Day 24

Well, there were only three people in class today, including me. So, Master Miller made us work alot on our kicks. We focused on keeping our knee up and snapping the kick. It was a very informative class! I did notice one point of interest while he was instructing us. He told us that we should practice our kicks in our daily lives (for example in the kitchen closing drawers) to help us be as comfortable with our feet as we are with our hands. I found this interesting because the majority of women I have spoken to are more hesitant to use their fists than they are to use their legs. So, I saw directly today how physical experiences are different for males and females (not that this wasn't evident before, but this is a specific experiences that I acknowledged). For instance, I'm a whole lot more comfortable using my feet than my hands and I have several reasons for feeling this way. For starters, if I can pick something up with my feet, I do. So, I depend on my feet/legs more than most. Since I believed I didn't have as much upperbody strength, I compensated by using my legs when wrestling with friends. I also noticed, early on, that in altercations in fictional shows on t.v. the women being attacked (and some of the men for that matter) could have escaped if they'd only used their legs, so I tended to do more things with my legs upon that observation. I also wonder if perhaps men have a similar experience with the upperbody. So, if men believe that their upperbody is their strength, then they may both consciously and subconsciously utilize the upperbody more often than the legs. Of course this is not a polished thought, just a meditation on possibilities pertinant to my thesis. I also received a comment of someone who attempted to provide and explanation on this subject, which went something like, "Regarding kicking.. For obvious reasons, women are generally stronger and quite flexible from the waist down. Thus their kicking technique tends to be more polished." If the commentor could explain what he/she thought the "obvious reasons" were, I would be really interested in knowing!

Well, I'm going to leave it here. I think I did some beneficial brainstorming this evening and now I can actually do Yoga for the first time in almost a month. There have been a few times where I've said I was going to do yoga and didn't, because I remember something I forgot to do for school. But this time, I think it's really going to happen! Good night!