January Covid blues

 

January Covid blues

January 2021, speaking politely was a mixed bag, especially emotionally.  Being really honest, it was pretty awful, with a struggle to find any motivation in the midst of it.  At least I had the luck of having two anchor points, my work, which was very demanding, and karate.

Given the inclement weather for training outside, work rather that karate was my "turn to" at many points, especially that month.  This was probably what resulted in all the neck issues I had around that time.  Karate usually provided a healthy counterpoint to work, but when the  balance switched, I think my body decided to tell me was being neglected. 

By this point I had effectively in lock-down for the best part of 10 months , with minimal physical interaction with anyone outside the immediate family in that time (i.e. the people in the house).   It took a toll on my mental health from the start, and I sought and found some help for that.   One of the big pluses was the advice that I should lock on to karate and keep on going.  That is what I tried to do.  

I think one of the hardest things to admit for many people is the need for a degree of separation.  In pre-Covid times, this was easy to achieve as most people who worked were separated from those at home for the duration of work and travel at least.   Working from home and being at extreme risk denied me and my family that separation.

I was not one of the gainsayers about Covid-19, it was a confirmed super-killer to anyone with my conditions, so there was no choice from my perspective other than to work from home to survive.  Some of my friends who contracted Covid gave me hope if their recoveries, but as the sole earner in my family I couldn't take many risks.  However, January 2021was probably the worst month during Covid, with respect to being able to keep home issues separate from work.

The two started to overlap and that was hard to cope with for me.   The coping mechanisms  for me cope had been a fair bit of kata and a few too many bottles of wine. The former has to be the preferred route, but becoming somewhat stale and so the second had started to come more into play; not good.   Enter PJ Broomy, with a demonstration of one of his dojo's kata.

I have suffered from stress related mental health issues, bordering on depression and have struggled at times with my temper, as well as my heart and lung conditions.  My best answer to all of those has always been to learn something new.  I think I frustrated my Sensei at times in this, as I should really have been drilling my fundamental kata.  I totally agreed with them that as only a blue belt in our discipline, I needed to practice, practice, practice. 

However, the physical needs also needed to be tempered with the mental.  Learning a new kata for me was a mental as well as physical challenge, which while I felt I was under mental siege was an important release.   I was not trying to learn different bunkai, because all I needed to know is in Naihanchi.  It's a codex for many of the brutal strikes you can make, and for a last resort, if all other things have failed, that's perfect.

PJs school of Karate, Bu-Kai is based primarily on the Goju Ryu style.  I had previously gone through the basics of Seisan with him, and this time around he was showing me the basics of Sanseru.  Both are derivative of Sanchin, the base kata of Goju-Ryu.  My interest started in this school when I was shown how to use Tensho as a kata to help with breathing.

 First of all PJ contributed to an online lesson with my own dojo during Covid, and opened the door to more kata from the same school as Tensho.  It was a door which I happily went through and have been learning from PJ ever since.  My own research has shown me that the divides between schools such as Shorin Ryu and Goju Ryo are historically artificial.

The bottom line in my mind was, I had to practice the fundamentals; my core kata and drills, but I also needed mental challenges.   This gave a focus away from home and work and in so doing, helped me create my own mental "separation", in place of the physical one that is impossible to achieve in lock-down.

The material from another school of karate provided me with just the mental stimulus I needed to  keep me challenged.

Hope this all makes sense and thank you for reading.

04-01-2021 (re-written 01/09/2023)