Self Defense - the action of protecting yourself from something bad.
Last Tuesday I was blessed with the opportunity to watch a fantastic Intermediate Black Dragons class. As the kids worked their butts off to learn the start of Da Mu Hsing, they were also challenged to each say why they personally were so awesome. You could see the struggle in many of them to come up with something that they could own as their own awesomeness. I think this struggle gets harder and harder as we get older and pile on more of our own mental junk.
This then lead into a discussion about self defense. To be honest, I had to look for quite some time to find the definition of self defense given above. For the longest time all of the answers had to do with defending against physical attacks. The lesson for the kids and anyone listening is that there are many types of self defense. Any time you defend yourself against anything bad it is really self defense. This can be seen living a healthy lifestyle, eating right, filling our minds with good content, having strong self esteem to list just a few ways. Many different choices but if the right choice is made, it is all the same - defense of yourself. The class naturally lead into the conversation and kudos to Sifu Rybak for jumping on the cool opportunity. I'm not sure how much of the message really sunk down deep into her captive audience but I do know a beautiful seed was planted and with time it will grow.
Karen Bergstreiser