100 Days Standing and I’m still Standing
There is no Charge for Awesomeness, maybe there is?
To achieve anything one has to move towards one’s goal with mindful intent. The 100-Day Challenge we set ourselves was just a flippant muttering of words in order to motivate ourselves to be committed to developing our martial engine.
The minimum requirement is one minute per posture and there are seven postures. My personal goal was three minutes per posture which lasted one week, I’m now down to two minutes most days and three occasionally. The shorter I stand, the purer I try to stand, melting away any tension, scanning my body and focusing my mind.
I’m nearly a month into the standing and amazing things have again started to happen, so I felt the strong urge to diarise my experience and my thoughts, not on a daily basis but as and when I feel the urge and need to express myself.
The act of standing in a pure as possible mindful state opens up sensations and thought patterns that I could not imagine possible. My usual process is a series of exercises followed by cool-down. This is followed by 15-20 minutes of joint opening before the standing begins. The motivation is knowing that my friends are pinging away on the Whats App group Done. (No-one wants to be the not-Done).
For me it’s now a habit and a great feeling as it is now part of daily life. The purer the standing, the purer the euphoric feeling and the feeling of an open mind which is then filled with enthusiasm for life. With my Photography and Martial Arts I’m finding that everything around me starts to make sense and has more meaning. I am attracted to certain types of people that seem to enthuse me more and unknowingly feel myself distancing myself from things that appear to negatively affect my karma and state.
This weekend I attended a seminar on Prana Dynamics run by Huai Hsiang Wang, an awesome individual, incredible martial artist and peaceful man with a serene smile and also a beautiful and deep philosophical mind. He talked about developing a third eye, an antenna, a martial antenna, it’s something I have started to try and feel and develop. It’s like seeing beyond yourself; it’s like an understanding, almost seeing into the future. Knowing an outcome before it’s happened.
Standing is about finding tension and releasing it. Once the body is relaxed you can release the mind, walk yourself out of the shadow of the mind and set yourself free. We are born from innocence then life takes it away. Through standing you guide yourself back to that innocence and you develop the knowing eye. (This was something Huai Talked about at the Seminar)
I suppose my standing has nothing to do with the seminar – or maybe it does. Without the standing I may not have been guided to hear some simple, but powerful words. I seem to be finding messages and meaning in everything I do and hear.
I watched the film Fierce People and at the end of the movie I honed in on these words: “When you change your tribe, the tribe changes you, we become the sum of all the people we have ever met.”
At the moment I feel I have an insatiable thirst for personal growth and development, along with an extreme desire for personal achievement and creativity. I find myself wanting to surround myself with inspiration and immerse myself in positivity and individuals that inspire and motivate me to become a better person.
We are Yin and we are Yang everything we do has a balance. Like the chi flowing through our body, the tide flows in and out and from bad things comes the good things. From pain comes joy; from hard work comes reward. It’s a balancing cycle, when everything is in balance, life flows and grows. We are what has shaped us and we are what we want to be. We can choose what to accept.
Things are black or white – the grey bit in the middle is where we stand and observe and where we find our centre and balance. We can choose to make judgement from a balanced perspective.
But then are we really making our own decisions? Do we just stand relax and release the tension and let life naturally unfold and decide for us? Is the purpose not to fight and just let it be and accept what it is? Is knowing the path about accepting and embracing the outcome that we created? Or was created by consciously or unconsciously conspiring with the laws that govern balance?
If we act from a balanced perspective we stand a better chance of making the right choices and decisions in life. In Photography a Grey Card is used to produce consistent image exposure – and I think we also need such a marker for consistent life choices.
The 100 Day Standing, was the idea of my friend and training partner Tom when we were at the Mindfulness in Motion Weekend, the writing and references are mine and my interpretation of my personal experience, I train with my Sifu Leo Au Yeung and with my friends and Mindfulness in Motion teacher Shy. I attend seminars and I am always trying to meet with like minded people to try and develop myself. It is through my Photography and Martial Art mentors that I try to find my own path and its with the help of my teachers and guides that I find myself grateful for the positive input they have in helping me develop as a person.
The Selection of images I have selected are from a the Mindfulness in Motion Centre Park Weekend and taken with a Nikon FM3a and processed by Bayeux Photo processing lab in London.