughter dinner. He had been training with him for a few months and was trying to encourage me to start. We walked the two flights of winding stairs and Master Choi came to greet us. He was teaching the children, there were only two students. He gave them a simple direction from the doorway and stood in Choon Bee talking to us while the kids shouted and practiced the strange mime. I could not understand a word Master Choi said. He was the most intimidating person I had ever seen in my entire life, wearing his strange clothes and standing in that odd way.
I joined the class with a friend of mine. It was back when men’s locker room was still on the far side of the dojang, without a door, we hadn’t installed the one-sided window mirrors in the waiting area, and the women’s locker room was furnished with nothing but folding chairs and a small shelf. It was frigid in the winter. So cold that one winter Jackie and I agreed to buy each other slippers to weather it, and coincidentally purchased each other fluffy animal slippers that made noise when you pushed a button. Mine were frogs, hers were ducks. Master Choi saw them and demanded we make them ribbit and quack again and again until he could stop laughing.
My first class I was one of three brand new students. Paul was senior student, an orange belt, and I stood two rows behind him. The movements and the sounds and the language were so strange to me that I wanted to laugh. Having ZERO knowledge of martial arts, not even from movies, I could not conceptualize what these motions even were and Master Choi spoke so quietly, and with such a thick accent, that the heater nearly drowned him out from the back row. Back then he called “low block,” “low blow” and hadn’t learned the word “pivot” so used confusing workarounds like “turn your heel to the front.” He pronounced things in a consistently strange manner, one which stumped a classmate for years was his pronunciation of “advance.” My classmate tried to ask someone else if they knew what it was, regurgitating the strangeism as best as he could muster, and she replied, “I don’t know, but it means to go forward.”
I had no idea what I was doing. I simply watched everyone else and tried not to act conspicuous. The training itself was strange to me, and many of the exercises even stranger. I remember the first time we crawled across the floor with just our toes, classes where we practiced walking a specific way, the prolonged partner stretches, entire months of bar exercises — Master Choi pushing my legs high up to the ceiling. I remember one where we had to walk on all fours, straight knees and arms, with our mouths wide open and tongues sticking out touching our chins.
My feet were raw after every class, kicking and kicking and kicking for one hour until after years I developed callouses on the bottom of my big toe where I now can’t feel a thing. I remember those nights, the first summer I trained, before my Mom and I left my childhood home, I’d put my dobok down, orange belt tied around it, folded in its perfect rectangle — the way we were taught back then — and feel my feet every step to the computer. I remember how unbelievably sore I used to get, all over my body. I remember the first time that Master Choi stretched me hard two days in a row, the second day he pushed me even further than the first. I wanted to scream, I was so sore from the day before, but he pushed me through it and the pain went away completely.
I went to that studio 3-6 times a week for five straight years and never ceased visiting after I moved. I hadn’t intended to stay for one month. Of all the things that happened to me when I was fourteen, all of the changes that inaugurated this cycle, that first day that I stepped into the Korean Martial Arts Academy was the singular moment in which my entire life has been molded. The things I learned in those classes defined me spiritually. It rerouted my life. It kept me off drugs, pulled me out of a self harming slump, offered a sanctuary from some of the most painful moments of my life. I learned how to understand my body. I was fearless about my challenges. I recognize this now because I have since lived out this adolesence — all of the awkwardness and heartbreak — as a college student. It was a fit of destiny that caused me to stumble into Master Choi when I did. Any other time would have been wrong.
Tonight, I can’t help but recall the day I first received my Cho Dan, Master Choi tying my stubborn belt which stuck out like whiskers around my waist. I didn’t feel that I deserved it, or was ready for it, in spite of what the test results said about me. But that was the nature of his training. We were humbled by him to always wanted to be more than what we saw ourselves as. I was honored that he had allowed me to know this tradition. Every day we valued and respected that training. It had a power we all recognized and held sacred. Master Choi has always put great import on the meaning of our practice. It was not enough to just practice movements, the mind had to meet itself with naked human truth. That was always the center, the search, the thing we had to face.
The hardest thing about closing the dojang doors is not the act itself.
It is not even the memories, the classes, the sweat. Though these things are omnipresent as I try to make sense of the ending. Tasting and seeing and hearing the events of each year, each phase, each time. Hours and hours spent talking to Master Choi after every class, turned into school-wide dinners. We developed a family there, and everyone looked forward to the comings and goings. We loved that school and held onto it like it was our’s. And it was our’s. We sweat there, together. We cleaned the floors, together. We swept the snow off of the steps, came in early to turn on the heat, and did everything within our power to grow the school. But for all of our loyalty and camaraderie, we still suffered at his feet. One day, everything turned a corner and the school began it’s slow, inevitable failure.
Tonight, after ten years, we closed the school forever. A handful of us held a small vigil as Sa Bom Nim gave his dojang its long deferred farewell. It was incredibly sad and luckily there were only a few tears. We moved everything out tonight because he couldn’t bear to come back tomorrow. It was the most real I have ever seen him.
I do truly believe that closing is a positive step and I hope the best for Han Dol. But in those long silences I think we all felt what was not just the loss of a location, but of our school, our home. We built that place to be what it became, year after year slowly evolving and changing it, perfecting it. It was infected with the love and care we all put into it for so long. It was ours in a way that Han Dol will never be, not for us as students nor Sa Bom Nim. We’ve all changed. He has changed. Training, it is always alive. But with the blessing of birth we must meet an end. So here, we meet our evolution.
As we were leaving Master Choi asked if we could smell the cinnamon. I immediately imagined those many afternoons before kids class, walking in from the bitter cold and smelling the Soo Jeong Gwa as I come up the stairs. Master Choi, in his office, one hand on the boiling pot atop his kerosene heater, the room warm with life. And then we all loomed in that parking lot for the last time.
I finally feel as if I have enough stability in my life to maintain a reliable routine, so tonight I did a light run and workout in the hopes of burning off some excess nervous energy and creating a building block workout to hopefully expand upon as the months progress. I need to get myself back up to speed and also lose some weight.
Here is what I did.
- Rode my bike home from work (approx 3 mi)
- 5 laps around the park (approx 1 mi)
- 20x stretching kicks — front, back, side, hooking
- 20x hooking kick hip flexion (hard to describe this one)
- 20x folding crunches
- 10x upside down leg lifts
- 60x pushups in half split (30x ea. side)
- 20x shoulder stretching
- stretching (splits, butterflies)
For the future: Back bends (falling back, standing up 5-10x), yogi style stretching (very inflexible when it comes to folding my legs and getting moreso), hand stands, inside-outside stretching kicks, solid kicking (instead of just stretching/range of motion kicking), jumping/jump kicking.
I feel pretty good. Didn’t want to overdo it. All together it took me about 45 minutes door-to-door.
I need to think about what I am going to do when it gets cold. I think I’m going to hold on to biking as long as I can because I just dread the T! The #1 Bus and I need a break. It has not been long enough.
Now I smell like grass and need to shower.
Wandering, tree-like girl living in Cambridge, MA. Hibernates by writing. Might actually be a bear.