For five years and counting, I’ve practiced kung fu, Northern Shaolin Kung Fu to be exact, partnered with Sun Style Tai Chi. The first is flowery and fluid, yet explosive with speed and power. The second is slow and measured, with compact, flowing motions.

Most people think I break boards, wear a gi (the uniform found in karate, judo, or tae kwan do), and yowl like Bruce Lee. Mostly, I practice forms, stance, and breathing, all in sweats and a t-shirt. Because of the Chinese family lineage of our styles, we don’t have a ranking system if colored belts. I’m not sure how I would rank in such a system anyway. My skills are fair to middling, more theory than practice and quite honestly, I’m not in a hurry to test my skills beyond friendly sparring.

So why bother even pretending to hit people? Essentially, that is the crux of what I do. Martial arts are designed to subdue, injure, or even kill another human. This is not the toolset of a pacifist.

Kung fu teaches me to listen.

The body often tells us things we choose to ignore, little warning signals of discomfort that eventually become things like back pain or carpel tunnel syndrome. It can be the smothered pangs of anxiety that, left unchecked, turn into fight-or-flight panic attacks. Been there, done that, and I can’t believe now that I ever did. Nothing is worth such breakdowns, not unless you are fighting for your fucking life. Yet, I see people accept these discomforts as part of their status quo, something to put up with, to muddle through.

Listen. There is music in your body, where your weight shifts from one leg to the other, where your heart keeps time and your breath takes in the cool  air and warms it before sending it out again. Listen to your thoughts snap with little synaptic crackles as they scurry about your head. Your senses are a conversation with yourself waiting to happen.

Listen and maybe you’ll surprise yourself with what you hear.