Disability in Martial Arts Part 2: Finding your way forward.

As a disabled person, you have many roadblocks in your life. There are things that people assume that you cannot do. In life, when you reach a roadblock you cannot quit, you need to get around it and move forward. Martial Arts teaches you how to do this. If you are disabled, then you must do martial arts.

Two karate students from the same dojo are walking down the street and come across two attackers. One student, meets an attack, blocks, and returns a few strikes subduing the attacker. The second student ducks an attack instead of blocking, returning a few strikes and stopping his attacker. Which one is better?

The answer is neither is better. The action that they took was different but they had the same result. They had a different way of facing an attack. There are several different martial arts and several ways to approach a situation.

One thing that has stuck with me in all my years of martial arts training is that no one is good at anything immediately. It takes practice and the sooner this is realized, the better things are.

It is not like in the movies where someone picks up martial arts in a few weeks and is tournament-ready. It takes time to develop a skill and practice. As a disabled man, this was not an easy thing to learn. Take sparring, as illustrated in my last article I had to learn to love the mirror and practice my stances. As a martial artist, this is important because there is no way something can’t be done. In an attack, we need to handle the problem and survive. In the dojo, we learn to do this.

In this dojo, when I reached purple belt I was able to take up nunchucks. As a person with cerebral palsy, I was very nervous about how I could do this. The Cha Sin Do form originally had a chuck form that had several passes to each hand and this was not in my ability. With my Sensei, we created a new form that included all the strikes and blocks but single-handedly. I found my way.

As mentioned before, with two students being attacked on the street, neither was better. They still got the job done. As a disabled man, I learned in the moment of creating the nunchaku form with Sensei Gifford that I could make it in life and the disability is part of me, but it does not define me.

In the dojo, you may not spar well at first like myself but I took the time to develop a style for myself that worked for me that was close up and on my side that is strong. Like in life, you go towards what you know as comfortable and away from what you don’t know that is dangerous.

As a dear friend of mine says “There are tools in the sidekick.” It’s not just kicks and punches in the dojo these are life lessons that carry us through our life. In the real world, it is possible that you may encounter a pothole on the road, do you just go home? Or call your boss to say you are not coming in because there is a pothole? Of course, the answer is no. You need to find a way around this. You remember to breathe, look for alternatives if one way does not work, and practice that new way until you are unstoppable.

If you are dyslexic, then you may find a video to learn information instead of a book. You may have a form of autism but hyper-focus and get great at one thing. You have an anxiety disorder but focus on little moments to get the job done. You learn these things in martial arts.

In Conclusion, if you are disabled, you must do Martial arts. Martial arts will help you forge your path forward and continue on in your journey of life in every way.