As we find ourselves smack bang in the middle of a global crises where nearly everything is closed and house arrest has been respectfully asked of us all (except critical workers (Gods bless them)), I thought it time to reflect on my personal experience of the last weeks/months and the role Martial Arts has had on it.
Where to start? I guess everybody’s favourite month – January. I had survived Christmas without a blemish which was an improvement from previous year when both the wife and I got laid flat by nasty, nasty flu for the entire festive period, so much so the 11-year-old kid had to cook and clean for us. So, to get through this year reasonably unscathed was nice. Work was busy but I was feeling very positive about my progress on a huge internal project, and I was ready to wind down the debaucherous levels of eating and drinking and ramp up my training in readiness to grade for 2nd Dan at Easter, so generally life was good….
…. then in February my annual slump into the doldrums occurred and I once again hit rock bottom for no obvious reason. Ok work did start to be proving difficult and frustrating, my body seemed to be sending me signals that it wasn’t happy with the extra load at the Dojo with things going ping, pop and twang, but there was nothing big that warranted this latest in a long line of crashes.
Time to get this shit sorted, and a short story even shorter turns out I have Recurrent Depressive Disorder (bipolar for short whenever I’m discussing it) which has been an unwelcome companion my whole life, born with it the Shrink reckons. It certainly explains plenty of things least of all the once every 12 months fall into abject sadness. So, signed off from work for lord knows how long, Spring not far away, and a big bag full of tablets to munch on I settled down to mend my mind ‘yet again’ when ….
…… Covid-19 happened! Literarily a week after I started the new happy tabs Boris shut the country down. Well that was bad timing and all rather unfortunate. I couldn’t even augment my drugs and therapy with a visit to the Dojo to beast my demons out with a few of Sensei Sean’s advanced classes. What to do? Karate is massive thing in my life, the Dojo is a sanctuary where pain is weakness leaving the body! It’s a place of healing, regeneration, the dojo is a place where you can safely and in the name of fun go get a punch in the face and pat each other on the back afterwards. And I can’t bloody go because the buffoon in power has ordered the doors locked!
As well as my wonderful girls to keep me company I do have dogs that need walking every day which is a great boon to be fair, strolling out with them twice a day picking up their shite. But of course, out in public everybody is eyeing up everybody else like they have the bloody plague, which they sort of might have. So even a pleasant walk in the woods with the Schnauzer boys brings its own mental challenges. And besides, pandemic or not it is still frowned upon to drop a gyaku zuki on a total stranger in the middle of the afternoon.
“Picked a fine time to lose my mind “, is my new favourite saying.
However, the situation has brought yet another new facet to Karate that wasn’t there before, and one that the great art has probably never seen in all of its long history. Working closely with Sean and Karen and the other Instructors @ SDSMA it became obvious very quickly that we all had to get agile and do so sharpish. We not only had to do what we could to ensure the Dojo could open again when this shit storm is over, but we had to keep ourselves active and sane (some more than others), keep our students active and learning and developing, and also to support all the parents and carers who were house bound with the little darlings. And all of these challenges are underpinned by the fact that it all has to be done via the tinterweb by an ageing bunch of ‘Geezers’ with a varying degree of technical ability and very fat arthritic fingers.
The response has just been fantastic and extremely uplifting when all around us is mostly bad news. The students have got stuck right into the online classes SDSMA are running, and the Students are giving the same levels of commitment as they do at the Dojo. It is a struggle teaching online and we have had to adapt the training to cope with such things as sofas, coffee tables, walls, slippy floors, dodgy wifi, pets/parents/siblings randomly wandering across the tatami and a general lack of space to work in. But the work ethic of those taking part could not be better.
Personally, as a Karate Ka and Sempai with Recurrent Depressive Disorder the daily routine of connecting in and seeing my small group of students each day has been extremely rewarding, and I know the other senior grades/instructors have felt the same. As mentioned above, it is not easy, there is lots of stuff you just cant do, you have to allow for funny camera angles, different floor surfaces, varying space to manoeuvre in and dodgy Wifi links that sometimes freeze leaving a student suspended in mid air with both legs off the floor. But we are all getting on with it as a community, as a club, and that has been extremely beneficial to me and an important aid for my recovery. Its not a substitute for training as a club in our Dojo obv…, with all the Instructors there, on a proper Tatami and room to ‘jump turn crescent kick’ without fear of taking out a vase or killing the cat, but it has proven to be just as valuable to everyone’s wellbeing during this awful period in our lives.
Needless to say, these difficulties and challenges that I speak of are nothing compared to the daily nightmare our critical workers are facing every day. I can’t even begin to imagine what must go through your minds each day as you leave the house for work, and a ‘thank you’ and banging a pan with a spoon once a week hardly seems anywhere near enough.
And I also can’t write about your struggles so instead I have shuffled some words together on a subject I do know about (me), and I dare say many will argue I can’t write about that either, but I have had a go anyway. Hope you enjoy.
Onwards and upwards.
Sempai Jason
Oosss