Pa Kua Kids North Hollywood

Though we don't push any particular type of religious belief and are open to all, much of Pa Kua has it's foundation in Taoist philosophy. If you're interested in learning more about Taoism the Tao of Pooh is a good book on the topic which is pretty approachable to both kids and adults. https://youtu.be/ksVgOSJ_Kv0

We have a great group of kids getting ready for their next round of evaluations in another week.

This week's discussion:

No direct quote this week. Instead I offered up a question I want the students to think about until next class

This week's discussion has been focused on the quote "Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast." The kids' thoughts included the idea that we must take our time to learn techniques and that taking a slower approach helps to get things done correctly the first time rather than rushing and having to redo things. My own thoughts include the idea that so much of our modern society seems to put a hurried time line on many aspects of our lives. Often it seems we don't allow ourselves to take... our time with tasks and in some cases enjoy the full richness of the experience. In learning about martial arts especially it seems important that we take the time to slow down our ideas about learning. It can be easy to get swept up in the glamour of watching martial arts movies and thinking the choreographed well rehearsed fight sequences reflect mastery of techniques but in real world learning a hurried approach can lead to bad habits of incorrect form or worse yet unnecessary injuries. We must exercise patience in our practice and in our lives to allow ourselves to become smooth in our actions and in our thoughts. See more

A special quote this week. As an instructor I strive to provide the best I can for my students but what they take away from class doesn't truly come from me. I may provide the tools but they must create the art themselves. In a very rare instance, a student was able to attend belt evaluations but because of a number of circumstances off the mat, and through no fault of his own, was not able to receive his belt with the rest of his class. This gentleman watched as all of his p...eers received belt promotions while he did not. To his amazing credit he never once complained about it, he continued to show up to every class, continued to put in his best effort towards everything he was asked to do, and stood as a great example for everyone in class. Thankfully all the conditions for his belt promotion were cleared up and the school made an exception to grant his advancement outside of the standard time frame. I can't even begin to express how grateful I am to the school for helping make this promotion happen and how proud I am of this guy for his phenomenal strength of spirit as he showed immense patience through all of this. Today this young man is now officially a yellow belt. I look forward to seeing how he continues to grow and develop with us as a martial artist. See more

This group often asks me to set up obstacle courses for them. Being an obstacle course racer myself it is a treat for all of us to have OCR (obstacle course race) day once a month. Lane 1: Front roll then bear crawl to the first bag and perform 20 punches Lane 2: Back roll then crab crawl to the second bag and perform 20 kicks Lane 3: Side shuffle to the color coded hand, touch the hand on the ground, then perform the appropriate block to defend against incoming strikes (from... the instructor) Lane 4: Do 1 burpee, climb over the rolling pad, burpee, roll the pad to the other end of the mat, burpee, over the pad, burpee, roll the pad back to where it started Everyone handled this course like a champ and each completed 5 rounds. They could have easily done more rounds but we ran out of time for the day.

This week's discussions have centered around this quote from Japanese sword master Miyamoto Musashi. As a class we came to the conclusion that the first part simply means that we must always be working to better ourselves. The second part can have many meanings but we determined that the best idea from it is that the "lesser" people this is referring to are those who don't continue to apply themselves towards betterment in their practice and that victory over them has more to do with not being controlled by thoughts of comparing ourselves to others and especially those who don't apply themselves as fully as they can in their practice.

Every so often I like to discuss a martial arts related quote and see what the kids' interpretations of it are. I gave them this one a few weeks ago and everyone gave some version of "its better to learn one thing really well rather than trying to learn a whole bunch of different things not so well" I tend to agree with the class's assessment and also offered the idea that maybe this also speaks to things outside the martial arts and that whatever thing we find in life which we find important we should dedicate ourselves to it as fully as we can. What do you think?

Congratulations to this group of kids for getting through their evaluations and earning their new belt ranks

Everyone helps contribute after class to keeping the mat a safe, clean, environment for all

As students advance they get opportunities to lead portions of class to help build confidence and leadership skills

In this no contact exercise students can work to work to refine their techniques and build towards applying them safely