Being the teacher

Teaching karate is not easy. To try to put into words and actions what you have learned in order to make it understandable to others is very challenging. Sensei was off on a motorcycle adventure today (mental health day) and I am dai sempai (unless our other black belts are in class, which they usually aren't at that time). I felt so put on the spot and a little uncomfortable today. This isn't the first time I've taught, but today just felt a little weird to me. There's this voice in the back of my head that keeps telling me I really want to be Sensei some day (that's some day a long way from now). It's hard to not feel like I want to crawl inside a hole sometimes! And I also kept putting myself down when I didn't do a move right. What?! It was just very strange. But my head-set lately hasn't been that great since there are other outside forces acting in not very nice ways on my brain right now, which in turn affects my performance in karate. Forces like marriage troubles, work troubles (as in I want to work less and be a mommy more). The marriage troubles aren't devestating, just annoyingly present. Anyway, I digress. When others are looking to you for guidance and instruction it places so much pressure on your performance. I kept feeling like I had to get everything right, which isn't the right mindset in my opinion. There was no one to show off to, to gain approval from. I think that this was just me coming into another phase in my training, specifically teacher training. In order to get a black belt in Koro Ken you must teach on a regular basis, and not only just by yourself but in every class. It's a wonderful way to improve on what you already know and forces you to go back to the beginning. It also provides humbleness, which is a great thing in martial arts. To be humble is so important in the karate world (the martial arts world for that matter). The class today was also all men, but men that I have been training with for a while. So, we just went through a few kihones and then the first three kata and their bunkai. Then I tried the technique Charles James Sensei has been writing about in the isshindo.blogspot.com blog, which is having uke and tori during the kata. It was really interesting to mix things up a bit. I also had them do this facing in the opposite direction, which is always a challenge. But when I brought up that I wanted to try something new, they all backed away, laughing, and pointed at one guy to be the "guinea pig". Guess I can be a little too rough sometimes....