Over the last four decades, training in the martial arts, I have come across countless reasons why I love the martial arts and would like to share them with you. When people ask me why I do martial arts, I have so many answers I do not know where to begin. Today, in this first chapter, I will start at the beginning, my very first class.
I was obsessed with Kung Fu movies and professional wrestling. I had taken wrestling at the Park District, gotten friends to show me some martial art moves, and dropped in on a free community safety class. But now here I was, finally on my way to my very first official martial arts class at a real dojo. I was so excited at the prospect of all of the cool moves I was going to learn, all of this secret knowledge that I was going to be initiated into. However, instead of learning any deadly strikes, I was instructed to:
- Put my feet together
- Put my hands at my side
- Bend my knees slightly
- Keep my head in line with my body
- Look straight ahead without moving
- And breathe smoothly and gently
The very first martial art move I ever learned was to not move at all — rather, it was what my teacher said was the most important lesson he would teach me: the Attention Stance.
I had heard of the Chinese martial art myth that new students were made to stand in a horse stance or wait outside the temple gates for days and weeks as a test, to see if they would be selected as a student or not. I took this instruction absolutely seriously. I knew if I passed this small test, it would unlock the door to all that cool stuff I wanted to learn. This was my gateway to the wondrous world of the martial arts.
I knew I could pass this test. I wanted more than anything to pass this test, and I did pass this test.
It seemed like forever, especially for a pre-teen boy trying to contain his excitement that he was in the one place he begged his parents for two years to bring him to. Now I couldn’t move. My teacher told me that the test was to be able to control myself and my body and not have it move unless I wanted it to. That I clear my mind of anything other than preparing to learn martial arts.
I did it.
After demonstrating the ability to hold myself still, control my body and not let my mind wander off, I was taught how to bow in and class began.
I didn’t understand the power of stillness back then. I didn’t understand why I had to be still or the benefits of it. Even though in Catholic school I was often forced to sit in a pew and be quiet, otherwise I would get the ruler. I knew I could do it because I was being told to do it, but I didn’t know why, and that was the missing link for me.
The simplest reason — that it would make me a better martial artist — was enough for me to accept it and get good at it.
I also didn’t understand the power of posture and that holding my body in different ways could change my mind, my thoughts, and my emotions. I performed the stances and postures in every class without understanding I was reaping those benefits unconsciously and automatically.
It wasn’t until after I became a teacher myself that I started to research the mechanisms behind what seemed like magic in the martial arts.
I loved the martial arts for what it was doing for me, teaching me to harness my unlimited enthusiasm. Now I needed to be able to not only teach, but also to convey and to explain the what’s and the why’s behind this power.
What Science Says About Standing Still
In the 1990s, researcher Daniel Goleman, who wrote the book Emotional Intelligence, stated that if a child could focus for two minutes on one thing, then he had enough attention span to achieve anything that he wanted. Here was some compelling research by a non-martial artist that corroborated exactly what I and generations of martial artists knew by direct experience — that practicing kime, or focus, in martial art training was a fundamental skill to long-term success in life.
In the 2010s, researcher Amy Cuddy, author of the book Presence, postulated that how you posed your body could change your emotions. Famously, she had people adopt the Superman or Wonder Woman pose, with hands on your hips and legs spread, in an effort to gain self-confidence before speaking or presenting to a crowd. A century earlier, William James, the father of modern psychology, stated that emotions could arise out of physical actions — for example, people didn’t smile only because they were happy, they could also be happy because they smiled.
People, when seeing a sad person, instinctively advise them to smile, not to be rude, not to be sexist, but because people know that when you smile long enough, you feel better. We also tell each other when we are feeling depressed or discouraged to “keep your chin up,” literally, to feel better and to be better prepared to deal with the current hardship. Anecdotally, I find I can never stay mad or sad if I am skipping.
One of the reasons that I love martial arts is because all of the little things that you might think are unnecessary or meaningless, such as standing still, actually can contain deep, powerful lessons.
The very first lesson of my martial arts career set the stage for an entire lifetime of invaluable lessons that still continue to pay off dividends to this day.
This is one reason I love the martial arts and so should you.