Swine Flu & floods

Yesterday I went to pick my daughter up from school (Near Wilmslow, Cheshire) and there was a letter in her bag saying that a child in the nursery had swine flu. This morning we got dressed and went into the school. As we were getting dressed I got 3 phone calls from her friends mums saying they weren’t taking their children in today, I got into school with my daughter and it was nearly deserted. A school which is normally heaving with kids had maybe 30 or so milling around looking a bit lost.
I took my girl into her classroom and spoke to her teacher, a lot of the parents had decided to not bring their kids in and really I can’t blame them. I asked for some work for my daughter for home and took her back home. Luckily she can stay with my dad while I am working so it wasn’t too bad.

Anyway I went to work and on starting my car on the way out of work I heard a whirring sound and the battery light came on and stayed on… “oh god what next?” I thought and drove it to Wilmslow where the Ford garage is. It turns out the alternator is goosed so thanking heavens that it’s still just under warranty I booked it in, unfortunately they can’t do it until Thursday so I got my rather heavy kit bag out of the back, full of sparring gear, first aid kit, instructor manuals, certificates and focus pads (it weighs about 3.7 tons approx) I stuffed in my sat nav which was in the car and started walking home. 10 minutes into the walk and the inevitable happened… they say it comes in threes… well number 3 was a tropical style downpour. I spent about 40 minutes being drenched by rain and splashed by cars and when nearly home it stopped raining.
Nice timing.

More about the Swine flu, I’ve just spoken to a couple of parents and one of the teachers has it now and a sibling of the child that has it is in school. My daughter is not going back in until the 5 days quarantine has passed.

Chinese Physiotherapy #4

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything here but I’ll try and fill in the gaps.

I’ve been for a few more sessions at the Chinese Docs and they have been mostly the same. He wipes some Wood Lok oil on my leg, sticks the needles in (very quick so they don’t hurt) and then I lie there for half an hour while it all takes effect. Then he comes back, takes the needles out and while massaging the spot I get updated on what his wife and daughter have done this week. I can tell they are the light of his life, he never stops talking about them although he says he’s usually a very quiet person and it’s his wife and daughter who chat all the time.

The leg is betting loads better and in a couple of weeks I should be able to back into it all with full force so I hope I’ve not lost strength in that leg. I’ve had to take it easy a little anyway recently because I got kicked in the ribs by a really powerful bloke and it winded me and seems to have injured something inside because when I twist or crunch up that side it hurts like hell.

I’ve started a TKD blog now, it’s at http://lcwilmslowtkd.wordpress.com so have a look

Chinese Physiotherapy #3 vs the rest of the world

Well more of the same this week, my knee aches where the doctor shoved his fingers into the muscles but other than that it feels ok. It’s not much of an improvement on the first weeks pain loss but at least that pain loss still exists (apart from the ache that is) and this week I have some herbs to boil and drink. The herbs aren’t too bad in powder form, they have a very unusual taste but are drinkable, the boiling ones stink to high heavens and taste worse!

I have to stick them in a pan and boil them for a minute then simmer it for around half an hour or until the liquid is reduced to about half a cupful. Then I’m supposed to drink that then use the herbs again in the evening and reboil them. Not on your nelly! There’s no way with my lifestyle I get the time and my dad complains so much about me doing it once a day that it’s only getting done in the evening. So I put two pints of liquid in and reduce it to around a cupful of liquid then split it into two cups. One I have to drink straight away and one in the morning. Yuck! It tastes foul and has the consistancy of gravy. It better work!

Anyway today I am going off with my daughters school and being very naughty, we have a two mile hike over rough ground and through a forest so I better not tell the doctor that! Also I get to miss my training which I’m getting withdrawal symtoms about already and it’s not even class time yet.

Ok todays thoguht

Watch what you are thinking, positive thoughts attract positive outcomes, negative thoughts attract negative outcomes. Feel good about life and life will be good.

Caio!

Life, the Universe and TaeKwon-Do

Well that’s the week over with, I am so glad of that as work is easier now it’s shorter hours but I try and cram as much into 5 hours a day as I did 8 hours and I swear I’m actually doing more???

Anyway I’m not in next week for 3 days because I’m going away with my daughter’s school as a parent helper. People’s reactions when I tell them that are funny, I’ve had a couple of people saying “rather you than me” or pulling a face but it’ll be fun, true there will be 4 adults to between 20 to 30 children but they are all around 7 years old so they are at a lovely age where they do as they are told and not try to escape too hard

The only thing I think will be a problem will be getting them to sleep and if I have my way a few after class TaeKwon-Do style workouts and mini lessons for those who want to join in will sort that bit out *mwahahahahaha*

Anyway were going to go watch some candles being made, play warriors in a castle, build dens and poke cows at a farm so it all sounds very educational and not much fun at all…. oh have you heard I am prone to sarcasm? We are going to have a blast!!!

What’s all this to do with TaeKwon-Do? I hear you ask in that stone silent way the masses have of ignoring me. Well nothing much apart from maybe the little lessons I might give the kids, but I have got my brand new belt with my name and the association logo embroidered on it and I have a nice new coat on order with my club name on it (of which the adults classes have since been disbanded) so I am all set up for my new classes to be opened. The school did me a CRB check which was handy because mine was due and my yearly insurance and licence to kill is in the post I’ve not paid for it all myself this year so god help me next year when it’s all due again!!! I’m broke now!

OK a bit of worldly wisdom and possibly soul saving stuff for the end of the post….

Don’t ever worry about what other people think of you, other people are more interested in what you think of them so just be yourself and relax about it. As long as you are true to yourself and try your best it doesn’t matter how you appear to others.

Until next time!

Chinese Physiotheraphy #2

Hi again, I went to my second session of physio with the Chinese doctor again on Saturday, I’ve only just had time to blog this so here it is.

On my second session the doctor got straight into the acupunture and again I felt the energies in my leg changing and moving. I had a few quick peeps and it was doing basically the same thing, swirling round and round without resting. It wasn’t swirling as fast though and seems a bit more liquid and not trying to come to rest as much. I didn’t add Reiki this time and I don’t know whether that made a difference or if it was the fact that I was lay on my side but I fell asleep for around 15 minutes.

When the doctor came back he massaged the area again and then pulled my legs together and used a piece of metal to measure the distance between my hip bones and my navel. He then told me that the distances were different. I am lob-sided!!!

Anyway he twisted and pulled my right leg around a bit then measured again, this was a bit better but I have excercises to do for a while now, every day until he says I have to stand on my left leg and wave my right one around and kick it out in different directions…. hmmm TKD people will recognise this as “training” hehe So I thought… “Right that means I am going to get good at 4 directional kicks on my right leg!”

Anyway I have now got some really nasty tasting herbs to pour boiling water over and drink for a week, next week he’s going to give me a different mix of herbs which I hope taste a bit better.

The leg has really improved in one week though, I have noticed that although I am being a bit more delicate on it, that it doesn’t hurt as much to do things like stand up from crouched down. Hopefully the pain relief and energy help given by the acupuncture and the manipulation and massage will do the trick and the herbs will help the healing.

God knows it’s costing enough!!!!

Failblog

I was looking for Lolcats which I find highly amusing and also give my daughter a laugh when I came across failblog.org and just had to share this one with you.

see more Fail Blog

So please be careful what you are signing up for and don’t use iTunes to create Nuclear Weapons! Be warned!

Chinese Physiotherapy

I have been working really hard this week at Taekwon-Do training and my left leg started aching in the knee area again.

I must tell you that it’s been hurting for a long while, well over a year ago I was running on the street, training for a 5k run but my knee twisted on a bump in the road and I got a sharp pain in it.  I went for physiotherapy and it eased a little, I went to the hospital for an xray (useless but procedure) and then an MRI scan.  This showed nothing so they released me and said it was fixed.  As I wasn’t getting pain at this time I believed them.   Western medicine (spits).

Anyway after a lot of fitness sessions my knee aches still and when I’m bent down I have to move it towards my other leg and angle it inwards so it doesn’t hurt when I get up. 

It was aching this week quite badly and I felt really bad yesterday morning with the hardest training session of the week looming (10am Sat morning) so I texted my instructor who knows I am not lazy.  “Sometimes”, he said “you need a rest and you know you have to take a break”.  He’s a nice guy, especially when you don’t mess him around.  I turned up to teach the kids though and we had a great time hitting them with sponge sticks in order to teach them to block.  That was lots of fun and the kids love it but it’s not relevant to this blog

After kids class I went to the Trafford Centre in Manchester.  I was walking around wondering what compulsion had taken me there when I spotted a notice for Chinese Physiotherapy in the window of a Dr and Herbs shop.

I went inside and enquired and after a free consultation found myself in a room on a table having acupuncture.

While I was lying there I was curious so I looked at my leg through my “third eye” and saw that the energies in my leg were acting very oddly.  They were swirling around and trying to come to rest in the energy centres that he had put the needles in (it doesnt hurt one little bit) and not being able to rest they started swirling again.  It reminded of water with dye in it that kept being stirred gently every time it stopped moving.

I decided to add a bit of Reiki to see what would happen and the result was again very interesting.  I could see the Reiki energy coming in through my crown chakra and running down through my body and out of the sacral Chakra but I could also see it diverting down into my left leg and adding to the swirls of energy that were happening there.  After about 20 minutes I stopped doing Reiki on myself as I felt it was time and shortly after that the doctor re-appeared.

He took the needles out and massaged the ligament that was damaged.  He also found without asking or testing a couple of other ligaments that were damaged, he showed me the difference by prodding the damaged ligament and the corresponding one on the other leg.  When he touched the damaged on on the back of my left knee I nearly jumped out of my skin!!!    I’m sure the guy is a sensitive.

Then he manipulated my right leg exactly the way a chiropractor had done when I had hip flexor problems.  I hadn’t even told him I’d had them or that they were getting stiff again.

Anyway I’ve booked a course of treatment, I’m now not allowed to do any heavy impact stuff on my legs for 8 weeks while the course is running but that’s not a hardship really as I have some technical stuff to learn and I don’t have to kick anything very hard when teaching kids.

I’ll keep you all posted on the treatment.

Scientific Reiki

Here’s an interesting article about energy healing and the science about it.

http://www.polaritytherapy.org/page.asp?PageID=25

Reiki and me

Ever since I was a kid I could feel electricity as heat in my hands.   I told my dad and he said that I couldn’t feel anything, that it was my imagination.   Other things also came up, the fact that I could just “know” whether an injury was a bad one or not.

Anyway the long and short of it was that I started to think that I was imagining it, that I couldn’t actually do those things and the things I could do started to fade through lack of excercise.

Later on if life I met someone who guided me to learn spiritual healing then eventually to take my Reiki Attunements I found that all my old talents came back to me.  I can once more feel electric wires in walls,  not quite as well as I used to when I was a kid but I can do it.   I can also look at someone and tell where they need healing, I see it in my head.

Anyway my message to you all is don’t give up if someone tells you that you can’t do something, if they tell you that you are mistaken.   Your instincts are usually right and you know more about you than anyone else does.

Don’t let somoene else tell you what you can and can’t do.

Only you know that.

Kids and TaeKwon-Do

I have been talking to a school PE Co-ordinator today about teaching TaeKwon-Do in schools.  It seems that the schools in my area are starting to look at TaeKwon-Do and Karate teachers for after school clubs for the kids.

Now normally we don’t teach Taekwon-Do to under 5′s, but in this case the 4 year olds want to have a go and the teachers fully support them.  I found myself suggesting that they modify the class for 4 year olds to a simple program of grab release self defence and some fun pad kicking and maybe a martial arts supporting game like tig or bulldog  (good for reactions and teamwork if they play them right).

I had an argument some years back with a guy on a forum about teaching kids martial arts.  He was dead against it, my argument was that if they are likely to try and hurt each other they are going to do it anyway and that is up to the parents to decide.  If I make a difference in that just one child manages to get themselves out of a sticky situation and potentially saves thier own life or the life of a friend then it’s worth a few bruises in the playground when they practice grab releases on each other and go flying into the kids running past playing tig.  

My daughter learns TaeKwon-Do with me.  I don’t usually teach her, she’s my instructors student and I prefer someone else to teach her as I teach her life skills.  She needs another teacher than me.  Anyway a while back we were in a waiting room somewhere and she was messing around with an adult she knows very well.  he grabbed her arm and without a second thought she performed a simple quick grab release on him.  It hurt his wrist, he let go.   She was 6 years old and he was in his 30′s and not a weak man.

It really drove home to me that it could have been anyone trying to drag my daughter away when my back was turned.  My daughter could have been in a dangerous situation but her knowledge of grab releases from her TaeKwon-Do lessons would have given me enough time to turn round and see what was going on  (then kick his ass and make him regret ever seeing us –  I’m not a violent person but I have my limits,  anyone would).

Anyway this guy that I had the argument with all them years ago.  My parting shot to him was “how many kids do you have?”   He never answered.  It turned out he didn’t have any.

 

If you don’t think kids should do martial arts take a read of this  http://martialartsforchildren94.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/martial-arts-for-kids-black-belt-ottawa/