I just started Kung Fu this past Monday. The training is very very painful. The horse stance in particular. To give an idea of the pain, my legs were legitimately shaking and giving out about 20 minutes into the session yesterday, but I persisted for about an hour and a half. I much rather would have sprained my knee or something than gone through this (I haven't experienced many other injuries to compare to this).
They teach that you can choose/learn to ignore the pain. The purpose of the past session seems to be for me to learn "mind over matter" and ignore the pain.
Anyway, I'm hoping that the "mind over matter" skill will translate to other areas of my life (they say it will). Maybe it'll help me to not procrastinate. To have the strength to make uncomfortable decisions (although I'm already pretty good at that). To ignore the things that make me unhappy.
Interesting. I started boxing, then moved over to kick-boxing. I have a hunch that Western / heavily Westernized MAs are a better fit for people living in Western circumstances. At least I don't have to deal with fake spirituality - it is clearly sold as a combat sport, not as a spiritual path. By fake spirituality I mean I had my fair share of Zen and Vajrayana meditations, which are fairly efficient at creating altered mind-states, and yet they happened rarely and not very deeply, because I am not a Zen monk doing it all day but a normal guy who catches ...
This is the public group rationality diary for May 5 - 23, 2015. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:
Established a useful new habit
Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief
Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations
Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior
Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something
Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life
Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you
Tried doing any of the above and failed
Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.
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