Permission to be unpretty
People often say that women are under intolerable pressure to worry about their appearance. Well guess what – this is yet another reason to love martial arts training . . .
The Art of the Guarded Heart
Kamae (engagement stance in the Japanese martial arts) is not only for fighting; and when used mindfully, a guarded heart is not necessarily the bad thing people often believe it to be . . .
Why I’m not inspired by female warriors – despite loving martial arts
A friend has sent me a three-minute video called Women Were Some of the Fiercest Samurai Warriors Ever. It’s about a woman called Takeko Nakano who led an army of women to fight in the Boshin War (Japanese Revolution).
He thinks he’s sent me an exciting, inspirational and glorious story about women’s empowerment, which I will love as a female martial arts practitioner […]
Ten ways that “real” martial arts training can be more empowering than a “Martial Arts Inspired” workout
[Photo credit: IMG_2415 by John Roberts via Flickr]. This post is dedicated to a friend of mine who runs his own dojo. He expressed frustration at the number of people who choose to take “Martial Arts Inspired” workouts, when they could be getting much deeper benefits from “real” martial arts training (at his dojo of course!) . . .
The Attraction of Violence
Some uneasy issues came up in conversation. Why can fighting and machismo transfix even a cultured and sensitive man . . . ?
“”To see a world in a grain of sand” – The awesomeness of training with beginners
Last week a new woman started in my aikijujutsu class. We trained together all evening, and had a ball. But still, she kept saying, Sorry, you must be so bored! or Sorry, I feel really guilty for spoiling your training. … Continued
The (Martial) Art of Good Men
So far on this blog, I’ve focused a lot on women’s participation and experience in the martial arts. This post however is for a site called The Good Men Project, which is “an international conversation about what it means to be a good man in the 21st century”.
To me it’s a no-brainer – if you want to know about “good men”, just look inside many dojos. So this is the article I wrote for them, basically saying just that . . .