I have been busy in the last few weeks with some (a little late) New Year inspiration and have been trying to figure out how to bring more of what lights me up into my days.  Most of you know that I am always trying to figure out how to bring more tae kwon do into my week.  I love to kick and I love to teach, and finally I am pulling together a class to do both!  You can read more about my new Black Belt Fitness class on my website by clicking here!

This month I also started the process of earning my therapeutic riding instructor certification.  Ever since my daughter started riding horses a couple years ago I fell in love with them.  Some weeks I ride along side of her, but mostly I am content just being at the barn with these magnificent creatures and all the sights, smells and sensations they bring.  I started volunteering for the therapeutic riding program where my daughter rode, just out of curiosity and wanting to enjoy the whole horse experience more often.  This year I decided that the combination of my occupation of physical therapist and my love of horses might fit perfectly together as an instructor.  So in a few more weeks I will begin the “student instructor” phase of the certification and begin working toward 25 hours of teaching under a mentor.  When I finish that phase, I will sign up for a final workshop and certification exam to complete the process.  I hope that in the near future I will be able to offer therapeutic riding as a service to my clients.  In the mean time I will be studying everything there is to know about horses and riding!

I know that as I have brought my passions into my life and let them be the flow and the focus, that I feel an energy, a healing energy that fills me up.  Way back before tae kwon do and horses I remember starting with a list that the author of one of my books asked us to make.  It was a list of what we loved, and of what we were grateful for.  It was a great place to start.  Making that list set up the framework in my mind for what things lit me up, and helped me focus on the love and abundance that was already in my life.  And what you put your energy into is what you will experience more of.

So tell me, what do you love?

Horse love

I missed my normal schedule of classes this week.  This crazy week from hell.  Life dragged me out of my happy routine and demanded that I deal.  Through fights with my spouse and cleaning up dog vomit I thought I might scream or cry.  And then the dog died.  I cried.  I spent one last sleepless night cradling my sweet boy Rocky against seizure after seizure, getting peed on and spit on and scratched.  I carried him, his soft limp head against my cheek, around the house and outside under the stars, and on and off the couch, between violent bouts of shaking.  Until one last seizure took all he had left and he was quiet.

Rocky doing "Beg."

The kids and I said a prayer and we planned his funeral.  Jonathan stayed home from school that day and spent it watching me crying on and off until I dried up.  Moving back into our routines as best we could, the kids returned to school the following day.  I checked messages that morning and my gut clenched.  It was that call every parent hopes they never get.  Jonathan had been involved in an altercation.  Would I please call as soon as possible.

“Really?”, I thought as I looked up into the sky.  This week?

A humungous relief washed over as I heard the words, “Jonathan is okay and it was not his fault.”  He had been taken by surprise and punched in the stomach for no apparent reason.  WTF?

I remembered that God only gives us what we can handle.  I tucked the kids into bed that night and quickly followed, anxious to shut off from the world and fall into sleep.  I was exhausted.

The next day brought a bit more unexpected disappointment.  Little tests of character I call them.  I wondered how long this week would last.  I looked forward to the following day when I would rest back into the part of my life that has proven to be a steady presence of comfort for the last seven years.

I put my dobuk on Saturday morning and I saw the warrior.  I knew everything would be okay.  My helicopter kicks were ninja-like that morning.  Yeah, it is all good.

We packed up and took Rocky to the cabin that afternoon, buried him under our circle of trees, and felt at peace.

Rocky's grave stones at the cabin

And everything was okay.  For one of the first times in my life I fully understood closure.

The discipline of tae kwon do, that I have spent my time and my heart getting to know, just like a best friend has proven its loyalty.  It’s there in good times and it’s there in bad.  It’s there whether you are or not, an unwavering presence you never doubt, always ready should you need to lean a little.  Always ready for whatever you bring.  Fully accepting who you are and challenging you to be you.

I am exceptionally blessed to have family and friends who lend an ear and a shoulder, who I can count on when I need someone.  They are part of my tae kwon do.  I put the uniform on for them and for me.  I am the warrior for them and with them.  And I am certain that everything is going to be okay.

Today I took the kids up to Liberty Mountain and made good on my promise to Jonathan to spend the gift card he got for Christmas.  It was a spectacularly sunny, wonderful day up there.  I am sure Jonathan and Danielle, and the several hundred other locals who joined us would agree that it was a great day to ski.  I decided to find a bench in the sun and enjoy some chill out time, no pun intended.  Here was what came from a few quiet moments on the bench, watching the beaming bright snow and listening to all the happy squeals, and swooshes around me:

Winter Mountain Play

Hot, on top a mountain of snow,

Squinting to stand the glare,

Peeling off layers to cool the sweat,

Letting the sun take care of the breeze.

Playing with my edge to see what I can do,

My body learns the move.

Slamming down hard and laughing just as hard,

It will take another try or two…or fifty.

Groaning to stand, sliding off for another go,

Smiling and breathing in deep to fuel my next run.

My son Jonathan and Shaun's daughter Becky at a visit to the firehouse

Firefighters are a special breed of people…they have the ability to stare fear in the face and bust through that wall of fire, literally.  Many of us spend a life time trying to over come that kind of fear.  We all wanted to be one when we grew up but now we know that this job is reserved for a unique type of person.  Since I have known Shaun, almost 20 years now, I have seen his strength and his compassion.  I have come to know the attitude in him that has allowed him to persevere.

My husband and kids and I had a chance to visit with Shaun this holiday and we spent some time talking about the challenges and worries he is facing.  We had a chance to understand first hand what it takes for him to maneuver in his home, and do all the things of daily life that you and I take for granted.  We learned about diaphram pace makers and feeding tubes and the pain that occurs in a body that can no longer hold itself up.

As a firefighter Shaun has always been involved with the MDA (Muscular Dystrophy Association) during their regular “Fill the boot” campaigns, but since his diagnosis he has opened up and talked about his disease and the importance of the MDA in his life and the lives of many children.  You can watch his latest speech at the the International Association of Firefighter’s convention here.

We travelled home from our visit with sadness and some feeling of helplessness, but also an intense gratitude for our own health.  We have spent a lot of time thinking about how to help knowing that there may not be much we can do…

Which brings me to a lighter piece of this story.  In my now daily addiction to Facebook, and in a continued effort to keep what shows up on my time line in the spirit of positivity and good vibes, I came across a story of a gentleman named Dr. Craig Oster.  Dr. Craig, as he is referred to, was diagnosed with ALS at the age of 30 in 1994.  Do the math.  Someone had commented on a post he had made about getting a meeting with some of the top researchers at the ALS clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital.  See the Facebook post here.  In my effort to keep up with things that interest me, I “liked” his page and “friended” him, after which he immediately posted a note to my time line that read, “would you like to write a guest article for my historic holistic THE HEALERS campaign, with a world class team of advisors such as Bruce Lipton?”

Bruce Lipton?  I have been reading his stuff since I was a wee physical therapist.  Biology of Belief is sitting on my night stand.  I was interested, to say the least.  One thing led to another and well, you can now read my first guest blog HERE, about having a black belt attitude, which is what people like Dr. Craig, and my brother in law Shaun exhibit every day, each moment of their lives.

Thank you Dr. Craig for reaching out to me and for the opportunity you have given me to help in this small way.  People come across our path for a reason and it makes me smile to have come across yours.  I am proud to contribute to the amazing work you are doing to help people like Shaun.

I know that feeling well.  That amazing connection when you can feel your child’s victory (or defeat) deep in your heart, like it is your own.

I asked Kim to share a little more about their moment for us…

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Captain’s Cup by Kim Fernandez

I cringe every time my kids try to break a board at Taekwondo test time. I cringe and I tangle my fingers up into a knot and count my toes and read the inane labels on my plastic water bottle and say little prayers. “Please let it break. Please let it break. Please please please let it break.”

I say that prayer when it’s my turn on the floor, too. Just for the record. But I say it more passionately when my kids are up. I’m not a proponent of “everybody gets a trophy for showing up,” but I also don’t want to watch my little guys fail. It hurts.

Saturday was our first tournament. We practiced our team form what felt like thousands of times and it went off without a hitch; hard work pays off. But board breaking…well…in the moment, it either happens or it doesn’t. Perfecting the kick helps, but the steadiness of the holder, the wood’s grain, and simple luck weigh in pretty heavily too.

I started chanting my “please let it break” mantra when my son stood up for his turn before the judges. He looked at his holders, waited for the call, and then BANG! BANG! BANG! Broke all three boards, one right after the other.

Thank you.

His fist lowered to his side after the third board, he inhaled, and then he realized what just happened as the applause started. All three. First try. Totally rocked it. His face lit up like Christmas, and over on the sidelines, my heart nearly exploded. I’m pretty sure I was happier than he was, because I knew what those three boards meant.

I can do this!

The tournament was good for our bodies, to be sure, but also so very good for our souls. That’s what this is all about–growing as a warrior and as a person. My son went home with a medal, but also with a life experience–a defining moment. And a smile that hasn’t let up three days later. How incredibly, amazingly awesome is that?

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And THAT is why we love taekwondo!

My mom and I were emailing back and forth this morning and she divulged some information about a recent battle with the elliptical machine.  My mom began the long and sad journey of grieving the loss of her husband this past June, and she has slowly been getting her mojo back, including thinking a lot about, and finally starting some exercise.  Gung Ho about getting back to her routine of months past which included very vigorous walking (she finished the Susan G. Komen 3 day last year which is 60 miles in 3 days) she promised herself that she would get over to her fitness center and at least put 15 or 20 minutes on that elliptical as a start.  Well she finally did that, and then immediately ended up with low back pain.

I know she won’t mind me telling you all that she is 65.  My mom is the prettiest, healthiest, most upbeat and caring 65 year old woman anyone would want to meet.  With the recent months of intense care taking of my step dad, she wasn’t able to take care of herself as much as she needed to, and now she is battling the body that is a result of those many months of neglect.

Here is where the advise, and the “Go slow” come into play.  I therapied to her over the phone this morning about taking her exercise routine slow.  I told her not to have any rules about what she should do to get it going again.  That her body would need some TLC, and for her to give it some time to stretch out between dates with the elliptical.  Cardiovascular fitness is extremely important, but flexibility is the thing I see the most lacking in people as they age.  So I talked her through a hip flexor stretch over the phone.  Hip flexor stretch, you may be wondering?  Yes, and here is a picture taken from an awesome book called, “The Key Muscles of Hatha Yoga,” by Ray Long, MD.

The Psoas and Iliacus muscles (the hip flexors)

Can you see where the muscles (red) come up from the hips and pelvis and attach into the lumbar vertebrae?  The hip flexors are back muscles!  There are several ways to stretch out the hip flexors and I ended up talking my mom through one of those exercises.  A few minutes after we got off of the phone she emailed me.  ”That one exercise alone helped me enormously!!! You NEED to post about that… And hip flexors!”  So here is that post!  Don’t forget to stretch out your hips when you have low back pain!

This weekend I had the honor of being a referee at the 2012 U.S. Taekwondo Festival along side my instructors, Master John L. Holloway and Ms. Shawn McDermott, both international level referees.  It was trial by fire, and honestly I think that may have been one of the best ways to break into the world of refereeing.  I was lucky though, to have expert level instructors by my side to make sure I didn’t make any huge mistakes.

First and foremost I will never again look at the judges of our future competitions with anything but respect.  I might be disappointed if I lose a match, but I won’t be blaming the judges anymore.  Parents, if you have been upset by the judging in any of your kids’ matches, I highly recommend trying your hand at refereeing.  It will completely change your perspective.

Master John L. Holloway

I am lucky to be a mom of an athlete, an athlete and now a referee.  I get the picture from all of these vantage points and that will help me understand and excel at all of them.  I am now also appreciating the opportunity I had to observe the athletes and their coaches, their techniques and the strategies they used to compete, coach and teach.  It will make me a better competitor and a better teacher.

Referees at The Captain's Cup Challenge 2010

The referees who work at your tournaments do it from the passion they have for this sport.  We couldn’t compete without them.  They commit 12 or 13 hour weekend days to you.  Next time you are muttering some kind of nastiness under your breath, think twice and just say, “Thank you” instead.

“Do girls do it?” the dad asked?

“Uhmm, let me see, wait just a second,” the young staff member replied.  ”Yes, I think there is one girl in the class.”

Now, mind you, I am standing in the hallway, fully uniformed, sporting my regular long pony tail, listening, curious about what the rest of the conversation might be like.  My first reaction was going to be to laugh.  But then I frowned.  Are people still worried about stuff like that?  I so wanted to butt in and say, “YES, girls do it!”  And continue on my usual passionate rant about how taekwondo changed my life.  But I refrained.

Earlier that week I was standing in line at Chipotle, with my daughter and we filed in behind a dad, with his teenage son and daughter, both in their baseball uniforms.  I stared at the girl, as unassumingly as possible, for a while.  Yeah, girls do it!  I was wondering what Danielle thought about that, but forgot to ask.  And I don’t think it mattered to her, it was normal.

Yes, of course girls can do that!  Yes, girls kick ass!

She wrote about her first sparring experience and I found my heart beating faster as I read.  Yeah, I know that feeling!  Love that feeling!  Gotta have more of THAT!  What is it about this part of taekwondo anyway?  The adrenaline rush is crazy and that was the energy that came straight through from Australia to Bethesda this morning as I read Deb’s blog.

Me in one of my very first tournaments

As Jonathan and I get ready to compete in our first tournament as black belts, my heart is already trying to talk to me.  Boom, boom, boom.  No, not ready for that yet, we are still a month away!  It is different this time, we are black belts!  I am not sure I can take any more butterflies than already reside in my stomach for just these occasions.  Those butterflies are not always helpful, they seem intrusive, zapping me of all my leg power right before I step onto the mat.  And as corny as it might sound, a couple of them show up before every regular taekwondo class I take.  Those aren’t as intrusive, just reminding me that I am about to live in my passion and have another chance to do this thing that lights me up so much.

So, at another risk of sounding even cornier, connecting with Deb, across the world, with the same feeling inside, is just the bomb.  Yeah, it isn’t just me that is crazy about this.  We are everywhere.

I was staring at the floor, in the middle of my fifty push ups and drops of sweat were sliding off of my face…I thought to myself, “You just can’t get this kind of workout anywhere.”  Push ups are one thing, but sparring takes that ten notches up.  I learned that during a test, I will quickly remember what underwear I put on that day as the colors come shining through my sweat soaked dobuk.  If only I were braver and could show off the zebra prints.

Loved your blog Deb.  Thanks for the kick to write about it today!  Thanks for the great reminder of how much I love this stuff!

Oh, by the way, I think the gear is totally sexy, you just have to own it.

In physical therapy school, Phil and I and every other student on the planet learned how to make a muscle stronger by training it properly with weights and resistance.  We got good at contracting, constricting, building, tightening, compressing and ultimately at producing a body that was strong, but we were missing a piece.  A really, really important piece.

This missing piece, researchers are finally figuring out, might even be a link to helping to understand things like the cure for cancer, and how to grow body parts!  Oh my gosh, I never thought I would live to see that day!  The missing piece has to do with a connective tissue in your body called fascia.  We are starting to see some research articles now that mention the extracellular matrix.  Another word for extracellular matrix is fascia.

Check out this TED talk about that: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/mina_bissell_experiments_that_point_to_a_new_understanding_of_cancer.html

After I graduated from physical therapy school I started taking courses where I learned about the fascia.  The John F. Barnes Myofascial Release courses taught me, and Phil, and now a quickly growing bunch of us, how to understand this amazing connective tissue, how it was related to restriction, pain and dysfunction, and how to treat it with techniques that were aimed at softening, letting go and releasing the tissue.  Making a muscle stronger by lifting weights had nothing to do with helping to facilitate healing in most cases.  And in some cases I saw improved strength and function just by helping the body let go.  Just by getting softer.

If you have been laid up in a hospital bed for weeks and have lost your muscle tone and strength, or if you have made couch potato an olympic sport in your house, you might need to lift a few weights.  And keeping your muscles strong through a proper exercise and strengthening is important.  What I am talking about here is when you have tightness, restricted movement, pain, tension, stress or injury, and you want to facilitate better healing.  So rather than thinking “I need to get stronger,” I want you to dabble with the idea that you might need to get softer.  Things that are too rigid, break.  Things that have good mobility, flexibility, movement and give, they have a strength that goes beyond what you get from a thousand bicep curls.  Through the softness comes the strength.

We, as myofascial release practitioners, help people to release their fascial restrictions with several hands on kinds of techniques.  And we also teach our clients how to self treat.  Self treatment is really important.  Start thinking about all the different ways you can treat yourself, using massage balls, rollers, your own hands, etc…and get some help if you are not sure what to do.  When you get into a routine of good self treatment you can prevent injury.  Go to www.myofascialrelease.com for some ideas, and your local practitioner for a session!

Next time you hit the gym or head to your class to do your routine, think about adding some self myofascial stretching.  Grab a mat and a roller or a body ball and have fun exploring all the parts of your body that are in desperate need of some softening and lengthening.  The benefits will include preventing workout soreness, tightness, and even possible injury.  By releasing the myofascial tissue you will even allow for a better flow and absorption of water and nutrients, making your healthy eating work better for your body.  Release, soften, let go, and restore your muscles – they will thank you and you will be smiling well into the later decades of your life as you land that axe kick, and run or swim or ride those miles, while everyone else is shopping for their therapeutic chairs.

RESOURCES :    My friend Maggie does body ball workshops in Bethesda:  www.yogaplus.com

The Body Rolling Ball is my favorite self myofascial stretching toy:

http://www.optp.com/Balls-for-Body-Work-Series.aspx

And my next favorite is The Grid:    http://www.optp.com/The-Grid.aspx

My favorite self treatment book is:  Myofascial Stretching, A Guide to Self Treatment

And if you want a hands on session to experience myofascial release and/or to be taught self treatment – call me!

www.bodyworksptonline.com