Training Focus
This week is Gradings and Curriculum Practice. If you need any help getting ready for your gradings, be it tags or a belt please ask and let us help. Here is the module schedule for the week.
Monday: Ukemi
Tuesday: Dynamic
Wednesday: Jo
Thursday: Tanto
Friday: Self Defence
Saturday: Sword
Balance Through Discipline
Here is some interesting reading from this months ‘Lessons in Mindfulness’. Important reading for everyone I think, myself included.
External discipline
One of the greatest benefits of studying martial arts is greater self-discipline and self-control. From birth, discipline is a part of the human experience. Imposed on us by caring parents and relatives, discipline teaches us to make wise choices. Teachers, coaches, law enforcement officials, and other authority figures soon add their influence. External discipline is used frequently to obtain compliance in the military, prisons, religious orders or any regulated environment requiring specific behaviours. It can be an effective method to control individuals, but when the authority figure or consequence disappears, often we realize that the behaviour was just being controlled rather than transformed, or repressed rather than rehabilitated.
Freedom is born of self-discipline. The undisciplined man is a slave to his own weaknesses.
–Alan Valentine
Internal discipline
As we mature, we realize the importance of self-imposed discipline or internal discipline. For example, eating well and exercising usually maintains our health. Building a successful career demands discipline of our time. Financial success requires the discipline to save and invest regularly. In our culture, certain holidays and rituals inspire us to become more disciplined. Birthdays, our annual reminder of the passing of time, can be an opportunity to acknowledge what we have accomplished, as well as what we have not. Without a doubt, the most popular time of the year for assessing our lives and vowing change is January 1st. The beginning of a new year gives us a fresh slate for new resolutions, and millions of people participate in this annual ritual. But well over 90% of us give up on our sincere and heartfelt visions within months. This confirms the need for commitment, follow-through and good old fashioned self-discipline.
Continuous action
Start investing the time and energy needed to design the life you desire in great detail. Then take continuous action on that design, never stopping until you reach your goals. If you are thinking that this seems really hard, you are right. However, everything in life is hard. Being poor, sick or uneducated is difficult as well. You have a choice: Take control of your life, making it satisfying and rewarding, or allow circumstances and outside forces to determine your future, and ultimately, your life.
We must all suffer one of two things: The pain of discipline or the pain of regret and disappointment.
–E. James Rohn
Osu,
Sensei Matt Thurman – Aikido Nottingham
