Changes

It's Jeet Kune Do tonight. Even thought I had the courage to start taking part in Salsa classes again last week, and even started attending Yoga, I'll probably make every excuse I can come up with for not going to JKD. It seems strange, because martial arts have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember - well, since I was seven years old anyway. So, what has changed? The answer to that question seems to be that I have.

The break from formal martial arts practice (in a class) was far longer than the break I had from my work. Even in my work though, I struggled after taking that break, and found that I had to adjust my way of working to account for no longer being quite the same.

In Salsa too, there's the sense of now being a very different dancer - not just in the way I dance but in the person who's present on the dance floor. Sometimes I wish I was still that awkward guy who was learning to dance, but said little and was really only there for the lessons. By slow degrees, I was pulled into the social aspects of the hobby, and there are friends in the dance scene who I wouldn't change for anything, but interacting with others is also at the root of many of the difficulties I'm now having with Salsa.

It would be all too easy to hide away from the world at the moment, becoming increasingly isolated and, to be honest, feeling a lot worse for it. What I'm currently reading about the effects of trauma, however, is that taking such action would be detrimental to my recovery. Another drawback of becoming isolated would be the negative impact on my health of the tendency to become more sedentary when alone.

I keep telling myself that it's just an hour of my time. Something else is going on though. There's a reluctance to spend time with other people, and the difficulty is in understanding why that should be. Maybe there's a vague feeling that I have to come to terms with how I've changed and am still changing, before feeling fit for the company of others.