 Why do I train in the Martial Arts? - I genuinely believe that we should always strive to become better than we were yesterday. We should disassemble our minds, our identities and truly understand what it is that we fear, what it is that holds us back. What baggage are we carrying that stops us from climbing higher and higher. In my opinion, nothing does this as well as Martial Arts training.
This critical self-analysis cannot be done while in a state of comfort. If your mind and your body are not at the extremes of what you can tolerate you can not honestly see your ego for what it is, a mechanism for keeping you where you are. If you don’t force your body to continue doing those burpees when your mind is screaming “enough!” You won’t understand how much your mind lies to you. If you are not doing your 25th first form in a row, you won’t realise how much you can truly tolerate. To truly understand who you are and why you are this way, you need to put yourself through the fire. Because it is this fire, that burns away the lies and the illusions and leaves you with the truth. Your demons have nowhere to hide when you place yourself way outside your comfort zone; and when you can see your demons, you can begin slaying them! This is personal growth; this is refinement, this is how we reach enlightenment! I have spent 2018 putting myself outside of my comfort zone on a daily basis and have grown as a result of doing this. I have also spent 2018 putting my students outside of their comfort zones, and they have become better as a result. In 2019 I will not relent, I will keep climbing and refining my mind and body and will take my students along this journey with me. However, I have just one requirement from them, “Leave your excuses in 2018.”
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 As far back as I can remember in my own life, being a better version of myself has always been my primary concern. I remember as a child of 12 or 13 going into my local library and going straight to the mind body & spirit section or the psychology section looking for books that will help with my endeavour. I remember the librarians who I was very familiar with would jokingly tell me that, "those books had no pictures in them". I was always searching for that secret or that path that would lead me to become better. I began training in the Tiger Crane Combination system of Kung Fu a few years later, and the journey inwards that the training has taken me on has been wondrous.
As humans, whether we are religious or not, whether we base our world view on faith or reason, we all have a yearning deep inside of us for something greater. Some satisfy this longing through belief in gods or angels, others lose themselves in the seemingly infinite nature of our universe, and some fall into drink and drugs to satisfy this insatiable thirst for more. What I do is I look inwards because to understand the nature of self and consciousness is to understand the subjective nature of our gods, our demons and our universe. I have always said that my training in Tiger Crane Kung Fu translates directly into anything I do in my life. This is a principle that I also try to get my students to understand. My role as a practitioner of this system is to get my body to respond, to do what I want it to do, to stretch further than it did yesterday, to hold the postures for a longer period than it did yesterday and to tolerate the pain for a while longer than it did yesterday. My success with my body is directly dependent on my ability to control my mind. My ability to not listen when it is making excuses, to ignore it when it tells me enough and to shut it down when it is not helpful. The level of mental clarity and discernment that one gets while training in a system like Tiger Crane Kung Fu is beneficial in one’s career, relationships and in one’s attempts to be a productive member of the societies they live. As the practitioner's training develops and their Kung Fu matures so does their mind, The practitioner begins to see through the illusory nature of their mind, their emotions, their thoughts and their worldview. Giving them the ability to create better and more productive habits. Training in a traditional martial art isn’t just about learning to kick and punch. It is about the journey one takes to create a better version of themselves every single day. So the next time you don't want to train on a training day, understand that this is your mind telling you to stagnate. When you understand this, you then have the choice to either listen or to not listen. This choice is always yours.  Most of us go to school until our late teens or early twenties, and we believe that we are done learning after this stage. We throw ourselves into our careers, and our family lives, leaving less and less time to learn and develop ourselves further. Even when at school, we learn fixed curriculums and our teachers' primary focus is how to pass exam after exam. Our educators seldom address the important questions about the nature of self and consciousness.
I have been fortunate to take a path in my life that has helped me understand the value of learning and training oneself. I have been training and learning all of my life, and I am only starting to scratch the surface. I have had some remarkable teachers who have helped me along the path of refinement and growth. Some of these teachers would be proud of the road I have taken and others less so as it can be difficult to watch your students find their path, a path that may diverge from your own. In the end, we all need to be honest with ourselves. We must ask ourselves constantly whether we are making decisions based on attachments to principles that are themselves impermanent. Are we trying hard to hold on to the character or characters we believe we are in our own internal narratives of our lives? The further we develop ourselves spiritually, the more careful and the more mindful we need to become. Our sense of self, our ego is relentlessly trying to co-opt any progression for its own gain. My Kung Fu training has been the single biggest tool that I have used to grow and learn. The word "grow" in this context can be quite deceptive as it implies adding stuff to make something bigger or larger. Most people will agree with that usage of the word as it is related to adding knowledge and skills to make ourselves better. But real personal growth is not about adding things; real personal growth is about taking things away. Our lives burden us with mental patterns, habits and ways of thinking that do not stand up to scrutiny when dissected and examined. We hold on to ideas that make us happy and push away ideas that make us sad. We lack the training and discernment to ignore the emotional swings and look at the true nature of what happiness and sadness actually are. We get angry, envious or greedy, but we do not detach from the emotions and skilfully look at the nature of our minds during these states. Like a scientist would when observing a natural phenomenon with unbiased attention. When a beginner trains in my classes, I can see at first the battle they have with their bodies. Why doesn’t my arm go to where I want to it to go? Why can’t my hips and my legs flex enough to get into the posture I need to get into? At first, students try to force their bodies into the positions and stances that the system requires but over time something changes in the student. They stop striving for the perfect posture or movement, and they accept “as good as I can do.” They tell themselves, "my body won’t do it; I will go to as close as possible, without causing myself too much discomfort." This line of reasoning is, of course, an illusion, this is the mind, the ego wanting to stay within its comfort zone. A lot of students plateau at this level and refuse to push themselves, and this is fine because it is where they are at that current stage. They may end up training on and off and eventually stop training altogether, giving me their reasons for leaving. Reasons that they firmly believe to be true but when probed further is another illusion rooted in staying within their comfort zone. The students that continue to train eventually start to change. They begin training in more classes, repeating movements outside of class and even start dreaming about their training. These students begin to see the difference between what they can achieve with real effort and dedication and what the false limits are that their mind creates for them. This ability to observe the mind that students acquire through training is the most important tool one needs to grow and change. Like a great sculptor you are trying to chip away at the unneeded excess to find the masterpiece that is the real you. Real refinement of self is about stripping away who you believe you are, eliminating the limits that you have created for yourself and abandoning the excuses your mind creates when going out of your comfort zone. Real maturity begins the moment you understand that the little voice inside your head, constantly talking you out of things is your biggest adversary. |
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