When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade

 

 

 Back around 2003 one of my most dedicated adult students. John Dinger who studied both Isshinryu and T’ai Chi with me, stopped coming to train. He was an adult, I understood adults must make adult decisions, and most times they have been enjoying our mutual studies and when they stop, they just disappear off your radar. I am sure it is because they can’t find it to explain why to you, they just disappear. Then years later they attempt to explain if you see them. Explanations are not necessary because I do understand. It is just what it is.

 

Sometime later Doc Harper came to talk to me, John was  nor his docror but he approached Doc to explain and then have him explain it to me.

 

John had developed a rare neurological condition than a team of Boston doctors and a team of doctors at the Mayo clinic could not diagnose what was wrong. His body was just slowly shutting down. Many of his symptoms were similar to what I am experiencing today. Not the same but similar and a team of doctors in Boston were similarly not able to tell me what I have, Synchronicity.

 

Anyhow when I heard this, that Sunday I immediately paid John a visit at his home in a nearby town. John explained what he was experiencing, he literally had little control over his muscles. Observing what he was experiencing I immediately returned to his tai chi studies, and began focusing on what he could do. Then weekly I returned to continue his possible training. He literally could not control himself from falling when standing so I focused on adjusting and keeping his t’ai chi while seated.  In time he was placed in one nursing home as he needed much care. I continued my weekly training with him.

 

Then when he moved to a facility closer to his home (to make it easier for his wife) I was the one that moved him to the new location.

As time progressed, that team of doctor’s had no answers, but he and I continued to train the possible. For one thing he did not have enough motor control to pick up a glass of water and then drink it. Working he and I found, if he flowed his hand out as in t’ai chi, and then flowed that same arm back picking up the glass on the return, he could drink, When he showed the doctors what he could do, they were astounded. He was just using his t’ai chi.

 

The doctor’s eventually came up with a diagnosis of an extremely rare neurological condition. Then they observed his end was approaching. As he and his wife knew the nursing home would have kept his body alive on ventilators and neither of them wanted that, they met with is attorney and then had him released to go home. He did not want to end lingering on machines.

 

He and I continued to train up to the end. By that time we were only focusing on T’ai Chi breathing.

 

Then I got the call and went over, etc.  Finally I attended his funeral and that was done.

 

O then those doctors from the autopsy after his death worked out their diagnosis was incorrect and it was a rare condition.

 

 

Shortly after that my friend and mentor Sherman Harrill’s life ended.  I had been able to train with him for a decade at clinics, some of which I hosted.  He had been sharing what he saw as the application potential of Isshinryu might be.  That event also had a profound impact on me.

 

As he lived elsewhere, I could not attend the funeral, my grieving would be on my own.

 

 

 

I found myself so moved by that, for the next 3 months I went through every note, every video record I had of him and worked up that he had shared some 800 applications for Isshinryu’s 8 kata, along with principles behind how he found those applications and other valuable material. I sent a copy to his Senior student, John Kerker, who I had not met at that time, and he observed that was somewhat correct. There were likely about 500 more that he never got to in those clinics and were dojo studies.

 

But the real story is that after experiencing John and then Sherman’s passing there was an even greater effect. One affecting my adult karate program.

 

First to understand adults over time come and go, for their own needs, not mine.

 

My youth program was not affected, and that was always my primary purpose, serving the youth of the Boys and Girls Club.

 

But those deaths released something in my groups mind. One of my members had to stop coming for several years as he had moved out of the possible commuting area. Many of the rest came to their end point.

I suspect thinking on those deaths, as they were getting older, caused them to reflect they had other things they should be spending their time on.  And they did what adults do, what was right for themselves.

They discontinued training with me.

 

It was a reality, For a variety of different reasons I found my adult program was Mike Cassidy and I.

 

For one thing as the student’s needs always came first for me, I found I had freedom to work at a different personal level. Mike Cassidy was there and as he was at the 20 year point of his studies that permitted me to work on many other studies.

 

It was a combination of things. Advanced work on breathing in kata study. Advanced work on my kata application studies as well as time spent further working what I had learned from Sherman. I was able to get into advanced studies for bo and sai, finding they were linked to things I experienced with Ernest Rothrock as his own studied advanced. I was able to find how weapon study affected advanced kata practice and that would  affect all my advancing kata studies. I also had time for deeper study among the +150 kata I had been exposed to. They were one’s I did not teach but that focused study served me well on many fronts.

 

So Mike and I were very well occupied. Then one student returned to this area and slowly we built up a group of new students.

 

Training went back to serving the student’s needs foremost.

 

But through it all, I had learned that when life serves you lemons, you make lemonade.