I began my husband's karate class in 1989 after the birth of my first child. My reasons were simple; I wanted to spend more time with my husband while attempting to lose the seventy pounds I had put on during the pregnancy.
Until I began my training, I had never had a desire to participate in any form of martial arts. In fact, I really couldn't stand the stuff due to all the hokey Saturday morning movies where the Chinese villain's mouth moved three minutes just to say, "Kill her." I smiled, listened to his newest self-defense techniques and nodded at the appropriate time while he spoke about his "other love."
At the age of 29, when I finally joined my husband in going to the dojo, I went in with the attitude that I really was going to try and learn. Much to my surprise, I soon discovered that I enjoyed it. I also realized that no matterhow much effort I put into my training, the results came back ten-fold.
I moved quickly up through my belt colors while practicing my sparring techniques and fine-tuning my personal favorite activity of Katas. When I became a green belt (fourth belt in my style) my husband and I started to compete in tournaments around the state of Texas. I continued my training and received my first-degree black belt in 1991.
By this time I had lost the excess weight and felt better than ever. I could climb a full flight of stairs carrying the baby without stopping half a dozen times. During round robin sparring, I was able to continue in the center for up to twenty minutes, and one hundred fifty sit-ups were a piece of cake. Then all of a sudden, all hell broke loose. My abusive childhood came back to bite me in the rear.
As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, I began to have trouble with all the attention I received from men due to my new fit body and size. Tournaments became a nightmare because every person judging me in any division was always a man. Each time we went to a tournament, I became physically sick and unable to breathe. I also experienced anxiety and panic attacks.
Although I didn't give up my martial arts training, I stopped competing for quite some time. As the repressed anger, fear and memories started bubbling to the surface, my husband and I decided to turn our martial arts in a new direction by teaching self-defense and rape prevention to women and children. In doing so, I turned a living nightmare into something good.
The heavy punching bag in our dojo has been a Godsend. When the nightmares or anger become overwhelming, it absorbs all I can dish out and waits for more. By envisioning my abusers as part of the bag, I can stay focused, yell, cry, punch and kick until the anger is gone. If my hands give out before the anger, I have a handy baseball bat that just happens to love contact with the big bag.
At other times, I can put on a soothing musical tape and practice for hours doing nothing but Kata. Each movement, slow and deliberate, with each exhaling breath releasing a little more of the anxiety and tension.
Some days when the anxiety hits hard, I will simply lock myself in the building and do nothing but the stretches I was taught as a white belt. By the time I am on the floor with my legs stretched open as far as possible with my chest and head resting flat on the floor, the anxiety and tension will have long since been gone.
During our training sessions, I am the only female in the entire school. As such my options are very limited as to sparring and training. I can participate and fight the demons of being attacked by a man or I can sit in the corner afraid. By forcing myself each time to enter the ring or practice the self-defense moves, I am empowering myself to be able to fight back. To stand up as an adult and face life head on. For those who have never been abused or raped, it may be hard to understand just how difficult it is to build up enough gumption to even yell "NO!" at a student who is playing an assailant.
For those women who have thought about joining martial arts for whatever reason, go for it because it is something you will not regret. As for the survivors of child sexual abuse, rape, or sexual assault as an adult, it is a fantastic method of ridding yourself of the anger, hate, anxiety and terror so many of us live with every day of our lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment