What A Week

This has been a pretty stressful week to say the least.  On Tuesday, my mom had to have emergency laser eye surgery on her left eye; they found two holes and a tear on her retina, so that had to be fixed.  She lost some vision at the bottom of her eye, but thankfully she's okay now.  I'm quickly blogging before we leave to head out for Saskatoon for thanksgiving, and my grandmas 90th birthday! 

At the beginning of the week, I had posted a challenge for everyone to blog about two of their requirements from the I Ho Chuan; one personal, and one "pre-set" requirement.  For my 'pre-set' requirement, I chose 'participate and organize all SRKF events.'  This has been my favorite requirement so far.  I remember a couple weeks ago when, in his video blog, Sihing Robinson had said that he wanted to start to get to know the members of the I Ho Chuan outside of formal training in Kung Fu.  To me, this requirement helps me to become more acquainted with other members of the team on more of a personal level.  It also makes me feel more apart of a 'second family' then a team.  The teamwork that this requirement entails has really helped me to enjoy my experience as a Silent River Kung Fu student, and an I Ho Chuan team member.

For my personal requirement, I chose 1000 repetitions of my Tai Chi form.  This year for all of my forms, I decided to focus on my slower, more tai-chi like forms; including my 18 Temple Motions.  I feel that these are the forms that I struggle the most with.  My mom had to force me into going to my first Tai Chi class... I did not want to do it.  But after a few sessions, it grew on me, and I noticed the benefits that it had for all of my forms.  The biggest thing was that I always had my chin down while I did my forms.  Tai Chi helped me fix that, and now I find that I have way better flow in all of my other forms.  I recommend that anyone struggling with their 'harder' hand forms take Tai Chi.  It's going to be frustrating at first, trust me, but there are so many benefits that will only serve you in the long run.  I wish that I hadn't waited to long to start taking it =)

I'm being called to run out the door now, so unfortunately, this is all I had time to write.  I encourage those of you who haven't done the challenge yet to do it, you'll be surprised what you discover about the personal benefits that you discover about each of your requirements. 

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone =)