I am a 55-year-old woman that recently completed a pilgrimage of hiking over 600 miles across Wyoming to raise awareness of Generational Trauma. Generational trauma is trauma that is passed down from generation to generation. It takes its bold form in poverty, substance abuse, and all forms of domestic violence. This I call, “Big T-trauma”. This trauma is to the outside, the body, it is easy to see, and easy to identify as abuse and trauma. But I want to make people aware of a more subtle form of trauma that I like to call “little t-trauma.” This is emotional and mental abuse, humiliation, and shame. It is trauma to the soft squishy inside of us. It is unseen, hard to identify, and masks itself to look like a wide range of mental health disorders. I have an official diagnosis of Complex Post Traumatic Stress disorder, or CPTSD, because of that generational trauma. This can express itself in me from mild triggers to extreme emotional dysregulation. In me, it can be very intense panic attacks, deep cycles of depression, or any of the intense fight or flight trauma response. It can get to the point that it starts negatively affecting all aspects of my life.
Faced once again with the long cold winter of Wyoming, I was going to find something to help me not slide into the depth of depression. I decided that I would do Karate classes. I am a natural fighter. Little did I know that that decision would change my life. As it turns out, as cheesy as “Kurt’s Karate” sounded to me, my instructors were not some “average Joe” with a black belt who thought it would be fun to open a Karate studio. No, he and his wife are seriously committed to martial arts, are extremely high level, seriously world class ranking. Kurt is the founder of his own lineage of martial art called Spirit Wind Hapkido…in Worland Wyoming! What an amazing opportunity! But best of all, I found a way to deal with a hard mental health issue, that currently does not have a very good treatment success rate.
When I first started, I felt awful. I was frustrated trying to follow along in class, always one step behind and utterly confused. They say and do weird things, and even speak a different language. And it is physically hard. My body was not used to moving in all those weird directions. For the first few months, I was sore and hurt in places I have never hurt before. My confidence began to waver, and I wanted to stop, but I persevered and within a few weeks, something magical started to happen. I started to “flower” is the best word I can think to describe it. I am serious, it took a few months, but then I started to understand the different levels and my confidence grew. My body started to move in relation to the people around me, and most of all, I started to understand how the mind, body, and spirit are connected.
This is where my story really starts to get interesting. I am not sure why, but my CPTSD symptoms started to decrease as well. Every time I quickly and easily escaped someone’s hold on me, my confidence grew. Every time I twisted someone, a man, bigger and stronger than me, into a pretzel of pain, my confidence grew. As my body grew stronger, more flexible, my mind grew more confident, more flexible. And as I “flowered,” I started to understand higher level aspects of the martial arts, such as how the breath affects energy flow.
I tell people that I was born at the gates of hell, and I have been fighting my way out since. I have a side of me that is “tough as nails,” as my miles hiking across harsh and rugged Wyoming proves. There is a part of me that is a natural fighter. I thought that I would learn how to become a better fighter. What I was actually taught was the opposite. I was, am, being taught how to not fight. I know that sounds strange, but it’s true. If you were to drive by this dojo, and look in the windows, you would be almost as likely to see the class just standing, or even sitting, as you would to see us kicking and punching. That is because Kurt feels a strong duty to exercise your brain as well as your body. You will be taught about history, and culture, philosophy, and lineage of all the different forms of Martial Arts. This brings me to the most important part of this whole thing. Kurt’s Karate teaches Hapkido, which is a “soft” martial art, and it is not about fighting, it is about peace.
All the different martial art styles are on a scale from “hard” to “soft”. Hard has a lot of force on force, with aggressive attacks. This is what you see in the movies. Hapkido is all the way down that scale, sitting next to its sister, Aikido, considered one of the softest of the arts. The main goal of the softer arts is to do the least amount of harm. It is about protection. Protect yourself, protect innocent people around the attacker, but also protect the attacker. The goal is to overcome one’s self, rather than the cultivation of violence or aggressiveness. I am now to the point in which I am beginning to apply these principles to my life. I am trying to find ways to use the philosophy of Spirit Wind Hapkido, of Harmony Empathy, and Resolve in my personal relationships, and when I come up against difficult challenges.
I am telling this story, not only to toot my own horn about my own accomplishments, or to sing the praises of Kurt and martial arts, but because I feel like it is my duty to tell other people who may be struggling with a mental health issue, that Hapkido may be a path for you as well.
I understand that I am extremely blessed. Most people would never have the resources available to them to spend the summer hiking to deal with whatever crazy they have going on inside of their head. And, honestly, I don’t recommend it, it is pretty brutal at times. But anyone can take the slow and steady path of martial arts training, no matter what your current physical abilities are at this time.
Don’t let anything stop you from being the best version of yourself, not pain, not frustration, not lack of confidence, not lack of time or money. One thing that my hiking teaches me, no matter how high the mountain, it really boils down to one step in front of another. If you have even the slightest interest in martial arts, let go of any excuses or self-doubt that is holding you back. If this crazy old woman can do it, so can you.