School is about to begin! One of the issues that inevitabley pops up when school starts is bullying. With this in mind, for our students self defense project this testing cycle they will be turning in a drawing, photo, or written report on ten ways to effectively deal with a bully. Many of these suggestions can come from www.StopBulliesinAshevilleNOW.org.
Turn in your project soon for a prize from the prize vault!
By our definition, Integrity means to always do what you think is right- no matter what everybody else is doing. Here is a section from our students lesson packet.
To have Integrity means to follow through with what you know is right. If you know, think, say, and believe what is right…follow through with it. Most of us know what is right. We have an internal understanding of this. Don’t be fooled by anyone to go against this understanding of what you know inside. You will encounter many individuals who will knowingly or unknowingly attempt to sway you. Sometimes that person will be you. Be disciplined to stick to what is right by thinking and acting appropriately.
Your task for your next belt is 10 acts of Integrity. If you see someone doing or saying something you know is not right, respectfully suggest something or guide them to the right action. This may mean taking someone aside and having a polite discussion, role modeling the right way, writing them a note, pointing out someone else doing the right thing, and what benefits there are to doing so. This is sometimes difficult. However, this is what being a Black Belt Leader signifies: doing your best to live the virtues of the Black Belt all of the time, and showing (Leading the Way) others what benefits there are to doing so. Are you beginning to live by the Student Creed and the virtues of the Black Belt Leader?
Also, this cycle we are workig on defenses against grabs and locks from behind.
If you would like more information about our school just click here!
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Thank you everybody who was able to attend this year’s seminar with Grand Master George Xu. This time we worked on differentiating pure internal power from physical power, focusing on expanding and shrinking, spiraling, and getting your internal body bigger than the external. It was a priviledge to get to learn from the highest level martial artist I have ever seen.
If you missed this seminar, come by for the next one in October of 2012!
If you would like to learn more about our school click here.
There is all kinds of information available on the subject of chi. Much of it is correct from a certain point of view, but the problem is that chi is an oriental concept and doesn’t really translate very well to the western mind. The differences in culture are really just as important as the differences in language- oriental people just think differently than we do.
So here it is. Chi is change. A change of state like ice to water. A change of velocity- acceleration or deceleration. A change in temperature. The change of seasons. The difference between air and wind. Chi is simply when something changes.
For martial arts we are interested initially in change as it pertains to your body. The common termonology in internal martial arts is that a person has chi or does not have chi. This is a silly statement as everybody has chi. Your heart pumping is chi. Your nervous system firing is chi. Your body is always changing and moving, and therefore has chi until you die. For this reason, chi is often defined as “life force” or “vital energy.” This is true enough.
To have chi for martial arts means that you are using your core muscle agility to fuel your movements while the rest of your body is melted and empty, giving you a tremendous amount of efficiency and more power then you ever thought possible. The change we are most interested in within your body is the change within the core muscles. Not tension, not relaxation, but movement.
When you can do this you will find that you can relax every other part of your body, giving you what is called empty force. This means that not only will you have tremendous physical power, but you will achieve a much higher degree of physical health than the average person. They used to call this the art of immortality as practitioners of these arts would live into their 70′s and 80′s when the average person lived to their mid 20s.
Not only do our students have to do their kung fu sequence for their next belt, they also have to write down 10 things that they could have lied about but chose to be honest instead as well as to read a martial arts related book. Here is what Abe had to say about this.
HONESTY
1. About what I did at home all day.
2. Whether or not I had seven cups of water.
3. If I brushed my teeth.
4. If I exercized.
5. If I did my chores.
6. If I practiced Hebrew.
7. If I fed the cat.
8. If I fed the dogs.
9. If I washed my face.
10. If I spent the whole day staring at a computer screen.
And for his reading project:
ABE’S TAKE AWAY FOR IRON AND SILK
I took three things away from this book.
1. Know matter what you are doing one should always get multiple perspectives.
2. One can’t do what they are trying to do if they don’t keep doing it.
3. There is no chance of getting what you want if you don’t ask for it.
If you would like more information about our school please click here.
Yesterday I went to the Avery’s Creek YMCA Summer Camp to do a presentation on Bullying. They seem to run a great camp over there, all of the kids were well behaved and participated in the conversation- which is always nice!
We talked about what a bully is, defining a bully as somebody who says or does something mean. They had a lot of good examples of real bullying behavior. We then talked about the three kinds of involvement in bullying- the victim, the bystander, and the bully.
The victim has a few rules to follow. First, you are not allowed to be a human punching bag. If somebody tries to hit you block, cover, dodge- whatever, but don’t let people hit you. Second, tell the person to stop. Third, tell the teacher, then tell your parents. Fourth, create a written record of what happened- it may come in handy in the future.
The bystander also has a few things to take care of. First, if it is within your power to intervene, do so. For example, somebody calls somebody else a bad name you can say, “that wasn’t very nice. Why did you say that?” Then tell your teacher. Second, if it is a more serious situation or of you feel things are beyond your ability to help, skip trying to intervene and just go tell the teacher.
The bully needs to do some rethinking. Sometimes people bully others in an effort to feel more powerful, sometimes people bully others as a bad joke. If you find yourself being a bully because it makes you feel more powerful you need to find a better way to build that feeling of power. Try getting involved in sports. If you just took a joke too far, or started a line of joking around that wasn’t cool to begin with, apologize to the person you were bullying and don’t do whatever you were doing again.
This, in a nutshell is what we talked about. One of the best ways to empower yourself in any of these three roles is to enroll into a quality martial arts program. Having high self esteem and self confidence with humility goes a long way in dealing with these issues, and that is what we specialize in.
To get their next belt for this testing cycle our students must:
We also have our Self Defense training topic: This time around it will be the Summer Reading Project!
Our programs are designed specifically to bring out the best in our students mentally, physically, and spiritually. We teach our students to be conscientious, mindful, and responsible Black Belt leaders through positive example and experience based education.
If you would like more information about our school, click here.
The Kung Fu Reading Challenge!For every age appropriate martial arts oriented book that you read this testing cycle you get a special prize! These books can be fiction or nonfiction.
To prove that you read the book turn in to me
1.the title and author of the book and
2.write about or draw a picture of your favorite part of the book. What was your take away? Why did you like this part?
At the White Oak Martial Arts Center there are several things that our students must do in order to earn the next belt. They must pass a physical fitness test based on their personal improvement, a martial arts technique test, they must perform up to snuff at home and at school based upon their personal goals, they must have shown up to enough classes, and they must complete a Task designed to teach a particular character trait.
This past testing cycle our Thought in Action Character Trait was Humility. We define this as understanding yourself well enough that you don’t need to make somebody feel bad to make yourself feel good. The interesting thing about humility is that it requires self confidence, something we specialize in instilling in our students.
We believe in learning by doing, so our students task to learn more about humility was to do a community service project. Here is a short video with just a few of our students and what they did!
Thank you Jones Elementary for letting us take part in your Terrific Thursday! We were able to award 10 gold belts to 10 great kids!
Over the six weeks of this class we went over dietary self defense, the five ways to say no to negative influences, what is a real hero?, how to deal with a bully, and what real self defense is- avoiding things that hurt your mind, body, or spirit. We also practiced some self defense against violence techniques, some basic fitness exercises, and a bunch of fun martial arts related drills and games.
Thank you Jones Elementary, and if anybody else reading this would like us to do a presentation at your school, event, or whatever just email me at dctai@bellsouth.net.
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