Note: This is the first of 2 essays I wrote as part of my test for Ee Dan (second degree black belt) in Tang Soo Do Mi Guk Kwan.
There are several primary reasons that I continued to train after I attained the rank of Cho Dan. The most obvious is the desire to continue learning more about our art. Training also offers me wonderful opportunities to spend time alongside my wife and children as we grow in the art together. And finally, continued training in Tang Soo Do Mi Guk Kwan helps enrich my life by keeping me integrated with our NAC, Region 6, and TSDMGK communities. By being a part of these communities, and by working to help them continue to grow and thrive, I express my gratitude and help to ensure that others can benefit from these things as well.
More, Please
The desire to continue learning new material was one of the most obvious and significant reasons. Frankly, it never even occurred to me to consider stopping. My only desire after I received my new rank was to … keep going. Learn more. Continue. One of the things I love about Tang Soo Do Mi Guk Kwan is the breadth and depth of the curriculum, and continuing to train and work toward my Ee Dan provided me with the opportunity to continue immersing myself in that curriculum. Once I’d learned I had passed my Cho Dan test I could hardly wait to begin learning new hyungs, sleeve grabs, elbow strikes, knife defense … MORE!
Without continuing I wouldn’t have the chance to feel the sense of accomplishment I get from learning a new form: from the early stages where I can barely manage to remember all of the individual techniques in order, to committing it to memory and beginning the difficult, sometimes frustrating process of getting it “right,” to the final steps of polishing it to the level of skill and proficiency that is required to demonstrate it at a tournament as well as before a Shim Sa for testing and promotion purposes. I love these challenges, and the hard work and dedication it takes to overcome these challenges. I can’t imagine walking away from them just because I’ve attained a specific rank.
Training with Family, Sharing with Our Community
One of the best aspects of training for me has been all of the time I have gotten to spend with my family on the mat. Testing alongside my daughter and my mother for our Cho Dans was an experience I’ll treasure for the rest of my life, and training with my wife and son to prepare for our Ee Dan test has been wonderful as well. I know that continuing to train in TSDMGK with my entire family – now including my brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew – will continue to provide us with opportunities to create incredible new memories together. We all lead very busy lives, and having Tang Soo Do as a common shared experience really helps us all to stay connected with one another.
And then there’s simply being a part of a larger family, the Tang Soo Do Mik Guk Kwan community. From an organizational level, I’ve made many friends around the entire country through my participation in our organizational events such as Nationals, Weekends with the Masters, and so forth. I eagerly look forward to attending these events because they give me the chance to reconnect with these wonderful people.
Then there’s the Region 6 family. Again, I’ve made so many good, trusted friends here in Texas, and it’s always exciting to get together and catch up at local tournaments, or at red belt tests when Kyo Sa Nim Pugh’s students test alongside ours, or at the dan classings. We’re a very varied group here in Region 6, and it’s always a good time when we share fellowship with each other.
Finally, there’s our TSDA/NAC community. The friendships I’ve made here are incredibly important to me, and there’s just no way I can imagine not being an active part of that community, or perhaps more importantly of not having our dojang community and the friendships I’ve built there to help sustain me though tough times. Like everyone, my life can be a bit heavier to bear than I care to admit sometimes. This year, in particular, has been tougher than most.
Shortly after Easter, my oldest and closest friend died suddenly from an aneurism. I’d known him for 38 years, from the time he babysat me and my brother when we were young, to going out and partying in NYC as roommates, to him standing beside me as one of my groomsmen on the day I made the single best decision of my life, and finally to his accepting the role of godfather to my son Trevor. He was my best friend for decades, one of my wife’s closest confidantes, a dear friend to my mother and brother, an incredibly important part of our entire family.
His health was not good, so he’d moved here to Austin from New York to live with his brother, and as a result we got to spend some wonderful times together in the last year of his life. We knew he wasn’t well, but it looked like he had a several solid years to go. The aneurism came out of nowhere -- a complete, horrible shock. Losing him was devastating to us all, and without the support of my dojang family I don’t know how I would have coped those first few weeks. And without the chance to go in and train, to work through the grief in a constructive way, I don’t know how I could have coped the past 6 months.
And this is, again, why I love what we do here so much and why it never occurred to me to stop training, to stop being a part of this community. With the help of this dojang, and its students, I’m taking this awful event and channeling it into activity that helps me to release the anger and stress in a safe and healthy way, but that also brings me closer to my family and to my friends instead of turning away from them and retreating from the world to lick my wounds.
Better Lives, Better People
I can’t possibly be more grateful to Sa Bom Nim Nunan, to my brothers and sisters in the dojang and here in Region 6, and to the Tang Soo Do Mi Guk Kwan for the ways in which they’ve enriched my life. An essential part of expressing that gratitude is helping those things to grow and thrive so that others can experience them as well. And that, at the end of the day, is the most significant reason I continued to train after I attained Cho Dan.
I always tell people that, while martial arts is a terrific physical activity, what we do here is so much bigger than the simple, technical content of the curriculum and the physical acts of punching, kicking, and so forth. What we do creates better lives. What we do creates better people. Yes, it’s important that we develop ourselves physically and that we learn the skills necessary to defend ourselves if necessary, but those skills are just tools to extend what we’ve learned out into our lives.
To paraphrase something Master Nunan often says, I believe people are made almost entirely of flaws. We are all broken, each in our own way. I believe that by continuing to train, by continuing to work to extend the gains I make in the dojang out into the rest of my life, I am using the tools of our art to fix some of my own flaws. This, ultimately, is what I feel is the life-long goal of studying our art: transformation. And I know that even after over 6 years of training I am only beginning to scratch the surface of this process.
Friday, November 04, 2011
Here We Go Again
Yeah, yeah. I know. It's been, what? Oh, jeez, OVER A YEAR since I last wrote in this blog. I guess I owe my massive horde of fans (both of you) an apology. I had many points over the past year when I was ready to write an entry here, but for whatever reason the inspiration fled and that was that.
Then back in April I was going to begin writing about the run up to my Ee Dan/Kyo Sa testing (scheduled for May 29th), but life intervened again, thjis time is a more pointed and brutal fashion. The sudden death of my oldest, dearest friend Gregory at the end of April. This event led directly to the easiest (if most frustrating) choice I've ever had to make: attending his memorial service or attending my dan classing and Kyo Sa test. Obviously, I chose to attend the memorial.
And, as a result, here I am, November 2011, 8 days out from my Ee Dan and Kyo Sa test. Six months later than planned, but as the Song of the Sip Sam Seh says, "surprising things will happen when you meet your opponent." Sometimes your opponent is life. Surprise!
So, anyway, it's been a rough, rough year on our end. In addition to losing Gregory we have all too many friends battling illnesses (Cancer! It's the new black!) and losing loved ones and family members (sometimes they're the same thing) of their own as we stand there and wish we could do something to help, knowing there's nothing. Distant relations committing suicide. Friends with deeply troubled kids suffering under the strain. Other "friends" revealing themselves to be anything but the people we took them to be. And work. Work work work.
You name it. 2011 has sucked. Hard.
Through this all, the dojang and my dojang family have been there, and I can't express the gratitude I feel for this. Well, I *can* express it, but I tend to get all weepy and "I love you man!" when I do, so it's kind of embarrassing for all involved. But you get the idea. The dojang and Tang Soo Do Mi Guk Kwan continue to be a source of peace, a place to go when things are great, and a place to turn when things are awful. I am incredibly fortunate to have this art, and these people, in my life.
As with all of my previous testing, the Ee Dan (second degree black belt) and Kyo Sa (certified instructor) tests include essays. I have written 4, which I will be publishing in additional blog entries following this one. I hope their content is helpful to my brothers and sisters in the martial arts. And if they're not helpful, I hope you'll at least find them entertaining.
Then back in April I was going to begin writing about the run up to my Ee Dan/Kyo Sa testing (scheduled for May 29th), but life intervened again, thjis time is a more pointed and brutal fashion. The sudden death of my oldest, dearest friend Gregory at the end of April. This event led directly to the easiest (if most frustrating) choice I've ever had to make: attending his memorial service or attending my dan classing and Kyo Sa test. Obviously, I chose to attend the memorial.
And, as a result, here I am, November 2011, 8 days out from my Ee Dan and Kyo Sa test. Six months later than planned, but as the Song of the Sip Sam Seh says, "surprising things will happen when you meet your opponent." Sometimes your opponent is life. Surprise!
So, anyway, it's been a rough, rough year on our end. In addition to losing Gregory we have all too many friends battling illnesses (Cancer! It's the new black!) and losing loved ones and family members (sometimes they're the same thing) of their own as we stand there and wish we could do something to help, knowing there's nothing. Distant relations committing suicide. Friends with deeply troubled kids suffering under the strain. Other "friends" revealing themselves to be anything but the people we took them to be. And work. Work work work.
You name it. 2011 has sucked. Hard.
Through this all, the dojang and my dojang family have been there, and I can't express the gratitude I feel for this. Well, I *can* express it, but I tend to get all weepy and "I love you man!" when I do, so it's kind of embarrassing for all involved. But you get the idea. The dojang and Tang Soo Do Mi Guk Kwan continue to be a source of peace, a place to go when things are great, and a place to turn when things are awful. I am incredibly fortunate to have this art, and these people, in my life.
As with all of my previous testing, the Ee Dan (second degree black belt) and Kyo Sa (certified instructor) tests include essays. I have written 4, which I will be publishing in additional blog entries following this one. I hope their content is helpful to my brothers and sisters in the martial arts. And if they're not helpful, I hope you'll at least find them entertaining.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Time Flies Like an Arrow ...
... and fruit flies like a banana.
Yeah, yeah. I know it's been months. It's turned out to be a pretty insane year, work- and life-wise, and blogging has fallen way down to the bottom of the list of "Things I Have Time To Do These Days." Apologies.
So, training continues along at a steady pace, and happily the vast majority of injuries I've been suffering from are in the manageable, under control, or resolved categories. Had a really fun new one pop up in the interim -- while trying to vacuum up some water that was leaking into the dojang during some nasty storms I bent over and dislocated my sacrum (joint way at the end of the spine), causing every muscle in my lower back to seize up in order to protect my spinal cord and resulting in my typically "S" shaped spine resembling a "Capital B" instead.
The pain was … well, extraordinary, to be honest. Couldn't stand up straight at all, could barely walk 100 feet without having to stop and rest. Couldn't sleep. It was really something else. Happily, a few days of intensive PT with Pieter got me functional and pain free again. But still, enough with the damn injuries already!
It's been an interesting few months in our dojang. We've moved to a much larger new location -- probably double the total floor space of our last (also quite large space). The new space is in a fantastic new location, and as a result we've seen a pretty exciting influx of new students: lots of white and orange belts floating around these days, and even a couple of students who'd left the art coming back into the fold. We've also had a couple of our senior members unexpectedly jump ship, creating some more opportunities for teaching, and as a result I've been teaching as often as I can -- at least a couple of Saturdays a month, plus assisting or taking entire groups during classes as well. I'm hopeful that this will all help me to be ready to test for Kyo Sa this Spring.
This Spring. Yep, it's coming. The next dan classing for our region is actually occurring on Saturday, in just two days. Kwan Jhang Nim Ferraro arrives tomorrow, and we'll have a clinic with him at our dojang Saturday morning. After that, I'll hang out and watch many friends and fellow students test for the midnight blue belts or for their next stripe. And then, barring any unforeseen circumstances, I'll begin preparing in earnest to test for my Ee Dan (midnight blue belt 2 stripes a.k.a. second dan) in the next classing in our region.
Yikes.
Not that I haven't been prepping already. Even on a slow week I train 3 times in addition to teaching, and thus far preparation is going smoothly -- even with the succession of injuries I've been coping with for the past 9-10 months, I feel solid in the majority of my techniques. My forms feel great (in fact I clinched Gold in my grid at Nationals this year for my Chil Sung Sa Rho Hyung -- very exciting. Totally blew my Dando Hyung Cho Dan, but that's what happens when you show up to compete after overindulging in Vegas the night before…), elbow techniques are solid, sleeve grabs are there if not polished to a high shine just yet, knife defense is coming along nicely, and all of my line drills techniques are doing just fine. Jump kicks are so-so -- have been going easy on them because of the injuries, but my kicking skills are pretty solid for a 40-something dude and I know that once I'm comfortable that my injuries are resolved I can get them back to the level of proficiency where I want them pretty quickly.
Only sparring really worries me, as I'm hardly sparred at all in the past year due to all the garbage I've been dealing with in my back/knees/ankles/feet. I'm trying to get back in the swing of sparring, but honestly my confidence is quite shot after being out of it for so long. Need to just accept that I'm going to kind of suck for a few weeks/months as I try to sand the rust off my sparring technique and try not to worry about it too much. Regardless, I know that I'll be ready on test day.
In just 6 or so months.
Yikes.
Mood: Harried
Now Playing: nothing
Yeah, yeah. I know it's been months. It's turned out to be a pretty insane year, work- and life-wise, and blogging has fallen way down to the bottom of the list of "Things I Have Time To Do These Days." Apologies.
So, training continues along at a steady pace, and happily the vast majority of injuries I've been suffering from are in the manageable, under control, or resolved categories. Had a really fun new one pop up in the interim -- while trying to vacuum up some water that was leaking into the dojang during some nasty storms I bent over and dislocated my sacrum (joint way at the end of the spine), causing every muscle in my lower back to seize up in order to protect my spinal cord and resulting in my typically "S" shaped spine resembling a "Capital B" instead.
The pain was … well, extraordinary, to be honest. Couldn't stand up straight at all, could barely walk 100 feet without having to stop and rest. Couldn't sleep. It was really something else. Happily, a few days of intensive PT with Pieter got me functional and pain free again. But still, enough with the damn injuries already!
It's been an interesting few months in our dojang. We've moved to a much larger new location -- probably double the total floor space of our last (also quite large space). The new space is in a fantastic new location, and as a result we've seen a pretty exciting influx of new students: lots of white and orange belts floating around these days, and even a couple of students who'd left the art coming back into the fold. We've also had a couple of our senior members unexpectedly jump ship, creating some more opportunities for teaching, and as a result I've been teaching as often as I can -- at least a couple of Saturdays a month, plus assisting or taking entire groups during classes as well. I'm hopeful that this will all help me to be ready to test for Kyo Sa this Spring.
This Spring. Yep, it's coming. The next dan classing for our region is actually occurring on Saturday, in just two days. Kwan Jhang Nim Ferraro arrives tomorrow, and we'll have a clinic with him at our dojang Saturday morning. After that, I'll hang out and watch many friends and fellow students test for the midnight blue belts or for their next stripe. And then, barring any unforeseen circumstances, I'll begin preparing in earnest to test for my Ee Dan (midnight blue belt 2 stripes a.k.a. second dan) in the next classing in our region.
Yikes.
Not that I haven't been prepping already. Even on a slow week I train 3 times in addition to teaching, and thus far preparation is going smoothly -- even with the succession of injuries I've been coping with for the past 9-10 months, I feel solid in the majority of my techniques. My forms feel great (in fact I clinched Gold in my grid at Nationals this year for my Chil Sung Sa Rho Hyung -- very exciting. Totally blew my Dando Hyung Cho Dan, but that's what happens when you show up to compete after overindulging in Vegas the night before…), elbow techniques are solid, sleeve grabs are there if not polished to a high shine just yet, knife defense is coming along nicely, and all of my line drills techniques are doing just fine. Jump kicks are so-so -- have been going easy on them because of the injuries, but my kicking skills are pretty solid for a 40-something dude and I know that once I'm comfortable that my injuries are resolved I can get them back to the level of proficiency where I want them pretty quickly.
Only sparring really worries me, as I'm hardly sparred at all in the past year due to all the garbage I've been dealing with in my back/knees/ankles/feet. I'm trying to get back in the swing of sparring, but honestly my confidence is quite shot after being out of it for so long. Need to just accept that I'm going to kind of suck for a few weeks/months as I try to sand the rust off my sparring technique and try not to worry about it too much. Regardless, I know that I'll be ready on test day.
In just 6 or so months.
Yikes.
Mood: Harried
Now Playing: nothing
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