On pullin' the gi outta the closet...
So, for those who don't know, I've taken up martial arts again after a gap of about a decade.*
I'm studying Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu again and loving it so much that...well, let me put it this way, there was a dream involved in my decision to start training again and as a dead friend featured prominently in it I think that the term "visitation" might be the more accurate description.
The "dojo" is the lawn of a nearby school, year round, rain or shine. The Sensei is a woman who has cross trained in so many different arts that it's insane which, when combined with the fact that she's about 5"4 and looks like a china doll with long hair and big blue eyes, effectively weeds out the kind of jerk that you get in the martial arts who is only there to prove what a big dick he's got, because no one looks macho being taken down by a woman half his size. Thus, any of the guys who stick around are pretty cool and have good senses of humour about themselves and what we're doing (which is really necessary because some of the stuff we do takes a while to learn and it is impossible to look dignified doing in the process.) My fellow students are predominantly black belts or nearly so, so I have a slough of people to answer questions and help me out and the classes tend to be no more than five or six people on average.
And above all, nobody patronises me, which any woman in the martial arts can tell you is virtually unheard of.
As it's been umpty-ump years since I last trained I came back as a white belt, despite having been three levels up from there when I left the old place. As out of practice as I was, it would have been the height of arrogance to do otherwise. Unfortunately, one of the things I like about Budo (which is the abbreviation I chose to use, because "Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu" is too long to type every time) is that after your first grading you go straight to a green belt, there to stay, until you get your black belt. There are, of course, levels in between, but they are only differentiated by patches worn on the chest and in a dojo where my Sensei turned up today wearing a gi jacket with the arms torn off, random baggy pants (because apparently she has managed to tear the crotch out of all six of her pairs of gi pants,) and elbow length wrist socks, we're lucky if anyone has remembered to sew on their permanent school patches, let alone anything that might change. (And I might add that Sherri's outfit was bordering on the formal for her; she was actually wearing a portion of a gi and her belt; that's positively dressy for her;-D) In her defense, (if such a thing is needed, personally I think it's awesome) if she wears her full gi and is seen to be instructing men by some of the loonies in this neighbourhood she risks having the class interrupted and having to politely talk to people about yes, she does believe that it is a woman's place to be teaching men and no she is not going to prove herself by fighting them. Or worse, having them come by when she isn't teaching and someone like me having to deal with them.
But I digress. The universal green belt is great because it teaches you caution in approaching the unknown. The person who has dropped in for a class may be about to grade for their black belt or they may have just moved up from white, you don't know what they're capable of and so you approach with no expectations and read the person not the symbol.
The problem is that it kinda sucks to be a white belt in that environment because unlike styles where you go through a veritable rainbow to get to the black it *really* stands out. I'm not all crazy focused on getting up the ranks, that will come as it comes, I just have really kind of wanted to put my green belt back on and get lost in the ranks again. Or as lost as one can be in classes that average between four and five people in size.
But anyway, that's some of the scoop on that. I'm a little obsessive about it right now, trying to shanghai friends into acting as playfellows for the seemingly endless gap between the Wednesday and Sunday classes.
Any volunteers? ;-D
*This post originally one big post with the next one, but I thought I'd split them so people didn't need to go through both if they didn't want to.
I'm studying Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu again and loving it so much that...well, let me put it this way, there was a dream involved in my decision to start training again and as a dead friend featured prominently in it I think that the term "visitation" might be the more accurate description.
The "dojo" is the lawn of a nearby school, year round, rain or shine. The Sensei is a woman who has cross trained in so many different arts that it's insane which, when combined with the fact that she's about 5"4 and looks like a china doll with long hair and big blue eyes, effectively weeds out the kind of jerk that you get in the martial arts who is only there to prove what a big dick he's got, because no one looks macho being taken down by a woman half his size. Thus, any of the guys who stick around are pretty cool and have good senses of humour about themselves and what we're doing (which is really necessary because some of the stuff we do takes a while to learn and it is impossible to look dignified doing in the process.) My fellow students are predominantly black belts or nearly so, so I have a slough of people to answer questions and help me out and the classes tend to be no more than five or six people on average.
And above all, nobody patronises me, which any woman in the martial arts can tell you is virtually unheard of.
As it's been umpty-ump years since I last trained I came back as a white belt, despite having been three levels up from there when I left the old place. As out of practice as I was, it would have been the height of arrogance to do otherwise. Unfortunately, one of the things I like about Budo (which is the abbreviation I chose to use, because "Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu" is too long to type every time) is that after your first grading you go straight to a green belt, there to stay, until you get your black belt. There are, of course, levels in between, but they are only differentiated by patches worn on the chest and in a dojo where my Sensei turned up today wearing a gi jacket with the arms torn off, random baggy pants (because apparently she has managed to tear the crotch out of all six of her pairs of gi pants,) and elbow length wrist socks, we're lucky if anyone has remembered to sew on their permanent school patches, let alone anything that might change. (And I might add that Sherri's outfit was bordering on the formal for her; she was actually wearing a portion of a gi and her belt; that's positively dressy for her;-D) In her defense, (if such a thing is needed, personally I think it's awesome) if she wears her full gi and is seen to be instructing men by some of the loonies in this neighbourhood she risks having the class interrupted and having to politely talk to people about yes, she does believe that it is a woman's place to be teaching men and no she is not going to prove herself by fighting them. Or worse, having them come by when she isn't teaching and someone like me having to deal with them.
But I digress. The universal green belt is great because it teaches you caution in approaching the unknown. The person who has dropped in for a class may be about to grade for their black belt or they may have just moved up from white, you don't know what they're capable of and so you approach with no expectations and read the person not the symbol.
The problem is that it kinda sucks to be a white belt in that environment because unlike styles where you go through a veritable rainbow to get to the black it *really* stands out. I'm not all crazy focused on getting up the ranks, that will come as it comes, I just have really kind of wanted to put my green belt back on and get lost in the ranks again. Or as lost as one can be in classes that average between four and five people in size.
But anyway, that's some of the scoop on that. I'm a little obsessive about it right now, trying to shanghai friends into acting as playfellows for the seemingly endless gap between the Wednesday and Sunday classes.
Any volunteers? ;-D
*This post originally one big post with the next one, but I thought I'd split them so people didn't need to go through both if they didn't want to.