Why Do We Fall?

One of my favourite lines from a movie is from Batman Begins:

"Why do we fall sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up."

Sure the story is make-believe, but I think that quote resonates because there is truth in it.

When I was studying for four years (five actually, I took an extension) at herbal college I was so busy studying that I felt I didn't have time for physical fitness. I actually stopped doing a lot of things because of how focused I was on my studies. That's right, learning how to help others be healthy but neglecting an important part of my own health. In the decision to stop working on my fitness I fell.

Since then (graduation) I've tried to be more active on my own. Tried getting back into swimming, but my shoulder and driving in the winter in a car to the pool with a broken heater stopped that. Did some horseback and horse training lessons, but my instructor stopped teaching, and no one I talked to knew of a suitable replacement nearby (I sure miss those lessons!). Still it wasn't enough. My flexibility, stamina, and balance were declining. For whatever reasons it wasn't possible to get what I really needed out of it, and doing it alone didn't make it any easier.

As a teenager I had gone to a martial arts tournament in support of a boyfriend at the time. He was doing Karate, but what really captured my attention was the Kung Fu I saw there. I had never seen anything like it. There was something cat-like and graceful about it that the Karate didn't seem to have (in my eyes anyway). It stuck with me, and I've wanted to try it ever since. Parenting, divorce, time, money, life, and finding a place to learn always seemed to get in the way of doing so.

Then my mother died (a little over three years ago), and I really started to feel my own mortality! On top of that my blood pressure had elevated and my herbal remedies weren't helping it, because I still wasn't getting the exercise part of the "treatment" that I really needed. Felt the mortality of that too!

One of the things my parents taught me, when something didn't work or I didn't like something, was:

"What are you going to do instead?"

I decided, enough was enough! So I started looking for the Kung Fu school that one of my son-in-law's had attended. SRKF no longer taught in Onoway, but they weren't too far away and, now a grandmother, I finally started taking those Kung Fu lessons.

Sorry this blog is so long.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's never too late to pick yourself up. And, although it may take me a while to catch on sometimes, and I'm behind on my IHC numbers, I will keep picking myself up for as long as I have a heartbeat.

Elizabeth Walker