“From the moment we are born to the moment we die, we must constantly try to improve. If we do not, we die. It is our obligation as human beings…” (End quote) – Joon Pyo Choi 10th Dan SongMooKwan
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We had a great class on Saturday. Those moments where a student has a lightbulb moment and says; “ah, I get it now, I get what you’ve been trying to tell me.” Some of our students had an epiphany when working on a drill, and they saw the connection to the application practices that are contained within the kata.
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Those lightbulb moments are fantastic. Believe it or not, I too had a few of them over the years. But inevitably those lightbulb moments may make you look back on what you have been doing and you may feel like you have been wasting your time. Perhaps thinking that you haven’t been as productive as you could, you could be so much further forward in your understanding.
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Well guess what? You were able to have that epiphany because of that prior training. Without that prior training, without all of the context, you would not have had that lightbulb moment.
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You can teach someone something, but quite often they have to feel it for themselves. Sometimes they have to experience it the wrong way before they get the feeling of it being right, or…. “ah, now I get it.”
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What happens when you come to a realization where, something as fundamental as a punch, or a basic movement, or even the way you “block” has to change. Not because what you were doing was wrong, but because you’ve now discovered something that resonates better for you, something you had not noticed before.
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This is one of the great things about the martial arts. That constant growth leads to not just more, because there’s only so many ways that we can move our bodies, but to put in the time and to realize there maybe a better way of doing this.
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Often these “aha moments” don’t require exclusively physical training, sometimes it’s mental training, sometimes it’s sitting down and considering, contemplating everything that you do and have been doing and trying to understand how it all pieces together. This mental component is much larger than you initially believe it to be.
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Wherever you are in your training you can always see there is another step. Sometimes it’s a difficult step, sometimes it can just take time. Whatever it is, you now have a better vision of who you are becoming as a martial artist, and it’s simply going to take time. To become that martial artist that you now want to become, and that’s fine. It’s a process. It’s not the belt, it’s not the trophy, it’s about becoming a better person, through becoming a better martial artist….. And that’s why I love these moments. 
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 Photo Credit: CityScene Media Group…Quote courtesy of: Joon Pyo Choi 10th Dan
SongMooKwan
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