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When one blog is filled, another one must open. |
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Coming soon: more work from someone creative, ambitious, and determined - often called a variant of insane/crazy. Notes: Genderfluid. Preferred pronouns (they/them) [& denotes married couples] Immediate Family: soon-to-be-ex-Dilbert, Tempest, Dogbert My Extended Family: (s)Dad, cousins (K, D, G, J, F, N) I guess it's good to be on speaking terms with someone. Voluntarily. AuntS Dilbert's Extended Family: SIL (+5 kids)& BIL, FIL's gf (only for holidays, mostly) Important People I Don't See Enough: Owl + Partner, Paradise ICON crew (which owl is a part of) People I've Known a Long Time/Long Distance: Doc & [husband], Sheer & DocSheer, Mrs. Light & [husband], Trillium & Diego (not married but close enough), Steph Local People: MotherDroid, Owl&Partner ... There are about to be new people on this list, because, well, I'm evolving. And it hurts. DnD: used letters, S (DM), D(doctor), Y(because I like him!), K(old RPGer friend who also attends church), P(church guy who does game night and is local and our families are also friends), A (went to church but moved back to Chicago, moved back locally then i moved) Tempest's friends: I don't know very many of her local friends. She's got an internet buddy who also talks to CousinK's younger daughter. the younger daughter is DRAMA. Dogbert's friends: Has a new group of friends based on a Pokemon thing and they have a DnD club at school and outside of school. Lucky kid! |
| sometimes, it's hard to tell. Like spending 2 hours in front of a screen working on a yoga blurb and getting nowhere. I feel like I don't even have words to say it even though I just want to describe the class I want to be teaching. |
| In some ways I'm fighting myself in class - even if it is just the image of this small girl who can't cause an issue to someone who is strong, powerful, and knowledgeable. The internal views are not lining up, but I'm working on it. I'm more bruised this week- it's the third week in a row I've brought home bruises. I'm also called insane because I don't just try to hit once or twice with the padded combat weapon (the source of bruising for two of those three weeks) - but I keep swinging. Sometimes I connect and sometimes I don't. but I don't stop. Half of them wear shirts for Kali saying "always my turn" so i don't understand how this is foreign to them. I'm also searching for a way around this trigger that makes alarm bells go off in my brain. And I know I'm going to manage - I got ideas from my therapist and my friend the yoga therapist. So i'll be implementing that as much as I can. I don't want these things to trigger and I don't want to be still suffering from things that happened that I don't properly recall and that shouldn't ever happen again. Trauma sucks, but at some point you have to move beyond it. That there are stages to getting beyond it, and it takes years. Therapist's words keep coming back to me about how you have the problems that you own. So I refuse to own this label of being a victim. Because I am not a victim. I don't have to be, no matter what happens. |
| Received the piece of paper that is my knowledge test for the first belt (orange) for Krav Maga. Also have a host of new injuries to show how I'm progressing: last week it was a wrist bruise from a padded stick in kali that bloomed in krav while we practiced hammerfists. This week I pushed over a girl in a stress drill. It was only her second day, and while she is near my size she's nowhere near my muscle class. I totally didn't mean to, but she got knocked over just the same. Then my partner, in a different drill, overpowered me (running backward) to step into someone's helmet and i scraped my arm against the I-beam (at least I didn't break the window). And i kept going. Later I rolled my big toe under my foot a bit while runningish. Still aches, but the yoga therapist did confirm it isn't broken this morning. I didn't think so, but it is bothering me a bit. Workout partner called me strong. Instructor from krav agreed with my 'feisty' assessment of myself from another time. The pretty boy said my arms were more solid than his (i'm not sure about that, but i won't bulk up so my arms are corded muscle and tight along the bones). There was one other girl there on Thursday, and I really felt her punches through the bag. So it made me wonder if people feel mine that way. I don't look on myself as that tough. I'm worried I won't make it through my physical 5.5 minute test. I'm also thinking about how, through yoga, to shut down the stress response when the test is done. I think I can do that, but it also might hurt a little. Getting used to have a new fitness style smart watch. Put together my U-wing lego set for mother's day. The kids picked out cookbooks for me but they won't eat anything out of them. Dogbert's dance recital was awesome and Tempest's late birthday party is sunday. School is only in session 7 more days (and i keep getting corrected for the last day to be a half day, but honestly if I get some time away it counts). There's a training in June with one of the guys from the yoga festival that I liked, and I'm going to see if I can possibly sign up for that. 15 CEUs for a very reasonable price. Then he's returning in 2018 for up to 500 hr RYT. And... I might have to see if I can do that. To which the yoga therapist said she and my teacher for the other training would be doing a similar one also in 2018. I'm torn, because I do so appreciate my yoga therapist friend and I do also appreciate this new yoga dude. And my last mentor teacher is great but she's also seriously in her own zone, and i need to find a way out of it. But between the books and the teaching and my own practice, I am on my way. I feel like I have something that's calling me, but I'm just not exactly sure where I'm going every time. |
| A guy tried to hug me in Krav on Tuesday night. He's okay, awkward like engineers tend to be, and it's not the first time. It is the first time I punched him in response instead of letting it happen. I hope he gets the unsubtle hint when I tell him I don't want to be hugged and I kept my fists up. Oddly I think this was something more internal within me than external toward him shifting at that moment. And since then I've been thinking about it, and I've been thinking about the angel card reading I got on Sunday at the yoga festival, and then to a thing that happened Thursday... One at a time: I saw the guy again on Wednesday, and he seemed normal. Didn't try anything, and that's' okay with me. Had a partner who kept talking about how I looked like I was gonna kill somebody, and I did tell him I wasn't angry. But since Tuesday, I just think if he tries to hug me again, I'll just hit him harder. I have that in me, and the power of consent is a huge deal - which is also the reason I now have playing cards as part of my set for yoga stuff: someone wasn't okay with my adjustment of her on Monday, and I feel awful about it. I knew I needed to add that to my yoga classes, and I had talked with a yoga therapist on several occasions about it, but I had not actually taken that step to implement it - until this incident. My angel card reading said to cleanse the aura, which I did when I got home from the festival - and while it wasn't exactly as they outlined, I have felt so much lighter since. I haven't gotten to the part of clear the path (which means getting rid of things that no longer have value to me even if they have material value), but I did add to the pile of clothes to be donated. The last one says Let Go. Somehow I instinctively know what that means even though I thought I've been doing just that for a long time. I've been facing long-lost history since I started Krav Maga. It's like I ripped a bunch of scars open to find that they hadn't really healed, just closed over the gaping wounds and something festered underneath. Which is probably why I hit that guy. And I still believe he deserves it. On to Thursday: we're practicing getting out of headlocks from the back all week. And my partner is a much-older man, probably older enough to be my father, guess 70s? He's bent over and he's not flexible at all. I only learned his name on Thursday, and when he puts me in that headlock, I am stuck. His weight feels to lean against my upper back/shoulders. I can't drop my weight without hurting him (I flung a guy that way on Tuesday, but he caught himself on his hands because he's inflexible but younger enough to manage, likely around my age?) I even went to my knees once, but I couldn't loose that weight from me. He also wasn't choking me, but rather wrapping an arm around my front shoulders - which really wasn't how it was supposed to go. So I brought it down to my knees. Still, he leaned on me. Then he (un)helpfully reminded me I was kicking with the wrong leg.  If you'd done your damn job with the headlock, I wouldn't be struggling with the release. Case in point: during the stress drill, I had to hit a bag and my instructor (since my group was one short) was doing the headlock. And I released just fine from that each time, or I'm certain he would have said something. I talked to my counselor on Friday morning, and she asked, "What did he trigger?" And that question cinched it. It triggered something. But I still don't have a clue what it is that he triggered. Only that I'm not okay in that instance. And now I have to chew over what to tell the instructor - because I think I need to mention this. There's a lot that happens at Krav that maybe shouldn't- that might trigger people - like when a guy will come over and put me in a headlock without me really seeing him come up behind me. The brit did that, and I am fine. It may have triggered many people. but he didn't lean on me at all, and I came back from that without losing my cool. I think my Tuesday shift is helping work toward that letting go, but the Thursday trigger revelation needs a bunch of work. I knew Krav Maga would be a mental strain, but it's interesting how specific this is. Maybe someone else will help me put those pieces together. Last piece from krav this week - one of the guys that I like (we'll call him The Pretty One, because he's 22, has muscles in all the right places, and has a pleasing face plus he treats me like a fellow human and not a lesser woman) expressed that he was uncomfortable because of the girls staring at him when he went to that yoga class, like once? and I told him it was the same for a girl to go to krav. He didn't believe me, but I am going to bring that around to discuss the point. I think it's worth it. I also mentioned to the guys (he is one) who stretch with me after class, that I found it very interesting who chose to join me. They're the young ones (14, 18, 22, and the newest is around 30, the guy who hugged me joined us once only and is 29). The 14 year old piped up that i gave them yoga for free when it was what I did for a job. And i explained, sort of, that i used yoga poses to stretch but yoga was more. And it's hard to quantify to someone who hasn't done it. And the instructor chimed in: that we'd be there another hour to do yoga. (He's done it in the past, so he gets it. Plus he's never given me trouble about why I'm at Krav despite being a yoga teacher and at least supposedly bound by nonviolence. No wonder I like the dude, right?) I also want to ask him if he's tested any other girl for any other belt except the one who is in advanced krav - and there's only one. I think the answer will be interesting. Still reading The Body Keeps the Score, and it is also troubling my head over things I cannot change. But I also can't just leave it alone because I really, really want to understand it. |
| I'm tired. I looked back when the latest entry was- and the woman with the abusive husband didn't come back. A lot of the women don't come back. I have 19 hours into Krav Maga and 6 into Kali. Have two pair of sticks and a practice blade and two pair of workable gloves. But I am not what I do. Attended a yoga festival this weekend, and it was a heart-full experience. I met several interesting gurus and I learned a great deal. I also may have figured out where one of my disconnects is, though I'm not entirely certain where to connect it. I managed to register my 200 hr RYT through the yoga alliance before I went to get my CEUs - so I logged both the continuing education and the current teaching hours. Yoga Alliance uses a 3 year cycle but a yearly registration. Weird, but whatever. In my 3 year rotation I need 45 teaching hours and 30 continuing education hours that fall within one of their categories. (I wish they'd printed the category on the certificate, but I'm doing the best I can.) Currently at 94 teaching hours (since December) and 5 CE hours. My training was about making yoga accessible to all - using whatever tools to make that necessary. That was good, and I'm thinking about branding my saturday class toward accessibility. But the other workshops I took were about philosophy of yoga and about the body and the brain and stress. It's a lot to take in all at once. I think I felt more connected after my first training - all on my own - than the second. So I will need to seek out something to help bring that in line. I do have more tools to think about mantras and mudras. I'm still reading a trauma and stress book for the yoga book club, and I think I might ask the yoga therapist for other things. I'm not sure, but she might be able to help me find it. I did an angel card reading, though I was generally not interested in it at first. I did it after Yoga Nidra (the sleep of awakening) and that might have been a mistake. I felt weird after it, and part of it was my leg spasmed (apparently lacking in sleep means you can't lie still for half an hour on the mat). But I will be practicing that when I get the file. One of the side effects might mean I need less sleep, and since I'm not getting enough, maybe that'll help. The angel card reading was seriously directed: Aura cleanse, clear the path, let go. I found it interesting that I needed to clear my aura, my energies, after all of that yoga stuff. But maybe that was part of what happened after the yoga nidra and the feeling odd. Clear the path is to literally clean up things - which Dilbert will be happy about. I've noticed I've got a lot of clutter. And it's about getting rid of things that don't mean anything to me even if they have material value. Which doesn't account for the new stuff I'm bringing home from the festival: hand-hammered tibetan singing bowl, marma stick, mudra book, and therapy balls. Also ordering a mala (okay, two) and another book if I can find a way to get my hands on it. Plus my doterra yoga buddy explained some things that might be helpful in my life. I asked about an essential oils handbook that isn't connected to the essential oil companies, but she couldn't recommend one. But she and I are planning on going to the yoga festival again next year. We traveled together okay. Again, I am not what I do, but the yoga philosophy does tend to change people. I was sort of amazed that one of the teachers was six weeks older than me. I expected an older woman because she has so many amazing qualities to teach to others. Yoga teachers just don't quite age like everyone else, and she is of Indian descent, so I thought she could easily be older and just look young. Silly me. Also trying to bring myself back into writing, editing, and those things. I feel a little split on this idea, and I'm not sure what to do about it. It's easy to fill in extra time with the duolingo and not pull out my edits for ten minutes where I wouldn't get a lot done - and then i didn't pull it out at all in a month. (The bronchitis at the end didn't help at all.) So: Finding direction in what to study, when to study, and how to fit it all in. |
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