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Love

This wonderful Christmas eve (in some parts of this world) I want to mention once again about love.

Love is care. Plus sympathy to the core of the owner of this care.

If someone doesn’t like you, and they dare to take care of you, it’s bullshit and not love.

If your core, your sense is not to someone’s liking, they don’t give a damn about your care, or simply use you.

I suggest we are passionless and care only for those who need us.

And I suggest to give up the habit of using the care of people who we don’t feel like taking care of in return.

Being a reason, you become a consequence.

To friends, relatives, now and always, and forever, love to us 🙂

Based on text by Ira Demchuk, translated by Tetyana Kushniruk

Happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
May the upcoming 2016 year bring you lots of joy, happiness and prosperity! May it be filled with creative endeavors and huge successes! May in the New Year your dreams come true and your goals come to get realized!
Warm wishes for the Holiday Season from the Academy of Traditional Wing Chun in Ukraine and CIS!

Поздравляем всех наших друзей по винг чунь с Рождеством и наступающим Новым Годом! Путь следующий 2016 принесёт нам всем много радости, счастья и процветания! Пусть он будет наполнен творческими достижениями и огромным успехом! Пусть в новом году все ваши желания станут явью, а цели реализуются!
С наилучшими пожеланиями в эти праздничные дни, Представительство Всемирной Ассоциации Традиционного Винг Чунь кунг фу в Украине и по СНГ.

 

Believe – you can

Only one person can stand in the way of everything you want. That person is you.

There are points in life where you realize that you can change. For some it means cutting off a bad habit, for others taking a step toward a job of their dreams.

Usually, the determination needed for the change grows slowly. The idea can even nag inside your head for a long time until you choose to act upon it and just do it.

Besides noticing the nagging, even more important is to the realization that only one person delays the way to that change.

That person is you.

To explain, I return to Wing Chun practise.

Doing Wing Chun exercises is very much getting into a zone of doing. You determine which moves you want to do and then you either do them – or you don’t.

If you stop halfway, it is only you stopping. If you work half-heartedly, it is only your own lack of work.

No one is there to say you cannot. It is your own beliefs that keep you from going forward. And vice versa: It’s your own believes that ensure you can reach your dreams.

It is all about doing. Because you can.

Have you ever done something, which, at first, you didn’t believe you could?

If you found this article helpful, please share it forward or leave a comment. Also, feel free to come by and say hi on our forum and on facebook.

By Milla Koramo 

Everything you need to be aware

Believe it or not, you already have everything you need to be aware of yourself and your surroundings right now.

I know, it sound strange. In a busy world with business’s, social demands, news feeds and boring household chores, you are more prone to go with add-to-gain mentality.

In add-to-gain mentality, you have to add some work to gain something. Nothing comes for free. That is why being aware of all your daily activities seems to take a lot of extra effort, mastered only by those who meditate or do yoga every day.

To gain awareness you can of course practice meditation or yoga to learn awareness, but you can as well doodle, jump around or fold plastic bags. It is not the action itself that matters, but the attitude you have. You simply let go of everything else.

It does not have to take long either. First, you can just go for 15 minutes. Remember that this is the time you give yourself. The main idea is to enjoy.

How does it work?

1. To start, pick one action you enjoy.

2. Commit yourself to focus and let go of everything else for 15 minutes straight.

3. For 15 minutes be aware of that one action.

You can do this everywhere and every time. No need for extra ingredients.

Awareness is like a body of water. It flows freely when there is nothing on it’s way.

What action do you most want to be aware of? Share your thoughts and join the discussion in comments. For more points on relaxing and awareness, follow our updates on facebook.

Text and photo by Milla Koramo

Rewire Your Brain and Learn

Whenever you wake up, you have a new brain. Well, not entirely new, but it has been rewired. It’s like your system has been updated to the most latest version of you.

The new wiring is not there just by itself, but because you have confronted tasks and need skills you previously did not. Maybe you have met a new person, who’s name you want to memorize or want to make daily walking a new habit.

Your brain is upgrading every morning, because it adds the new skills to your previous experiences. With enough repetition and a rest a name can be learned in a day, new routines within a couple of weeks.

So how to learn a new skill? You repeat it over and over and then sleep on it. There is no other way to get your brain rewired. And nothing as easy.

While you are asleep the skills become easier for the brain to perform. And there the skills are in your new brain – ready and served whenever you wake up.

What did learn from yesterday? Join the discussion in comments and see more points on relaxing and awareness on our Facebook page.

Text by Milla Koramo

One habit to make a joyful morning

If you were offered a breakfast to bed and the breakfast could consist of anything you wanted, what would the serving be like? Would you like it generous and fulfilling, heavy with wastes or just a half empty cup of yesterday’s coffee?

Like most people, you would probably choose the breakfast that makes you feel energetic rather than dim. Who would want an old cup of coffee anyway?

Some of us do it by habit. By habit, you can make one kind of breakfast, and by habit you also approach the morning the way you do. It all happens in your thought process.

Your thoughts are just like breakfasts to bed. They either give you energy or take it from you first thing in the morning. Still some of us deliver empty cups of coffee for ourselves each morning.

What is the first thing you think about in the morning? Is it something you value? Something that gives you energy and passion? Or is it something that pulls you down and drains you empty?

Asking yourself the question of the breakfast generates a concrete image of the ideal ingredients. Choosing your morning thoughts is just as simple. You just ask the right question.

If you want to feel passion, ask yourself what would or could you feel passionate about. If you want to feel joy, ask yourself what would or could you enjoy at the moment. Whether you want to feel gratitude, happiness or integrity, it is all behind simple questions.

It’s best to make it a habit. Have a great morning.

What do you feel passionate about right now? Share your thoughts and join the discussion below. For more points on awareness of body and mind, follow our updates or just say hi on facebook.

PS. You can read more about asking the right questions: Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins.

Text by Milla Koramo

Timely Quotes to Make Your Day

When ever I needed some time for my own I take a walk in the woods. When I let time go by, I always find something that will set things to balance. In a funny way it leads me to where I was going, back on the track with my work and passion.

The way to balance life is to use time the best way you can, right here and now. Here are some timely quotes to make your day!

The greatest gift you can give someone is your time because when you are giving someone your time, You are giving them a portion of your life that you will never get back.
– Anonymous

You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.
– Charles Buxton

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
– Steve Jobs

If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.
– Bruce Lee

Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow’s the future, but today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.
– Bil Keane

How do you enjoy time? Tell us by sending a reply or join more discussions in our international forum (registration required for posting).

Text and photo by Milla Koramo

Principle of straightness and why we learn to fall

To go straight, you need to know how what it means fall.

Why is that so? Because no matter where you are going, you can run into holes and obstacles. Even on a well-known path in a daylight, you can find yourself stumbling.

In wing chun training, you start by rooting yourself to the ground. To minimize gravity, you stand straight. To minimize force, you punch straight.

After a while you learn how to fall. You learn to hold your weight in the field of gravity, fall through the force with a relaxed mind.

But you always get up. As you fall and get up again and again, you find your feet faster and faster. You learn to seek straightness every day.

Straightness is not erect moments, but transitions. In each move you have a new way to be straight. It’s continuous work for balance and easiness. A repetition of life.

One or two stumbles are not something to worry about. If to fall, you just fall. Then you get up and become straight again.

Text by Milla Koramo

Relaxation and letting go

Just like trash that piles up, when the room doesn’t get cleaned regularly, there are certain tensions in our body that also keep piling up if not attended to.

Anyone who has ever worked on tracing own bodily tensions, knows what kind of work that is. It’s not enough just to remember to check oneself for the unnecessary tensions as often as possible. Which in itself means creating a whole new habit of self-monitoring. Once you get used to regularly get your attention into your body, you are in for a bunch of insights. How many tensions you have and where, when exactly they show and, if lucky, you also discover why, and so on.

It’s not enough to just let go once. It’s a skill of letting go all the time. Listening to your own self and deciding what to let go. Training your body-mind connection to be able to relax specific places at will, anytime you find it necessary.

In Wing Chun, this kind of relaxation is one of the basic training principles. Letting go in the language of Wing Chun means getting rid of the unnecessary, and it’s everyone’s personal work to find out what’s unnecessary for them and how exactly they want to handle it. It is of course possible to work with this matter with different approaches. Wing Chun is just another way, be it a very profound and powerful tool, to do this.

Text by Tetyana Kushniruk

When life becomes serious again

Back when I was still a teenager, I worked through high school with good grades. I was studying way more than average, but still I felt I did not learn enough. I read more, but nothing seemed to satisfy my demands. I used nearly all my waking hours to study.

When a thread is stretched far enough, it eventually snaps. Needless to say, I was not able to continue with this kind of practice, not even with my high believes.

Fortunately I got help. I was told that I should not take life so seriously. I was told that I should not be so hard on myself. These were pretty harsh comments for a teenage mind, but they itched me more because they hit the mark. I needed to allow myself some time.

After many years, I am still learning to be lazy. Some mornings it pains me to lay on my back, but after a while I can enjoy sun glimmering behind window glasses, breaths coming and going. They are good times, but I still love working and studying more. Do you know why?

Stillness itself is as bad as pushing yourself too much. You might enjoy the moments of relaxation, but you also enjoy times when you produce something great and work for things you have passion for. To feel harmony you need a good combination of these both.

When I was told that life should be not taken too seriously, it took me time to accept it. Nowadays I also think life has to be taken seriously enough. That middle way path is a where you can, in the end, be most productive.

Text and photo by Milla Koramo