I wanted to submit the following piece to Clinch, but I was late by a day. They told me to maybe try again in June. I spent quite a bit of time on it, so I wanted to share it. It’s a semi-autobiographic (i.e. edited for clarity and humor) account of my introduction to martial arts:
working title: this is your brain on judo
After three college semesters living in perpetual stress, I decided to find inner peace. I tried meditation apps, yoga, and even invested in a self-care journal. These things helped me cultivate mindfulness when I was alone. However, all my calm went out the window while navigating college’s biggest challenges: taking tests, giving presentations, and coping with dining hall food.
Like most people, I don’t spend all my time separated from the outside world. I could find inner peace if I was a monk, because everything that could possibly stress me out lives outside monastery walls. It takes guts to give up your earthly possessions. But let’s face it—many of us would be miserable without the stuff that stresses us out: relationships, communities, our hopes and dreams, etc. I wanted a mindfulness method that would let me have my cake and eat it too. Cake, as it turns out, is not on the monastery’s menu (I checked).
I turned to philosophy for some answers. Texts like The Bhagavad Gita and The Wisdom of Insecurity espoused the importance of acting with a clear mind but offered no practical advice for doing so. One day, I stumbled upon an unlikely solution to my mindfulness problem: Bruce Lee. I didn’t know he was an author until I picked up his book, Striking Thoughts. While flipping through the pages, I found the following passage titled “Stillness in movement”:
The stillness in stillness is not the real stillness, only when there is stillness in movement does the universal rhythm manifest.
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts
Many people meditate in a controlled environment: alone, away from family, work, romance, and everything else that causes them stress. Lee maintains that stillness of mind is most valuable if we can retain it during “movement,” or the happenings of everyday life. I thought about ways of incorporating this practice into my life. As I got farther into the book, I realized he answer was right in front of me: I should start practicing martial arts.
Bruce Lee convinced me that martial arts would help me tackle life’s greatest challenges. As a student, these included midterms, fraternity brothers, and living in a college dorm. Though my university offered martial arts, the only one that worked with my schedule was judo. I expected judo to be a lot like karate, with striking and chopping, all while maintaining a considerable distance from my opponents.
This was not at all the case. Judo was more like wrestling than karate. Looking around the room on my first day, I saw that I was one of three female students, meaning: I was going to be up close and personal with a group notorious for poor hygiene—college-age men. I reminded myself that dealing with smelly, immature people was part of the reason I signed up for martial arts. If I could fight these guys on the mat, I could handle anything.
I soon found out, that I didn’t have to worry about being thrown on the mat by a man twice my size, at least for a couple weeks. Instead, we did all sorts of weird exercises: the worm, piggyback rides, and yelling. Lots of yelling. Pretty much everything short of waxing on, waxing off, and actually fighting each other was up for grabs. Because it was 2018 and the Karate Kid (remake) had been out for a while, I had a feeling that these movements had a purpose. But around week 3, I was beginning to feel hopeless. I didn’t know how to fight, I didn’t have inner peace, and I was beginning to smell like my classmates.
When I watched Karate Kid, I didn’t really understand the mental fatigue involved in attaining total muscle memory. It took a long time for me to get comfortable running around with someone on my back. But, after a month of piggybacking, I could easily (and safely) flip someone over my shoulder. It was like musicians drilling scales or actors memorizing their scripts: you had to get the motions down before you could make them your own. The same could be said for meditation and breath regulation: we have to practice until these techniques become a part of our physiology instead of a daily habit we check off the to-do list.
Keeping calm under stress involves more than just muscle memory. When we actually got to fighting, no matter how many piggyback rides I gave, I had to learn how to adapt to my opponent’s fighting style. That’s why martial arts—or anything involving an adversary—is a better teacher for performing under pressure than something you do alone. Maybe if Rocky spent more time in the ring and less time smacking around cold cuts, he would’ve beat Apollo Creed.
There’s large body of work suggesting it’s easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than it is to think yourself into a new way of acting. That’s why the best way to teach any lesson is to put yourself through a physical test—it’ll end up challenging you mentally too. Author Haruki Murakami writes about how pushing himself physically as a runner helped push himself mentally as a writer. Yogis understand that breath regulation while pushing your physical limits help expand your mental limits outside the studio. If we want to get better at conquering life’s adversaries, we must first conquer our bodies.
While a few injuries and the COVID-19 pandemic cut my judo career short, I learned a new way of thinking: that a new way of thinking involves laying a considerable amount of groundwork. We must undo mental patterns and behaviors that we’ve unconsciously built up throughout our lives. Practicing martial arts showed me that our internal calm is determined by our reactions to the outside world; it also helped me maintain that calm when things get chaotic. I once told a Muay-Thai boxer that I found the psychology of combat sports fascinating. She called me ridiculous and all but laughed me out of the coffee shop we were sitting in. I hope I’ve convinced you otherwise 🐻
This Week’s Top Three
- Ice Skating at the Oakland Ice Center ⛸ – great confidence-builder and humility check
- Getting back into a regular yoga practice 🧘🏾♀️ – I haven’t fixed everything wrong with my body, but at least I’m more aware of it
- Del Valle Regional Park – for some South Bay fun. As a bonus, got to hike with a dog and eat a big salad afterwards.