To the uninitiated, martial arts training is all about kicking, punching, and self defence. Of course, this is understandable. When you mention martial arts to someone they are likely to have only been exposed to it in movies: The Karate Kid, Jackie Chan films, etc. At a seminar last year (2019), SIKJN Alex Suh told us to stop watching these. He claimed they aren’t about martial arts, they’re about fighting; they provide the biggest misconception of what martial arts is about, and they don’t even begin to showcase true martial arts to even the slightest degree. When you begin training for yourself however, you begin to see that there is a lot more to it and the physical, self-defence side of it really is just the tip of the iceberg.
For most, the first further aspect of training which gets exposure is the importance of good etiquette and respect. These are key principles in Kuk Sool, and most other martial arts for that matter. They really are the most important things to the point that they are the first thing that appear on every grading sheet in Kuk Sool – even for senior black belt gradings. It is upon this realisation that you begin to see that martial arts training is just as much about your attitude and mindset as it is your physical ability.
When you progress a bit further into your martial arts training, you may begin to hear people talking about the “black belt mindset”. But what is this? To those unversed in martial arts, a black belt may be a piece of fabric which represents the ability to beat someone up. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Although, yes, the person wearing the black belt may posses the skill to do this, the black belt shows that they won’t. In the words of Miyamoto Musashi, “The ultimate aim of martial arts is not having to use them”. This is a part of the black belt mindset, and among a whole host of things, I think this is one of the most key parts. But what else is there?
In martial arts, the phrase “mind, body, spirit” is thrown around a lot, but not many people dissect this to see what it is actually referring to. When you get to thinking about it, it’s not actually too hard to see what this means. Through martial arts training, your mind, body and spirit should work in harmony, and you should be able to take and adapt almost any aspect of what you will learn within martial arts to anything in life, martial arts related or not. A good example of this came to me in our recent “basic principles” class. JDKJN Martin (our school owner and seventh degree black belt) talked about how in Kuk Sool, our techniques work in a flowing, circular motion (See You-Won-Hwa). While this is true, it is within the black-belt mindset and the martial arts spirit to seek a deeper, allegorical meaning in this.
For me, it is apparent that this particular example can be applied to every day life, with almost anything that is thrown at you. Almost everyone has inconveniences and negative happenings thrown their way on a daily basis. Instead of meeting these head on, force-on-force, we should seek to redirect the energy from these events to solving them harmoniously and peacefully, and dealing with other things. In doing this, we are allowing ourselves to grow and develop as martial artists and as people. We should not waste energy on something which is trying to hurt us or distract us from our own progression and development. We should redirect such things and spend our own energy as well as the energy from these negative happenings on better things, which are more worth our time and effort.
There are many examples of concepts and principles in martial arts which we can see to have a deeper, allegorical, philosophical meaning which can be applied in our every day lives to make us better people. To me, this is what the martial arts spirit is about; this is the black-belt mentality; and this is why we train in Martial Arts. We don’t learn to kick and punch and to beat people up; we learn to improve ourselves and to make the world a better place.
There is so much more to martial arts than what you may see now and this applies to everyone, from complete starters to the highest ranking masters in the world. There’s always a new take on something you’ve done for years, and there’s always something more for you to discover on your martial arts journey. When you reach the peak of one mountain, a magnificent view of the other mountains yet to be climbed is revealed. The journey never stops and there is always more to be explored.
