Kung Fu Did NOT Change My Life.

Kung Fu did not change my life, or change me, or save my life.

It won't do it for you either.

Thinking it will is like thinking a bicycle will make you lose weight. The bicycle will do no such thing. The exercise you get from pedaling the bicycle can help you out quite a bit though.

Like any tool, it is all in how you use it. Kung Fu can be the tool you use to change your life.

Now

The time has come to approach my mental/emotional well being with the same vigor and dedication I have approached my physical well being.

I watch what foods I allow in my body, I will watch what thoughts I allow in my head.

I watch what activities I participate in, I will be just as choosy about what thinking I participate in.

When my body has done all it can, I give it rest, I will do the same thing for my brain and my heart.

I work to make my body stronger and more efficient, I will work to do the same with my thinking.

Facing Setbacks

I seem to be facing setbacks in multiple areas of life. It is easy to allow myself to be overwhelmed by this. I must remember to take a step back, reasess the situation, make a new plan, and start at that new beginning I have set. One step at a time.

First Things First In Self Defense

In self defense, or personal protection, I believe it is important to prioritize one's actions. For example, I have had people ask me, as a martial artist, if I could teach them what to do if they get jumped by three guys in an alley. My answer is always to not go in the alley in the first place.

I have also come to believe in a little "preemptive self defense". Now, I don't mean to jump the guys in the alley first, this is much more effective, and much more difficult and it is something I need to work on.

If one is worried about oneself or others being jumped in an alley in a bad part of town (first, as I said before, stay out of the alley), the next step is to start improving the conditions of the environment so that people will not feel they need to resort to jumping others in the alley.

And I thought stancework was hard.

As a small step in that direction, I had my students, at their last belt test, perform random acts of kindness. Just a small step to improving the environment around them.

More to come.

There Is No Hill

One day, when bicycling with my wife, she said, "How do you like these hills?" Paraphrasing the Matrix, I responded, "There is no hill." Of course, there really was a hill, there were two things I really intended when I said that, one thing I intended was to make her laugh. The other intent, however, goes a little deeper.

I was thinking of the hill as a mindset, a mindset of focusing on the obstacle instead of the solution. So when I said, "There is no hill," like in the movie, I was saying that I choose to focus on what I can do within myself to go over the hill, instead of the obstacle presented by the hill.

There is no hill.

Self Defense (Again)

Simply because I have a friend who disagrees, I feel the need to say this again.

First go peek at this, then let me know which of those you can defend yourself against with a kick, a punch, or a gun.

Self defense ain't what you think.

Why, Why, Why?

Why study kung fu?

To defend oneself? To get fit/healthy? To learn to fight? To build discipline? To build confidence?

All these things can be done without kung fu training, and I have known kung fu artists who had not successfully done any of the above.

So, why study kung fu?

Kung fu and other martial arts have a reputation for being able to instill in their practitioners strength, discipline, confidence, etc., but they do not in and of themselves accomplish anything.

A martial artist can be a great humanitarian or a bully, a wise sage or a con artist, a mentor to children or a convincing illusion of one out to sign them to three year contracts.

The secret is not in the martial arts themselves. The secret is in your approach to the martial arts, and the instructors approach to the martial arts.

At one point, my motivation as a martial artist was to get good at kung fu. At this time I believed in the illusion that being good at kung fu meant I was a good athlete/philosopher/humanitarian/leader/etc.

At one point my motivation was a dedication to "the art" I wanted to perfect the art in myself, then perfect it in others. Again I believed in the illusion that the art itself would do all the work.

If you don't believe there is an illusion out there, go browse some martial arts school websites, most of them will tell you all about the "benefits of training in the martial arts" but if you ask the instructor, "How does martial arts training teach each of these benefits?" will they be able to answer?

So what am I doing to break free from the illusion?

First of all I fight hard to stay off the pedestal. Lots of martial arts students want their teacher to be Yoda. Sorry I guys I am a flawed and fallible human being.

Second, I want to use martial arts training to teach other important things. Training for each belt test with a long term goal of obtaining a black belt can be used to teach goal setting. Repeating a drill over and over again not only improves the drill, but teaches one how to practice for any other achievement. Memorizing a sequence of 200 movements teaches that we can accomplish bigger things than we thought we could. Training for "self defense" teaches us to always practice self defense even in our eating habits.

Third, I must remember that HOW you train your kung fu decides what you get from it. If you train only for fighting, you will learn only fighting. If you train only for fitness you will get only fitness.

If you approach Kung Fu as a holistic analogy for everything you do in life it can be a revolution in your life.