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Fathers Day Message: Check Your Blood Pressure

Fathers Day is this weekend – and the question I have for all the fathers in our community is, “How is your health?”  Let’s start with a simple measure of health and that is your blood pressure.  Did you know that 1 in 3 adults has high blood pressure and does not know it?  It may not be obvious at first that your blood pressure is raised above what is considered healthy, but left untreated the damage can be very serious.

  • 77 % of Americans treated for a first stroke have blood pressure over 140/90
  • 69% of Americans who have a first heart attack have blood pressure over 140/90
  • 74% of Americans with congestive heart failure have blood pressure over 140/90

High blood pressure can lead to many other health issues too and no one is too young to be checking on their blood pressure, as some very simple changes can make a difference.

Dad’s on this weekend when your children and your spouses are praising you for all you do – do something for them and yourself – Get Your Blood Pressure Checked.  You can do it at the drugstore or your doctors office – just do it.  If it is over 120/80 then you are in at the very least a prehypertension category and need to take action NOW, for the sake of you and your family.

Want to learn more?  Check out this link to the American Heart Association

 

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Reconciling Opposites

Trying to lower my stance with a straight back at May competition

It’s been well over a month since my last post. Our training schedule has been in chaos for the last month, and it just seems like every time I might sit down and write, there is a competition,  or a performance, or a meditation period, or a bad internet connection, or something else to get in the way. A change is as good as a holiday, though, and I feel refreshed and ready to go now that training in Wudangshan is settling back into normal routine.

The month of May and the beginning of June were fairly stressful, because it seemed like we were never going to get a real day off to recover from all the events mentioned above. Everyone in our class, I think, felt this tension building under the calm we are trying to maintain. The harder we tried to keep a lid on stress, the more rigid our emotions became, and that rigidity fanned the embers of the stress inside. The calm produced was not really calm at all, but a facade over inner turmoil. One has to somehow face stress while staying light and happy. This seems impossible; the two seem mutually exclusive. One feels one must either escape the stress or embrace unhappiness. But we can’t do either.

This balancing of seemingly mutually exclusive elements is a reoccurring theme in my training. From day one, coaches yell at us to sink our stances lower, but keep our backs straighter. This seems impossible. To keep balance, you feel that you have to stick out your butt and lean your head forward if you want to get your stance lower. Or the coach tells you to do the movements faster and clearer, but you are already going as fast as you can and you feel the only way to go any faster is to fudge the movements. But though you ask the coach again and again to choose one of the opposing criteria for you to focus on, he keeps you on both horns of the dilemma. And then one day, through long, hard work, low and straight becomes possible, and fast and clear becomes fierce.

Often in our decision making, and particularly in the processes by which we find our emotional response to stimuli, we are too lazy to seek an ideal answer. Instead, we try to determine which extreme reaction will give the best result most of the time. Psychology calls this heuristics, and it is a very real part of how the human brain works. These shortcuts save time and reduce the amount of thinking we really have to do, but they also oversimplify  our inherently subtle world and thus make our path through it clumsy and misguided.

I think this is one reason meditation is so important: meditation changes the way one values time and helps prioritize balanced thinking instead of headlong speed. By slowing down and observing with greater sensitivity, we can hope to face each challenge with the right calm-happy, lazy-driven, optimistic-pessimistic, black-white, free-disciplined, push-pull, fast-clear, low-straight, give-take, yin-yang response.

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Culture of Peace is the answer to bullying

In just one week  I will be presenting on four occasions the topic, Creating a Culture of Peace in our Schools at AACC.  For months now I have been preparing this presentation because of my belief that it is not about rules, posters and punishments that will change what is happening in our schools – but rather an examination of the culture in each and every school.  As adults we have the responsibility and the power to help our children to learn to be peaceful, but creating peace starts with one – and that is ourselves.

In a recent interview the director of the documentary, Bully, touched on this point in a very powerful manner.  His comments are found in the video.  In the coming months we will be working to bring greater awareness to this subject, and I encourage each parent in our community to have this discussion at their school .  I am available to speak to this subject with parents and teachers in any school here in Anne Arundel County as we pursue peace in our schools.

Here is the link: Director of BULLY interview

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Habitat for Humanity Build in Baltimore

Sunny and breezy, with beautiful mid-70 degree weather… this past Saturday was a terrific day to spend outside. Instead of hanging at the beach or lounging in a downtown coffee shop, I arrived bright and early at a build site in Baltimore City to partake in a house demolition and reconstruction job!
Volunteering for Habitat for Humanity has been a dream of mine, but taking off for a week to build a house abroad just never seemed feasible with work and school. Who knew that Habitat for Humanity has local chapters that allow you to volunteer for day jobs (about 7 hours) during the week and/or weekends? I didn’t!

That is, I didn’t know until I came across Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake during a routine internet exploration. Registration is a breeze, and the site offers information about lots of different volunteer opportunities. If you’re not interested in labor-intensive work, maybe volunteering in the office will suit you better! You can request to do gardening and landscaping, or offer up your muscles for power tool duties. Either way, as long as you’re 16 or older, there is a job available for you!

The local chapter, Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake, has about 6 different sites in Baltimore city that they are focusing on over the next few months. In addition to novice volunteers (like myself) at the sites on build days, there are Red Hats who are veteran volunteers that have gone through additional safety courses and commit to two build days each month, Americorps members who are on job assignments with Habitat for 11-month contracts, and site supervisors who are employed by Habitat for Humanity and provide volunteers with wisdom, friendliness, and tasks!

I had a WONDERFUL experience getting to know other volunteers and spending the day ripping out old windows and frames, and reconstructing the exterior walls! The experience was so wonderful that I have already gone online and  signed up for four more jobs over the next two months! If you, or anyone you know, have an interest in volunteering in your community, I highly recommend Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake.

“Volunteering is the ultimate exercise in democracy. You vote in elections once a year, but when you volunteer, you vote every day about the kind of community you want to live in.”

—Marjorie Moore

 

 

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Connor S. takes part in Bello Machre “Every Step Counts” fundraiser

Connor S. is a student at Balanced Life Skills.  This Saturday on June the 9th he will be taking part in a fundraiser for Bello Machre, ” Every Step Counts”  with his team – Dust Off Your Dreams.  Why is this so special?  Here is a letter from his mom and a video of Connor speaking to nearly 200 Middle Schools Students at Severn School about autism.

For the last 40 years, Bello Machre, a locally based non-profit organization, has dedicated their energy to helping children and adults with developmental disabilities. The “Every Step Counts” fundraiser is their biggest of the year, and it accounts for a large portion of the money used to fund their services.  Bello Machre provides much needed support to families and group homes to hundreds of people of all ages with disabilities of all types.  For the last 9 years, Bello Machre has supported our efforts in bringing Connor out of his autistic shell by providing us with a yearly grant that we use to help defray the costs of his treatments. Half of every dollar we raise in “Every Step Counts” is added to Connor’s grant account to be used specifically for his treatments.

We have been blessed that all of the medicines, doctors appointments, therapy appointments, specialized medical tests, friends, family, aides and teachers have come together to bring Connor to a very high functioning level.  It is a wonderful thing to be able to dream of a future for Connor not totally dominated by the world of autism. Unfortunately, for every one like Connor, there are 10 others who haven’t been so lucky. We would love to have your support once again as we attempt to raise money for a very worthy organization.  Any donation, big or small, is greatly appreciated.  If you wish to donate, you can send a check to us made out to “Bello Machre/Every Step Counts” to our home address listed below.  If you would prefer to donate online, go towww.bellomachre.org/events/every_step_counts.php.  Our team name is “Dust Off Your Dreams,” and that name would need to be included on the online donation form in order for us to receive credit.

We thank you in advance for your support, and the hundreds of other individuals served by Bello Machre thank you as well.

Gratefully,

Bob, Lori and Connor Skalitzky

2513 Windy Oak Court

Crofton, MD 21114

P.S.  If you would like to see Connor’s amazing speech given on World Autism Awareness Day (which also happens to be his birthday), check out this video:


 

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Martial Arts Testing and Getting Rank: An Aikido Perspective

In many ways, Aikido is a lifelong journey. There’s always something to learn around the corner,always something just out of reach. This is what makes practicing Aikido so rewarding. You are always on the path, and the path never ends. I have practiced with Aikido practitioners who have been on the path for many years but never tested. Their Aikido was no worse than those students who pursued rank. The Aikido journey is not one of rank. It is one of personal development.

The journey of Aikido—and all martial arts—is not driven by the attainment of rank or recognition.These are external things that contain no inherent value; things you show to others to gain the recognition and admiration of others. The things that matter: technical skill; personal confidence;and the ability to teach others have nothing to do with a particular belt. A practitioner of the “lowest” rank has the ability to welcome a new and unranked student and show them what he or she knows. Likewise, the “highest” ranked student has every opportunity to learn something new from even the newest class participant through the act of instruction.

When we as martial artists start personally identifying with a particular “rank” or colored belt, we are at a very high risk of technical and philosophical stagnation. Such a personalization of rank is very dangerous for several reasons.

First, if we identify too strongly with a rank, we are effectively closing off our ability to learn from everyone on the mat. A white or yellow belt has the potential to teach a black belt just as muchas—if not more—than the dojo instructor. The mechanism is different, but the learning is the same. An instructor imparts a technique by describing and demonstrating it to the students. An advanced student learns from a beginning student through the act of instruction. Having to describe and show the technique in a way that the beginning student understands is the highest educational experience for the more advanced student.

Additionally, focusing on the attainment of a particular rank can very often get in the way of focusing on what’s important; internalizing the techniques and developing a deep sense of how the techniques work best for your skill level and body type. The rank means nothing, your mental and physical ability to internalize the skill set is the greater focus.

Finally, a myopic view of rank and belts within your specific school ignores the broader context of martial arts. In all Japanese martial arts systems, a practitioner is a white belt until they are awarded a black belt. I say “awarded,” because there is no test. When the instructor feels that a particular student has achieved a certain skill level, that student is given a black belt. There is no test, no ceremony, and no recognition. It just is. Often, this process takes 10 – 12 years.

The system of colored belts was only adopted after the Japanese arts were introduced to American culture, which is inherently impatient and demands visible signs of progress in the form of colored belts, ignoring the more subtle—but more important—visible signs of progress in a student’s technique over time. Further undermining the idea of a particular “colored belt” meaning anything is an examination of the Tae Kwon Do rank of red belt. In Tae Kwon Do—a Korean martial art—a red belt symbolizes the highest ranking non-black belt student. However, in Karate—a Japanese martial art—a red symbolizes the absolute highest level of mastery, a 9th degree black belt which is only earned after a devoted lifetime of study and training. The Korean red belt was deliberately adopted to make a social and political statement against Japanese supremacy and occupation during
World War II.

So what does a belt mean? Why are there colors? What does rank mean? What does a test mean?The answer is nothing, and everything. A belt, or obi, is a tool to keep the gi top closed, and the pants up. It is nothing more. If your school has adopted a colored belt system, the purpose of a belt is not to be “above” your peers. Rather, the colored belt serves as a declaration to other students concerning what you are able to teach them, and identifies who the lower ranked students should goto with questions. A test is not a particular moment in time. A test occurs every time you step on to the mat, every time you practice, and every time you learn.

Ultimately, if you are striving to attain rank, you will never truly achieve it. Rank is not a static or singular  entity or status that can be captured, conquered, owned, or mastered. If you cannot see and appreciate your technical and philosophical progress independently of colored belts, testing, and attaining rank, you have not fully understood the essence of the martial arts journey.