Kung Fu & Disability
Chronic illness and kung fu don’t seem like they would go together, but I’m here to tell you: they’re like peanut butter and chocolate. Unless you’re allergic to peanuts, in which case, I guess, pick two other things that are more awesome together.
When I started my kung fu training at the Austin school back in 2015, the hope was that it would give my chronically ill body and my chronically anxious mind something to work on together. Like couples’ counseling, but just for parts of me. My mind wanted to not be stuck in a disabled body. My body wanted to be less busted. I needed something that could get them to meet in the middle and build a new relationship.
My disease attacks my joints and connective tissues, so some form of physical therapy was required. Everything else I’d tried - yoga, swim therapy, etc - were helpful, but WOW were they boring. My mind just wasn’t engaged enough for me to stick with it consistently. Someone suggested martial arts training, but I’m just not a competitive person. Zero interest in tests, or colorful belts, or tournaments, or trophies, or whatever. I wanted the strength, the mental focus, and the ability to protect myself, without all that nonsense.
Turns out, that’s exactly what ving tsun kung fu offers. Ving Tsun builds up the body by engaging the mind along with the muscles. It finds your weaknesses and laser-targets them for improvement.
My first kung fu class was like doing calculus in my head while juggling and reciting Shakespeare. Somewhere between trying to convince leg muscles I hadn’t even known existed to stand in a way that relieved the pain in my knees for the first time in years, and concentrating so hard on making my hands do two different things at the same time that I forgot how swollen my knuckles were … I fell in love. I kept going back to class, week after week, month after month, year after year, finding new puzzles for my mind and body to work on together.
Along the way, I got strong. Confident. Reasonably sure of my ability to forcefeed a grown man his own teeth, if the need arose. With every sweat-stained class shirt, every new set of bruises decorating my forearms, I gained a new layer of armor between me and my illness. Not just physically, but also mentally, emotionally. If I could survive all day training sessions full of hard knocks and brain cramps, I could survive anything. With a smile on my face.
Has the training been easy? No, of course not. If it was easy, I’d get bored and quit. But the hard work has only ever made me better. My fingers don’t throb with pain and curl up like dying insects anymore. The cane that I used to lean on sits in a corner, gathering dust. When my disease inevitably flares up and reminds me that I am, in fact, still disabled, I know that I’ll recover faster and more thoroughly than I ever could before I started training.
I’m not going to say that ving tsun saved my life - that’s a bit melodramatic, even for me. But it did save my quality of life, and that’s no small thing.