end of the year approaching

Days, weeks, months are slipping past too quickly and another year as well. I may have had less practice time this year than in any of the almost 20 prior years, before things got serious. Being slightly under-employed at the moment, I am racking up some nice end-of-the-year sessions but it can’t make up for the entire year of not-quite-enough.

Still, I am happy to have as much training time as I do, and regular access to the best teachers. It has been a year of both broadening and deepening my overall experience, and the stage is set for much more of the same next year. Yet I will be striving more for deepening than broadening, digging in more deeply in the current areas rather than exploring so much around the edges. It is time to go back and re-examine and strengthen my foundations.

I have already been assigned my main theme in training for 2009 – to get my middle section moving much more. My hips and shoulders have gotten looser, but that vast expanse between them has been neglected. Above dantian/ tanden, below the collar bones – nothing is happening there, or precious little, when I move.

Just three weeks until the new year and so many events on the horizon. Another demo/ tournament this coming Sunday, one in January, another in February. March will likely see another trip to Kunming and the Sha family. Somewhere in there I will get down to Okinawa. A trip to see Liu Laoshi in Beijing this spring would also be good, before his annual summer visit to Tokyo.

And in between, the challenge of everyday practice. Having a single goal for an entire year seems a bit much, but when I think of how quickly the years have been passing recently, I almost wonder if even more time will be needed to work on this one point which creeps into all the Chinese arts I practice.

(picture from a bell tower in Beijing which became (in)famous during the Olympics