Nick, this is a really neat question. I wish I could compress this into a shorter answer, but to do so would require leaving out things essential to understanding my point of view.
What drew me to the arts and what has kept me here are two different things. I had wanted to do martial arts as a child but there simply wasn't anything besides karate at the YMCA. Growing up, I was a sickly child and suffered with asthma quite a bit. I was uncoordinated, the last one picked for playground sports and often picked on by others. Self-defense and kickin' ass is the main thing that brought me into the martial arts.
We typically say that in six months time, most people can build an effective basis of self-defense for most real world scenarios. Matt McRorie, an Oklahoma City police officer & student at the dojo, told us that the really tough guys they deal with on the street have skills of about a green belt. So, what's kept me here some fifteen years after that? Helping people.
Our promotional criteria states, "Once a person reaches the rank of 1st degree black belt, their interest should begin to lie in the areas of teaching [aikido, judo or jyodo], rather than the sole interest of improving their skills."
Learning how to operate as a teacher has had a great effect in my life. Sure, I teach classes and individuals at the dojo. I also have learned to apply that to daily life, teaching other technicians how to perform their craft in the telecommunications industry. It bleeds over into playing guitar, teaching folks to tie different knots while backpacking, and the like. But it goes further than that. Only through becoming a teacher can we really begin to function as a student. You really have to know your stuff in order to teach. This, in turn, builds even greater self-confidence.
At the dojo, nobody has their "secret" technique; we share everything we know with everybody -- nothing is held back. This reinforces what the Japanese call
kaizen, or continuous improvement. From what my fellow students and teachers tell me, this seems to be a rare occurrence among martial arts schools.
At some point, we recognize seriously injuring people is really a fairly simple endeavor. The human body is a horribly fragile thing. When people confront us, we try to figure out how not to seriously injure the person (should it go to blows) while the average person is dealing with the "fight or flight" response. Often, the aggressor recognizes that we don't behave like other people he's bullied, and realizes that he is messing with an alpha predator. True self-confidence creates this ability to be calm in the eye of the storm. This bleeds over into my professional life during stressful things at work we call, "outages" or "network events". It's when something really bad happens and affects telephone and/or internet service for a very large number of customers.
I think the realization of human fragility makes us more sympathetic toward our fellow man. I think this goes toward compassion, which is a key tenet of virtually every form of organized religion.
The dojo also teaches us equality. It is rare to have an environment where people from all walks of life come together and treat each other as equals. CPA's, engineers, salesmen, doctors, professors, plumbers, telephone men, electricians, grill cooks, airline pilots, locomotive engineers, millionaires, guys who have been homeless... it's rare folks from these varied disciplines would congregate and associate with one another.
So, what has budo done for me? Well, here's a short list:
- it's taught me to kick ass[/*:m:1khtehi9]
- it's taught me to not kick ass unless all no other option exists[/*:m:1khtehi9]
- developed a true, deep-rooted self-confidence[/*:m:1khtehi9]
- developed teaching skills[/*:m:1khtehi9]
- learned to be a student, and make everyone your teacher[/*:m:1khtehi9]
- learned we're all equally smart and equally dumb, just about different stuff[/*:m:1khtehi9]
- have compassion for my fellow man[/*:m:1khtehi9]
- responsibility[/*:m:1khtehi9]
- lead by example[/*:m:1khtehi9]
- more effective communications with others[/*:m:1khtehi9]
- eliminated stage fright[/*:m:1khtehi9]
- created a great number of friends[/*:m:1khtehi9]
- a black belt is really just the beginning of training[/*:m:1khtehi9]
Favorite resources? Most of them are at the dojo! It's a science lab, where we can mix things together and see if it blows up or not.
Aside from that, there's the Internet. Unfortunately, the majority of the videos and websites offer little as far as true technical wizardry. My focus has been on Judo the past couple of years, and that's where I spend most of my energy. Judoinfo.com is probably the greatest thing since grilled cheese sandwiches & tomato soup. Most Judo resources offer up neat tricks, but those tricks lack a great framework to hang on, so there's no understanding of how things play together.
I enjoy books, particularly things related to the samurai. The samurai and the bushido code are an interesting study.
- Kyle