Finally had my operation on March 29th. Two hours under, three hernias repaired; one pretty awful week and one not so awful week of recovery. Made it back on the mat today (April 10th).
It occurred to me today during class that for the past 4 months while I was waiting to be operated on that my focus in class has been pretty much exclusively on my centers. The hernias were clustered around my physical center in a nice equilateral triangle and seriously hampered my ability to be overly physical with my partners. Consequently, when practicing, I had to rely on really focusing on my, for lack of a better way of phrasing it, Ki center. The experience brought home to me the paramount importance of all of the principles I talk about in class (connection, congruent motion, timing, patience, letting the throw happen of its own accord, correct distance etc).
I have learned that via correct application of those principles that even though my physical center has been damaged and is still healing, thus not very reliable, that I can trust my Ki center. My injury has forced me to step up and perform at a higher level in order to continue performing at all. A most enlightening experience.
(Original blog post may be found
here.)
