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Martial Arts

Why Martial Arts?

Many people today are uncentered in their lives - are out of shape, stressed out, and/or lack a sense of where they fit within the universe. While certainly not a universal remedy, many find martial arts training helpful in achieving this balance between the physical, the mental, and the spiritual. 

Under proper instruction and within the proper environment, martial arts training can help fulfill the following needs:

1. The desire for self-defense training
2. The desire for a physical workout
3. The desire for mental calmness, self-confidence, and inner peace
4. The desire for spiritual reflection and a greater understanding of one's inner self and position within the universe.

Which Art?

There are many arts to choose from and each has a long history, tradition, and emphasis. Many of the more popular arts, such as karate, tae kwon do, kendo, fencing, and judo, have a sporting emphasis - they teach certain striking and defensive techniques that can be used to score "points" within  competition matches.

There is also a line of martial arts that some might refer to as "Warrior Arts". These martial arts were the ones developed centuries ago to teach warriors how to fight on the battlefield - with weapons and unarmed. Over the centuries, as the countries entered into peacetime eras, these warrior arts were sometimes outlawed, sometimes changed, sometimes taken underground. New arts were created, as discussed above, which became more sportlike and emphasized less the techniques one would use on the battlefield and more the techniques one would use to score a point during a match. Or the battlefield aspects of the arts were distilled into canonical or meditative forms (such as iai). For example, kenjutsu is the classical art of swordsmanship - fighting and training techniques to use with a real sword. The modern sport version is kendo - fighting and training with bamboo swords to score points against the opponent. And note that these martial arts are not just from the East - Western martial arts has a long historical martial arts tradition - just as long as, and in some cases longer than, the Eastern martial arts. The Western martial arts also have this Sport/Warrior split. Olympic Fencing is the sport version of the some of the Western martial arts. But the historical Western martial arts teach fighting not with light, whippy, swords to score points, as in Olympic fencing, but how to fight with a variety of weapons, shields, and armour situations. Thus, the classical, or warrior arts emphasize training and techniques as taught centuries ago for use on the battlefield, unlike the modern sport arts. 

As for which art you should choose, that is a very personal decision. Whether you choose a sport art or a historical martial art, the key is to find an instructor and dojo/salle with integrity, experience, skill, and balance. Many dojos/salles or instructors will claim that their method is "the most authentic" or "the most effective" or some such nonsense. I would avoid places that emphasize such hype rather than emphasizing substance and teaching of techniques. In the end, it is up to you, the martial arts student, that determines the value of the instruction you receive. Where I live I have the benefit of a variety of Western as well as Eastern martial arts to choose from. Here are some groups that I can recommend:

• WMA: Salle Green
• WMA: MASHS
• WMA: Order of the Seven Hearts
• EMA: Aikido of Northern Virginia
• EMA: Capital Area Budokai

Martial Arts Research

There is a lot of research being done in martial arts to try to understand the ancient martial arts texts that exist, both in the Eastern as well as the Western martial arts traditions. But it is often very difficult to understand exactly what the original author wrote hundreds of years ago - exactly how to perform the techniques and movements described in the text. Moreover, it is often unclear in what context the techniques or movements were meant to be used. As a result, there is a lot of politics among today's martial arts practitioners, both in the East and in the West, about which technique is the "correct" technique and who has a better interpretation of that technique.

Proper research into these ancient martial arts texts can help resolve some of these differences. Researching martial arts techniques is not just flipping through some old books and playing with the techniques in the air. Proper martial arts research utilizes research methodologies found in other research areas, such as ethnography research, social sciences, history, and information systems. For more information on this topic, and as an addition to the growing literature on martial arts research, please see the paper I have written, "Understanding Ancient Martial Arts Texts: Pooh and Hermeneutics", published in InYo: The Journal of Alternative Perspectives on the Martial Arts and Sciences, December, 2000.

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