By Trebomâros Auingnos, 8-22-18

 

Step Two – Physical 1:  Physical Conditioning -This course is designed to help the warrior engage in health-oriented, moderate, non-professionally related physical activity on a regular basis. The warrior is expected to find and regularly engage in a non-job related physical activity with the intention of health improvement and stress release.  In keeping with the Warrior’s Triad, one should remember the balance of physical training – Strength Training, Core Building, and Aerobic Conditioning.

Introduction

Warriors by their nature are individuals who when called, step forward to protect and support their communities from those who would bring harm.  They are not afraid to get hurt if need be and if they are afraid, they know that protecting their community is of a greater importance and act regardless.  In order to do this, a warrior must be physically and mentally conditioned to act in the most efficient manner to protect their loved ones and their communities.  In the spirit of this, the ADF Warrior’s Guild requires physical, mental, and spiritual training of its members.  In this training course, I am reflecting on a four month (18 week) training session I participated in with weekly recordings in regards to stamina, weight, and body measurements for this paper, as well as personal reflections on personal observations and what I learned during that four month period.

Physical Observations

Having been active in martial arts for years, there have been various workout regiments that I have used for different purposes.  For my basic cardio workout training, I have a regiment that involves going through my long forms from white belt to black belt.  In addition to this, the martial art that I participate in, Hwa Rang Do, has a three tier training program instead of a two tier program that you find in other martial art programs such as Karate and Tae Kwon Do, so the amount of core material we have to work with is in a higher overall volume.  Our long forms continue up through all three tiers maxing out at 26 open hand long forms.  Going through all the different long forms ends up not just being a discipline in physical conditioning, but also mental focus to make sure you are accurately performing all the various aspects within the forms.  For the position that I am in within our martial art community, that puts my workout at 19 open hand long forms that I perform back-to-back.  How well I do has a lot to do with how much sleep I have had, whether I have an empty stomach, if I have donated plasma recently, as well as the weather conditions for the day (I like to train outside because I find it invigorating).

After reviewing my physical conditioning over the four months, two things stood out.  One was that my weight and measurements did not change much.  My weight dropped slightly, 4 ½ pounds, and my measurements decreased between 1-3 inches, depending on which part of the body I was measuring.  The second thing I noticed was that my stamina improved drastically.  By the end of the four months, I shaves an average of 5 minutes off my run time.  In addition, the average amount of breaks I took did not go up or down, but the amount of time I took for each break decreased by an average of 30 seconds.  I also noticed that I made less mistakes by the end of the four months in my performance and my focus lasted throughout the workout.

Emotionally, as I continued the workout, I felt calmer then when I did when I did not get my training in and energetically, I would feel energized and accomplished, a sensation that I see through my third eye as white fire.  This fire is also something that I feel when I connect with the sky current with the two powers meditation presented in the Dedicant Program, but when I train, the sensation is more intense and when I feel the energy flow through my system, it almost takes on a physically quality like beads of water running down my skin.  I am also filled with a sense of just being in the training space with nothing else in the world going on.

Personal Reflections

Overall, it took a solid sense of perseverance, dedication, and tenacity to get through this four month period.  Building a martial art community in the city I am living in, having a family with a two year old son to take care of, working a full time job, and trying to get ready to go back to school this fall for a career change made finding the time to commit to this training course difficult.  I had to work around other people’s schedules and in some weeks, I wasn’t sure that I would get it in until the last minute.  But I found a way and I made it happen.  The hardest thing I had to deal with throughout this four month period was my dad passing away in week three and the funeral being held in week four.  In addition, my dad was not the greatest at taking care of his personal business, so our family farm, which has been in the family for over 120 years and is seen as being a real living part of our family, had large portions of it sold to neighbors because my dad did not pay his taxes and he was threatened with foreclosures.  The only saving grace with it is that my older brother was living on the farm with his family when my dad passed, so he has been spear-heading much of the family business to finalizing the estate and will be living there.  Otherwise, I would have had to uproot my life, put all my plans on hold, and go home to handle the estate while my wife and I found new jobs in the area.

Finally, about mid-way through the four month period, I had a vivid dream involving a Korean warrior.  In the dream, he was standing outside in the area of the lawn where I train staring at me.  I had felt like I had seen him before and in the dream I went out to meet him.  He did not give me a name, but he claimed to be an ancestor spirit of the martial art tradition I belong to.  The impression I got in the dream was that he had been paying attention to the events that has happened with our martial art community in in the Mid-West and that he and others like him are watching over members of our community and making sure that we stand firm in relation to our martial values, which we call the Meng Sae.  They are also assisting and guiding our community as we drive forward in our humanitarian efforts both domestically and internationally.  There were some specific things that he wanted to point out, especially with one of my students in Eau Claire, and he reminded me that much of the events that I had been through within our community over the last few years was necessary to drive me forward to where I am now.  We concluded our involvement with an initiation ritual that we use for our black sash ceremonies (third tier of our martial community) to help me re-center to who I am and once we were done, one of my patrons, Cernunnos, came down to talk to him as I drifted back to sleep.

Conclusion

Overall, I am glad I went through the four month course.  I forced me to take time to take care of myself despite everything that is going on in my life and focus on the things that I value in addition to my family.  This training period has certainly been an emotional roller coaster, but despite everything that happened, I maintained my sense of self-discipline and perseverance, both of which are key warrior virtues.  I took the time I needed to take care of myself and mourn my family loss and it made me take the time to make sure I stayed focused on what I had promised myself I would do.  By taking it one day at a time, I slowly moved forward and did what I had to do to complete the task at hand.