Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Evening to my lovely readers 🙂 It is a Friday once again in Aotearoa (New Zealand), and that means another happiness post from yours truly. 😄
So my wonderful friends – give yourself a pat on the back! Why? Because you made it through the hell year that was 2020! Take a moment, relax, feel good about that. One thing I’m going to do a lot more of this year is fighting stress (which triggers anxiety and migraines for me) and when I feel stressed about something I am going to remember to breathe … and take things one step at a time. I will try and live in the moment, the now and not worry about the past or the future.
I think mindfulness is a direct path to happiness or feeling content with your life and good about yourself. So, therefore, today’s graphic is about mindfulness:
Let me know what you’re doing this year to cope better with stressful situations or anxiety or any other positive thing you want to practice this year?
Stay safe my readers, wear your masks, look after each other and I’ll catch you in tomorrow’s post but hopefully, in the comments!
darksiderconfessions.blog 
Hi Julie, I have taken up my lightsaber and am doubling the time I spend practicing my swordsmanship. As a saber practitioner you can, whilst practicing, achieve a very calming effect as you start your movements off slowly then gradually build momentum as your skill/proficiency grows. Lightsaber artistry can be very much like traditional Martial Artistry…good for keeping you centred. Remember, be mindful of the living Force, keep your mind on the here and now where it belongs!
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I totally agree with you – one of the best things I learned when I was doing martial arts was focus and meditation. There is so much that spills over into Star Wars that I learned when practising Karate 🙂
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Hi Julie, I use a set of “katas” or Forms developed by my friend Master Medwyn. He is a fantastic martial artist and saber user. You can see examples of his lightsaber forms based on the “Elements” at the Distant Earth Knighthood page on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFVJ2KBGtOctxr58oAH9u4A
I also created a set of sabers inspired by these Elements which you can find here:
https://ftsabersite.wordpress.com/tag/medwyn-dek/
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Yup, Kata is one half of what you learn in Karate the other being Kumite or sparring. I used to love doing Kata it was a nice way to relax away from having to actively punch and kick someone in sparring until you win the point lol but in competition when I used to compete, I didn’t do form. My thing was Kumite 🙂
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Hi again, I have to rely on honing my skill via Kata as there is no one near my cave that will spar with me. I live on the edges of the UK but when I was younger and lived more centrally I did a mix of martial arts however one day I had an incident. I was at high school when I was confronted by a gang that had been harrassing me for a while, in a corridor. I tried to pass by without incident but they wanted “trouble”. I didn’t. so I warned them to stay away and I hit the wall next to me with a Heel Palm Strike. Now the punch only travelled 4 inches (fingertip to heel of palm) but a window 10m away shattered! The scary thing was that there were 5 other windows between me and the one that shattered which remained intact (think of the Dim Mak brick shattering scene in the Van Damme movie Bloodsport) So yeah, I have powers but I have to be very careful!
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That is amazing and omg I REMEMBER dim mak LOL I used to look up to Jean-Claude until I found out he used to beat his wife … needless to say no more JCVD lol
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I will say at the time it was more scary than OMG. I didn’t know I could do what I did, I just knew I didn’t want a fight with the gang as it was 5 against 1 so I thought “I know I’ll make out I’m crazy and hit that brick wall – hopefully they’ll back off”. I just hit the wall and the window imploded, needless to say I never had any problems afterwards. I was even given a heightened respect from the teaching staff (I didn’t face any disciplinary action or pay to repair the window as I was the victim and showed restraint). Some people say Dim Mak is fictional but I proved it exists (sort of).
Regards to JCVD and his wife, I hadn’t heard or read about that – my interests changed when I went to college and became an entertainer so I didn’t follow martial arts (and films) after that.
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