In Korean they call this “Moo.”  Moo is one of the basic tenets of all martial arts training.  In Soo Bahk Do, we were always taught to understand the symbology as “Stop Sword” — the left hand portion of the character representing the stopping of the sword represented in a flourish on the right.  Take it a step further, it means to stop fighting.  In a sense, Moo represents peace.  But it is not itself peace, it is, instead, action toward resolution.  The manifestation of violence ceased by nonviolence.

It is interesting to many Westerners initially to practice martial arts toward the goal of nonviolence.  True martial arts promote peace, cooperation and camaraderie.  The practice is itself meant to cleanse the body and mind so that the practitioner feels at peace.  Maybe for some who get carried away with power, they want to go out and start fights.  Maybe for others, dealing with power teaches them the important lessons in wielding it appropriately.  Maybe some do not even know they have power at all.

Sifu says if you stop fighting inside, you no longer fight outside.  So it is not the physical discipline that is of utmost importance, it is the internal cultivation.  Note that I say cultivation and not discipline, though in a sense it is a discipline.  There is a fine line, however, and it must be distinguished.

In many esoteric disciplines the sword represents the mind — intellect, cutting words, wit, anxiety, so on.  And so in the material realm to see the sword both as an artists tool or a deadly weapon is much the same when applied to words and the mental realms.  Taoists might interpret “stopping the sword” as overcoming the human mind, or the ego, to follow the true path of the Tao.  You don’t win against the mind by squashing it.  You merely learn to detach yourself from it by continuous effort to unify all as one.  When the ego acts up, you learn to observe it rather than involve yourself.  You learn to wait rather than be dragged to and fro by the ego’s ceaseless whims.  When someone crosses you, you do not immediately anger.  You become selfless.  In a sense it is in recognizing that others’ ego conflicts are not your own, and not for your ego to take on, no matter how much it desires to gain or destroy.  True Tao is true peace.  True peace comes from the inside — as what is inside is always reflected on the outside in equal measure.

In other words, when you have peace inside you will have no desire for a fight.  One that comes your way will be dissolved into the nothingness of nondesire.  It will not be of use to you to harm another, be it with action or with words, because these acts of violence only remove you from peace.

Training is a process of dissolving the ego.  Internal training is allowing the All of the Universe to come in and be one with the individual.  You can’t experience All if your ego is interfering.  It’s impossible.  So instead, you must let go.  Forget about pain, forget about being better, forget about winning, forget about what happened before, forget about letting go, forget everything.

Sifu says that if you follow the path, your actions will be naturally virtuous because you will not want to disturb the delicate balance of being one, once you have experienced it.  Inner peace is easy to the Taoist, who does nothing but allow himself to be as he is in truth.

If the editing were less tripped out this would be better, but it’s the best I can dig up on the interwebs :)  Look at how he moves — damn!

My favorite part is the expression on the students face when the master breaks the pole right off the base.

But first I must say, to describe the changes is quite hard.  The further I go down the path of the internal, the more difficult it is to speak of it and the less, oddly, I feel the urge.  There are a few reasons for this…

The most obvious reason is that when you work in subtler realms, even those open to energy have difficulty grasping it if they themselves have not spent much time there.  In Western society, we are taught to shut off our intuitive sense of the world and people throughout history have been routinely shunned or destroyed for any practice or “witchcraft” encouraging energetic work.

But more than this, the work is deeply personal.  I have recently written at length about my health history on this blog.  At the time of my writing, I had struck only the tip of the iceberg.  What has occurred since has been fantastic and complex.  I feel like ME again, and not just like me, I feel free of all the drama that used to keep me down.  I feel capable of appraising reality with consciousness.  Taking mindful action and intentional non action.  And muddling through one of my own struggles which is to be impeccable with my word.  I feel a new sense of control — I do not get thrown so easily by others emotional states, and have a much higher level of situation management as a direct result.  Nothing changed outside me, but inside I am less afraid and I am more grounded.

There is a level you get to in any aspect of martial training, when you start to become empowered, and you realize that what you have is not just a silly play thing, but a real and even dangerous force.  This is usually the point at which practitioners either get drunk on the feeling and squander it recklessly, or start to become more introverted.  There are extremely practical reasons why spiritual, emotional/mental and physical discipline are tantamount and must be developed simultaneously.  The main of these is for the pure health of the practitioner.  A physically powerful person with no emotional grounding is reckless.  A spiritually powerful person with no connection to the physical is aimless.  The mentally astute will become too wrapped up in their intellect and the emotionally driven, their feelings — both will cause physical imbalance and spiritual blockage.  On a basic level, this causes pain.  Failure to develop an inner eye is a failure to understand your body and listen to its messages.  Sa Bom Nim always taught that you should see yourself from the inside, and recognize your imbalances and correct your mistakes from that place rather than say, looking in a mirror or having someone tell you.  This means not only being able to see yourself externally in terms of movement (is my foot in the right place?), but also internally (am I balanced?  am I aligned correctly?), and ultimately spiritually (where am I blocking or holding energy?  how am I inhabiting space?)  This is why many masters make few corrections.  Knowing when to guide and when to let go and let the student self guide is important on that end.

But there is another benefit to learning the skill of self knowledge and internal vision, and it is that your intuition automatically increases.  In martial arts training, this is obviously useful in fighting, as you sense more easily the moves of your opponent.  In the real world, it is no different.

I can speak to this as I have always had a very good sense of what it is to be inside my body, physically, but had a very poor sense of myself in my surrounding space, particularly in relation to others.  My colleagues can attest that I have very good form and can easily explain to others how they should feel inside their bodies when practicing techniques.  The physical discipline has always been very natural to me, almost effortless.  But for years, I sucked at sparring.  Positively sucked.  This is because I couldn’t get my mind to move out of the way so my intuition could come in.  I didn’t trust myself, so my willpower and physical sense overpowered EVERYTHING.  I could do every exercise with half the effort of others around me and even when struggling could defeat all with my unrelenting diligence.  But when it came time to break out of the structure and flow, I didn’t know how to react.  When plans changed or the structure was altered, I lost my footing.  It seemed all my training was for nothing!

In life, I struggled constantly with bad timing.  I was stunned in conflict, depressed by ignored hunches, and mowed over by anyone who sensed this weakness.  It was many years into my training when my real life finally beat my mind into submission and suddenly my sparring improved.  Having no choice but to follow pure intuition was the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me.  Here is why:

I became, am becoming, completely self empowered.

Spiritual work is the most important work of training, and it is arguable that all work we do as martial artists is spiritual.  The discipline is spiritual.  The physical challenge is spiritual.  The emotional control is spiritual.  Each offers deeper benefit to the betterment of your person through enforced adversity.  However, this is only the most superficial level of spiritual training as the real work begins only when you are capable of hearing your intuitive voice, and willing to follow through on its advice.  There lie the real challenges, as many intuitive insights defy social expectations and norms.  The struggle to stay “true to yourself” is one we are all well acquainted with, but how many actually follow their truth in practice?  Qi gong, internal martial arts, meditation — all of this work is a manner of learning to inhabit yourself spiritually.  I think of it is as me following the path to the version of me I want to be at my highest and best — not through force, but through allowance.  On some level, it is a manner of living fearlessly.  I’ve done a LOT of strange things in the past year that my rational mind would have never considered reasonable, but following mystic happenstance has freed me.  There are curious rewards for following your intuition that are often unexpected, and once you follow it enough you start to see negative repercussions that arise when you go against it.  The more I listened and trusted, the smoother the ride, even when following my “gut” meant doing or facing something unpleasant, sad, difficult, or the opposite of what I was inclined to do.  On a personal level this has lead to considerable change in lifestyle and an overhaul of long standing habits.  This process of spiritual growth has been both healing and empowering, and aside from feeling better, happier, and more relaxed — knowing myself in this way has given me first-hand evidence that I am a person whose sense of the world is worth trusting.  Practicing self trust, above all other things, has enabled me to navigate people and forces that wish to harm me in a way that is unprecedented in my life.

This is true internal vision and the key component to sharpening all senses.  Higher states of awareness see much more clearly the fumbles of a lesser attacker and the looming danger of those too great.  I spend a great deal less time worrying about what other people think.  What they do reflects them, not me, and if my self preservation means walking away and having someone throw a temper tantrum over it, so be it.  It’s not worth the energy on my part.  And what freedom it is to be released from everyone else’s drama!

I know that there are many schools that still write off spiritual and “energy” work as some new age woo woo bullshit.  But I wish to emphasize here that you don’t need to be special or smart or a kook to use internal work to benefit your life.  That is the beauty of it!  It is the most practical, reasonable, and intelligent work we can do.  And there are no drawbacks!  For myself, I am supremely blessed for my good fortune to land me here:  Exactly where I need to be.

Those who know do not talk.
Those who talk do not know.

Keep your mouth closed.
Guard your senses.
Temper your sharpness.
Simplify your problems.
Mask your brightness.
Be at one with the dust of the earth.
This is primal union.

He who has achieved this state
Is unconcerned with friends and enemies,
With good and harm, with honour and disgrace.
This therefore is the highest state of man.

Tao Te Ching, 56.

I have been outside of myself for some time, that is why I have been seeking. Now with a more concrete (if you can call it that) sense of my absence, I feel more urgent, more yang. What can I do? Do do do do do… doing doing doing.

There is one question that has been troubling me lately. For ten years I practiced a martial art that is considered an internal/external hard/soft style. Now, for a time, I am practicing internal martial arts only. At first, it was easy. I had no problem understanding the flow of qi, as I have been trained well enough to know about directing my energy. But lately, I’m blocked. I find it almost impossible to send my breath down to my lower dantien, I feel the energy stuck up in my chest and head and now to the right… and I feel all of the symptoms related to qi congestion and stagnation. I’ve had outbreaks on my skin (lung and liver), I’ve been a hot head. I feel frustrated and aggressive. I feel like I have an insane amount of energy but it’s shooting off in every direction, not coming inside, and it is not serving me. This is all confusing to me. My friends from class have suggested that this is just a natural and fairly normal phase in qi cultivation — old injuries may be aggravated and old emotional patterns may rise. But I have never had such a hard time breathing, and though anger is not a stranger, I have not felt so hot in a long time.

What confuses me the most is that my old training, which was very rigorous and physical, often addressed this anger and this heat such that it allowed me to feel balanced and whole afterward. We did a very specific type of breathing and used our voices in such a way that my throat never felt strained and my breath came very naturally from the lower dantien, as it is supposed to. It is true that I had to learn the “yin” aspects much later, but I never before felt that my yin was so lacking. If anything, I’ve been embracing my yin more than ever these past two or three years! I want to understand the inner alchemy of it. What was the nature of my Soo Bahk Do training? Did training in such a rigorous discipline help me burn away my fire nature so that I can emerge from it more balanced? Was this what my Tao instructor terms as “fire” training and now I am experiencing “water” training for the first time and finding I knew less than I thought?

I have been considering some things about this. Sifu says that water training will allow for the eternal flow of energy, because it is the nature of water to seem soft but also have the flowing capability of a river to sweep away. Or a Tsunami, to destroy. He says that fire cultivation will always burn out eventually, it is not sustainable, and that is why learning to cultivate water energy is important. As I have mentioned before, according to the Tao philosophy the upper half of the body is considered the “fire” element and the lower “water” and the idea of Tai Chi training is to place the fire below the water (the breath to the lower dantien) to create “steam” which is qi. If you do not consciously try to guide these elements they will naturally move apart which is what creates a lot of imbalances, particularly in Western culture where the upper chakras are venerated and the lower (instincts, survival, sexuality, “gut” knowing) are ignored or repressed.

It’s gotten me thinking about Soo Bahk. When I first came to Tai Chi, I was fresh off the boat from a month of Soo Bahk training with Choi Sa Bom Nim and had just got back in the swing of it before my move. I remember the first few classes made me feel so delicious and powerful. Even though we did not practice stretching, I felt limber. Even though we did not do a hard workout, I felt as if I had a lot of strength. For the first several months I lived in Asheville, I felt clean and clear! But now all of this weird stuff is cropping up, and I wonder if what I perceived as healing was just a restorative period, a time of rest that allowed me only peace enough to be a functional human again, and now I’m encountering the truly difficult task of reinhabiting a body I’ve been a stranger to for years.

Was it fire training? I don’t know. But I would be willing to say that I did burn out all of my Yang while I was in Boston. Soo Bahk Do usually made me feel energized when I had the energy to face the practice, but by the end it did not sustain me. My body started to break down under all of the stress and pressure of the circumstances of my life there and I ceased to be able to tolerate the rigor. I remember going to Master Choi’s classes and feeling like I just didn’t care anymore — Don’t get me wrong, I was there because I wanted to train, but the act of getting there was so dreadfully difficult that it mattered little to bother with the discipline, or… to show up on time. I started to practice yoga in Boston and initially found it really frustrating because it lacked the rigor and athleticism I was used to, but this all changed, ironically, when I ended up in a “Yin” yoga class for the first time and had several powerful experiences that totally changed my perspective on what physical practice can be. It helped me see with more depth than was possible before that the physical body has a direct connection to our mental/emotional well being, as well as understand for the first time the value of sitting still and being silent. After moving to Asheville, I was fully invested in internal practices and felt many obstacles that had plagued me in recent times evolve and lift. It wasn’t hard for me to meditate or go to yoga and feel all good natured afterward. But then I just hit this wall. I suddenly felt good again. For a fleeting moment, I felt like ME again! I started to do my Soo Bahk Do at home from time to time, but was frustrated to find I was unable to keep a regular practice. I started to feel annoyed with yoga and that it wasn’t structured enough for me, and it wasn’t disciplined enough. I stopped being able to concentrate in class as well. I started to feel like I was floating around in nothing nothing land and that everything was spiraling out of control. All of my anxieties about my lack of discipline came to rise again and so, all the distractions that keep me from doing my work. I attempted to make rigorous guidelines for myself to achieve what I wanted like some rebellion against this Southern town’s overly relaxed way, for naught. By then it became apparent that all of the spiritual work I had done up until that point was completely superficial. All I had got through were the recent ails, and these were only symptoms of the larger issues at play in my life. The stuff that is really hard for me has yet to be tackled — my addictions, my lifelong patterns, and all of the physical and emotional pain that is associated with those things. The more I start to understand what it is I’m driven to do in this life, the more I see how important it is for me to overcome these issues, as they are the very struggles which prevent me from just going ahead and doing as I will. These difficulties are, in fact, holding me back from what I want and have been built, slow and steady, over the course of years.

So I wonder now if I had actually been entirely out of my body at the end of my time in Boston. Maybe I had been out of my body the whole time, and Soo Bahk Do was one of the few times where I came back to myself, until finally I couldn’t even come back there. This past year was no doubt a period where I felt like a sick child in bed. What I surrendered, I was absolved of. When I surrendered, I was taken care of. Then maybe getting better, returning to my being, I didn’t need to be cared for anymore so I immediately jumped at my first inclination to do the things my depression and disassociation prevented me from accomplishing. The trouble here is that this is my old way of being — the do, do, do — that got me in trouble in the first place. And doing constantly is not getting me anywhere. I haven’t yet understood how to surrender my defenses to my own being, how to let go in front of myself. It’s like… I have a memory of what it felt like to be a whole person, but no understanding of why I am not that way currently, or how to be that way again. I keep thinking I need to go back to these things that made me feel whole and right, like Soo Bahk. But in truth, I need to just let it go.

I need to let go of the idea that I was ever a cool person in some past mystical time. I need to let go of the 20 years I played the piano and the 10 years I did martial arts and the 5 years I lived in Boston and it all went to hell. I need to let go of my fear of getting older, and the fear that if I lose my training I’ll lose my body. I need to let go of my fear of becoming weak and fragile, and my concerns that I won’t progress ever again, and that I disappoint myself and everyone else by my mediocrity. This is not to say I need to give up, but holding onto these aspects of my past and my fears about the future are only impeding me now. There is divine order, I want to trust that the movement of my life is as it is, if not the way it is supposed to be, and that those things I fear releasing will return to me if I am meant to have them. I am not ready to go back to my Soo Bahk Do training right now, because I do not adequately understand something about it that’s really important. If I am to make a life of martial arts, it is pivotal that I fill in the gaps of this traditional training properly and that I understand fully. The paradoxical thing about it is that I must empty myself completely of the ten years of experience and accept the fact that I’ve lost certain things. There’s nothing I can do to change the course of the river, my life flows as it must, and sadly, for me, this has meant a lot of saying goodbye. Have I ever mentioned that the one thing I’m worst at is letting go?

Trusting in just being is something I haven’t been able to do for years. There is so much potential in my hands and I see others with less all around me making their lives happen, and I can’t seem to create any sense of my reality. It’s painful to see so much work “go to waste.” I have lived a life of constant drive and seen it amount to so little, but holding onto whatever small achievements there were in the present moment is not going to help me move forward. Yes, I was well-respected once in more than one world. Yes, I was the top of my class and I practiced every day. Yes, I once lead a structured, disciplined, focused life that seemed to have some meaning and felt as if it was going somewhere. …But that is not today. I will never get an answer to What For, especially not if I’m searching. The only way forward is to be, and to trust. Today I can safely say I’m not driving my life into a nonsensical hole, I am here for a reason and I have intentionally chosen the activities I am a part of — because I enjoy them, because they help me, and because they are a part of my path. That’s enough. There’s nothing more I can do but allow this path to take me where it means me to go.

So why is that so damn hard?

Impatience and fear. That’s all it comes down to. I thought discipline was about doing all these years, but now I see that it’s really about overcoming. And to overcome is to surrender.

As young as seven or eight I started reading my sister’s “Seventeen” magazines, which I meticulously paged through back to back in one sitting every time (I was that kind of kid, I had to read the title page and the copyright and everything).  I tore out an article about yoga and practiced the postures diligently exactly as the article described.  I timed them when the article said to hold the pose for 3 minutes and held it for exactly 3 minutes.  Once or twice I even practiced with friends.  I had not seen the exercises described in the article anywhere else until I eventually came to Soo Bahk Do where many of the postures were practiced daily.

I played all different kinds of sports.  My sister was always good at sports and I wanted to be like her so I joined the basketball team and the track team and tried softball.  I never really liked team sports (too much standing around, too much depending on other people) but I liked track because spring training was intense and I wasn’t required to do much running.  I chiefly threw discus, javelin and shot put, and I was a natural at hurdles.  My strides were the right length and having spent so much childhood jumping fences in and out of pastures, I had no anxiety leaping over hurdles.  I found 100 meters of hurdling substantially less tiring than 100 meters of running and I often won the races.

There are some childhood health issues that are worth noting:

1.  When I was nine, I tested positive for tuberculosis and was required to swallow pills for nine months.  As a nine year old learning to swallow pills was hard at first.  Because of the nature of the illness, my Mom told me not to tell other people at school, but I didn’t know why and it became more than swallowing just pills.  I still don’t understand what this meant and continues to mean for me in my life.  Obviously, I am not sick myself because the antibiotics managed to kill the disease before it started.  But other questions arise — mainly, am I a carrier now?  Will my children be exposed?  Can I give blood?

2.  Around 11 I developed eczema around my eyes.  Nobody knew what it was for a while and my sister used to say it was because I was malnourished because my parents allowed me to eat pasta and frozen burritos since I refused everything, even the chicken and lima beans and peas I used to think were OK.  She’s probably right that these things were related.  Eczema has no real cause and no real cure and the only times in my life when it has not been present were when my diet substantially changed.  When I was a kid, I was the pickiest eater alive and could not eat anything too flavorful without feeling my throat close up and my stomach lurch.  I dreaded and avoided eating.  The lunch supervisor at my elementary school watched over me to make sure that I ate and sometimes I would throw my food away behind her back.  Everyone’s concern about the issue only exacerbated it.  I was embarrassed about it but couldn’t bring myself to try new things, even though all I wanted was to fit in with everyone else who ate salads and apples and meat and ketchup.  I found the texture and taste of all of these things repulsive and hated that I could not seem to see them otherwise.

Related to that, for as long as I can remember I’ve been a chronic chewer.  I used to chew cloths to get to sleep when I was younger and as I aged I chewed straight through pens and started smothering my face with chapstick and gobbling up gum.  Though I’m now a fully vetted adventurous eater, I still compulsively chew.

3.  At 11 or so, it was discovered that I have scoliosis.  By 13, I was required to wear a back brace at night because it had reached a degree of severity which threatened surgery.  The curve is in the center of my back, a full S, and was 29 degrees last time I got it X-rayed.  I wore the brace for two years and was happy when I didn’t have to see the ugly fiberglass thing ever again.  My mom used to make me lug it to sleepovers.  Worst thing ever.  Like having braces but freaky.

Psychologically, I was a lonely kid.  I didn’t fit in at school and my childhood home was extremely isolating.  I relied on my friends for support that most people get from their families.  This is not to say my family was bad, but we were not connected.  My brother, nine years my senior, and I never got along.  My parents split up when I was twelve, and at the same time my sister was struggling with addiction.  Nobody spoke openly about anything, and I, being the youngest, was kept furthest from the truth.  This was very hard and stressful for me, as I knew what was going on, but I had no recourse or outlet.  Other kids my age had no concept of what was happening in my family and my family wouldn’t include me.  Like my sickness, it was a secret that I felt ashamed about.  Even today, to be honest about an experience that I know has been that of so many is really challenging for me.  Choosing my words carefully and tiptoeing, but it’s long past is it not?  With family, it never is.

I started Soo Bahk Do when I was fourteen.  I have a hard time remembering now what exactly was going on at the time, but I know by the time September rolled around, my siblings and my Dad had moved out entirely and my Mom and I relocated to a tiny cottage.  My Dad had started Soo Bahk Do with me as a sort of father-daughter activity, probably to help himself deal with the transition as well as me and we trained together for the first five years.

While doing Soo Bahk Do, I always had a very active lifestyle.  I played piano, I went out with my friends, I worked on art and did well in school.  One year I did track and trained at the same time, which was insane to say the least.  As I have already said here, Master Choi’s classes are/were very rigorous and for the first few years I had no idea why I was going.  They were so painful, difficult, and disorienting, but at the same time I felt I could totally handle them.  We practiced exercises that were familiar to me in all of my childhood pretending and play.  And Master Choi’s philosophies on life resonated with me, even as a teenager.  Once I started to make friends with my classmates, I was hooked.  Like so many of my obsessions and activities through those years, Soo Bahk Do was a place where I felt I could be “a part of the family” in a way that was more accepting and less stressful than being a part of my own.  I have always been thankful it was Soo Bahk Do and not something else.  Training in Soo Bahk Do has, without a doubt, altered the course of my life for the better.

By eighteen, I was practicing Soo Bahk Do 4-6 days a week, doing resistance training with weights and physioballs 3 days a week, and hiking every sunday with my boyfriend at the time.  I was in school full time as a classical pianist and writing voraciously.  I was nineteen when I decided to move to Boston and that was when everything shifted in my life.  I gained quite a lot in my training during this time, but I also lost some, or perceived it as loss.  I still trained 4-5 times a week.  I had routines outside of the dojang as well as in.  I came to the dojang every day it was open and eventually started teaching more and more.  Master Steyer and I had disagreements and we both had difficulty with it at the time, but I see now that they were necessary for me to understand what I know, want, and need.  Conflict is often a way of digging deeper into the truth and it forced me to really question what I had learned from both instructors.  I discovered what Master Choi’s teachings really were about, and at the same time, ways in which I could maybe approach those teachings differently, in a way that suited me, my life, my culture, and my background… so that it was not just an inauthentic chirping.  I eventually realized that regurgitation did a disservice to the art and that it was necessary for me to discover it on my own if I ever hoped to understand it at all.  Though training was the most important aspect of my life, the only constant, it had become challenged and strained by the countless difficulties in and around and I finally had to depart when I was twenty three.

My life in Boston was insanely stressful from start to finish.  School was intense, my workload was outrageous, I had constant difficulty with friends and other people around.  Once out of school, the working world was impossible and ruthless, my roommate situation was in constant flux, and things at home in CT were unresolved.  In addition to outward difficulties, when I was twenty I had a traumatic sexual experience and when I was twenty-two, a friend of mine killed another friend of mine and was sentenced to fifty years in prison.  There is no speaking how these events changed me and I have even hesitated to claim them as my own trauma.  Easier to talk about shitty roommates then to talk about death.  Easier to hold onto a bad relationship that hurt me repeatedly, to enact damaging patterns on those who had nothing to do with it, than to admit that I had allowed something to happen to me that was against what I wanted and that this decision had lasting repercussions on my life.

There was no relief.

What I lost during this time, I always attributed falsely to my training, though maybe the rigor of Master Choi’s classes my have helped me decompress, I am not sure if they would have been the long run cure that I always believed.  I started having pain in my body shortly after I moved.  The first was in my knee, which I hyper-extended practicing a new kick.  Later it moved to my hips, and once I stopped training, my back.

I started yoga after I left Soo Bahk Do because I wanted something to tide me over while I was on my break.  Truly, I didn’t understand yoga at all until I practiced Yin Yoga with a wonderful instructor, Caroline Harvey.  Yin yoga is a style of yoga which requires the exact opposite of all I had understood exercise to be before.  It asks you to relax and release and let go.  The postures are held for a very long time, are relatively simple, and do not need to even look right.  This was one of my first experiences with meditation and self acceptance.  In just two months, practicing Yin had released so much of my hip tension and related emotional tension, I was amazed.

Eight months ago when I cut out of Boston, I was living in a dream and the dream continued and continued through a 12,000 mile trip across the United States and my relocation to Asheville.  With no real direction for myself, I have continued to practice yoga and start internal martial arts because my energy has been so low, I can’t really handle doing Soo Bahk Do.  My muscle definition has softened dramatically.  I feel weak sometimes and at times I am afraid that I might break my body.  Even eating is tricky, and I’ve become almost completely vegetarian.

But at the same time, so much has been revealed to me in these months.  Just yesterday, in an Iyengar class, the teacher pointed out my scoliosis.  My back is not strong as it was when I was training in Soo Bahk Do and the curve has become more noticeable to me and is one of the reasons I’ve kept up with some practice.  Exercise, as it was then, as it is now, as it will always be, may be the only thing that absolves my back pain.  She said that there was a class in town that was specifically tailored for people with scoliosis and that I should check it out.  The realization that my scoliosis was so apparent to someone else and could be fixed or negated through yoga practice was what lead me to write this.  How many health issues have I had my entire life that I can start to fix?  Why are the conditions of our lives so important to our physicality?

I remember what it felt like when my hips were perfectly in line and when my knee did not hurt.  I remember when conversation was easy and my throat didn’t feel strained or choked.  I remember when moving through my center was natural.  But today my hips have an anterior tilt and my knee is crooked.  I walk on the edges of my feet rather than evenly across the center.  My neck, if I’m not paying attention, has a tendency to fall forward compressing the vertebrae, and my jaw has been so tense at times that I get headaches and my teeth feel sensitive.  My back, also, is out of line, with one set of ribs turned slightly forward from the other.  These subtle changes in my body have taken years to create.  They represent traumas that I’ve carried and must let go of in order to come back into balance.  The more I work through these physical blocks, the more the emotional blocks come to my consciousness.

I had forgotten about my scoliosis for years.  I had forgotten that I had to take pills for nine months when I was a child.  I have had issues with my lungs, neck, throat, and jaw for my entire life and never connected it to the mental action of the lungs, neck, throat, and jaw.  Breath, speech, rhythm, food.  How many years have I written letters because I could not speak in conflict?  Written blogs because I didn’t talk right?  I have not outgrown all of my compulsive habits related to eating/chewing and I now fully believe that the eczema was caused by food sensitivities I developed from my one note diet as well as metaphysical issues related to keeping secrets, stress, fear, being told I talk too much and being unable to talk when the information was critical.  Working on relieving the pain physically also requires me to speak more correctly, eat more consciously, and accept aspects of myself that I have always considered horrible and unloveable.  It’s not easy, and some days I feel like I can’t face the world at all because the inner voices are so strong.  My biggest obstacle as of today is forgiving myself for things I said in anger, and ways I spoke when I was under stress.  Damn, it’s hard!  But it works, slowly, it works.

The function of my hips has greatly improved since I have been doing yoga, particularly alignment based styles like Ashtanga or Anusara, and much of the initial tension is gone.  This was the tension related to fluctuation in my life and to survival.  But the deeper stuff … intimacy, rigidity, creativity…  is taking much more time to sort out.  How do I have true discipline and not just structure for the sake of structure?  How do I love as I did when I was a teenager with openness, but also wisdom?  How do I allow life to come and accept it for all of its randomness, sadness, weirdness, difficulty, beauty, and wonder?  It’s been since I was five or so that I could do a full lotus, and it will take a near-return to that five year old emotional state before I can do it again.  The difference, of course, is that now I’m an adult and life doesn’t just happen to me anymore.  Within reason, I can manage what comes to me in the future, not by controlling it but by bending to it.

And this, of course, is the key.  People lose flexibility as they become adults not just because they are getting older, but because they have lost the flexibility and creativity of their childhood mind.  We fall so easily into the trap of “This is how life is.”  What crazy lies we tell ourselves to be comfortable and secure!  What’s even sillier is that we walk through this world still believing what Dad or Mom or your teacher or your best friend said when you were seven.  It could be anything.  You’re worthless, you look stupid, don’t say that…  and those negative preconceptions almost become a safe place.  ”Well, this is how I am.”  Is it really?   What if you could be someone of worth?  What if you looked great?  What if you said it anyway and people listened?

Yes, it is a matter of changing your mind, but no, it is not just all positive thinking and cheery happy-go-lucky yay yay yay! as many people make the mistake of believing.  Problems cannot be resolved until they are worked through.  Fears are not relieved until they are faced.  Problems are large, and fears are strong.  The spirit is stronger only through hard work and dedication.  You don’t need yoga or martial arts for this, no but for me they have been great tools in discovering who and what I really am.  Difficulties in my training directly reflect difficulties in my life.  The more I work with that, the more I see, the more I resolve, the happier and lighter I become.

I’m here to heal.  I’m here to get better.  And in learning how to do this as completely as I possibly can, I learn how to understand and support others.  This is the purpose of my vocation.  And, maybe, my life.

My friends, there are many songs and many voices, yet all birds are of one nature.  In all the world and all the universe, there are not two natures nor three nor many, but only one.  Even so, what kind of a world have people created for themselves?  One of multiplicity, complexity, and confusion:  one of trouble, disunity, and decline, all due to the barren minds of undeveloped people who build thick walls of fear around themselves.  Many teachers and leaders aggravate this situation with narrow views that foster an even greater separation between people.  Their words express only their own stage of development and that of the people who follow them.  The true test of a teacher’s value is his ability to transcend time, place and circumstance while still relating to the world.   The Great One does not create a vision that would limit the potential of the future; instead, he teaches only the absolute way which creates no obstacles to further spiritual development.

-Hua-Ching Ni, The Uncharted Voyage Toward the Subtle Light

Soooooooooo after climbing a few EPIC MOUNTAINS, getting lost and riding for about an hour, I jump immediately into this “Power Yoga” which is all core exercises and a lot of standing on one foot and trying not to knock over the person standing three inches on either side of you.  WTF have I gotten myself into?

The amazing thing about it though was that after I managed to stop huffing and puffing (I literally got off my bike after riding it uphill for 20 min and ran into this class, LOL.) I felt stronger than I have in at least a year.  I forgot what it was like to feel this strong!  Of course, if I had to do anything aside from pedal my legs and do some yoga poses I may have felt different but damn, I miss it.  A strong body makes life lighter.  Hard physical training immediately boosts.

The teacher in my yoga class said something really nice today.  ”This practice is dedication to your life.”

I believe that wholeheartedly.

We don’t train in physical or spiritual practices just for the hell of it, we do them because it is necessary for our vitality and well being.  Practice is giving yourself the love that you deserve.  Taking care of your body improves the quality of all things, and listening to its consciousness is no different than listening to a good friend.  Your life deserves your love and attention, give it that!  There is no reason to be afraid to care about your own happiness and health.

Deepening my internal practice (which has been a very natural process for me, starting from when I first wrote the post on this blog about “Po Wol”) has been and continues to be a fantastic journey into really understanding myself, the human body, and martial arts.  I no longer suffer the need to make delineation between this or that technique, style.  The principles are the same between all disciplines, yogic, martial, and beyond.  I am extremely grateful for my past ten years of training with people who were so aware of the martial path so that I am able to take this new step in my own.  I’ve found something really amazing here, and maybe it’s why I’m here.  With intention, physical work heals and balances.  I wish to understand more, so I can give more.  Learn alignment, anatomy, philosophy.  These are things I am only touching on the surface.

There is much in my life that remains formless for the time.  This will change, and one day I’ll know what direction to drive the next cycle.  But I am happy with where I am.  I feel my vitality returning.

I will have to return to share more in depth.  Hope everyone is well up north and otherwise.

I have a piece coming up about hip tension (somewhat related to lower back tension).  It is crazy how it can take so many years (and mistakes) to understand the most basic concepts.  I hope to start sharing these realizations with you more and more.  Maybe if I do, you won’t have to spend the years searching that I did.  Maybe you will anyway.

All I can say is that I hope one day I know enough that people take me seriously enough to benefit from the knowledge I’ve gained and will continue to work with, adapt, and try to understand.  Nobody needs to be in pain if they don’t want to be.  One day, I hope this is a given.