Shodai’s Blog September 8 2009 1:11 pm Playas de Tijuana, Baja California, México

Shodai’s Blog September 8 2009 1:11 pm Playas de Tijuana, Baja California, México

Shiken haramitsu daikomyo!

This morning I started my day very, very early. I had to teach a Black MAMBA class at 5:00 am until 7:30 am. The class started with a 40 minute breathing meditation from a CD that I made. I took some Inuit (Eskimo) Shaman drumming music that I had and I created a meditation recording. It is a very cool type of breathing meditation that I call “Turtle Meditation” because it leads you to slowly reduce your breathing rate all the way down to 2 breaths per minute. The idea here is to be able to slow your body down so that your mind is free to concentrate on the present.

After that we did a yoga routine, then 70 push ups and 100 leg raises. Usually we do more sets of abdominal work and push-ups in the dojo then we go outside and do three sets of pull-ups interspersed by a set of 3 lunges. Our sets of lunges are compound: we do (a) front, (b) side, and (c) back lunges with one leg then the other; that makes 1 repetition, but it is six lunges total, three with one leg, then three with the other. That is what we usually do, but not today.

After we finished the yoga and the conditioning we did “groundwork” – “ne waza” in Japanese, which means ground techniques. We practiced the figure four arm lock from the guard, then the escape against the figure four arm lock, then finally the counter to the escape. We also did some supplementary exercises to assist in those techniques.

We started teaching these early morning classes to try to get our membership up. I still can’t pay my bills and am constantly behind.

I decided I would make this more of a journal when I can

I love you guys and miss you very much,

Daddy

Shiken haramitsu daikomyo!