Adrenaline Rise and Salute to the Sun

Time flies so fast that before we know it it’s almost Christmas again. While many Filipinos, not only children, have been contemplating and excited about Christmas, some of us are not that excited for various reasons.

Before Christmas comes, which is just six days before 2007, many of us have to keep our adrenaline rising to beat some deadlines, if not complete some work backlogs. For us freelancers with some writing contracts, we have to finally finish what we have started and failed to complete in the past months. Otherwise, we miss the boat in getting new offers in the coming year.

Almost everybody in government or in private outfits also have to complete some annual reports from which plans for the next year will be based. In fact, some non-government organizations and other recipients of foreign donors had to complete their reports as early as October so their funding could be renewed.

The last quarter of the year is actually a high-tension period. With all the expected reports and deadlines to beat, who is excited about Christmas? Of course, working folk have one reason to be excited – their 13^th month pay and, if they are lucky, some bonus.

And as usual, local folk anticipate what the local media would name as the men or women of the year, both in a positive or in a notorious sense.

There’s also one thing more certain than Pacquiao’s recent victory over Morales. One more year will be added to our age, that is. While we, most especially women, try to defy aging by applying some oil or some paste over our faces, we cannot reverse the former thin lines in our faces that are eventually turning into grooves.

The same is true with our muscles and bones. The cavan of rice we used to lift with ease some years ago will soon appear heavier as time passes.

For those of us who kick as a way to keep fit, we will note that the round house or ax kick we used to deliver is not as lightning fast as our kicks before. There just are things the mind and spirit would like to do, but the flesh is just too weak to oblige.

So from taekwondo, we can shift to something friendlier to aging muscles and bones, like tai chi and shi bashi. Either that or we can still kick minus the fancy ones only Jet Li can deliver.

And we have to do away with some highly acrobatic hatha yoga limbering exercises we used to do. But we can still do the head stand and what I consider as one of the poetic hatha yoga exercises, which is “salute to the sun.”

Before I salute the rising sun, I also “embrace the mountains, push the waves of the sea, and offer a pear to a sage” (these are shibashi exercises). After these exercises, I close my eyes as I count every heart beat and feel the oxygen that enters my lungs while chirping birds and cicadas provide the background music.