Life Lessons from Martial Arts as a 40 Year-Old
A few months ago I started studying martial arts with my 8 year old son.
I have a phobia about tumbling so I was dreading learning rolls. Now that the time is here, it is as hard as I feared; it feels like one of the biggest challenges of my life. Harder than natural childbirth, public speaking, starting therapy, attending a new school, having surgery, or moving to a new country.
I have always felt gifted intellectually; emotionally I have done my work and am becoming more insightful and skilled; spiritually I feel at peace and honored to have found my connection; physically — physically, I have always felt inadequate and unskilled, especially when it comes to balance and tumbling.
I used to think I was clumsy and uncoordinated – that I was doomed to admire others’ physical ability while regretting my own inability. I used to think that if someone wasn’t a natural athlete, there wasn’t any chance of being skilled physically. It’s only recently that I am discovering that physical skills can be learned and that my block to tumbling can be shifted.
I’m not sure where I developed this fatalist view of my physical talents
– most likely a combination of slow physical development combined with a lack of good learning opportunities. (My first physical memory is my younger brother learning how to ride a bike before I did and how frustrated and embarrassed I felt.)
No matter, it’s a fascinating feeling to confront my own built-in prejudices against myself. I never knew that I could learn to catch a ball decently or increase my flexibility drastically or improve my coordination and balance. But I’ve yet to conquer these rolls. When I try shoulder rolls, I find myself getting frustrated and scared and in tears. My mental chatter is so loud that I am paralyzed.
And yet I can’t give up. My son is convinced that I can succeed and I am surrounded by others who have faced the same hurdle. I have amazing instructors who help me. They are gentle, wonderfully patient, and caring, who so firmly believe that I can succeed that their positive attitude is contagious.
I am discovering ways to support myself. Knowing that I need lots of time to practice. Knowing that facing my fears doesn’t mean forcing myself to “just do it”, it means easing myself into learning this, taking plenty of time, getting plenty of assistance. I am working with another EFT (emotional freedom techniques) practitioner to release the phobia-like fear I have of tumbling. I discovered that I am a kinesthetic learner – and most teachers teach visually – so I am learning to ask for instruction in a way that makes sense to me.
This might seem like a trivial challenge to some of you – after all, I don’t need to learn how to roll in order to live or succeed or thrive.
Yet the lessons are enormous as I look at my children. When I watch my children, I see my daughter with the same tendency to frustration. She is physically gifted and yet if she can’t do something, she gets so frustrated she cries, goes away, and has to try by herself before calming down. My son, who is less physically talented, is full of self-confidence and convinced he can do anything. He is totally sure of himself. I don’t know why they are so different. I do know that they both learn very differently and so need different support.
I used to tutor math to college athletes. I am firmly convinced that anyone can learn to be comfortable with math and I was very successful at finding ways to teach in a way that each student could get it. There was no doubt to me that it was possible; and yet it never occurred to me that the same was true for physical abilities. What a wonderful, liberating thing to discover …. we can learn, no matter our age. We can learn math or rolling or singing or painting …. all those things we wished we can do, we can.
My wish for all children is that as they move along their learning journey, they find it easy. And when they find it hard, my wish is that they find the support they need so that they firmly know they can succeed.
Much love to all,
Deborah
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