Karate has it helped my mental health or caused me issues?

As Sensei, we all know we have a responsibility to keep our students physically safe. I think this is something we can all agree on. But what about our responsibility to keep our students mentally healthy and safe? How do the words we use in the dojo or online sometimes cause people unnecessary stress?

Now, you might want to stop reading, and some of you might be saying, "Oh no, not another snowflake." Snowflake I am certainly not. I can only speak from my own experience and how, after leaving my previous training environment, I am still struggling to change the way I think about not only my training but also what I teach and expect from our students. This still sometimes needs to change.

I have always cross-trained, and what I mean by that is my weekly training has somewhat quadrupled over the last six years.

Between myself and the other instructors, we have 11 classes a week to teach. My own personal training consists of gym sessions 2 to 3 times a week, 2 Jujitsu classes a week, 3 kickboxing classes a week, and 1 yoga session. I also teach a fitness class twice a month and have a personal training session every week. Most of my life, if not in the gym or dojo, is spent doing exercise, learning about exercise, and teaching. This is very much my personal choice and something that I have always enjoyed doing. (I’m not moaning—just always tired!)

Until we opened our own martial arts school six years ago, I didn’t realise how much my mental health had been affected. Even after all this time, I am still trying to re-educate my mind to think differently and allow myself to be human.

To put a finer point on it, the Sensei-student relationship can be, if you are not careful, quite problematic.

We place Sensei on a pedestal at times, and once I had the responsibility for our very own students, I decided I needed to be different—not just for them but for myself.

We always said, "Family first." This is why we don’t have classes on a Sunday. We have one guilt-free day off a week.

I have said that I like training, and I do, but that’s not for everyone. Although I encourage our students to train regularly and consistently in order to reach their chosen goals, they are exactly that—chosen goals.

Only this week, I mentioned to my coach that I wouldn’t be attending a black belt class this weekend. I asked if that was okay—I wanted to spend some quality time with my husband.

I’m 50 years of age, and I am asking for permission to have a day off from my hobby.

Now, I want to make it very clear that I am now training with a coach who doesn’t expect me to be in the dojo every waking minute and doesn’t expect me to ask for permission to have time off training. This is something that I still really struggle with. Even when I am ill and unwell to train, I spend the whole time feeling incredibly anxious because I am not there.

Could we say this is a fear of missing out? I am sure there is a certain amount of that. But I still come back to the way I felt before. It might not even be a comment, but a lack of conversation because you missed a class, or a comment like, "Haven’t seen you in a while."

Now, these things, to some people, will be like water off a duck’s back. But there is a percentage of your students who will internalise these remarks and struggle for days until they feel they have earned enough attendance back.

I wanted to highlight this in the article because I don’t think any of us mean to do this to people. All we want to do is share our love and passion for martial arts. But let’s talk about balance. We talk a lot about balance when we practise—light and shade, hard and soft.

Let’s make a conscious effort to think about how we approach our training, our teaching, and our resting. Don’t overload our students with countless extra activities in and out of the dojo. You never know how someone is feeling about missing out or just not wanting to go.

We provide a fun, relaxed environment to train in. We make a big point of saying we learn from each other. We laugh together. We succeed together. And we fail together.

I hope no one feels stressed because of training.

I am still trying every day to allow myself time out, and the teacher I have now has shown me a different way. I’m very grateful for that.

Karate and martial arts should be an avenue to help people's mental health, and in the right environment, it does exactly that. For some, though, battles are still being fought.

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