Mission District Kung Fu Brothers.

Readers of my blog will remember the martial arts class that I'm teaching. I have about 9 students though only about 4 come very consistently. None of them are particularly athletic but all of them work very hard. (I'm speaking of my consistent students.) Truth of the matter is: out of all the many students I have taught in my life-- many of them world-class athletes-- I am most proud of this group of middle-aged nerds.

I think we've been training maybe 20 weeks and I cannot believe the growth they've achieved emotionally. Physically, they're still kind of retarded but none of them are by nature fighters and there's only one natural athlete in the group. But I've never had a group willing to risk more than this one and I'm proud of them.

Aristotle talks about the courage of superiority. I'm used to seeing that. I've trained many high-level guys in much more intense modules where the potential for injury was much greater. But these guys were used to this stuff so there really wasn't much of a stretch to make them do dangerous drills. My students now have to push themselves and confront personal demons just to come to class. That's big deal. One of my students is a committed pacifist who has only come to train because he agreed with my belief that pacifism means nothing without a capacity for violence. Another student has trained martial arts before but in a way that never gave him the personal growth he sought. Why? Because there was no risk and the training asked nothing personally of him. Both these men have grown incredibly in the last 5 months. They are different people now and live in their bodies in whole new ways.

I think that I'm a better teacher now. After my injury, I had to look at what the arts meant to me. I can't fight anymore. I'm a mere shell of my former self. I can defend myself with a knife but I'm not getting into any streetfights. There was this moment in my life right after my injury where I was incredibly despondent. I spent so much of my life practicing something that was apparently meaningless. It took me some years to snap out of that and realize that the lessons that I took away from the arts were still with me. The broken bones and bloody noses bought me something valuable that I can share. I love the Arts and what they gave me. I'm beyond grateful that I have the opportunity to share what I know.