JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi Daniel Linden (feel good novels txt) 📖

for you. Imagine being in Orlando. You walk into a gym and sit at a leg machine. You adjust it so that you push 200 pounds with each exertion. That is, you will lift 200 pounds with each leg press. I stand there and tell you to do three sets of 10. You do it. I tell you do it again, and you do. You’ve now pushed 12,000 pounds with each leg. At this point you would probably be breathing a little heavy, yeah?”

“I probably would,” he laughed.

“So, if I told you to do another 3 sets, but this time you had to hold a half inch diameter tube in your mouth and breathe through it, how would you feel?”

“I’m not sure I could do it.”

“Let’s assume that you can do it and you do. You have done ninety presses with each leg. So now we take the tube out of your mouth and you’re breathing pretty hard. Right? Okay, now I want you to do three more sets, and this time I want you to breathe through a tube that is one quarter inch in diameter.”

“I’m pretty certain that I can’t do that. In fact I know I can’t do that.”

“All right, when we made the climb from the Dudh Kosi valley to Namche Bazaar you did 1,500 leg presses with each leg while breathing through a straw. That is the percentage of oxygen in the air here. You did a total of 3,000 leg presses of 200 pounds with one half of your usual oxygen.” I looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “If I had told you that the climb would be easy and then you had had to face that challenge you would have failed; you would not even have started. You would have known you could not do it. I told you it was hard, though, and so you worked yourself up, challenged yourself, took it on, and won. It’s just like your first black belt test. Most guys are hyperventilating when they walk out and bow to O’Sensei. Well, most never even get that far, but those who do can’t catch their breath because they’re so nervous. But they somehow survive, and when they test for second dan it is much easier. They know they can do it.

“When I sent you up to Khunde the day after we arrived you walked up, looked around, and came back. I think that climb is at least as hard as the climb from the Dudh Kosi to Namche Bazaar, and you didn’t like it, you bitched about it a bit, but you didn’t really have to rest up from it or anything...You took it in stride, you could say. It’s sort of like that first break fall, it’s scary as hell, but after you’ve done a few you just shrug and carry on. We acclimatize to all sorts of things in this life and I just wanted you to understand that it was going to be hard as hell and you need to brace yourself for the challenge. Now that you’ve done it you can shrug it off all you want and I’m thrilled for you.

“In the United States Navy there is a group of warriors that go out each day and challenge themselves to do the impossible. And they are allowed to quit any time they want. The only caveat is that they cannot quit while engaged in an activity. They have to finish what they are doing and then they are allowed to quit. Allowed to go walk up and ring the bell. Most of the instructors will tell you that those that ring that bell and quit, do it out of fear that the challenge of the next day will be harder than the day they just survived.

“They want those guys to quit. They don’t need anyone on the team who is afraid of the unknown. They only want people who are stimulated by challenges and get jazzed when faced by the unknown. The system works. The teams employ the toughest, bravest warriors on the planet. They only know ukemi. They face every adversity and challenge with all their life force and will and live to escape and fight on.

“You guys are already acclimated to life at 11,000 feet and we’ll take it easy and get our bodies used to climbing higher each day. But we can’t dawdle forever and eventually have to make an assault on the peak we’ve chosen and need to be ready. You already understand that you can do it. You already know that you can climb high and then come back down. I’m proud of you.”

I paused and realized I was breathing very hard. It took a few minutes for me to catch my breath. We must be close to 13,000 feet here.

We finished our break and headed out. Bim led us to a little used trail that would take us back to the main path and not back along the way we had come. It was much rougher and steeper than we were used to, and we had to exercise caution on the descent. Eventually we found the main trail and wound our way past Syanguasa and turned toward Gokyo Ri. We labored on and finally crested the ridge above 13,000 feet. It was drizzling and we walked in a cloud bank. I felt really badly for the guys as this is a truly spectacular trail when clear. We were surrounded by monstrous Himalayan Mountains, the tallest in the entire world, and all they could see was the ground in front of them. We had to place our hiking poles carefully as the trail had become greasy and slick with the pounded clay becoming a course slip.

Now the trail descended toward the Dudh Kosi once again and we carefully followed it down. The cloud bank broke for a few moments and we could see across the river. The