When I was seven years old, I started to learn judo. My mother has claimed that it was her idea. The reasoning she gave was that she was worried my brother and I would be a target for bullies.
What actually happened was that one of the teachers at our primary school mentioned the judo classes. They were to begin that evening in the older building of the school. My parents were taken aback by the quieter of their two sons being the one to mention it. My father was thrilled that I had shown some interest in an activity that could be seen as manly; my mother's reaction would be best described as ambivalence.
After a while, we moved to a new home. The same instructor was teaching at a nearby community centre. It didn't take long for us to work out that, if we stayed on the mat after the children's class, he didn't mind if we took part in the adult class too. Our parents judged this as getting good value for money. Essentially, it meant that the seven years I was to spend learning judo had more learning packed into them.
The purpose of this post isn't to tell you that I was a great judoka. Even if that were the case, I have retained little of what I learned. No, there was something else about the adult class that had a more profound effect, even if I didn't realise it at the time.
At the end of the adult class, something happened which made it different from the children's class. As my brother and I (the only children present) knelt at the edge of the mat, we were fully expecting to bow and be dismissed as usual. Instead, the instructor told everyone to close their eyes and imagine the stress of the day running out of them into the floor below.
The area in which we lived was recently identified as one of the most deprived areas of the UK. Perhaps things got worse since we moved away, or else most of it escaped our attention as children. Judo felt like a break from all of that, for just a few hours a week. Years later, jujitsu lessons would serve the same purpose, but would be a break from something else entirely.
A few months ago, I lost a friend. She was the person with whom I felt most able to discuss spiritual matters. Others might have the impression that I'm not at all spiritual. It's something that's not easy to convey, and an aspect of ourselves that is all too easy to neglect. In counselling theory, it might be described as one of our "configurations of self". For me, martial arts practice is a part of my spiritual configuration of self. There are other components though.
Before the pandemic hit, I used to go to salsa classes once a week. The long drive to Chester was somewhat reminiscent of the long drive I used to take to Enniskillen, for jujitsu lessons. It was always dark on the way home and, at certain times of the year, dark on the way there too. Sometimes it rained. It always felt restorative. There's no better way to describe the feeling, unfortunately.
As I write this, it's dark and it's raining. Maybe it's time to go for a drive...
