The Way Back to the Dojo

Many people who start training in the martial arts discover that the training brings with it many benefits. Physically, training can improve one’s overall fitness, increase flexibility, make one stronger, and improve balance and coordination. Confidence increases as one learns to do things which once seemed scary or difficult, and as one acquires skills useful for self-defense.

Determination and focus are needed as one meets new challenges, and there is a great feeling of satisfaction in surmounting those challenges. Training with others, trusting them and taking care of them, builds awareness, empathy and camaraderie.

It can be a struggle to attend class as often as one would like, but making that effort, creating a place in one’s life for one’s training, is worth it. Even during times when life is busy, if one can just do one’s best to find the time to train when possible, one will continue to improve and to reap all of those benefits. Maybe one can not train four times a week, but two times a week will still bring improvement (albeit slower), and even once a week will keep one connected to the work for the long term. Sometimes, however, life gets in the way. Family, school, work, and other obligations require attention, and one may find that training falls by the wayside. Injuries or illness make going to class impossible for a time. And when life demands much of one, it can become difficult to find the motivation to keep training. And so weeks or months or years go by, and after a while, it can seem impossible to get back to the dojo. But the dojo – some dojo – is still there. Whatever skills one had acquired may be rusty. One may not be as young or as fit as one once was, and find the physical demands more challenging. One may be in a different stage of life, no longer able to train every day, like one did when one was a teenage brown belt. But the path remains, even if one will need to take a different approach to travelling it. And the benefits to be gained from traveling that path are still available, if one can just get started. One of the main struggles I have seen people have when they are trying to get back to training after a layoff – whether that layoff be a couple of months during a rough patch at work, a year or two after some major life event, or the many years separating one from one’s school days, when boundless energy and time allowed for deep immersion in the martial arts – is frustration. It can feel like one is starting from zero, like everything is so much harder than it used to be. But the truth is, if training has touched you in the past, has made a difference to you, has ignited positive changes in you, you are not starting from zero. Your spirit still has the connection to the work. You know its value. And so if you can be patient with yourself, if you can trust the work, if you can accept progressing at your own pace, you can resume your journey.

So whether you were a hot shot karate fighter twenty years ago, or whether you just trained in a martial art for a few months a year ago and really enjoyed it, or whether you are one of our Eizan Ryu members who has not been able to make it to class in a while, the door to the dojo – maybe your previous one, maybe a new one – is open. You just need to walk in.