The Beginning of New Chapters

The beginning of 2019 has been full of wonderful moments and new beginnings for my family. Work is going strong and I have been spending time with beautiful friends and making new ones. It has been a rather busy start to the year and I am slowing down so I can take a breather and take care of things around the house as well as spending more time being creative. In order to keep my body strong and fit I have taken up martial arts again, it is challenging but a lot of fun. There are things that are slowly coming back to me but other aspects of picking up a close contact sport is taking some time to get used to, espeically the ground holds. Carrying a little more love on my hips and tummy does make getting out of ground holds a little trickier. If someone comes to choke me on the ground, I have to swivel my hips to the side before hooking my leg around their neck for the take-down. Believe it or not, this move is the least of my worries. Last lesson my sense of modesty was saved from having to make a triangle around someone's head with my legs. A team-mate who witnessed my boggled facial expression told the instructor I am still moving through the correct sequence of blocks, throws and punches and I was spared that time. I know that this reprieve is short-lived, I won't be the newbie forever and there will come a time when my blushes can't be spared because self-defence cannot afford propriety. A couple of women in my class make jokes to help me get through the more intimate and vulnerable positions such as. "Move closer, closer...like you're going to fart on my face." One of them assured me. "By the time you get to orange belt, you won't even think about it." With that aside,I do enjoy the rush of feeling my own power and strength, I love the resounding echo of kai-ya's and oos through the dojo, the sound of bodies being thrown against the mat, the determined grunts of people grappling for dominance and bragging rights. This is my favourite time of the week now. I can see myself doing this for a long time. One of my new life-time goals is to become a black belt. A scary thought just occured to me... it looks like I am going to need to do Yoga afterall so I can gain more strength and flexibility. It seems before I become a kick-arse black-belt, I have to become a human pretzel first... On a side note, last night when I had to stay back for a staff meeting and was over the road at my local chip shop waiting for my food to be ready, I sat down and picked up a battered magazine that was a couple of years old, I read a magazine which had a article and exerpt from Robin McGraw's book "Inside My Heart". In that exerpt I found something that truly touched my heart and it was about how we are not meant to be passive about how our lives play out. That we have more power than we think and we can use what we know and what we have to bring joy and success to our lives. This is one book I am really excited to read! New chapters are exciting, fresh and full of promise and possibilities. I hope that whatever chapter you are in, that you are enjoying the life you are writing yourself into. Love, Sarah x