Since I last wrote about my morning practice, I’ve stopped practicing Aikido, and started Chi Gong. Also, I’ve added some floor work to build my core strength and to stretch after moving.
I’m really enjoying my movement practice at the moment, here is what I do:
To play this game you will need:
To play the game:
What can this game teach you?
Why would I want to play this game?
slacklines are like tightropes, but slack! The idea is very simple – you tie up a rope between 2 trees and then learn to balance on it. It’s great fun, a good workout for your core muscles, very meditative, and I meet lots of people out in the park!
Most people seem to like to tie their ropes very tight, which I think has some disadvantages:
I like it nice and loose because
All you need is a few metres of climbing tape. This shouldn’t cost more than £10 for 5 meters.
A good knot to use is the round turn and 2 half hitches. Use this on both ends of the rope around the trees. You can put in an extra turn to get more friction on the tree.
To make it easier to untie: while tieing the final hitch, put a loop through instead of the end of the rope. Then pull on the end of the rope to quick release.
now you’ve got the rope up, move to the centre and put one foot on the rope (in the direction of the rope). You want to have your center of gravity directly over the rope. Slowly put weight down on that foot and you’ll probably find that your leg starts wobbling uncontrollably! Don’t worry, this is totally normal! This stage lasts a little while but stick with it. Soon you’ll have the control to put all your weight on that leg and then you can start balancing!
After you can balance, you can learn to
People often think that being soft is a disadvantage, the word itself often has negative connotations. I’ll explain here why I think that softness is actually a very positive thing, especially when in balance with hardness.
Maybe its a good idea to think about what hardness means first. Imagine that you hold all your muscles tight so that your whole body is rigid and hard. Then think about what that means during life
And we’re not just talking about physical hardness. Many people freeze what their ideas of the world are and think that they know it all. This stops them from experiencing any new ideas or systems of thought that could be potentially very rewarding for them.
water is often thought of as the ultimate in softness. You throw something into water and it gives way, letting the object pass through easily. It moves around rocks in its path as a stream and reforms around it afterwards. Yet water is one of the most powerful forces in nature; crashing into coastland and eroding granite water beds.
In life its much better to flow around the objects and reform afterwards. Taking on board what that particular rock has taught us. We don’t get hurt if we’re soft and we’re open to new ideas.
Of course, we’re not like water. We get up and move around – and its our integral hardness (skeleton) that allows this. So for us, its much harder to learn to be soft because we need to balance softness with hardness. Being completely soft as a person is being weak, about as useless as being completely hard.
I’m training my body and mind to be softer by trying to keep an open mind, and practicing contact juggling, contact dance and Wing Tsun. I’m sure there are plenty of other ways. If you’re doing something to get a better balance, please get in touch and tell me!
