The Four Seasons

"There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens." (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

What are the four seasons? What do they mean? How can I draw on this natural occurrence to inform my life and my flow through it? Spring, Summer, Autumn & Winter. Simple enough. A Christian view could be to crawl, walk, sit & stand. A Daoism view could be interpreted as: no form, form, life & death. Something to keep in mind is that I have no control over the seasons. With this reminder comes acceptance, a signal of the inescapable or the unavoidable of my experience in life. When I come to be at one with that then I create less resistance or grind to trying to be in control of the outcome. Like a sculpture working with the grain in the wood rather than against it.

The seasons remind us there are opposites that work in tandem and complement each other. With life there is death. To totally understand beauty of something it is good to see the entire picture, which may include acknowledging the opposite. In this way it is a healthy prompt that over coming adversity is sometimes best done through yielding and I don’t mean submission but exercising control through using the power of the overwhelming situation against itself as found in the martial arts.

We are (in southern hemisphere for my northern friends) about to enter Spring in a few weeks. This is an opportunity for renewal. A chance to reinvent. An opening to see yourself afresh. I have sought to find a new venue for my classes. To shake up my own terrain and the awareness that this is happening as Spring is about to blossom is not lost on me.

With Spring comes a time for reassessing. An opportunity for growth… to crawl. To revisit the discipline of your movement skill base. Seeing this skill through the lens as the craftsperson that you are: an actor. With discipline comes rigour, with rigour comes consistency of skill. With this solid consistence skill can come informed choices in movement sequences or combat choreography.