Rest Day

Today is a much, much needed rest day.  My wrists hurt, my shoulders hurt, my back hurts.  I'm taking today off and tomorrow will be my grading.  Then back into the mill on Sunday with snorkling at the Blue Caves on Monday, which should be good. Well, should be better than good.

http://www.natural-blue.net/english.html

Ooohh!

So last night we went to karate and James and me were both feeling stiff and sore, which was good as it gave Arakaki sensei a chance to teach me some more of his massage therapy, some of which involved some strange techniques, but they did work and I can't wait to try them out on any unsuspecting injured people! 

I've been looking back at my posts and I've spoken a fair bit about losing weight and getting back in shape and general body composition changes.  But it's not just my body that's changing, my mind is too.  I'm lucky to be able to step out of my life and look at things, even my own mind set.  I've always been one for self analysis (or navel gazing) and the stress free lifestyle here is certainly letting me do that. 

I remember that when I dropped out of teacher training and went to Falconer I was a bit of a wreck on the inside and I spent a year putting myself back together, one confidence boost at a time and in that process I was sort of ruthless with myself in certain mental habits: I made myself less lazy, less laid back.  I seem to be doing it again, now; not rebuilding myself as such, but ironing out certain mental habits I've formed.  Certainly, I'm trying to take steps back from things, to look at them from a distance instead of up close. 

All the martial arts is effecting my perceptions and my mind's relationship to my body. A good example is the other day when we were working on the clinch; I was looking for another technique to teach the guys.  I had James clinch me and go for a neck twist and I just let my body react to see what it would do. What it did was quite effective (though there is a counter, if you're slow, but there's a counter to the counter and a counter to the counter of the counter...), but I only found it because I was able to turn my mind off and give my reactions free reign. 

But this whole mind/body thing is very Western, we get it from the Greeks.  The Japanese don't quite have the same split in their mind sets, don't have the same split in anything.  In the West we're good/evil, black/white, mind/body, sacred/profane.  Out here there just isn't that split.  I've seen temples hidden behind take aways, I've seen priests in a queue for cans of drinks, mausoleums next to motorways... there is no split in the Japanese mind set, things are as they are.  There is no mind/body split, there's just you.  Your mind and your body are the same thing, they're you.

Maybe I'm starting to recognise this. 

Anyway, rest today.