Well I made it. Got home on the 24th at around 2 am and spent the next several days with family doing the christmas thing and catching up on some zzzz's. Indoor heating is amazing, you have no idea how nice it feels to walk around the house in only 1 pair of socks...sometimes I don't even wear a sweater! I'm really enjoying relaxing and taking it easy for now. The Ultimate Black Belt Test is almost over and I've accomplished a lot. Did I succeed in every goal? Nope, but I learned so much about myself in the process and grew so much as a martial artist and a human being that the goals themselves have become secondary. I still plan to blog often, I'll be in China and need to keep everyone posted on what I'm up to. So for the folks out there who are regular readers, I'll still try to keep it entertaining. Thanks to everyone who's been there for me offering me support this year, I appreciate it more than I can say.

Yesterday was the first day of our break and it felt soooo good to sleep in and bum around all day. It's funny though because today we leave on the train to Beijing and we're packing and cleaning but what I really want to do is practice! I guess it's really become a part of my daily routine and having more than one day off at a time seems really strange. I'm so excited to hang out in a heated house with my family and eat delicious home-cooked food! I don't look forward to the long train and plane rides but once we get home I'm going to be really stoked.

Not much else to say....in a few hours we'll be on our way home.

I don't have a whole lot to say this week. It's almost break time and I'm winding down. Still training hard but mentally most of my focus is on the break. I'm so looking forward to some serious rest but I'm also determined not to lose momentum. I've gotten pretty used to demanding practice every day and I don't want to get lazy. That'd just make it even harder when we start up again. So I have a few things I'll be working on over the next month and a half to keep me limber and on top of my game, qi gong, stretching, and of course training with my silent river kung fu family.

Wow It's hard to believe that it's December already. Our break starts in 16 days and it seems like time has really flown by these past few months. We finished Xuen Gong Chuan 1,2, and 3 and now we're taking some time to practice and polish them before the break. I'm glad because even though I know the forms, I still feel like they need a lot of work. I'm still getting used to the style differences from my training at home and constantly need to remind myself to make the movements bigger. The Xuan Gong system is a long fist system and pretty different from what I've trained in the past. For those of you at home it's more similar to Lao Gar or Mu long koon. We also practice as a group a lot and need to work on staying together and in proper lines before it'll look decent.

I'm looking forward to resting and especially to coming home but it also seems really strange that it's break time already. We're making good progress so we definitely have time for a break but I'm nervous about what the training will be like when we get back. I'm going to keep stretching and stuff while I'm home but I still hope that Sifu will ease us back into training and not try to kill us right off the bat.

UBBT goals are going alright. I'm looking forward to getting in some sparring rounds while I'm home so get ready everyone!

What the UBBT Has Done for Me

When Master Brinker asked us if we wanted to participate as student members in the UBBT with him I had already set some personal goals and been working hard on them. My own goals were completely up to me but with the UBBT I had to choose from a selection off of the website. The nice thing about that was that the goals were already measurable, something I struggled with on my own goals. By measurable I mean they were worded so that I could easily keep track of my progress and I would know for sure when I was finished. For example 1000 acts of kindness is measurable, you just have to keep track of the numbers, whereas if I had written that I wanted to be more kind, it would be hard to know whether I had succeeded or not.

I admit that since coming to China to train full time again, I've found the UBBT less useful than I believe most of my teammates have but during my time home in Canada it was invaluable. I know that without the goals I chose for myself I would have never tried Brazilian Jiu Jitsu which was a lot of fun and very informative. I also tried Muay Thai which I thought I would like a lot more than I did. Both were mind broadening experiences and reinforced for me why I love kung fu so much.

While I was home I was training hard 6 days a week and totally focused on my martial arts training the entire time. Knowing that I was moving to China in the fall I wanted to spend as much time with my family and friends as possible, without the UBBT pushing me I'm sure I would have let my training fall to the back burner and focused more on social obligations. Now I can look back and I feel like I accomplished both intense training and spending quality time with those I care about both of which were extremely important to me. I have never been so driven and self-motivated as I was during the 6ish months before my return to Wudang. This was an important experience not only to achieve the goals that I had set but also to prove that I really have what it takes to push myself to do what is important to me in spite of social and societal pressures.

I also learned about how to train with injuries, how to avoid them, and how to take care of them when they happen. When you have a huge pile of goals hanging over your head you can't just take a week or 2 off if you get hurt, you have to figure out a way to work around it. I sprained my ankle so I couldn't do any run/walk/bike stuff so I did extra push ups, sit ups, etc while I let my ankle heal. I also learned that when you push your body so very hard you have to take really good care of it, I got regular massages (something I've never really made a priority before), ate well and often, and tried to avoid anything that would be another stressor in my daily routine. These lessons are really going to help me while I'm here training in China. I had a completely frozen up shoulder/neck last week and I've had to continue training without making it any worse. One armed push ups, slower punches, no handstands, massages, applying this AWESOME herbal ointment and it's slowly getting better and better.

Probably the most important thing I got out of the UBBT is that setting a goal and giving it my all is WAY more important than whether or not I succeed in achieving said goal. Some goals I blew out of the water and others I'm definitely not going to succeed at but they were all really valuable experiences that taught me about myself and what I'm made of. I have so much more confidence now to try my best at anything in life because I know that the journey really is more important than the destination.

I'm really glad that I chose to participate in the UBBT and really grateful to Sifu Brinker for asking me. Definitely a life changing experience.

I'm very cold.

It snowed here this week for 2 days or so and it's been very cold the whole week. We had an epic snowball fight 2 days ago with almost every student in the school participating, it was a lot of fun. Other than that I've been spending all my time either training or snuggling my hot water bottle under a blanket desperately trying to stay warm. Compared to a Canadian winter this is nothing but living in big buildings with no heat and missing windows in every hallway makes it way more challenging. Luckily a short term student who was leaving sold me a brand new down sleeping bag for super cheap a few weeks ago so at least I'm warm when I'm sleeping at night. I also bring it with me to meditation and it helps a lot. We meditate in a cold, dark room for an hour and a half or so almost every night and it gets pretty chilly when you're sitting perfectly still.

On the plus side my class finished learning Xuan Gong Chuan II this week and started on Xuan Gong Chuan III already. By the time we go on our Christmas break we'll be almost half done our set curriculum for this year which puts us ahead of schedule...sweet! Who knows what awesome extra stuff we'll get to do! I'm really looking forward to learning the broadsword form which we'll probably start around March or April. It is definitely one of the coolest broadsord forms I've seen in my short lifetime.

So I'm just training, trying to keep warm, looking forward to coming home in about a month and digging in to some western food and enjoying the indoor heating!

We had our first class on Taoism and wushu theory this week. I wasn't really sure what to expect but it was really interesting. Shifu did an excellent job of explaining something which is basically impossible to explain and in english too. He said that even people that understand Chinese very well have a difficult time with the concepts so he will repeat the ideas over and over so we can understand them.

There is a text in Taoism which describes the attainment of peace and stillness. He explained a bit of the beginning to us:

In the beginning there is formlessness, no name, "nature", "the way". Lao tzu said that he chose a name to call it 'tao' and as soon as it was named there was shape to it, a circle. Because this circle contains everything, it has every extreme with perfect balance within it. 1 becomes 2. Yin and yang. Within yin and yang there is every part of heaven, earth, and humans. 2 becomes 3. These three together can create anything. 3 becomes everything (wan wu).

He also explained the idea of "He" to us. As far as I can tell He means unity and balance. Yin and yang have he because they cannot be separated. He said that this would come up many more times in future classes.

We touched briefly on the word for experience. Basically Lao tzu wrote that understanding can only be acheived through experience (repetition of techniques to relate it to kung fu) not through learning. An interesting and familiar concept. I look forward to the next class.

Well that's a brief synopsis of what was covered. I have explained it as well as I can at this point. Hopefully more clarity will come as I understand more and more.