This essay reflects on a quiet training moment—stiffness while putting on socks and reduced range during warm-up kicks—to reveal a deeper discipline: recovery has its own tempo. Rather than signaling decline, temporary limits often mark adaptation still underway. Through training literacy—reading signals without dramatizing them—the practitioner adjusts with intelligence, preserves standards, and allows the body to reorganize. Patience doesn’t lower expectations; it refines them.
Tag Archives: #MartialArtsWisdom
What Watching My Tai Qi Teacher Taught Me About Dedicated Practice
In this reflective essay, I describe a quiet moment during practice when watching my teacher move shifted how I understood my own progress. What first appeared as ease in my body revealed a deeper lesson about lineage, responsibility, and what mature practice begins to demand. By observing how the art travels through different stages of a teacher’s life, I explore how practice evolves from effort into care—and how, at a certain point, the work no longer asks us to improve alone, but to carry something forward with intention.
Where Joy Goes When We Share It
A simple morning walk with my dogs,Caesar and Anubis, revealed what joy remembers even when we forget: it grows best when it widens beyond us.
Musings on Martial Arts, Taoist Philosophy & All Things Wellness Related. 