Tonight, for the first time in nearly three years, I sat down and started watching the instructional videos that my sensei made 25 years ago. He died two years and six months ago. Last October, when I ran my first half-marathon, I was able finally break through the wall that had blocked my meditation. That race changed me – he was there with me, and I spent much of the 13 miles talking to him, telling him the things I wished I had said before he died.
Last November I received my black belt. It was not given to me based on my current practice. I have not lost what I learned, but I have not increased my learning either. The instructors – masters really – who gave me my belt do not just hand out rank. If they believe I earned it, then I earned it. And I am so grateful. But I never went into this for rank. It has been and always will be about the skill. I think I’m finally ready to pick up where I left off and resume my practice. More than that, I think I need to resume my practice if I am to have any chance at successfully continuing my education.
The more time I spend tracking down the results of my brain injury, the more I’m learning that it has had and will have a direct impact on my ability to learn and remember. One of the greatest things that I ever got from studying martial arts is the ability to improve my learning curve. Even after the accident, the things I learned in the dojo stayed with me in a way that so much else didn’t. I need that advantage now more than ever. And while I’ve had access to the resources – to his training videos – for almost two years now, it is now that I finally feel ready to watch them, and use them.
For the first time my throat didn’t close when he appeared on the screen. For the first time I didn’t feel like I was falling into a dark hole of grief. For the first time I could watch him move and remember how it felt to translate his motion to my body type – longer legs and arms and torso, longer strides, less direct strength, more range, less snap more whip, less of his sharp almost snake-like strikes, more of my long, deceptively relaxed cat-like strikes. He was always the better fighter, but one of the best things he taught me was to accept my body for what it was and to learn to use its strengths and weaknesses to my advantage. We all move differently. That is not a bad thing.
Tonight, or tomorrow, as tonight is late, I will put some of his videos on my laptop, and next week, before work, I will take it to the gym and use one of the yoga rooms and I will practice. The muscle memory is there. I just need to engage the memory memory – a much more difficult task I’ll admit. And as my wrist heals and I work on my memory I’ll decide where I want to go with this next. I’m thinking jiu-jitsu. Or Iaido. I’ve long wanted to develop some skill with the sword. Maybe both. I’ll have to ask my sensei about it this March during my next half-marathon. Somehow I know he’ll be there with me. After all, he’s the one that taught me it was possible in the first place.
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