Kintsugi Company
Here’s the kicker: a good posture will only get you so far. You need actual skill to back up your signals. They need to tell the truth. Otherwise, you might be the one crumbled in a heap. You don’t want that. You want to walk away alive and in one piece. Your loved ones want you back home safely. Yes, listen to your mom but do more than that.
I’ve recently decided to considered myself built like a female sumo wrestler and to use that to my advantage in my martial arts training and teaching women’s self-defense. Why not? My training helps me to control my body weight and use it to my advantage. I can do things now that I couldn’t do a year ago. I’ve accomplished so much in a year’s time. I’m on my way to healing for terrifying traumas, ready to test for black belt, and getting stronger every week. My heart rate is great, my moods are generally better, my abilities are better and lifting 155 lbs. off the floor seems like a miracle –but it isn’t; it’s payoff.
Ah, yes, that moment of crisis that leads to decision making. The one where you have to just lay down and let that rock roll right over you, or get back up and keep pushing. If a 5-ton rock rolls over you, that can’t be good, right? Or maybe it’s good to get life over with and move on? Perhaps less dramatic, like throwing my hands in the air and saying “I give up, God — You do it” will stop this crazy cycle of pushing and pushing and pushing. After all, He’s big enough and strong enough to pick that rock right up and take it where it belongs. But why would He do that when making me do the work is much better and good? At least according to Him.
I’m a firm believer that in most cases anybody can learn to do anything given enough time, space, and creativity in both learning and teaching. When I encounter women who say “Oh, I could never do THAT,” what they are really saying is “I don’t have enough belief or confidence in myself to even try.” Getting people over that hump is my greatest task as teacher. I’ve seen the fear in the eyes of my partners as I’ve taken them through learning to grapple, hit each other (in sparring), taking throws, experiencing pain in techniques, and the falling techniques. I had to inspire belief in their own minds and hearts. I had to gain their trust and show them the way.
Helping someone overcome fear so they can perform the task before them is huge. It takes small, incremental steps of desensitization to help someone over that hump sometimes. Sometimes it requires pushing them in the deep end of the pool and let them figure it out. In the case of my sister, she needed the slower method and a lot of convincing. We started out with just figuring out how to get up and down off the floor. Then we moved to sitting on her knees and backside repeating the falling motion over and over. She needed to overcome that fear next. This went part went on for some months.
In self-defense circles, the words “situational awareness” and “zanshin” are frequently used. Both of these terms mean basically the same thing, although the transliteration of this word in Japanese, zanshin (残心), is “remaining mind.” Situational awareness means what it sounds like: being aware of your situation. This can apply to many things in life but when it comes to self-defense, situational awareness begins once you are outside of the relative safety of your home, work, or vehicle.