Returning home....

So I finally went to kickboxing with my good and very funny friend Erica. We kept having to reschedule the start date because of horrendous weather. After the blizzard and then after the ice storm the week following the snow, we finally did it. This past Wednesday we got organized and managed to get over to the martial arts school for some serious training.

WOW - That work out seriously kicked my butt. I forgot just how hard Master Robert's training methods are. He's nuts - out of control - merciless and I missed it. I can now say that I've been lying to myself about just how hard I've been training. Don't get me wrong, I've been training harder than your average bear, but this wasn't a class of average bears. This is the place you go to find out what you're really made of - where you find out how far you can go and then you go beyond that.

Pre-class Erica asked me how long the class was. I said I honestly did not remember because I hadn't been there in about 10 years. I replied with "I don't know, maybe 45 minutes, maybe an hour."

We went in the training room which has a floor covered in a very thick mat - puzzle mats to be exact and glass walls for all the world to see you sweating and being tortured. They had a lot more heavy bags then they used to. I can't say exactly how many people were there, possibly 30. Master Robert split into groups of three and used a variety of targets and heavy bag for training. We started with hook punches while doing slow squats, punching and squatting, going up and down and up and down. We moved through an assortment of kicks and punches that we would do for two minutes straight dropping into push ups and hand combinations on the bag - combinations changing every two minutes.

We did this for 45 minutes straight.

It was fast. Go Go Go. Music cranked and lots of yelling "you can do it - push it - don't quit - don't stop....etc."

When we hit the 45 minute mark he said, "now that we're done with the warm up everyone put the paddles back and get into pairs of two each with one body shield." My good friend gave me laser eyes. He then goes "Now we can work out. We're going to do the Circle of Death." Erica who wanted to probably murder or mace me was like "are we going to die now??? what is he talking about 'the circle of death?" LOL. It felt like death. The class was about an hour and forty five minutes of complete hell and I loved it. My good friend was awesome. No matter what, she did not quit and that's what it's all about. Never give up, never surrender!

Day two - Waking up and not being able to move, bend, lift my arms, move my big toe....you get the picture. When I was at work the next day I dropped something on the floor. One of my co-workers was like "aren't you going to pick that up?" I responded with "I'll pick it up tomorrow - or maybe the day after that."

I felt every part of my body that's been asleep for ten years wake up. I felt my spirit wake up. I was sore as heck and still am today but I feel better than ever.

The goal will be to go twice a week and do the third day of training at home and in March add in a supplemental Yoga Sunday at a Yoga school in the neighborhood.

Going back to the past after the 11th I went to martial arts class one last time that very week and had to leave. Being that close to the trade center coming down really screwed up my head. Post traumatic stress disorder is a very real thing. In the days and months after those events I felt very bad for Vietnam Vets and just vets in general. Holy cow! Sounds that were once comforting - screaming that once meant a release of energy and pounding sounds that were part of the rhythm of my life thereafter came to mean chaos and terror. It took me many many years - probably all ten years to not jump at thunder or have an anxiety attack when a passing truck would hit a bump in the road and shake the ground. I walked out of that class back then, to be exact it was Sept 13th 2001, and couldn't stop the tears that streamed down my face. It had nothing to do with sadness and everything to do with a now deep seated anxiety that I would spend the next many years battling - without medication (that's just not my way of handling things. I do life without the anaesthesia - thank you!)

In the Now, this past Wednesday is the first time I re-entered the doors of an institution where I spent four to five days a week training and working and breathing for a great number of years. I can breath again. I can be in the Now.

A very wise friend of mine, out on the northwest coast (isn't that where all the wise people in the U.S. live?) told me after I ruptured my calf muscle in 2007 that I had to return to the scene of the crime. She told me that when something traumatic happens to the body it knocks part of yourself out from you and you have to go back to that place and reclaim it. (Mind you, she said it a lot better than this.)

I ruptured that muscle in a substitute martial arts school I went to because I was not ready and I was afraid to return to my school, the one I am back at now. So once it healed enough and I was allowed back on the mat, I returned to the "substitute" school, stood in the spot where it happened, performed the same moves and nothing. I didn't feel my body or spirit return. I remember thinking "maybe you're not supposed to feel anything and it just magically happens. You just reclaim part of yourself and feel nothing."

This week, this past Wednesday, I walked in the door, went through the same motions I repeated with some of the same people and heard the voice that taught me, guided me for years and years and I felt it. The rupturing of my calf muscle in the other school was not the fracture point. It was not the place where I my spirit was knocked from me. It was in Master Robert's class, in that very room during a really horrible point in history - way back there in the past; I left a big part me there, the part of me that is very high energy.

I did feel it return. I feel whole again. Sore, and suffering in physical pain but whole and alive and Now.

Till next time. Class on Monday!