Whilst the training to this point has been awesome, nothing beats standing in a hall with hundreds of international karateka! So much has happened here, I want to drink in every moment and somehow bottle the motivation I’ve found for those days when life has me down and I can’t or don’t have the heart to train. I really […]
Today is registration day, that means that over 1,000 people need to arrive to the Karate Kaiken and collect their individualised registration pack. I’ve been trying to stick to my training regime and so because we needed to be at the Kaiken at 09:00 I headed off for my morning run at 06:30. I was so confident that it would […]
I’m calling Sunday my first day in Okinawa, in truth a lot of us arrived on Saturday and despite getting to the dojo and training, the rest of the day was a blur. That welcome mix of not having slept for almost 2 days and the excitement of being back in my spiritual homeland. So I decided to drag myself […]
Another trip to Okinawa begins. I’m gonna admit, this trip I’ve had a count down for about 5 months and it seemed for ages like as it was just not getting any closer. Then 1 week out and I get sick, not just your normal garden variety sick, no my entire immune system decided to switch itself off and ignore […]
I don’t know how many messages I’ve had in the last few weeks and months about this years Gishiki! I’m still getting used to calling it that and not Budosai by the way… I think it was in Denmark that people started saying “see you in Okinawa” and it all started to become real. So yes getting very excited now […]
I am a daydreamer. Always have been, I can put earphones in, head for a run and I am gone….I don’t even feel the miles tick by at times. Is it an escape mechanism? I don’t really know, but I do recognise there are times when an active imagination can just confuse a situation or me, which lets face it is very easy. I like wondering what people are really like… I would love to be able to read people’s thoughts for say 10 minutes. Can you imagine? It would be so interesting. I reckon 10 minutes would do it… I don’t want that sort of power for too long. No, 10 minutes… thanks! The problem though, as a day dreamer is when your mind decides to start joining it’s own dots… like now… I’m in a meeting on the top story of an impressive building, the sun is doing it’s best to break through the soup of clouds and the subject matter is heavy going. For once, I’m late, I was summoned to the meeting after mistakenly thinking it started 30 minutes later. I don’t have time to hand over my apologies before we are off and onto the very grown up serious subject at hand. The subject matter is not light, I start to make notes, I’m furiously trying to figure out where we are in the agenda, and to remember what was this meeting even about… It’s one of […]
I was speaking to someone recently about “beginners mind” and was reminded how some of the things we take for granted in martial arts actually can mean a lot to those who are not practitioners. Furthermore, spending time with some of these concepts can bring a whole new level of… dare I say it…enlightenment. 🙂 I think I heard about […]
