reflections on practice, D. Gauld, Edmonton, Tues. Sept. 15/20

-two things I have been thinking about my practice in the past couple of days: 1. the new task of ‘resetting’ my body, given me by GM, is more profound than it seems, 2. the process of how you learn is as at least as important as what you learn
1.
-the task GM has given me may be the most difficult one I’ve ever been given
-not only does it encompass a complete re-working, re-tooling, re-creation of my entire physical self it implicitly tasks me to begin to practice PM all-day long, not jibengong all day long, but finding ways to subtly inject elements of training into every action
-my body awareness and sensitivity will have to go up more than a notch, a quantum leap would be more descriptive, and my ability to accept and work with my cognitive-emotional states will have to ratchet up a notch also
-the task is to ‘re-set’ my body so that it produces expanding Peng (redundant?) energy without any observable or perhaps measurable tension in any body tissues, esp. the contractile muscles, ligaments and tendons
-this is proving to be extremely challenging and is of course affected by my psycho-emotional states, try relaxing contractile tissues while in pain (emotional or physical)
2.
-in keeping with working on my assigned task I noticed that the class last night at the Edmonton studio was remarkable in a couple of ways
-firstly, we had a visitor, GM’s newest disciple Sooyeon Zachrias, who was a most delightful addition to our practice group
-secondly, I found myself fondly remembering my experiences at TigerClaw Gung Fu School in the ’70’s when I trained & and competed in kickboxing, we had a pretty informal competition class atmosphere and we regularly teased and joked with each other and the teachers/coaches
-our group last night was ‘playing’ with each other, there was joking, and teasing and relaxed informality
– we were all laughing out loud, but respectful, nothing out of line or intended to be anything but supportive
– Sooyeon Zachrias mentioned how she was enjoying the training experience with others as mostly she only attends workshops in MapleRidge, thank you Sooyeon for reminding me that the time I share with my brothers and sisters in this art gives me something different from the hrs and hrs I spend working on PM alone
-not saying every class has to be a stand up session or that no laughter means its not a good class, I am trying to say that the moments we share in class are precious
– we all have the physical pains of trying to grind away the rough parts of our joints and the psychological pain of removing from our souls anything that fails to make room for Peng
-hope this is an okay subject to post on PM website
-learning to live a breath at a time