A note on Sleep

I find when I don’t train I sometimes get insomnia. Not surprising; my body’s got too much pent-up energy; my brain is still going a-mile-a-minute. But oddly, I find that when I do train a lot, while I sleep like a log, I sleep fewer hours and wake up much less exhausted. The last few nights after training I’ve been going home and watching the Olympics until about 1 am. Then, angry at myself, I set my alarm for 8:30 (the absolute latest I can wake up and still get to work) expecting to hit snooze three times. Yet, strangely, I end up waking up at 7:15, all in one piece, and ready for the day.

Maybe it’s just a sign that the rest of my life is no longer stressing me out and making me, contradictorily, perpetually exhausted and insomniac. But I theorize that, once I hit a reasonable training routine, I don’t simply acclimatize, but my body is getting stronger and my mind is clearer, so both need less rest. In either case it’s like getting three extra productive hours a day. And with those, who knows what I could do? Train more? :D

Be Good to Yourself -- Sleep!

Oof. Today I trained after an evening of much fun and a few hours of uneven sleep and man did I pay the price. I was stumbly and off balance during lunbi caijiao, so Shifu sent me to the side. And then after the rest of the class started practicing their forms, and Shifu came to the side to work with us, he knocked me to the side yet again for bad lunbi caijiao.

When I'm stumbly and tired, I tend not to extend enough, and I take an extra step in between each one because I'm struggling to keep up with the pace of the line. Shifu has knocked me out of the line for this before, and normally I am very mindful of how I do lunbi caijiao because I don't want to repeat this mistake again, but I guess today I was so bushed, it didn't translate to my actions. So he made me do basic caijiao and then lunbi caijiao non-stop for what seemed to be the longest 45 minutes of my life.

Miserable. I wanted to cry as I heard Mo and Sucheela trying to give me chi. In the end, I am glad I went, but boy, do I need a good solid six hours of sleep or more.

Oh, I did learn a new thing today -- Mo and I stretched with Julian, a newer student who hasn't been training that long. Looks like he's in his early to mid 20s, brown hair, an interesting line design tattoo on his left forearm, and a tiny gold stud through a part of his left ear, not his lobe.

Ok, now I'm going for a nap. Zzzzzzzzz.....