December 1, 2021
I had a conversation last week with one of my karate students—and how I hesitate to call him my student, mostly because I still grapple with imposter syndrome when I think of myself as a karate teacher—oops that sentence got away with me. But ya, that conversation made me feel like writing more, and more honestly, about my experiences as a karate teacher.
After our Saturday morning class some of us had gathered at a café, called The Refinery, just opposite our gym. We like getting a coffee/tea/snack post class when covid rules permit. We were seated at the longest wooden table, centrally placed, in the café. Potted plants separated us into two groups of four (only five allowed per group and we were eight that day). I was sitting next to one of our yellow belts, a quiet man who had taken his time to become more vocal in the group. I asked him, Will you continue karate after you get your shodan?
The question came from another conversation with some other students where we were talking about karatekas who had passed through the dojo. I had said to them, some leave in the first year and those who get to yellow normally continue until they get their black. But that is the goal that some aim for and these leave when they have achieved it. Only a small percentage—some say it is as small as 2% of those who enter the dojo—continue further.
The student I’d asked the question to turned his head and looked directly at me. He waited, then said, You had said it’s a way of life.
I do sometimes say a line or two about the ways in which karate is a way of life, but most times I think nobody is listening. I think when I ramble about it many just want to get on with the training. Yet on the off chance that some do hear and reflect further I bring it up anyway.
That’s all the yellow belt said. As if my question was silly. Then he added, kata is important. His answer was a surprise, a delight, a door into more questions. Just that morning I had asked the class what they liked about training. The Saturday class is about 70% white and yellow belts, and most of the juniors, particularly the women, had said partner work. I know women enjoy partner work as it allows them, for some for the first time, to connect to the power of their bodies in relationship to another. I’ve had one woman tell me after her first class, that the men who partnered her were so strong that training with them forced her to really feel her own physical strength.
All that internal grappling with—I should quit teaching... I cannot be a karate teacher... but I bring something to them... something non-verbal that some come seeking... but that’s not enough... many just want to learn self-defence... and tests measure other abilities not this esoteric stuff... so step down and let someone else teach—silenced for a while. It is true that the training needs to prepare students for tests but unlike school I hope that is not the only goal. It is true that it is about self-defense too, but I hope it does more than prepare one for bar brawls or sudden street attacks. I hope that training is about that something more in life, in each person’s individual life, that we probably begin searching for the moment we are born.
I think I want to write about ‘this’ and about the those who continue training as a lifelong process. Not sure what ‘this’ is exactly yet, but it’s time to explore.
My writing, the novel I mean, has reached another branch. I finished re-writing a lot of the book that needed complete reworking. There are more chapters that now need to be changed but I had thought they could be re-worked in a week or two and I’d have a new draft which I could polish into a final product in the first month of next year. But now I feel there is something that needs a re-look. Not sure what, but I need to explore.
That’s where I am today. On the first day of the last month of 2021 when I thought, I hoped, to be winding down, finishing up some things, I feel like I am just beginning. That thought is tiring. The part of me that is dying to package up something, to feel that sense of completion about at least one thing, is frustrated.
2021 the year that refuses to wind down. Now with omicron emerging it feels like the beginning of another old-new phase of covid. May we move from extreme uncertainty to only mild next year. We need some space to process this never-ending covid trauma.
