Give yourself time and space to heal.
You cannot overcome trauma or injury with brute force.
Be gentle with yourself.
Be kind to yourself.
Take as long as you need.
Seek out whatever help you can find.
Lean into the healing process and be patient.
Everything else can wait.
You deserve to be healthy and whole.
You deserve to be well.
Your future self will thank you.
Your future relationships will thank you.
You are the only you there is, so take care of yourself.
While we should not turn away from difficulty purely for the sake of comfort, we also should not seek out difficulty unnecessarily for the sake of itself.
Sometimes, things are difficult for no reason other than that they are difficult.
Not all difficulty is meant to be faced head on, moved through, or overcome.
Some obstacles, challenges, and hardships exist specifically to be avoided, bypassed, or circumvented.
That is their lesson.
Sometimes, the only thing to be learned from some circumstance, environment, or relationship is that we should find an better way, a more efficient path, and more effective means.
Intentionally seeking out difficulty, pain, and suffering for their own sake is not only counterproductive, but it is actually self destructive.
Difficulty for the sake of difficulty wears down our minds.
Pain for the sake of pain wears down our bodies.
Suffering for the sake fo suffering wears down our spirits.
Injuries do not make us stronger.
Sometimes, the path of less resistance is actually the better path.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh unless otherwise noted.
Follow Robert Van Valkenburgh and Holistic Budo on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkedIn.
If you found this post helpful or meaningful in some way, please feel free to Share, Comment, and Subscribe below.
Our flaws, our cracks, and our scars need not diminish our capacity for love, compassion, and creativity.
In spite of how we have been hurt, in spite of how we have been damaged, deceived, abused, or abandoned, we are all capable of boundless love, endless compassion, deep connection, unwavering dedication, and powerful, life-affirming, world-changing creativity.
Each and every one of us is a damaged vessel in some way. No one makes it out of this world unharmed, unhurt, and fully in tact. But, the vessel itself is not the essence of what it contains or is capable of containing.
When we look at each other, when we look at ourselves, we can choose to focus on the flaws, the cracks, and the sharp, jagged edges our experiences have given us. Or, we can choose to see beyond the vessel, to the potential it contains within it, the potential for fullness, for abundance, and for life.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh unless otherwise noted.
Follow Robert Van Valkenburgh and Holistic Budo on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkedIn.
If you found this post helpful or meaningful in some way, please feel free to Share, Comment, and Subscribe below.
Self defense starts with taking care of ourselves and our partners on the mats so that everyone gets stronger through training, not weaker through injury.
It is good to train hard, to push ourselves, and test ourselves in practice, but it must always be remembered that it is just practice. The goal of practice is to improve, to get stronger, to get faster, and to be better tomorrow than we were yesterday. Beyond that, the goal is to do this for a long time, so that our progress, and that of our training partners, never stops.
If we train to the point of injury, either our own or our partners’, progress is halted. The saying ‘pain is weakness leaving the body’ may be true, but the opposite is also true. That is to say, injury is weakness entering the body.
Injuries do not make us stronger, nor do injured training partners. In any martial art, we need to stay healthy and strong in order to continue training and in order to improve. Likewise, we need strong, healthy training partners who will push us, but who will also take care of us and us them, so that we can continue training together long into the future.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, as well as a founding member of the Severna Park and Baltimore Holistic Chamber of Commerce.
Street art photo taken by Robert Van Valkenburgh, artist unknown unless otherwise noted.
If you found this post helpful or meaningful in some way, please feel free to Share, Comment, and Subscribe below.
Meditations on God 