Blessed Rest

My last post was on engagement from the sidelines.  I want to thank everyone for all their encouraging comments.  The issue that I was trying to express, but didn't really get across very well is the difference between looking engaged and feeling engaged.  The adage "Just Do It" works wonders.  If you don't feel engaged, then act engaged and your feelings will eventually catch up.  I was doing what I could to act it even when how I felt was not engaged really at all.


That post was written when I was feeling so divided.  There is so much that I want to do yet the medical advice I received was to back off.  I backed off and the advice was back off more.  A couple days after that post I went in for my weekly chat with the neural psychologist to see where things were.  To say that it was mostly lecture from her side of the room and many tears from my side would have been an understatement.  I thought that I had done a great job scaling back on life.  After all I am a mom and a wife and it is December and there is so much going on...  She did congratulate me for going from 110% down to 90%.  Yay me!  That was seriously hard to do since the 110% was already a slowed down pace in my opinion.  She used words like martyr and super mom and told me to just stop it.  The goal was to aim for 20%.  Yup, you read that right - 20%!!!  Who can live at 20%.  I am a mom and a wife and it's Christmas time!!!


So now what...  The medical advice that I have received on this whole concussion thing has been so all over the place.  One doctor told me it was just stress from life and some depression and recommending counselling.  The counselling resulted in an acknowledgment that my brain may be hurting and that it could take up to 2 years to heal but I was encouraged to live life as full as I could to counter the depression.  I tried jumping back into life.  I tried to live like I was fine.  I was not fine.  The lady I have been seeing worked at the Glenrose in the brain trauma department.  She knows her stuff.  I went to her after the other options were not working.  Why go if you are not going to try...  And by try, that means resting my brain.  Not just sitting around reading or watching some sort of screen.  That is not resting my brain.  She meant horizontal with my eyes closed.


School ended and life was able to slow down significantly.  The last two weeks have been filled with rest.  I don't think I hit 20% (well maybe on that one day were I took 3, yes you read that right, 3 naps).  My family has circled the wagons and have really pitched in.  Christmas was wonderful.  My family came from Calgary so I would not have to travel and brought most of dinner with them.  Nearly every afternoon I have headed upstairs for a nap.  Really, I have stopped.  And the world has not stopped turning.


So how am I feeling?  I can literally feel my brain healing.  I am feeling so much better than I did two weeks ago.  It is really hard to put even into words.  Before my break I broke down and cried over the simplest things because they seemed so hard.  The are becoming simpler things again.  The fog is gone.  The anxiety and panic attacks have subsided.  The headaches are much more manageable.  I can focus for more than 5 minutes at a time.  I even wrote this blog in one sitting and that is a major accomplishment.  Am I completely better?  Not a chance but I am on my way.


What does this mean for my IHC year?  I have not quit.  My goals are very much on my mind.  I have started to add back some activity the last few days.  The warm weather has made it much easier to get out for some lovely walks with Guiness.  We are not going far and we are not breaking any speed records but I am getting out in the fresh air.  I will start adding in more each day slowly, very slowly.  I do not want this to be one step forward and two steps back.  I have accepted that my goals and achievements this year are what they are.  Really, even with not doing much since August, some of my achievements are higher than I imagined at this point last year.  My number one goal right now is get myself healthy.  That means that I am still moving at a much slower pace but I am still here.

Engagement from the Sidelines

There has been a ton of talk about engagement and perspective.  Most of the conversation revolves around those who are away from the kwoon and how do you stay engaged when you are away from the group.  This seems to be a struggle many on the team have had not only this year but over time.  The advice given always rings true.  The path to staying engaged is to do.  When you don't want to do, do it anyway.  Just do it.


So what do you do when you can't just do it?  There are a few of us on the team this year that are struggling with this very real issue.  Sifu Beckett spent months in a hospital bed.  Sihing Vanderham is limping around on crutches.  Most days, I look physically pretty good as long as you ignore how tired I look but the doctors have specifically asked me to stop doing.  For people who are in this group, the just do it advice can make you want to scream.  We want to do it.  Yes, even the dreaded push ups.  We want to train.  We want to be on the mats sweating, learning, working hard.  Yet, there we are at the back of the class or sitting on the benches watching.


I have really been struggling with engagement lately.  I have been trying to attend all of my classes.  I come ready to learn.  I bring my curriculum, my notebook and my pen.  I ask questions.  I flap my arms around on the bench trying to mimic and figure things out.  I have joined tai chi to try to find a way to be on the mats and still keep my heart rate at a lower level.  I attempted demo class last Friday which honestly was a physical stretch for me.  I had many caring teammates checking in on me between each demo run to see if I was ok.  Sifu Vantuil asked how I was feeling after class.  It was such a mixed bag really.  Physically, I felt pretty crappy.  Mentally, I was exhausted.  Yet, it felt unbelievably good to be on the mats with the team working on my weapon form.


Staying engaged from the sidelines is a tricky business.  With the physical goals, I have had to put most of them on hold for now.  I will have a lot of work to build back up again once I am well but I will conquer that hurdle when the time comes.  Then there are the personal goals.  This should free up my time to really attack these goals.  Due to the restrictions placed on me, I am having to look for different ways to approach these goals as well.  Since there has not been a ton to keep track of, I have unfortunately have fallen out of the habit of writing down my numbers each day.  Then when I try to play catch up, I can't remember what I did.  That is not helpful.  When you are limited to what you can do, it is even more important to give yourself credit for what you do accomplish.


So my game plan for now is to first of all just keep showing up - whether it be on the mats or on the bench.  The next is to get back into the habit of giving myself credit for things I do get accomplished.  Finally, I will be looking for creative ways to work around some of my goals to hopefully keep my focus moving forward as we finish out this year.  This will all be done within the framework of my health and healing being first priority which means rest, rest and more rest.

Teamwork At It's Finest!

Today I really don't want to talk about my own journey so instead I will focus on the team as a whole. 


This team is filled with strong, amazing people.  They are each in their own way overcomers.  Everyone has had personal struggles to deal with like injuries, work or school schedules, family issues.  Most would likely say that they have not had the year they had planned when they signed up last fall.  Yet each person has a unique story filled with amazing personal triumphs and growth.


There are times in life when you take a group of people and place them together and call them a team.  The people can each individually be amazing yet they fail to truly come together.  They are all individuals working towards something but that connection doesn't seem to happen.  Their impact is simply the sum of each of their individual contributions.  If everyone and everything is running perfectly, then this group of people will still have success.


Then there are times when something quite extraordinary happens.  It is even hard to explain how or why but to witness and be a part of it is awesome.  The Sheep Team is one of those groups that is simply quite extraordinary.  I look at this past week.  One team member put out a call for help on a goal.  Now there are paper cranes strung up all over the kwoon and every day more are flooding in.  Then the demo yesterday was fantastic!  Each team member went out and really shone bright but even brighter was the obvious relationships that have formed.  The team photos that were taken after the event shows a group of truly bonded people.  The Sheep Team is infinitely stronger and greater than the sum of each of individual's contribution.  I am so blessed to be able to be a part of it and I can't wait to see what else we can do together this year!

Learning to Embrace Rest

This week I have really struggled to write my blog post.  The main purpose of blogging is to document our journey's - first for ourselves and then for others.  For my own sake, I want to focus on the positive parts of my journey.  It's like my own personal weekly pep talk.  This week I desperately need to be able to give myself a pep talk but I've had troubles finding a way to approach that.


Back at the end of July I wrote a post on a book I had read.  It was about being addicted to busy and finding rest.  One of the warning issued by the book was to rest before life forces you to.  I am right smack dab in the middle of a forced rest.  This is a rest that I am struggling to embrace.


Since I am not able to find the words to give myself much of a pep talk, instead I will be honest about where I am at right now.  I love being a part of the I Ho Chuan team.  One of the things that I have been struggling with is letting down the team.


That said, I need to put myself first.  My doctor has recommended that I rest as much as possible, and by rest she means horizontal with my eyes shut.  I need to avoid getting my heart rate up.  I need to rest my poor brain as much as possible.  Many of the ways that I have used my entire life to manage stress have been placed on hold.  I have had a cognitive brain function assessment and the results were not very good.  It explains the brain fog and my inability to function the way that I always have.  The bonus is, that brains heal.  I just need to give mine a chance.  Then just to throw some fun into the mix, they also diagnosed depression which apparently is pretty common in this situation. 


Trying to process all of this has been very hard.  I have had to take a good look at my goals and then release myself from the pursuit of some of them.  That is the only way that I am going to be able to slow down and rest like I need to.  This most certainly is NOT the year I had planned when I signed up a year ago but this is my reality today and I need to learn to embrace that.  That said, I am not quitting.  I will still be at the kwoon.  I may or may not be on the mats but I will be there.  Not only am I going to be there for the remainder of this year but I have talked to Sifu Brinker about next year's team. 

Reality check - Reevaluating the past week

In last week's blog I had a little pep talk with myself about being excellent instead of worrying about being perfect.  My numbers this week were on the most part quite outstanding.  On paper it would look like my journey is headed in the right direction.  I had even written a blog post in my head this morning about how wonderful my week was.  Then I received some perspective this afternoon and I am now unable to write that blog.


As you all know, I have been dealing with a few issues relating to my car accident in August.  This past week had many positive moments in light of all of those struggles.  I graduated from physio for the whiplash.  I do have this lovely torture device to continue working out kinks going forward but I am so happy to have that all behind me.
 
The other major issue was the concussion that I sustained that day.  I find this one harder to talk about.  I was raised in a mind over matter home.  Have a warm shower, put on a smile and eventually how you feel with catch up with your attitude.  Sometimes this works, sometimes it just doesn't.


Today at the urging of some people much wiser than myself, I went to see a clinical neuropsychologist about my poor brain.  Lately I have been feeling so much better.  I even have had many moments where I have felt more like myself.  I almost cancelled the appointment thinking it would be a waste of time and money.  Turns out, it's a good thing I went. 


My concussion is starting to heal.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that it is not gone and I am actually heading into one of the most important and most challenging parts of the healing process.  The part where you feel like your old self but you really are not ready to jump fully into life with both feet quite yet.


So what did that look like this week...  I had moments of great clarity.  I had moments of complete scramble.  I had moments where I was able to push myself physically and really get some great numbers in.  I had other moments where I was hardly able to get out of bed due to fatigue.  I had moments where I was calmly able to go about my day.  I had moments where I was so irritable that I could hardly stand myself.  Really doesn't sound too terribly abnormal in many cases until you have the connection pointed out.  The positive highs were always followed by a low after I tried to do too much.


So what is too much?  I really don't know for sure.  I know that what I did this week is too much for right now.  I have been assured that if I can just behave myself that this will finish healing likely in the next few months.  I have also been assured that if I continue to push my way through this, like it is not happening, that I am not only slowing down the healing, I am outright preventing it.  The prescription is rest, rest and more rest.  The care plan I received has the warning to gradually return to daily activities as my symptoms decrease.  Not to barrel back into them and hope that my poor brain can keep up.  This is not what I wanted to hear.  I just want all of this to be over.  I want my old life back.  I want to push towards mastery.  For now I will have to settle for baby steps in the right direction.  


Here are my YTD totals as of the end of week 38:
Push ups             26,104
Sit ups                29,985
Kempo                  259
Staff                      375
Sparring                550
KM                       607.0
AoK                     736
Personal Goals:
Gratitude Journal  739
Piano                     48 hours
Books finished       21 
Daily fruit - 186 days
365 photo challenge - 140 days
Daily journal - 228 days

Perfect vs Excellent

Perfectionism is the enemy of learning and growing and enjoying areas of life where we haven't achieved mastery.  - Glynnis Whitwer


I have been reading a book that really focuses on understanding why people procrastinate so that we can then fight back.  The the chapter that I just read really hit home.  It was on taming perfectionist instincts.  The beginning of the chapter really made me take a look at how I've been viewing my IHC year recently.


Last fall we all set goals.  We started off in February full of excitement and possibility.  For me, I've had a couple of significant hurdles thrown into my year for me to try to maneuver around.  We all have had our own challenges to deal with, I know that I am not alone in this.  So here we are at the final stretch of the year evaluating where we are at.  If your anything like me, there are some goals that don't look like they may be fully achieved.  In my case there are many goals that are sitting in this state.  So what does that do to my motivation? 


I have been struggling to get motivated lately.  I think one of the main culprits is perfectionism.  I want to achieve all my goals.  This does not look like it may be possible, therefore my motivation to keep at it is inconsistent.  It is very easy to buy into the whole why bother mentality.  It makes it easier to push things off to tomorrow.


Instead of looking to be perfect, because seriously who can do that anyway, what if I looked at trying to be excellent.  Excellence is doing my best.  It is measured based on effort instead of purely on outcome.  It leaves room for me to learn and grow from my successes and my obstacles.  It leaves room to enjoy the journey even when it is not going perfectly as planned.  It leaves room to feel successful even if my goals aren't perfectly reached.  Excellence is placing the focus back on the journey instead of on the final outcome.  That simple change in mindset is what I need to embrace as I finish out the last few months of this year.


Here are my YTD totals as of the end of week 37:
Push ups             25,024
Sit ups                28,810
Kempo                  248
Staff                      355
Sparring                550
KM                       560.5
AoK                     714
Personal Goals:
Gratitude Journal  719
Piano                     48 hours
Books finished       20 
Daily fruit - 180 days
365 photo challenge - 136 days
Daily journal - 223 days

Tiger Challenge

I have meant to write a blog about the Tiger Challenge last weekend for over a week now.  I am really struggling with how to put it all into words.  It was such an amazing day.  It was also such a blur!  This is the first year that I have actually taken part in the competition.  Usually my focus is on my kids and supporting them as they shine for the judges and that is exactly what they did!

Here is a picture of Waylon receiving his medal for his weapons form.  I was so impressed with what he showed the judges this year.  In a way he walked away a little disappointed in himself this year which makes me so sad as his mama.  This year at the forms seminar he started to learn Lao Gar.  This form is crazy and busy and completely different from anything else he has ever learned.  He did get about 60% of the way through it that day.  He really wanted to compete with it this year but he was told he could only do it if he knew the entire form.  Off he went to learn the last 40%.  He worked very hard and the form that he did for the judges was by far the best he had ever done it.  Except...  The dreaded pause near the end....  He has had many moments while practicing where he is blanked momentarily and then recovered but never where he had his moment during the Tiger Challenge.  He knew when he came off the mats that that pause (right smack in front of the judges) was not good for his marks.  Yet seriously!!!  This young man learned a form in a month that really is way above his pay grade and then performed it for a panel of black belts.  As his mom, I think he rocked it out of the park!  So proud. 

As far as Waylon's day, my only disappointment was that I couldn't be there to watch his fight choreography with Kobe.  I was in the other ring cheering as loudly as I could without being a distraction to the people competing in my own category.

Then we get to Georgia.  She also had an amazing day.  My sweet girl really struggles with anxiety but you would have never guessed.  She went out there and just shone as she did her Kempo form for the judges.  She was a little concerned that she was the only yellow belt competing against all the orange belts but in the end she won a silver medal.  The confidence boost this gave her is something that I can't even put into words.  Then the icing on the cake was the white stripe she received right after her medal.  I'm really not sure which she was more excited about.

The next division she competed in was musical forms.  About a week or so before the Tiger Challenge she asked me to teach her Stick at open training.  We started just playing around with it and before long she was dead set on competing with it at the tournament BUT as a yellow belt, it was not part of her curriculum.  I am so grateful for the opportunity that the creative musical forms provides for people like her.  It really motivated her to learn something new and then to step out in front of a panel of black belts.  She had a couple of bobbles through the form but really put out a great performance.  Maybe she will be the next family member to learn Sifu Playter's staff form....

I was so wrapped up with being a mom, that when my divisions started right after Georgia's I really was not in the head space that I perhaps needed to be.  First was the weapons division and I was up first.  The exciting news is I did not drop my staff!  Really that was my main goal for the day.  Do not drop the staff.  Huge sigh of relief.

The other individual division that I competed in was hand forms.  I had had a conversation with Sifu Playter about how to manage nerves and adrenaline.  I have been practicing Kempo as my I Ho Chuan form so it was an obvious choice.  The issue was that it is so long - leaving too much time for nerves and adrenaline to build.  He recommended a few places to try to recenter and refocus throughout the form.  I'm not sure how I did with all that because I honestly do not remember doing my form that day.  I actually had to ask if I had skipped part of the form because I really don't remember much of what happened after I stepped out on the mats.  Once I managed to bring my level of inner chaos down, I was watching Waylon compete from afar in the ring on the opposite side of the kwoon.  I was hoping they would take a really long time to add up the scores so that I could soak in what he was doing.  As we were lining up to receive our results, he was being presented a gold medal over in the other ring.  I am so grateful that I have another crazy mom friend who will stand beside me and whoop and cheer - even at moments when it may not seem like proper etiquette.  I honestly don't remember who won the bronze medal in our division.  When Ms. Csillag won the silver I clearly remember thinking that she really deserved a medal.  Her form was great.  When they announced that I won the gold medal I was shocked, and I did not hide it very well at all.  I have been trying to process this portion of the day for over a week now and it is still a total blur.

The team form was a ton of fun.  We had such a great time.  I absolutely treasure the ladies in the morning class and I am so blessed to train along side them.

The Tiger Challenge was an opportunity that I have let slip by in the past.  I am happy that this year I took that opportunity.  I learned a lot by watching others and I learned a lot about myself.  It was a great day!