Thanks a lot to those who offered me advice last week, I've been much calmer these past few days. After putting some thought into it I know that part of the problem was my knee (I've been dealing with some tendon tightness and pain in the knee) as well as the fact that I haven't been sleeping well at night. The knee is slowly getting better with daily massages and (duh!) wearing a brace for running and tai chi in the morning and as the pain lessens so does my morning grumpiness. The other problem of not sleeping well is a bit more complicated. It's an ugly cycle of going to sleep dreading the morning run which causes me to have a very restless sleep which in turn makes the run that much worse. I practiced the meditation Sifu Olsvik described in his comment on my post to help process emotions before sleeping for the past 2 nights and I'm sleeping much better so far. I think once I can get over this emotional response/resistance I have to the structure of our morning run, I'll improve way more quickly. This week I'll try waking up 5 or 10 minutes earlier and trying it in the morning too. We'll see how that goes.

On a different note we finished learning our broadsword form and now we're going to do what we always do and drill the heck out of it until we can do it super fast as a group. I didn't realize how much faster I'd gotten in general until we had a few students who aren't in our class join in on our training this week and watched how much of a struggle it is for them to keep up with us. It's nice once in a while to take a look back and see how far you've come. It's inspiring and can really renew your passion for practice.

I'm very tired and I have to get up very early so this will be a short post.

We started running at 5 am again since the weather is warmer. I really wish that I enjoyed this part of my day but the truth is that I don't. Getting back from a grueling run before daybreak and having 3 more classes ahead of me not including meditation is a disheartening feeling. I'm not the best runner in my class, I'm actually one of the worst, and I though I can make it to the end, it's a painful struggle every time. Music helps, thinking about something else helps, but it's not enough to keep the run from putting me in a bad mood at least until after breakfast. I really try to stay positive but that's so much harder at 5 in the morning. All I've been able to do so far this week involves NOT murdering anyone, screaming, or crying in the middle of class. My internal state is still in turmoil though. It's definitely something I need to change. Starting every day in such mental distress is neither desirable nor productive.

Any advice??

I don't have a whole lot to say this week. It went by relatively quickly and yesterday afternoon as well as today has been really restful. I feel like I'll be fully ready to train again tomorrow. Shifu's birthday was a few days ago and we had a big dinner with cake and singing to celebrate. A lot of fun. He said he's really happy with my class overall. We're progressing more quickly than he expected and he's teaching us more and more than he was planning on. We started broadsword and it's a super cool form. We're picking it up a lot faster than we were able to at the beginning of the program which is encouraging. He said the biggest problems we have as a group are flexibility and stamina. I can see gradual improvements in my stamina but my hips aren't getting any less stiff. When it gets warm we'll do tons of stretching though and hopefully see some progress there.

We start running again soon, as soon as it warms up. I'm really not looking forward to it. I've had a much more positive attitude since the break and I think it's helping me improve faster but I'm concerned that my mood will go down the tubes when we start waking up at 5 to run again. It's generally the crappiest part of my day, I really can't think of a worse way to start the day training-wise. Not the kind of thing to put you in a good frame of mind for the rest of the day. I guess we'll see how it goes, maybe it won't be so bad. I can only hope.

Feeling better this week. My knee is on the mend, the cold I was coming down with only lasted a few days and never got really bad, and though the week still seemed long it was only the usual 6 days. We finished learning Tai Yi Wu Xing Chuan and this week we start broadsword. Yes! It's called Xuen Gong Dao and is definitely one of the coolest broadsword forms I've seen. I hope to be really good at it someday and though it has some serious jumping involved (not my strong suit) I think my understanding of vectors will help me out. I guess we'll find out right away!

On a different note I've noticed some improvement in my meditation practice. Recently in our Taoism class Shifu translated a text for us which discusses meditation and such. There were certain lines that really spoke to me and seemed relevant to where I am right now. A lot is said about diligence, many people want the benefits of meditation but are not willing to spend the time on it. Shifu encouraged us not to make that mistake, he said it can take many years of practice before you can really control your chi. Really old texts like these are often translated mistakenly, giving people with little understanding the impression that amazing things can happen in only a few days but it really takes a very long time. I've only been here for 6 months so I'm basically a brand new beginner in the scheme of things and if all I can do now is sit and try to relax and breathe, that's fine. It's a start. The text also talks about how in our internal practice we have good days and bad days. Sometimes I am very relaxed and focused and can feel my Dan tian and other times I am uncomfortable and distracted, this is normal. I find it encouraging to know that everyone from now and backwards through time has had similar challenges on their journey. Some of what is discussed is way beyond my level but that too pushes me to carry on as I have something to work towards. The final line of the text is really awesome, it basically comes down to...

Do not be afraid of not knowing,
only be afraid of never trying to learn.

It could probably be put much more elegantly than that but you get the idea. Shifu always says that these ideas are useless if you don't put them into practice. It's exciting when you can see the ways in which you have done that in your own life. I enjoy that Taoism class, we're always learning such cool stuff.