Tomorrow is New Years Eve. "No it's not!", I hear some say. Well according to the Chinese Lunar Calendar it is, and to that I pay homage this weekend. Actually, it seems like an eon ago that I welcomed the year of the Hare, so much has happened, so much productive activity was around me I could barely keep up. At our small group in Bensalem we enjoyed the great outdoors as always, we worked on our basics, which are becoming less and less basic every time we look at them. Some of us continued to study with Jack Hoban sensei in Springlake and tried to bring some of that feeling back to class. Some of us attended various seminars you can read about in other blog entries and I even managed to make it to Japan again, to watch Hatsumi Sensei in action. All that training, and that was just our little section of the Buyu.
But now 2012 is upon us, I hope that everyone reading this has already visited www.livingvalues.com to read about the Buyu in 2011 and the theme for 2012. If not, do not pass go, do not collect $200 and proceed directly to the site.
As you may have seen the theme for 2012 in the Buyu is "Health". This was clarified by Jack during the start of the year as being more than just physical health and not catching a cold etc. He talked about the physical and the mental health providing a platform whereby one can really enjoy life. This reminded me very much of the Japanese term "Genki", which is usually translated as "Health" but often refers to a persons general vitality. Someone can be quite ill or even frail yet be very "Genki" of spirit and I think this might be part of the idea. It really made me think a bit about myself and others in terms of how "Healthy" we really are. Plenty to work on. The year of the Dragon is the year of vitality and good luck, so hopefully that will help us get it.
Speaking of dragons, we were extremely fortunate to start the year with a visit from Pedro Sensei of the Canary Islands to Spring Lake NJ. He visited once before and I also blogged about that. What more can I say except every time I see him it just gets better! It was great to experience the contrast between the Tiger Jack and the Dragon Pedro, great to experience the level of training and I went home feeling super charged with feeling. There was a great sense of Buyu friendship at that seminar, people from all over the world just training and getting along as they should be. At those moments all the troubles of the universe fade away and you just enjoy yourself, as both teachers often told us to throughout the day "Enjoy yourself!".
