Karate is an Excellent Sport

By Karen Peralta

The sport of karate masters the soul, causing it to be more perfect and disciplined. It not only teaches you how to fight; it teaches you how to think, behave and act as well. My husband is a seventh degree black belt, among his other martial arts proclivities, and in six months I made it as far as a blue belt.

I have basically used my karate training twice in my real life. I used it to halt a black bear attack in the mountains of Washington State, and to foil two house burglars. For that, my husband has given me an honorary fourth degree black belt, primarily because I was also able to demonstrate a very good flying kick as well after some practice. He took only six months to get his seventh degree black belt, which also required that he actually catch in his hand an arrow as it was fired only one hundred feet away from him.

He and I survived, and you will too if you go ahead and take karate and other martial arts. Like I said, they can be useful in real life. For example, in the case of the bear attack, I used the "wall" stance they teach you in class. Maybe I should tell you about class first.

You enter a large room called a "dojo" with the other karate students. Next, a teacher or several teachers, called "sensei," may confront you. They taught me the wall right away, for example, by being a wall of power that kii-iid (yelled loudly) at me. It frightened me - but got me more used to the concept of becoming what they described as "a potential killing machine." I decided right away to never use my karate to hurt others, unless I was severely under attack and could get away with it without hurting any innocent parties (such as myself). You don't have to be heroic - I'm quite the physical coward myself.

The sensei really put me through my paces, and when I learned "the wall," I learned how to spread my legs and plant my feet with my knees over them, so that I became an invincible wall, with no one being able to push me over. This worked great during the bear attack. I used it to communicate a firmness of purpose, which the bear listened to. Then he demonstrated back that he was tougher than me. So I then signaled him that I wouldn't fight him in a respectful manner. Being intelligent, this black bear then simply turned and walked away satisfied that he had won the argument. So he didn't run down the cliff further and attack anyone else. We both won that day thanks to karate, and nobody was hurt.

In the case of the house burglary, karate gave me the strength of mental purpose and character to confront the burglars with what they were really doing and how they were terrorizing the home owner at whose house they were caught. The two burglars were astonished that I had any such courage to confront them. I only yelled at them and never used any real karate, and thus nobody was injured. The two burglars left and didn't come back to bother the home owner. Karate had won the day - once again.

In my husband's case, he was the proverbial 98 pound weakling until he learned a wide variety of martial arts, including karate, from a single master who personally trained him. The next time he was in a fight, after his training, he laid a bully who was menacing his life completely low. Nobody has ever taken him down in a fight since, even though he has been threatened with both guns and knives - nobody.

Therefore, you should learn karate or martial arts, which contains as wide of a variety of styles as the countries they now come from: aikido, kung fu or gung fu, karate, judo, kendo, and hundreds if not thousands of schools from Japan, China, Korea and Brazil. Pick a style, any style, see what's at your local dojo, and once you take up this wonderful sport - practice, practice, practice. It will teach you great discipline and knowledge of your own power. Try it and see, and you won't be sorry about the results. Like me and my husband, it might even save your life someday.

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