Victoria: Remember What Ninja Feels Like

I recently returned from visiting my friend Mark on Vancouver Island. This was intended as a wonderful escape from Edmonton winter (temperatures above freezing, even when there is rain and wind, are not winter), a chance to get away from stress at work, and a chance to visit my friend in his new digs, which I haven't seen since he moved out there.

What happened, though, was a rekindling of my interest in the pursuit of ninja-ness, something that I had lost recently. Over the past year, I've been exercising less, I've been feeling trapped in my career, and generally lost a lot of my joy of living. It's hard to train as a ninja when you aren't sure what you want out of life and are starting to feel like you won't ever get what you want out of life. It got to the point that I didn't want to go in to work at all any more. I finally realized that this was no longer an emotional lull, but a real problem that needed to be addressed.

Step one was to trigger my vacation and sabbatical time earlier than I had initially planned--I am fortunate to have such things available to me. Step two was to get out of my groove for a while, lest it become a rut, so I booked a flight as soon as was feasible.

It turned out to be exactly the medicine I needed. My stay consisted of frequent walks (multiple per day) out in the pleasant spruce-and-sea-scented air of Victoria, accompanied by my friend, his girlfriend, and their dog. I played a lot of Wii Fit on the Wii U. I ate healthy food in balanced amounts.

Even after a single day, I found my body was awake and craving exercise for the first time in months. I'd forgotten how amazing that feeling of wanting to exercise can be.

The dog was a huge emotional boost as well. Luna is happy, well adjusted, and well behaved. As my friend pointed out, staring into a dog's eyes can reduce your cortisol levels, which basically means that puppy-dog eyes reduce stress (assuming that the dog is happy and not trying to kill you).

Go ahead and try it with this adorable image of Luna. Stare into those eyes and feel your stress levels dropping.

The lovely Luna, aka. El Beasto, aka. The Beastie. Also my friend Mark's feet.

I hope to get more into the kinds of training that help pursue a state a ninja in later posts. But here are the basics, as Mark and Luna reminded me this past week:

• Physical health is key. Eat healthy food and eat it in moderation. Drink a good amount of water. Get to sleep at a good time each night. Get plenty of exercise and fresh air.
• As your physical health improves, your spirit will strengthen. This will manifest as confidence, good humor, and patience. Most of all, you will start to see challenge as something fun to be engaged with, rather than as something exhausting to be avoided.
• Be patient. You should start to feel better almost immediately, but becoming a ninja is a long process. Don't panic if things aren't perfect after just one week of ninja training.