Karate - study in psychology

Ran into an interesting issue at Karate last night.

I was asked by my teacher to go over a sword drill I showed them. We had two “new” students to our class, they both normally take a different class. I started off showing the drill with the teacher then with another student who knows it and all seemed to go well. We then started to break it down into parts to teach the new folks. This is where it got interesting for me.

Background - The school I learned the drill in was a Shotokan school and the teacher was not a bit concerned explaining what each move with the sword was, and what you were trying to do. . . such as cut the other person’s head off to be blunt about it.

Now as we went over the first part of the drill I was trying to explain how to hold the sword, what the moves were, how to block, and how to cut. This included where you were trying to cut as we went through the drill.

The two students I was teaching this to for the first time are both were women for whatever that is worth in this discussion. One of them took to it rather well the other got a little squeamish as we went through the drills. Now the one that took it well is a higher rank, and the other one has been doing this a year or so I would guess. The student that had a problem was trying to put together the move, the effect it would have on your target, and was seeing thing a bit to graphically in her head I think. She did get through it, but I am guessing that the weapon side of Karate is not going to hold much interest for her. Now this is fine, just the first time I have run into this. I am interest in where it will go with her training – Not that I hold it against her, but because the part of me that finds Psychology fascinating finds this all very interesting.

I have always been around people that studied martial arts for self defense and understood what was involved, and the damage you can do to a person with this knowledge (until now I guess). I have not done martial arts as a sport or to stay fit. Both are nice side effects of my study, but my main goal is to know the art and be able to take care of myself and family when/if thing go wrong. I am going to have to re-evaluate how I deal with other students now so I can take into account that they may be only doing this for fun/exercise and don’t want to know what the move does or how to actually use it on the street. This obviously extends to even swords which I doubt any of us would/will ever use outside the dojo. My fascination with the arts, the weapons and history drives me to wanting to know how the weapon was used, did it work well and how did this effect the way people fought. I could (and may if I get off my ass) write a bunch about how weapons evolution leads to changes in how we fight wars and that changes everything about us and history. . . From the martial arts point of view I want to know why you do the move, where are you trying to hit and why? I want to understand the full 360 degree view of the move if I can.

I have learned something new, seen a new way that other look at martial arts and hopefully (I doubt) not scared off a student of my teachers. Now I need to figure out a way to teach her the form so she can enjoy it without going into what she sees as unnecessary details to learning the moves. I hope I can do this as it will make me a better teacher in this politically correct world. It will also help me to deal with and understand the view of so many in this state that can’t get their mind around the fact that physical violence exists and as a martial artist you may need to use it someday.

I guess the question I need to ponder for a while is do you need to accept the facts of physical violence and its place in the martial arts to study the martial arts. Can you be a martial artists and just see it as a sport without any of the history or understanding of what you are really doing as you do a kata? Or maybe I just need to accept that not everyone in the Dojo is a Martial Artist, some are just folks at a different kind of gym doing their part to stay in shape – nothing wrong with that, but they are not Martial Artist.