this past weekend

Spent some time with my niece and nephew this weekend. My niece has been learning how to play the viola. They have her learning, "twinkle twinkle" and stuff like that. I showed her how to play those same songs on her little guitar. She's catching on really fast with all of it. They have her viola taped off on the 2nd,4th,5th positions. Right now, all the stuff she's learning is open string, 2,4,5 on the upper two strings in the key of D major. I forget the tuning at this moment, but anything that I transpose for her into tablature racks my brain for a few minutes, because I'm not as familiar with the tuning. I charted up on paper how it was tuned and how the notes(D scale) were positioned. She's not that far into music yet. Right now, they're just exposing them to music....which I think is great. I started late in music....my thing was martial arts...I was hyper and it gave my energy a channel. Its good for kids to learn "how to learn" by having art, music and so on. Martial arts is physical, but its also art.

My nephew's into drawing on a big whiteboard I used for school a couple of years ago. It's actually tile-board from Lowe's that comes in 8ft.X 4ft pieces. Anyway, he loves Spongebob.......and so do I. So we drew a big boat, put fishermen with their poles in the water. Down on the bottom of the ocean floor of course, was "bikini bottom"(spongebob's town). We drew Patrick's, Squidwards, and Spongebob's houses. My nephew also has a little kids drum set. I tried to teach him how to play some simple things while I played some 3chord rhythms on guitar, but he's 5yrs old and still a bit hyper for learning some things. It's always fun to get the kids to play along with whatever I'm playing on the guitar. My niece used to sing and make up songs, but we didn't record it. Some things were really neat and funny. MARTIAL ARTS: I tried to teach nephew some kicks and punches a few weeks ago, because he wanted "to learn some Karate!" It wasn't long after showing him a few things........and giving him the speech, "Don't use this on anyone, walk away if you can..etc."....that he was trying to kick his sister with that really mad look on his face(she was actually baiting him into a fight by kicking at him) . So, I'm going to wait a while before showing either of them anything else. Within a couple months of my own martial arts training, at the age of 10, I went around my neighborhood and abused what I'd learned from time to time. It didn't take long to learn that I would have NO friends if I continued. Not to mention, that I already knew what it felt like to be bullied, so seeing them lose their dignity bothered me. So, my answer to that was to teach the kids in my neighborhood what I knew, so they could defend themselves. I gave them the speech to only use it if only if necessary and couldn't walk away. Anything I could teach them, I would. Whether it was juggling, knife throwing, how to swim, ......they were all my adopted brothers/sisters. I guess, looking back.....I must have been training for the circus or a stage act. :)

WRIST GRABS Defense: I showed both my niece & nephew some basic escape self-defense with "wrist grab" attacks. If you don't know anything about escaping from someone grabbing your wrist.....just keep in mind, the thumb is the weakest part of the hand because its the only finger by its lonely self. So, if you twist and pull(or push) your wrist/arm toward the attackers thumb, you can slip out of it. If they for some reason reach out with two hands and grab, you can make a fist with that hand and with your free hand, grab the fist and pull toward their thumbs. Of course, this is just basic stuff, if you really want to know how to defend yourself well, you should find a martial arts/self-defense school or course in your area. There are probably some basic self-defense courses online for free, but if you really want to know these things you'll have to practice with a partner who's giving some resistance(so that you learn proper technique).


The below quote was posted on: Bighappybuddha.blogspot.com
"People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you're given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further." ~Pema Chodron