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April 30, 2013

Black Belt Test 2013 is this Sunday May 5 at 3 PM

On Sunday May 5 at 3 PM you are invited to share in the celebration of our 3 black belt candidates who will complete their testing with a demonstration. In the last couple of months in addition to all of the physical preparations the three candidates completed the following:

1. Kyle Pinder engaged some of his classmates and created a program for a group of individuals who have MS. He showed them how they could use martial arts to get some positive movement in their routine. It was met with appreciation from all of the participants, as they not only enjoyed the different kind of movement, but also the skill and patience of each of the students who worked with them.

2. Mark Paalman has put together a program on Downs Syndrome as a beginning of an awareness education work we are creating for our school. His goal is to help all of our students understand the scientific side of some common differences – that in the end we can see and feel that no matter our differences, as humans we all have goals and dreams. This is a great follow up to the work done last year by Audrey on autism.

3. Jen Selby completed a 6 week program on art education, Art in Mind. This visual education in art and the conversations that resulted in what you see created opportunity for creative thinking. In addition it helped each of the students to appreciate that all of us see things in different ways. All of this culminated in a unbelievable display and evening meeting the artist and seeing all of the work they put in on Museum Night. There was a great turnout and demand for the program to be repeated.

Please come and support the candidates this Sunday afternoon and watch them do forms, kicks, self defense, break boards and talk about their journey. The event will be held at Summit School – right across from Camp Letts. Their test begins at 11AM and you may come at any time, but the please be there by 3 PM for the final demonstration.

April 24, 2013

Sausages are like Laws

Last weekend I had intended to post a new blog, but it didn’t happen. Why? Sausages, that’s why.

How many of you really LOVE a good hotdog? Before I came to China, hotdogs were very low on my list of favorite foods. At a cookout, I would pick a hamburger over a hotdog 7 times out of 10, perhaps. But everything changes when we are separated from the loving embrace of our mother culture. When I was home a few months ago, and had opportunity to eat whatever western food I wanted, there was no single mouthful of food that so filled me with joy as a hotdog, on a bun, with ketchup, mustard, and relish.

So I decided China needed hotdogs. Maybe part of what makes hotdogs so enticing to me is the fact that there are hotdog imposters everywhere here. These things, called huotui (fire legs) look exactly like hotdogs should look but lack any of the flavor of their ballpark cousins. They are lengths of flavorless processed ham — even spam is better. But one sees them and is duped, thinking, “I could really go for a hotdog right now.”

So I set out to make some hotdogs. First, I looked at recipes online. They all looked simple enough. I needed sausage casings, meat, certain spices — “I can do this,” I thought to myself. So I poked around town, asked the cook at the school questions, and after a few weeks of dead ends, false starts, and re-thinkings, I eventually believed I had a workable plan. Continue reading “Sausages are like Laws”

April 9, 2013

Rubber Duck Fun Race for a great cause – fighting hunger in Anne Arundel County

The Rotary Club of South Anne Arundel County is sponsoring Quacks for Backpacks on Sunday May 19th from 12:00-3:00 at Camp Letts – 4009 Camp Letts Rd. Edgewater, MD 21037.

100% of the proceeds will benefit the Bountiful Backpack Program, sponsored by South County Rotary. Hunger in Anne Arundel County is unfortunately a grim reality for many area children. Nutritious meals are available at school; however weekends are not covered. In an effort to sustain these children, South County Rotary launched the Bountiful Backpack Program as part of its hunger initiative. The backpacks are filled with a weekend supply of nourishing food for children to take home each Friday. The packs are returned on Monday and re-filled by club members and volunteers for the next weekend. Continue reading “Rubber Duck Fun Race for a great cause – fighting hunger in Anne Arundel County”

April 4, 2013

Relationship Premises

I’ll tell a little story about life here at the kungfu school. Our dormitories are located in a former hospital, in two buildings with a courtyard between. But when I first came here in early 2008, the kungfu school only occupied the front-most of the two buildings. Shifu acquired the back building shortly before I started studying here full-time.

The rooms of the former hospital had been being used for residence for a while, and there was one occupant who would not leave when the kungfu school took over. In the spirit goodwill, I imagine, no big fuss was made and that man– an older, retired herbal doctor — has continued to live at one end of the dormitory hallway. As a matter of fact, he is my next-door neighbor.

For various reasons, tensions between the kungfu students and my neighbor escalated. Not the least of these was the intrusion of pervasive Chinese culture shock into our ex-patriot stronghold, the one place in China we hoped to call our own. Also, he did not share our training schedule, so when we desperately needed rest he might be having a loud and alcoholic card game with his friends or stomping down the hallway or loudly and revoltingly clearing his throat and spitting on the floor. For a while we even shared a bathroom with the guy, and finding the remains of his having cleaned fish for dinner in your shower drain is never fun. Things bottomed out with multilingual screaming matches in the hallway and hard feelings all around.

But for me there was a significant turning point where my relationship with the guy stopped getting worse and started getting better. That was the moment when I realized he wasn’t going away. I think subconsciously my fellow students acted on the premiss that they could choose not to have this relationship, that if they antagonized him enough, he would move out. When I accepted that he was not going to move out, and that I didn’t want to be the kind of person who would drive him out, the question became not if I was going to have a relationship with this guy, but what kind of relationship ours would be.

There is a degree of satisfaction to be gained just by committing to a thing, that can’t be found while we withhold acceptance of that thing’s actuality. New people or circumstances are like a new piece of furniture that surprises you by appearing in your living room; if you can’t fit it out the door, it is better to rearrange the furniture and make a place for it than to leave it sitting in the middle of the floor.

As for my neighbor, all I really did was smile at him when I saw him in the hallway and compliment him once in a while if I liked his clothes or something. More than my external behavior, my internal behavior changed. When I started acting on the premiss that he was part of my life here in Wudang, his noise, his smelly cooking, his loud TV, it all stopped annoying me because I acknowledged his right to be there.

March 20, 2013

Another Turn Around the Circle

I have returned to Wudang, China, once more. I am in the agony of what I have previously dubbed “Week One Syndrome,” though it has been a light week and really not as excruciating as I was afraid it would be.

I had a wonderful time at home, though it was by far my most stressful trip home for work and family reasons I won’t get into right now. While I was home this time, I let myself relax a bit on my kungfu training and focused more on my internal training, trying to keep deep breathing and keep my emotions steady in the face of the above mentioned stress. And — and I hope you can understand what I mean — I tried to consciously unclench the fist of self-discipline I had going on and hold my emotions and will in a gentler grip.

I felt this was immensely constructive, and it got me thinking about another aspect of self cultivation. I think that, inherent in the ability to push yourself to be better is at least a grain of self-criticism. You have to be able to look at yourself and find your own weaknesses, find the things about yourself that are not satisfying to you. I spend a fair amount of time in this mode during my training, always looking for ways to improve. On the other hand, the best way to exercise the powers developed in training, and to find the satisfaction that is the goal of the training, is to accept yourself and, indeed, enjoy the fruits of your hard work.

The trouble is that we often get stuck in one or the other. Too much self-criticism makes us unhappy and stressed, too much self-acceptance makes us complacent and stagnant. This puts me in mind of something my kungfu uncle Zhou Xuan Yun said during his talk in DC in January. I paraphrase, but he said that life is what happens when Yin and Yang interact. So if self-criticism and self-acceptance are pure concepts defining the extremes of yourself, growth and life are only possible when moving naturally between the two, holding one but easily and regularly reaching for the other.

The challenge is to find real balance between the two in our subjective worlds. Our only guide is past experience, and if you have never pushed yourself hard enough or accepted yourself completely enough, moving toward balance feels so unnatural that you think you are actually losing balance. Disciplined effort seems too hard, and you think you just can’t do it. Loving yourself feels too alien, and you think it’s not real. Real hard work is required to understand the two extremes enough to accurately sense where the healthy balance really is.

I think this is a good thing to meditate on in times of transition like I am facing now. The only constant is change, after all.

February 21, 2013

Art In Mind: VIsual Arts Program

This past Monday, February 18 was the first Art In Mind (AIM) session for students and friends of Balanced Life Skills! The pioneer group of 12 elementary-aged students had a great hands on experience learning about Alberto Giacometti and his sculptures – read the attached PDF file here for more information about their project!

The first class of the Art in Mind 6-week series begins Thursday, February 28th at 4:30 – 5:30. Students can come to all six hands-on workshops, or just drop-in for each class that interests them. Tuition can either be paid on a drop-in basis, or you can pay $75 up front for all six sessions.

In order for the instructor to have enough materials prepared, students do need to REGISTER HERE for each class they plan on attending! This workshop series is open to registered and non-registered BLS students.

Week look forward to seeing you there! Keep an eye out for the “Museum Night” featuring your child’s art exhibits at Balanced Life Skills!