Christmas is traditionally time for The Nutcracker ballet. Seven years ago (3rd of December 2011 to be exact) I performed in my very first ballet recital. The Nutcracker was our ballet piece for the year 🙂 I got to dance as one of the snowflakes, which was very exciting (my first time wearing a tutu!)… Read More The Nutcracker and Shakespeare
Happy Christmas! The first Monday in months for me without Martial Arts classes, so I’ll be kicking around the Christmas Tree tonight 🙂 I bumped into this informative link today about how Christmas is celebrated in South Korea. Random Geekery Diving further into Korea-facts, I read that both the Crane and Hibiscus (H. Syriacus, Korea’s national flower… Read More Christmas, Cranes and Poetry
Happy Holidays – if you’re reading this on the 24-25th! This will be a shorter post today, a bit more of a training log than strength philosopy 🙂 A report back after last week’s Janda situp experiment: Sunday: 0 reps, 0 negs (but I gave it my all!) Monday: 0 reps (yet almost managed one)… Read More Gainz for Christmas
Engaged in the creative process we feel more alive than ever, because we are making something and not merely consuming, Masters of the small reality we create. In doing this work, we are in fact creating ourselves. Mastery – Robert Greene
Those of you who know me, know (ooh, I like how that sentence came out) that I am an advocate for variability, in movement and in life(!). I see it as the surest way to build resilience, and to find balance in every sense. When working on flexibility, I like to employ a holistic approach,… Read More Roll with It
One of the hardest things to do in practise for me, still, be it for dance or martial arts, is to work on the things I do not feel I am very ‘good’ at yet. I know those are precisely the areas where there is the most potential for growth, for positive development. And yet.… Read More The Great Unknown
The shortest day (as well as a Meteor Shower, a Mercury–Jupiter Conjunction and this year’s last full Moon) is fast approaching. We’ve had frost already in November, and even a bit of snow this week. We’re in the heart of winter, greeting soon the longest nights. And yet. Every morning, when I look outside the kitchen window, I see the buds… Read More The Buds are Waiting
One thing that is inevitably a part of learning, of growth, is the time spent in (on?) plateaus. I am writing this post mostly as a reminder to myself, as patience is something I need to practise as well. Currently I am at a kind of plateau on pointes (which makes for an interesting visualisation),… Read More Pointes and Plateaus
If there is one thing that I love about Martial Arts (if I had to choose) it would be that the learning never stops. It’s not supposed to. This might sound cliché, but most probably that’s simply because it’s true. What makes it even better is that the learnings seem to transfer to other (life!)… Read More Perpetual Learning
With any kind of progressive training, for strength or for other skills, it can be easy to forget that the magic really happens in between the practise sessions. And that the times where we struggle is where we learn/grow the most. The body (and mind) adapts after the training, to the stresses that the training… Read More The Invisible Work
