the Judge, the Victim, and You

About a week ago I read this fantastic book called the Four Agreements. It makes you look at your life as a dream, your own personal dream, and you can make your dream a hell on Earth, or you can make your dream into a heaven on Earth depending on how you live it. It was an good book. It was very intriguing and I would highly recommend it.
I want to talk about an important part of the book. Within your own mind, you have a judge that judges you for doing something wrong, on your appearance, or on the way you act. It defines you and makes you act and think in a certain way. “You look fat. You look stupid. Why can’t you act like them,” says the judge. If you believe in the judge and think he’s correct, then you will be fat, stupid and hurt. When you feel this way you are now feeding the victim within your mind. You start saying “I’m fat, I’m stupid and I will never be like them”. It becomes a constant cycle where you are slowly killing yourself from within; causing you to lose confidence and plunge into a dream of hell.
What this book showed me is that everyone is born with the capacity to live a happy life. When you listen to these parasites in your mind, you lose yourself to a tormenting cycle of pain and anguish. However, you can stop this from happening. You can choose to stop listening to the judge in your mind and learn to not feed the victim. You tell yourself that you can when you think you can’t. You say you’re beautiful when you think you’re not. You believe in yourself when you’re afraid.
This applies to martial arts because when there is a form you feel you can’t learn, a kick that seems off, or when the workout gets tough, you can choose to feed your victim and tell yourself “I can’t do it”. This then lets your judge tell you that you can’t then you will never overcome that obstacle. OR, you can believe in yourself and work hard and never give up on achieving your goal. Tell yourself, “this is hard but I will work on it and I will overcome it in time”. In the words of Winston Churchill, the famous prime minister of England, “Never, never, never give up. “
By Alex Tienda 3rd Dan at the Asian Arts Center

Private Lessons Are Available at the AAC

I have been having a good time teaching private lessons this week. It is great to have one-on-one training with a student where I can work on specific training goals with them. As instructors, we strive to give each child individual attention during our regular classes. However, a private lesson allows us to do this more easily and gives the child more of an opportunity to discuss what they feel they need to reach their goals. It’s also been a blast doing some running races with them!

Kellen Brown, Lead Instructor at the Kettering School

Fun Facts About Taekwondo

Do you know which is the most popular martial art in the world?

No. it is not Karate or Kung Fu. It is called Taekwondo – the popular martial art and the national sport in South Korea. This popular martial art is practiced as a sport in as many as 123 countries all over the world. It has been estimated that there are more than 30 million practitioners of this unique martial art across the world, of which more than 3 million are holders of black-belt – a certificate for recognition of their skill level in the sport. Taekwondo is one of the two martial arts that have been included in the Olympic Games.

What actually is the sport of Taekwondo?

It is a martial art in which the foot and the fist are used. In other words, Taekwondo refers to the method of using the foot and the fist effectively in the form of kicking and punching. A student of Taekwondo as a martial art is taught the various techniques and methods involved in punching, kicking as well as blocking using the feet and the fists effectively. The student, in particular, is taught the martial art in a systematic way that involves blocking using the fists effectively, kicking using the legs, punching using the fists and also a series of open-handed attacks.

What makes Taekwondo a popular sport?

Taekwondo is not viewed as a mere sport played for the sake of fun. It is viewed as an essential and useful martial art that includes many techniques for combating attack from opponent. It is best considered as an effective tool for self-defense. In addition to the role of attack as well as self-defense, the martial art of Taekwondo is considered as a very effectively tool for exercising the body, and also for meditation and philosophy, since the sport or the art requires concentration and alertness the most.

What makes Taekwondo special in comparison with Karate and Kung Fu?

Taekwondo uses both the fists and the feet effectively. The strongest and also the longest organ in a person’s body is the leg. Taekwondo uses this longest part to the best effect through the means of kicking. It is believed that kicking the opponent using the legs will be the best way for executing powerful strikes on the opponent and the possibility of retaliation from the opponent is relatively less when kicked powerfully.

Debbie Spiegel, Enrollment Director

Taekwondo Training Techniques

Taekwondo is a Korean martial art and the national sport of South Korea. It is the world’s most popular martial art in terms of number of practitioners. In Korean, tae means “foot”; kwon means “fist”; and do means “way” or “martial art”; so Taekwondo is loosely translated as “the way of the foot and fist”

Taekwondo training involves:

Techniques and curriculum of taekwondo
Anaerobic and aerobic workout, including stretching
Self-defense techniques (hosinsul)
Forms (also called patterns, pumsae, teul, hyeong)
Sparring
Relaxation and meditation exercises
Throwing and/or falling techniques
Breaking
Martial arts demonstrations
Power breaking
Special techniques
Speed breaking
Focus on mental and ethical discipline, justice, etiquette, respect, and self-confidence
Some taekwondo instructors also incorporate the use of pressure points, known as jiapsul, as well as grabbing self-defense techniques borrowed from other martial arts, such as Hapkido and Judo.

Debbie Spiegel, Enrollment Director

The Importance of Physical Activity for Children

“The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommend 60 minutes of physical aerobic activity daily for children ages 6-17 (there are no specifications for those five and under), and 30 minutes daily for adults ages 18-64.” (http://fitness.gov/be-active/physical-activity-guidelines-for-americans/ ) For children, physical education within the schools is only a partial solution.

“Two decades ago, 42 percent of public school children attended daily physical education classes. Today, gym has been reduced to once a week in many city schools. Nationally, only 4 percent of elementary schools, 8 percent of middle schools, and 2 percent of high schools in the U.S. provided daily physical education or its equivalent for all students in all grades, according to a 2006 report from the Centers of Disease Control.” (http://www.alternet.org/story/156152/what_ever_happened_to_gym_class_budget_cuts_and_the_rise_of_childhood_obesity )

With obesity on the rise and physical education in schools on the decline, what is a family to do to ensure that their child(ren) maintain a healthy lifestyle? The answer is to look outside of the school and home for alternatives to physical activities.

The Asian Arts Center offers a one month trial course at no cost or obligation to you. This gives your family the opportunity to come into one of our two locations, meet our qualified instructors, and participate in two classes per week for an entire month. Our Taekwondo classes get children moving. In one 50 minute class, a child will do stretches, run, kick, punch, and more.

The best thing about it is that children are so busy having fun that the physical exercise is rarely noticed. Many children (as well as adults!) have a negative association to the word “exercise”. They hear the word and instantly translate it to “too hard”, “too much work”, or “no fun”. That is not the case at the AAC. There are relays and games that are often played during a class, allowing children to have fun and cheer each other on. Before they know it, class is over and they never even noticed that they received a full workout!

Physical activity is the best solution to weigh management for our children and for ourselves.

Angel Perkins, Enrollment Specialist