How I Ended up Here…

Like Melissa, I, too, do not come from a martial arts background.  Prior to discovering Shinobi Martial Arts, I searched around on and off for several years looking for something that would be a good fit for me.  I looked into a few different styles and dojos.  I observed a few classes.  I asked a lot of questions.  What I learned in my search is that there are tons of different martial sports and much variance in the quality of dojos.  The biggest indicator of the quality difference, at least to me, was that the questions I asked were often dismissed with unrealistic expectations.  I remember asking one instructor as I was observing, “But how could I reasonably take him down, I’m 5’ tall?  He’s 6’.  He’s muscular and I certainly am not.”  The instructor basically told me that I would just have to work harder and strike harder.  I thanked him, turned from him and left the dojo. 

What these dojos couldn’t provide me with was something much larger than sport.  You see, I’m not athletic and I’m not all that competitive, well at least physically.  Like Melissa, I was in an unhealthy relationship in my youth as well.  What I was after in my search was the promise all these martial arts seemingly offer, but perhaps don’t always fulfill outside of the context sport: discipline, confidence and self-defense.  I wanted to find a reasonable sense of safety in our violent world.  I wanted to banish my sense of helplessness in protecting myself.

I discovered Shinobi Martial Arts almost by accident.  I had pretty much stopped looking for a martial art as I was just about convinced that none existed for me.  I had moved back into the area not long before and had been driving up 125 when I saw the big yellow karate sign.  I realized that I hadn’t searched in the Plaistow area previously and went home to look them up online.  In surfing all the interconnected sites, I watched clips of all sorts of men doing various techniques.  But when I stumbled across the videos of Theresa demonstrating LIVE techniques my jaw pretty much hit my keyboard.  I could see how the LIVE techniques were born out of the art’s movements and better yet I could see it applied with a significant size discrepancy between attacker and defender.  I could see it work – she whipped Dennis after all.  This had to be what I was looking for!

A week later, I found myself standing in the back of the dojo observing my first To-Shin Do class.  Much to my surprise, I did not have to ask a single question because the students were asking the very same things that came to my mind.  The answers that day and the ones since have all been similar.  Not once has the answer ever been to hit harder.  Never has anyone ever made any unrealistic statement.  In fact, our teachers couldn’t be more honest and forthcoming.  Statements like, “You wouldn’t just hit him, he’d clobber you” aren’t uncommon during class.  It is keeping things honest, true and realistic that reeled me in and has kept me coming back week after week for almost two years.  It is this authenticity that will keep me coming into the foreseeable future because it has allowed me to begin to find truth in the statement: “I believe in myself.  I am confident.  I can accomplish my goals.”

Danielle DeBlois
SMAC Student