The ebb and flow of life by Charlie Badenhop

During my first year in Japan I hitchhiked for two weeks, visiting rural fishing villages on the west coast of Japan. At the time I spoke very little Japanese, and relied on the kindness of the people I met.


I visited tiny villages that had no hotels, and very few tourists passing by. Upon entering a village, I would find a kind looking soul, and pantomime that I needed a place to sleep. Sometimes my acting skills were not enough to get the message across, and sometimes I wound up in the house of a family willing to take in visitors for a small fee. I ate with my hosts and was then led to a simple room to sleep in.


In one village I had the privilege of staying with a remarkable man and his family. One night the man and I sat on a small wooden dock by the ocean. Using lots of gestures to help me understand, the man told me about his life. He was 63 years old. As a boy he'd been very involved in studying karate, but at the age of nineteen his life changed dramatically. Working on his father's fishing boat in rough seas, he lost his balance, and fell just as he was throwing a heavy fishing cage overboard. His left leg got caught in the line attached to the cage and the damage caused to the muscles and nerves of his left calf was severe. He had been limping ever since.


Once he realized he'd no longer be able to study karate, he made a firm commitment to use his life as a fisherman to further his studies. He read various books written by martial arts masters and then applied the principles of what he learned to his work life.


"One of the most important things I learned" he said, "Is to create a rhythm with your posture, movements, and breathing, that matches the rhythm of nature. When I injured myself on the boat, I was so involved in handling the heavy cage, I lost touch with the flow of my surroundings. I was fighting against the ocean, rather than moving with it. Guess what? The ocean won!"

"Notice the gentle ebb and flow of the ocean as we sit here now." he said, "And the sound of the tide lapping against the pilings of the pier."

"As you sense the movement and sounds of the ocean, notice your breathing, and feel your body responding."

I began to do as he suggested and felt myself being drawn into a parallel world that was outside my everyday awareness.

"Feel the life force of the ocean, and without doing anything, allow yourself to move with the ocean." "Breathe, move, and feel your heartbeat." "Invite your heartbeat, to synchronize with the heartbeat of the ocean."

"Now you're becoming one with the water, and you might sense the fluids in your body ebbing and flowing, like the ocean entering into a shallow inlet made of coral."

"Like the ocean you can begin to feel the power of flowing without resisting. Flowing without fighting against."

"Water surrounds and moves past all obstacles, and you can do the same."

"Only flow."

"A single drop of water, has no power. A single drop of water moving with the flow of the ocean forms a wave. The power of the wave comes from joining with. The same is true of me and you"

We sat there together for a while.

The man, myself, and the ocean.

Not separate, but together.

In this moment, I sense all power is really One.

Such was my journey.

*Written by Charlie Badenhop, the originator of Seishindo, an Aikido instructor, NLP trainer, and Ericksonian Hypnotherapist. Charlie sends you his articles twice a month. Each article is about 600 words long. Feel free to visit his website for more inspirational articles.

Sometimes Faith Can Do Miracles by Michael Josepson

“Coach, why are we doing this?”

Grapevine Faith’s (TX) high school football coach replied, “Imagine if you didn’t have a home life. Imagine if everybody had pretty much given up on you. Imagine what it would mean for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in you.”

In Rick Reilly’s moving ESPN.com story of how one simple gesture by a teacher-coach can change lives forever, he described what took place on a remote field last November in the little town of Grapevine, Texas.

Kris Hogan, coach of the 7-2 Grapevine Faith, wanted to do something special for his visiting opponent, the 0-8 Gainesville State Tornadoes, whose players weren’t having a good year in more ways than one. He contacted Faithful fans and exhorted them to split up for the game – he wanted half of them to root for the visitors this one night only.

When Gainesville took the field, a 40-yard spirit line of Faith fans were lined up for them to run between, and a GO TORNADOES! banner was at the end for them to burst through. Two hundred Faithful fans awaited them in the visitor’s bleachers and cheered for them the entire game.

“I thought maybe they were confused,” said a Gainesville lineman afterward. “They started yelling ‘DEE-fense!’ when their team had the ball. I said, ‘What?’”

Melinda Wright Gainesville State players douse their coach, Mark Williams after the game.

After the game, which Gainesville lost once again, players from both teams gathered at midfield to pray. Leading it was a Gainesville player named Isiah.

“Lord, I don’t know how this happened so I don’t know how to say thank you,” he said. “But I never would have known there were so many people in the world who cared about us.”

As the visitors walked off the field, Faith’s players watched silently as 12 armed officers escorted the boys into their bus. As they stepped aboard, Faith supporters handed each of them a bag for the ride home. In each one were a hamburger, fries, candy, a soda, a Bible, and a personal letter from a Faith player.

The Gainesville coach went up to coach Hogan and said, “You’ll never know what your people did for these kids tonight. You’ll never, ever know.”

Every Tornadoes football game is on the road because Gainesville is a maximum-security correctional facility. We’ll let Reilly recount the rest of the story:

As the bus pulled away, all the Gainesville players crammed to one side and pressed their hands to the window, staring at these people they’d never met before, watching their waves and smiles disappearing into the night.

With the economy six feet under and Christmas running on about three and a half reindeer, it’s nice to know that one of the best presents you can give is still absolutely free. Hope."

-from Michael Josephson's charactercounts