I used to believe that only people born with natural talent could do physical things. And I knew I wasn\u2019t talented.<\/p>\n
When I was five, the doctor recommended ballet classes because I had problems with my ankles. Ballet isn\u2019t a particularly good exercise for weak ankles, but it was one of the few physical classes available for girls back then.<\/p>\n
My teacher put me in toe shoes. Clearly she didn\u2019t know anything about strengthening ankles. Toe shoes probably made my ankles worse.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t remember much about those classes, but I came away knowing I wasn\u2019t talented.<\/p>\n
I was always one of the tall kids, so I figured I could play basketball (even if my parents thought it was silly). The PE teacher told us that anyone who could run a mile around the track could play basketball, so I did it, only to discover that the test only applied to sixth graders. After that, I went to a school that didn\u2019t have basketball for girls. I used to shoot layups before PE class, trying to get good just because I wanted to be good.<\/p>\n
But despite that, PE class informed me that I wasn\u2019t talented. I got picked last for teams. I could never get the volleyball over the net. Or the tennis ball, though I liked tennis.<\/p>\n
I could ride a horse, though I never rode as much as my sister. I used a bicycle to get into town until I got a driver\u2019s license. Mostly I spent my time curled up with a book. I was \u201csmart,\u201d not physical.<\/p>\n
The first chink in my wall of belief came from watching The Avengers<\/em>. Not the superhero movies, but the clever British spy spoof TV series from the 60s. Mrs. Peel, as played by the late Diana Rigg, was an awesome fighter because she had trained in martial arts.<\/p>\n A seed was planted in the back of my mind: Learn martial arts and you won\u2019t be at risk from men.<\/p>\n Of course, martial arts was physical and I was untalented, but the idea remained.<\/p>\n Yes, stories matter, even high camp sixties TV.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Fifteen years later I signed up for karate at the YMCA in Wichita Falls, Texas, showed up late for class wearing the wrong clothes, got on the mat even though there were no other women there, and fell in love with something physical.<\/p>\n And, no, I wasn\u2019t any good. I\u2019d spent most of the years in between not being physical. I slipped past PE requirements in college by getting enough hours to be a junior after one year. Outside of riding a bicycle for transportation, I remained the person who curled up with a book.<\/p>\n Bodies are capable of learning a lot, but they need to move to learn. And mine hadn\u2019t been moving much.<\/p>\n It took years of training (first in karate, then in aikido) to undo those initial beliefs. Most people who take up martial arts aren\u2019t particularly talented, but a few are. Watching the talented succeed while you plod along can be disheartening.<\/p>\n But if you stay with something physical because you love it, talent begins to matter less and less. You start to care about principle. You start to understand what your body can learn and how that can transform the rest of you.<\/p>\n You start to realize that we\u2019re physical creatures and that using our bodies is an important part of who we are. Talent has nothing to do with it.<\/p>\n Now I believe that I am a physical person, that moving my body is vital to who I am. I\u2019m no longer sure what it was like being that person who assumed that I didn\u2019t get to do physical things because I wasn\u2019t and would never be talented.<\/p>\n I was also right that learning to fight showed me I didn\u2019t have to be afraid of men.<\/p>\n Right now the only safe physical activities are ones we do by ourselves. I miss the contact with others, but I still try to move.<\/p>\n It took me a long time to learn that I could be physical. I\u2019m not going to give it up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I used to believe that only people born with natural talent could do physical things. And I knew I wasn\u2019t talented. When I was five, the doctor recommended ballet classes because I had problems with my ankles. Ballet isn\u2019t a particularly good exercise for weak ankles, but it was one of the few physical classes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[188,187],"class_list":["post-880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-experiences","tag-martial-arts","tag-talent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=880"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":881,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions\/881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}