DataB4 wrote:
I wonder if dojos will eventually take up that marketing challenge then. Also, if only martial arts weren't so expensive. I admire that you learn from the videos and try to practice even without a partner. I hope you can find a class, or at least a partner, at some point.
thank you... the only person who expresses any concern or belief in these aspirations offline is a therapist.
unfortunately, yes, they’re typically expensive to learn, and especially so in california. can’t afford them personally, but have been offered past studies by family concerned about being a pedestrian around here... have had some odd experiences with people looking for a contact for something unknown in broad daylight. one seemed more than disgruntled about a past purchase... stopped at a light, and jumped out of his car in pursuit while ranting until it must have set in he wasn’t yelling at who he thought he was. from the distance the sound of his pace kept, all that could be done was to walk as if unrattled within a mediation(focusing on a point in the distance and walking without thought upon anything else) without turning around in case he had a gun, and didn’t wish to be identified.
it doesn’t always seem overpriced out of greed though, with as much as it costs for overhead, and whatever licenses are required. typically, that’s the problem, as unknown style names get glossed over for those that are made most familiar through popular media. it’s why there are many karate and kung fu studios... as the names are familiar, even though kung fu isn’t a style, and karate is often sold by the direct translation of either “empty hand” or “chinese hand”, and the garb the iconic japanese gi, because people will train in it even if they don’t know it isn’t actually karate(actually, shaolin white crane kung fu, was supposedly the inspiration for okinawan karate, and okinawan the inspiration for japanese karate... kind of interesting, as it means japanese karate is not a traditional art, it was refined to require great strength/resilience to be effective for self defense, and shaolin white crane was said to be devised by women for self defense like wing chun was.).
the ideal is to save a few true defense arts from being lost to the united states, open a studio somewhere affordable, yet not dangerous, and have a job that can pay the expenses so that students can choose to pay by donation if they wish or can... kind of like the teachers of old. it’s hard to imagine how though, as if to go into some medical field, the conscience would feel weighted if not to work in a free clinic. father says the nation is not as bad as california would make it seem... having lived in a few states elsewhere, he’s probably correct. just been here too long, and it’s too costly to stay, and very costly(in priorities... finished most of community college less than a decade ago, so it’d be faster and less expensive to transfer to an in state university) to leave.
as for taking up the marketing challenge, wing chun has tried to, and it surely gets female students, but they aren’t exactly taking up roles in hong kong cinema, and traditional martial arts get nerfed in televised fights because the hands cannot be bound without having a debilitating effect to muscle memory, and reflex speed much like putting shoes on a graceful cat only makes it into a sullen and clumsy creature. there’s that, and traditional asian arts went beyond strength and focused upon efficient strikes to the nervous system, or ones that triggered autonomic responses(have to take into account that such people were often starving, not large, and weapons outlawed), of which, many are in regions that are off limits in any televised fight.
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