Martial Arts--The Cure All?

Since returning to Boise for a little while I decided to open up the phone book and take a glance at what my beautiful hometown had to offer. I was pleasantly impressed by the amount of new schools available to people now, but what really caught my eye was one add in particular. It touted off a list of what their school gave to their students. Confidence! Discipline! Respect! Honesty! Integrity! That was just the beginning of the list. My question is--how do they instill these in their students.

It's not that I disbelieve that these can be offered through the martial arts. To the contrary. My skepticism comes in how this is accomplished. I guess I feel a bit disillusioned by the claims being thrown around. In your own experience, do the people in your classes seem to be more confident than those you meet day to day? Is there an air of respect and dignity that accompanies those who train that goes above the norm? What about honesty and integrity?

I was talking about this with a friend this morning. My experience has shown me that there are a lot of blanket claims thrown around in the martial arts world that may or may not actually have any meaning behind them. The important thing to learn from all this, however, is that SOMETHING draws people to the martial arts. What is it? What is it for you? Do you expect to gain more confidence as you move about in the world? Are you looking for discipline or a sense of respect? As an instructor, do you know what it is that brings your students in day after day? If you're not the instructor then are you making sure that your purposes are being met? You may have to take it upon yourself to find meaning and personal growth in the martial arts.

The question then is: How? How can you train in a way that you will become more confident in yourself in all aspects of your life? Or develop more respect or integrity--or whatever? It won't come from just learning katas and and new kicks year after year. In fact, there are two ingredients that are not only mandatory for your personal growth but will also guarantee it. Those two ingredients are: Intent and Focus. I'll end this here as sort of a bit of a rant. I actually plan on writing more on the topic of personal growth and the martial arts and even putting up podcasts on the subject. Until then I hope you'll take some time to think about these things yourself and maybe come up with your own answers.