Meditations on God

I recently suffered an injury while rolling (sparring) during an early morning Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu open mat session at my school. It was a muscle sprain, nothing permanent or serious. It got me thinking though. My goal with martial art training is longevity, to have a physical-mental practice that I can continue with for a long time, slowly improving even into old age. The Japanese call this slow, incremental improvement ‘kaizen’ (改善). Injuries, however, slow or even reverse progress. As one of my teachers said, “The goal of martial art training is to get stronger. Injuries create weakness, not strength. Do not injure each other.”

Whenever I get hurt during training, I replay in my mind over and over again what happened, what led up to the injury, what could I have done to prevent it, and what can I do in the future to reduce the risk of it happening again. This injury happened in slow motion, as if I actually watched it happen from outside of myself, but was unable to stop it. The technique was applied and I was hurt. Just like that. I couldn’t tap fast enough. I know not to let techniques go that far. I know to tap early and often. However, I was too slow this time. Afterward, I kept asking myself why. What was I doing that allowed this to happen so easily. Then it struck me. I was defending. I was letting my opponent (training partner) do his thing and I was reactive, not proactive.

The problem with passively, or even actively defending against attacks is that it is always slower than the attack itself. You may be successful, but if you continue defending and your opponent keeps attacking, eventually you will be too slow and you will lose. In this case, losing meant that I got hurt and have been off the mats for several days. It has been said that in Japanese martial arts, everything is an attack. Even a seemingly defensive move is an attack in disguise. Ellis Amdur has written, “In Japanese, reactive counters are often called ‘go no sen,’ which is a counter to a counter to the other’s initiative, but even this is not accurate. In fact, reactive counters are commemorated with tombstones.” I was reactive and I ‘died,’ not actually of course, but every injury is a reminder of our mortality.

Defense, when it is passive, is not defense at all, but acquiescence — giving in. It is like ritual suicide at the hands of another. Martial arts should add to, should improve and enhance our lives. The very act of sparring is life affirming, even in loss. It is about saying to the universe and to ourselves over and over, “My will is to face and conquer difficulty, to live intentionally, and to survive and thrive in spite of adversity.” Injury, however, is like a small death. It is the opposite of life, the opposite of thriving. It is pain and regression. The lesson in my injury is to not give in to passivity, to remain active and alive, in training as in life, to not ‘defend,’ but to move forward in all things, to attack difficulty head on, even when in retreat, to stand tall, to own my space, and to not let the will of others dictate the path I take because that only leads to pain and regret. To live a life of intention — this is irimi (入り身).

When I was a teenager, I was sent to a Scared Straight program and was made to visit a prison for a day. If nothing else, the experience of being looked at, talked to, and treated like prey gave me empathy for the weak and outnumbered.

From the time I was very young, I was almost constantly bullied and ridiculed, something I never got used to, but I adapted. There is something intrinsically inhumane about bullying, but it the experience in the prison was different. It was actually inhuman. It was animalistic.

Bullying hurts emotionally and psychologically, but I could feel this fear and discomfort physically. It was creepy and life altering.

Imagine for a moment that you experienced this feeling every time you are outside and alone at night, or when you walk past a group of men, any group of men, or when you find yourself alone with someone who is bigger and stronger than you.

Imagine if every day you are looked at, talked to, and treated like prey. How long would that need to go on before you actually felt non-human?

I am not saying that all big, strong men behave like or should be treated like predators. I’m not saying that every group of men behaves like a prison gang when a woman walks by. What I am saying is that we should have some empathy and compassion when a woman says she has felt like prey at some point in her life and that she was, or still is affected by it in a deeply emotional, psychological, and physical way. We should not dismiss it. We should listen and think about what we can do better to make the people around us feel safer and more empowered as humans.

We are supposed to take care of each other. If not us, then who?

The thoughts above were prompted by my reading and contemplating the meaning of this article by a woman about how even self-defense training is not always enough to make women feel safe.