Problems, problems everywhere, and not a solution to be found. Life is full of problems. I’ve heard many say to me that only the dead don’t have problems, which is probably true… but we’ll find out eventually. The problem is not the problem itself, but rather learning how to deal with the problem. In the case of martial art practitioners, students and the like, as with normal people, we tend to become like ostriches and stick our heads in the sand and hide, hoping that things will get better or simply go away. But as soon as you peek out from under that blanket of denial, the problem is still there like a leftover bad monster decoration from Halloween staring you in the face. We all have problems, big and small, things that hit us sideways and make us wobble and things that just totally pull the rug out from under us. The one thing that we can rely on is the consistency of our martial art practice.
I’ve had many students come to me and say, I have this problem that I’m going through and I need to put my training on the back burner so I can deal with it. I sit there and I shake my head, thinking here we go again. People say, I have XYZ to take care of, therefor I don’t have time to train, but the training is there for you to help yourself have power and grow and maintain your strength and energy. Isn’t that what you signed up for in the first place? Or am I mistaken? Inevitably, every student comes in professing that they want confidence, self-discipline, a better work ethic, a way to relieve their stress, blah, blah, blah. And inevitably they don’t follow through. So they don’t follow through on themselves.
Taking time off from your training when you reach an impasse or more importantly a personal crisis is one of the worst things you can do. It’s just like you’re kicking out one leg from the table. How do you expect it to stand on three legs? You need all the support systems that you can get. People don’t understand that the martial arts training, no matter how rigorous and tedious and seemingly time consuming it may be to you at the moment things are going well, is the one thing that’s going to support you when things are not going well. It’s this infrastructure that you’re going to create through training that will support you over time. It’s the reservoir of strength that you can draw upon.
Once you take the battery of your training out of the unit, which is you, you’re not going to function the same way. That extra energy that you took for granted that you had derived from your martial art training has now been dampened and/or removed. You no longer have the wherewithal to withstand and be able to go beyond the troubles that are presented to all of us in daily life. Case in point, I had a student who was sick on Saturday. I was right next to him all day for four hours. I should be sick too, but I’m not. Why? Because I have enough energy and chi built up in my body that immediately, on a physical level, I block you. Your sickness can’t come through my system. Because we develop the mental toughness, the bad thoughts, or the bad energy, or the depression, doesn’t come through into our minds. Even though we may be exposed to something that’s an ill thought or an ill feeling or a physical ailment, it doesn’t permeate through because we’re strong enough to block it. For example, I have a student who just came from work. The work environment isn’t a good one. There’s a lot of backstabbing and bad attitudes. But he knows that he’s going to come to the Mo Gwoon and train and re-energize himself. You have to sweat it out.
Each one of us requires something unique, something special, something empowering that brings us joy, happiness and a way to circumvent the issues of daily life. The problems may be big or small but that’s really not the crux of what we’re talking about. Rather, what medicine are you going to use to maintain yourself, to maintain your own health, specifically mental health. Mental health will translate into physical health and vice versa. The individual becomes sick or ill not only from physical maladies but also maladies of the mind. Instead of using problems or life altering situations as an excuse to quit, you should engross yourself in the training even more. Don’t be an ostrich and hide your head in the sand. Now’s the time to get up and fight. I know it’s hard. Maybe you’re depressed or sad, and you might want to give up. Maybe you don’t know how to handle things. But when you train consistently in your Kung Fu, you find a respite; you find a safe haven; you find a place that you can reenergize, regroup, or at the very least go away from those issues for an hour or two and come back refreshed and be able to handle them better.
On a purely physical level, training gives you a rigorous physical exercise. When we engage in rigorous exercise, it releases endorphins. Endorphins are the body’s feel good drug. Why don’t you want to feel good? You don’t even have to pay for these drugs; they’re already in you. All you have to do is work a little bit and sweat, and they start moving. There aren’t any ill side effects, either, so I say, be a junkie for Kung Fu. Somebody might say, why can’t I do this at Planet Fitness? I can do the same thing going on a run or going to the gym. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s just not the same. Training Kung Fu, you have to train your mind to fight. In this instance, we’re talking about fighting off anything that’s malevolent, be it from within or from without. You must adopt a warrior’s mentality. It’s a 100% commitment to that endeavor. So, this is different from your garden-variety workout that you’re going to get at a gym. There’s no one in the gym pushing you the way your Sifu will push you. Your Sifu will push you to the max, so that some days you will love him and some days you will despise him. This relationship between the teacher and the student is another integral part of the training that you won’t get if you go to Crossfit. Ultimately, those same students always come back to me and thank me for pushing them all the time because they made it through whatever situation they were going through. The training on the inside gives you an armor that protects you.
From a very basic point of view, the training is also a diversion. What happens is you get so embroiled in the problem or situation that’s going on at that point in time – and I’m not making light of it – but we all have a tendency to blow things out of proportion. You need a way to step back from the edge. It’s easy to say, step back, relax, take a break, but the body and the mind need a route, some particular way to facilitate that step back. I’ve said many times to the students, your Kung Fu training is your circuit breaker. So when the fuse is blown and it trips the switch and all the lights go out, how do you reset it? We can’t go to the hardware store and buy a brand new you. Once your fuse is blown, you yourself have to have a way to reset. So this is very apropos because Kung Fu training is all about learning the way, the Tao, the nature of things. The first thing that you have to learn from the example of nature is your way. You have to know the way of the person, the human being, and how to help yourself reset your own circuit. This is no easy task. Because of the way we’re hard wired and because of our so-called intelligence, we have a tendency to stray from the way, the nature of the human being. Animals are already attuned to the way; they only know the way that they’re supposed to be. They don’t sit there and contemplate themselves; they just follow their nature. So in one way they’re better off than we are. We tend to create our own problems. Because we have a tendency to escalate and/or create our own situations, we need to find a way to untie those knots that have bound us up.
Keeping a clear, strong, focused mind is at the core of martial art training and is also the thing that’s going to get you through the hard times. A clear, calm, cool head prevails above all. As I’ve said before in many of my Kung Fu In A Minute movies, even in fighting, you must be the eye of the storm, and in the eye of the storm, it’s calm. When you’re calm, cool and collected, the same problems that would have otherwise torn you down now only serve as a catalyst to make you stronger. You learn how to persevere and fight for yourself and overcome anything that may be holding you back.
The martial art training has the effect that if you continually play, it helps you find your way back to the real you. It helps you to reset yourself, bring yourself back to zero and be able to start again. At the end of the day, your problems don’t evaporate. They don’t float away on a cloud, but you have, through your training, been able to release the stress and the tension. You’ve found a new strength or have renewed your strength through the challenges that the training has put you through and will do again and again. In truth, an hour or two spent every day for your own personal gain, mental and physical health, is not a lot to ask of yourself for yourself, and everyone that’s connected to you benefits, too. So, whether you’re the CEO of a major conglomerate or the soccer mom down the block or a high school senior that just needs that extra bolstering from something more than what you get on a regular basis, your Kung Fu training is always there for you, and once learned, digested and consumed will be with you forever. It’s something you will always be able to turn to. You find yourself again. That’s what it’s all about. You may have lost the way but found it again through the training. It’s not from an external source. The martial arts gives you an internal way to rediscover and reaffirm and strengthen the individual. Other methodologies that do not give you self-power, are not true methodologies that give you the tools to open yourself up and release the power you need to take care of your problems. Because as we said before, the problems don’t go away.
Through your practice and its positive effects on your physical and emotional state, it, at the very minimum, becomes a release valve for the stress, tension and even depression that the individual will go through when problems arise, which inevitably they do. It’s the one bastion, the one sanctuary, the one safe place that one can turn to as a cathartic method to relieve all those things that ail the individual while giving them the strength to withstand, undergo, cope with, and eventually confront and conquer the challenges and problems that come with living. This is the true gift of martial art training and why the classical martial arts, the way they are taught with focus on personal improvement, empowerment as well as discipline, will always have a place in our society.
We are all presented with issues big and small, and you need to find a way to overcome them. My personal way to tap into the energy that we have is through my martial art training. From age 16 to 60 plus and beyond, it’s a very special kind of psychological drug that you can take.
You don’t know what’s coming and you don’t know how you’re going to handle it. But what’s worse is wallowing in that cesspool of self-pity, doubt and fear. When you come to train and Sifu yells at you and forces you to do things that aren’t comfortable, and all of a sudden you lose yourself to the practice, all the self-pity, doubt and fear flies away from you like dead skin coming off a snake. You peel it off and become new again. The problems aren’t gone, but somehow, physically and mentally you become transformed and you can better deal with whatever comes your way. When you face your fears head on and accept the challenge, you feel so light and powerful, as though you could fly from one building another because you’ve overcome this thing, this problem, this black cloud. You were able to face that fear head-on because of your marital art training. It’s like you had that golden sword in your hand and you just cleaved through the clouds. You can breathe again. You can’t be an ostrich. I don’t think in Kung Fu we have an ostrich system; if they do, I don’t want to learn it. Ha ha.
Everybody has had their mom or their auntie or someone in their family say, don’t touch this, don’t do that, be careful of this, watch out. You’ve been trained in a way to perceive problems as problems. Let’s rather perceive the problems as daily challenges that have been set in front of you, those tests that I talk about that happen every day. “They” have conditioned you to become fearful; now train yourself to become fearless. This is what you gain from the martial arts.
I’ll tell you the truth; I didn’t really want to write a blog today, but I set myself upon the task and wanted to rise up to meet the challenge, so this is what I came up with. See what you can do when you take your head out of the sand? Kung Fu saved the day again.
-Sifu Paul Koh 高寶羅