Defense Against What?

The most obvious reason for training in martial arts is to learn self-defense. But defense against what?

When I began training at age 17, my motive was clear. I wanted to be able to defend myself against the bullies and bad guys I expected to encounter in an adventurous life.

Not that I was the 90-pound weakling who got sand kicked in his face at the beach. I was a decent athlete, had wrestled in high school and had done ok in the fistfights that were a major form of recreation in the small Midwestern town where I grew up.

I didn’t enjoy those fights and didn’t provoke them. But I was raised with the blue-collar Irish values that say you turn the other cheek only if you’re winding up to throw a punch. Losing a fight brought shame, but not standing up to a bully brought total disgrace. It would be many years before I began to question the wisdom of a code of honor that, when strictly adhered to, inevitably sucks you into a cycle of violence.

I was in my early 30s when it realized I had outgrown my initial motivation for training. By then I had transitioned from Okinawan Karate to Korean Tae Kwon Do and then onto Chinese Shoalin, Tai Chi and Xing Yi.

My martial arts had steadily improved over the years, but I kept raising the bar on my expectations. Early on, my goal was to earn a black belt. But by the time I got a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, I realized that the most important thing I had learned was how little I knew.

When I moved to California and began training in Chinese styles, self-defense was still a strong motivation. But it gradually dawned on me that I would need to be paranoid and extravagantly wasteful of my time to train hours a day, year after year, solely to hone fighting skills I might never use.

Yes, there were a few dicey moments over the years along dark streets and in rowdy bars. And yes, my work as a journalist covering stories in more than a dozen countries several times put me in situations where I was glad to have had years of martial arts training under my belt. But I knew even that might prove useless against an assailant with a gun – and I then lived in Oakland, where lots of menacing people carried guns.

So why keep training? Because by then I had discovered that self-defense is merely one dimension of martial arts, and that even self-defense is often too narrowly defined. What threatens us at 20 can be very different from what puts us at risk at 40 or 60, when the possibility of getting mugged may seem much less likely than suffering a massive heart attack or stroke.

But just as martial arts training can protect against a mugger, it can also defend against infirmities. Tai Chi is revered in China for its health benefits, helping people stay flexible and fit deep into old age. It benefits mental health as well, helping to control stress and regulate neurotic and destructive impulses.

Martial arts also offer the athletic and aesthetic challenges that attract people to other sports and movement arts. Great joy can be found in the pure motion of martial arts, as well as in the refinement of difficult techniques.

And finally, there is that often elusive quest for spiritual growth, a term sometimes linked to martial arts but one so laden with baggage and vulnerable to misunderstanding that every mention of it needs to start with a definition.

Here’s mine: Spiritual growth is ever more intimate identification with the great cosmic totality of which I am already a part.

On some mornings when I practice Tai Chi in my backyard, it feels as if my skin dissolves and I no longer feel a separation from the wind, the sun and the songs of the birds. I feel full and content, free of anticipation and regret or the internal chatter of a restless mind.

Those moments are fleeting. But over the years they have arrived with greater frequency and lasted longer. They have become for me the greatest benefit of martial arts, one I never imagined when I began training so many years ago.