Inspiration

School is over. April's impediments have healed themselves. I'm renewed in mind and body, and I've applied my restored strength primarily in training physically for the past week, ignoring largely the desire to chronicle or even to much discuss my endeavors. I've averaged around forty-five or more minutes per day on my circle, earned over a solid hour of turning a few times, trained my striking moderately, and put forth a tremendous amount of effort with a saw on some woefully deformed trees in my yard that have built me up into feeling very strong.
Some of the things I've learned:

• Turning more than once in a day is an excellent idea.
• Turning in Lion until I cannot turn in Lion any more and then turning in Dragon or Phoenix only to return to Lion again enhances my training.
• Even if I turn for obscenely long on my first time in each direction, the benefits are multiplied enormously by turning in each direction at least once more, though more here, within the limits of my physical capabilities, is more.
• Watching demonstrations of techniques and the applications of those techniques is incredibly important to do on a daily basis if possible, even if only for a few minutes.

I've decided to try to get onto my circle in a significant way two or three times every day that I can this summer, hopefully averaging 60-90 minutes per day in the effort, and at least once or twice per week, I'd very much like to do a workshop day for myself, wherein I emulate, to the best of my abilities, the rigors of a day at a workshop with He Jinbao. I've decided that I must heed his advice carefully and fully: "steady practice over a long time will achieve a good result."

Just today, though, I found myself down about training and felt more lazy than usual toward the effort, and as if in answer to my attitude that training is a horribly lonely activity, I found the following quote by Kozo Nishino: "When one carries out the training of an art to the limit, the body exhibits individualism for the first time." I hope it's inspiring enough to pick my practicing back up.