Brown belt grading for me on monday evening. It feels significant. As Sensei Kevin says: from here you can smell the black belt. But that depends if I get through. I don’t think I ever imagined I would get this far. Now I can’t see myself giving up until I am just clearly too old. Not that I am looking forward to the actual grading: two hours of incredibly hard work which I am just hoping I manage without losing my wits, being overcome with exhaustion or my arms getting too battered to continue. Hopefully I will get through. If I do it will feel fantastic.
I haven’t written for a while. Partly because all my writing time is going into a book I have been commissioned to write on Feldenkrais for actors (very exciting) and partly because I still can’t write about martial arts in anything other than a personal journey kind of way as I am just not remotely an ‘authority’ and I didn’t have any more to say about it for a while. But recently Sensei Kevin asked me something about what I had learnt from Karate and how it was affecting my Feldenkrais work with clients and my Feldenkrais Trainer, Garet Newell, was curious about aspects of it too and as I think I am the only Feldenkrais Practitioner who does Karate (as opposed to other martial arts) I thought this grading was an interesting time to re-collect my thoughts around those good questions. Continue reading “Karate Brown Belt: ‘Self-image’ and Strength”