For the Love of Movement: An Ode to Newton's Second Law

Last Friday, my throat was a little scratchy. On Sunday morning, the voice was totally gone. By Monday - Christmas Eve (which meant everything, including my doctor's office, closed early) - I had chills and dizziness. When I finally was able to get in to see the doc two days later, I found out I had a flu-like virus + a bacterial respiratory infection AND a lovely oral fungal infection. I had hit the germ trifecta - and left the pharmacy with a bag full of stuff to help make two of those nasty critters go away.

I've slept more in the past week than I even thought possible. Trips down the hall to the bathroom or kitchen felt more like marathons than simple walks. My appetite fell off (one meal of chicken with rice soup a day was all I could muster) and showering to change into fresh PJs took all the strength I had, I was so totally void of energy. I was really, really sick.

Suffice to say, I didn't train during my almost week in microbial hades. Usually, forced breaks from training make me cagey, but this one wasn't so bad. I guess all the sleeping made free time I could have used for training non-existant, really. But in addition to helping my body shore its resources and prepare to fend off the germ invasion, the sleep had another therapeutic value: I actually dreamed about karate a lot. Kata, bunkai, evasion/counter techniques, kihon - yep, all of it frequently made appearances in my REM cycle. My body may not have been physically able to do anything martial, but that didn't stop my mind, I guess. That's kinda cool, I think.

Since today was the first day in the last few that I woke up feeling almost kinda normal, I actually did push-ups, air squats and kata! It feels like it's been so long since I've done that and I had a brief moment of panic - like suppose I can't remember how or simply can't push my body off the ground? - but it passed quickly. There's something quite liberating about actual movement, y'know? Reading (or dreaming) about kata is one thing, but actually doing it is something else entirely. It's very profound.

If this upward health trend continues, I might actually do - gasp! - some abdominal work tomorrow, who knows? An object in motion and all that...