Hesitation

Damn. I need to decide quick if I am going to go through with the Kidpower instructor certification process. I have been feeling some hesitation about it since my recovery from my hip injury a month back. Not sure why. I was feeling enthusiastic about it since I attended their workshop in July. Since then I have been in contact with their central offices to pursue my desire to be instructor certified in their program. There is a lot of paperwork to sign, another Skype interview I have to do, money that is owed to begin the training, etc, etc. Although I told my contact person that I felt I was ready to move forward, there is a tinge of something holding me back. I'm having to really focus on being honest with myself here. Is it because I think I can't do it? Is it because there are other options out there that I am considering? Is it because I'm not really into all this "personal safety" business as I thought?

In the meanwhile I am continuing to pursue my personal martial arts training with judo and jujutsu. Although a lot is still left to be desired with my training (especially with regards to fitness and flexibility), there isn't much I can do except strive to improve upon what's there.

I am excited for an upcoming Rory Miller seminar that will be towards the end of October. Three days for which I paid an early bird fee of $265. Kind of a lot of money to me right now, but for the amount of insight, information and other illuminations I might get, I am willing to risk it. It's really great that a person like Rory Miller does seminars here in Oakland. I mean, sometimes I forget about the high degree of synchronicity I experience here in Oakland. There are a lot of avenues/opportunities for me to pursue here in the Bay Area. The key is actually pursuing them and not being afraid that it might be the wrong decision. To that end, I am going to fill out my volunteer forms for East Oakland Boxing Association (a non-profit I came across while on a delivery route for my last job) and I may reconsider the specific instructor training path I want to take with Kidpower (I was set on being a padded instructor but I realize there are other types of instructors). 

I have no idea where any of this might lead to; the one thing I am having to remind myself of constantly is that the reason I became interested in personal safety, the reason I became interested in doing Wing Chun and jujutsu, is all because I was trying to make my karate training more relevant, more realistic and more broadminded. I realized from my brief time spent showing karate to young people in Detroit that they needed something that was relevant to their immediate personal safety needs. Simply showing them any one of the 15 kata I memorized from my previous 5 years of training, while interesting and exotic, was not the reason I was interested in showing them karate in the first place. The "self-defense" aspect of karate has been disconnected from in the modern era and until my personal situation allows me the flexibility to pursue "practical karate" training, I am going to make do with what is here. It's like I've blogged about previously; I broke down karate into three areas that I feel are important for me to pursue and what I see as being interconnected parts of an entire whole: Fitness, Personal Safety, Self-defense.

That's why I started taking up judo twice a week because I really needed a good sweat; that's why I signed up for the Rory Miller seminar because I really want a reality check in learning about how to deal with violence; and that's why I'm going to reconsider the instructor training path with Kidpower. I simply need to keep pursuing and acting on the things that were made apparent to me in Detroit.

There is no "try".

Elbow SMASH!

- Hiji Até