“Uh-oh, I know what we’re going to do,” said a teenage black belt in a half-groan/half-giggle. It was red and black belt class, our late night class after sparring. My fellow red belts and bo dans abandoned me after sparring, so all that was left were me, the teenager who never comes to sparring (ahem!), and an older man who got his black belt last year.
My instructor’s face lit up as he steepled his fingers together and positioned us in a wide diagonal line across the floor. “I want you to do Koryo One again,” he said after we had just completed the form as a warm-up. “But this time I want you to do it with your eyes closed.”
My eyes danced furiously under my closed lids, trying desperately to make sense of what was going on. I ignored them and focused on breathing deeply, shifting my weight, and making sure I stayed low in my stances. I opened my eyes and felt refreshed and excited, as if I’d gotten to know the form on a much deeper level.
Then we did the two other red belt forms, and that’s when things started to fall apart. I began to feel wobbly and unsure. I lost my balance, shuffled timidly and stiffly through stances, and somehow inexplicably flung myself into the left side wall and ballet barre during the part of the Palgwe Pal-jang that is directed straight towards the back of the room. (Notice that my instructor did nothing to stop me, probably because he was laughing too hard).
“What the heck just happened?” I shouted when I stumbled into the end of the form and blinked open my eyes. Perhaps my attempt at Koryo One was successful because it was the first form I’d ever practiced with my eyes closed, and I had no expectations. Perhaps it was successful because unlike the other forms, it only goes back and forth on the vertical axis. The individual strikes and blocks are complex, but the movement pattern is simple. (Koryo One is also the only form that I can fully do in my hallway without modifying it or running into anything….hey, I was doing laundry and I was bored.)
Perhaps my deteriorating performance of the forms Chil-jang and Pal-jang was because I started to lose confidence and doubt my own abilities.
My last post offered the concept of trusting ourselves when our worlds get turned upside down. It could be the same challenge or something very similar we’ve faced before, but the perspective has changed, and that makes it scary. Sometimes we might be facing a challenge with limitations such as time, money, resources, support, or one of our senses. If we get too wrapped up in dwelling on what we can’t control then we will end up emotionally paralyzed and will run into even more walls, figuratively or literally. The trick is to focus on what we can control and what we can do, no matter the limitations or obstacles we face.
