Turning Through Pain

Turning is an uncomfortable endeavor. Today, like so many days recently, I set myself to the idea of turning for a long time only to find myself unreasonably uncomfortable within the first fifty or sixty revolutions in the Lion representational posture, which is to say after walking and holding my arms in the position for five to six minutes. In fact, as has frequently plagued my turning practice recently, I felt like aiming for seventy-two revolutions and then changing sides, which kind of stinks because that's right about at the seven-minute mark. I compare that with the last day that I turned in front of He Jinbao (last September) in which I maintained a single direction of the Lion representational posture while turning for some thirty-five or so minutes. Today, though, I decided that I should force myself through to at least the magic 108 revolutions, and suddenly, almost bizarrely, at the point when I got to my eighty-some-oddth time around my little circle, the pain severely lessened. I continued on, getting a decent turning session twice today, both pushing close to twenty-five minutes. Since my wife was planning to go out of town this evening for a few days, I kept them short to try to catch some time with her before she left.

After my second turning session today, I did strikes around the loop in my driveway. It takes anywhere from seventy to a hundred strikes in the one-step, or zig-zag-stepping, method, and I work my way all the way around, usually changing the strike without stopping for as many revolutions as I can maintain. This depends on the strikes I chose, and the double opening hooking strike and rolling shocking strikes today wore me out so that four times around was good enough. I finished the striking aspect of my training by doing the lying step in a box in both directions until I couldn't put my feet in the right places consistently. My butt, after that, was on fire.

I'm going to try to do a lot of meditating since it's just the kids and I until Sunday. They're pretty frustrating, so I figure the extra meditation time will do me good. We'll see if it actually works out or not, though....