It is a truth universally acknowledged that when attempting to do a front roll while holding a sword, I will land on my shoulder, hard.
[Please insert a stream of bad words here.]
Rolling is a no-fear activity. You must fully commit to the roll. If you hesitate, you will hurt yourself, do the roll badly, end up off-balance, or worse. (If you are me, you will slam your shoulder against the ground and enjoy a massive bruise for days and days and days.)
On a few occasions, I’ve just gone for it and I rolled well without hurting myself. But most of the time, I let the fear win.
Much of the weapons work we do requires no fear, especially the forms beyond the ones I’ve learned. This is something I need to overcome. And if I can’t obliterate the fear, I have to learn how to ignore it, to trust myself, to GO FOR IT.
Fear. I must kick it to the curb.
How about you guys? What no-fear activities have you conquered?
Jumping over things while running also requires no-fear. The other day, I was jumping over my couch (funner than walking around it) and I hesitated and hit my leg against the armrest. It hurt!
That's *exactly* the sort of thing I'm talking about! (And besides, jumping over a couch could be considered an indoor version of Parkour — you were doing martial arts!)
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