Lessons from the Self

Recently, for awhile, something between or within those two ideas, I've been feeling a need to reconnect with something.  Something feels foreign in my body, something feels distant in my spirituality.  Searching for my voice as a teacher, missing one that I had.

This morning I led myself through a Tae Kwon Do work-out.  It's been awhile.  I did kicks I had forgotten about.  Something about turning and jumping in certain ways opens my mind.  Something about determining how many sit-ups, push-ups, kicks, what I need and want to do next, made me check in more deeply with myself.  Where am I?  What is needed here?  To go through the physical hour somehow puts my mind in check in a way I had missed.

It also made me think more deeply about teaching and about the essential need to allow a student to do this.  The student is a whole person.  As someone who as led myself through musical and martial arts practice, my job is not to upload technique into them, but to help them become more self-aware and aware of their surroundings so that they can learn to serve themselves and others. 

Sometimes it is good to be away from something in order to miss it, in order to hear it more clearly when it opens itself again.