When I started kung fu training 16 years ago (exactly 16 years, woo!), one of the first things my instructors told me to do was:  “Relax your shoulders!”

Nowadays I even tell my students, when they start training with me,  “Expect to hear that phrase about 368,422 times over the first year.  It’s just something we all apparently do.”

And so I dutifully tell them, every time I see it, “Relax your shoulders!”

This week, while training, I discovered that on a number of moves, I need to relax my shoulders more.

(!)

I love it.  Even after all these years, I’m still learning and still developing more and more depth of understanding (and feeling it in the body) in even the most basic of corrections.  Something to work on and focus on, until the next thing.  And then the next, and the next.

I’m smiling already just thinking about it.

-salute!-