2019 Reflection Challenge!

If you look up Judo on Wikipedia, it states that Judo was intended by Kano to be pedagogical system. Kano wanted to create a new way of teaching physical fitness, a way that would be able to generalize to our lives, making us better people by understanding our bodies better.

So as the year comes to a close, I want to invite all our readers on a reflective journey from now until Christmas. Our goal is to help you reflect on Martial Arts, how it’s impacted you, what you’ve learned from it. Then, after Christmas, we want to take a look forward and help start a discussion for you to think about what you want your future in Martial Arts to entail.

To do this, we have set themes for every week and day* with questions to help you reflect on your Martial Arts journey or, for our non-Martial Artist readers, your life in general. We invite you to think or journal on one or more of these questions, and post your answers on the Facebook status or Instagram post we share each day. The writers at Gentle Tempest will pick three answers from each day to share on our social media accounts to celebrate your journeys with you.

We encourage you to be creative with your answers! Maybe journaling isn’t your thing; draw a picture! Make a video! Write a poem! Share a song that resonates with you, the theme, and your Martial Arts journey! Put as much or as little effort into as possible, we just hope to get you thinking about your past, and your future. We want to help you appreciate what Martial Arts is and has done for you.

So on that note, I welcome you to our first week of reflection, themed CHILD-LIKE. Many of us tried Martial Arts as children; I (Holly) did Karate for all of 5 minutes as a kid. But I fell out of it (cough, my brother quit therefore I quit), and didn’t return for 15 years. The excitement of getting my technique almost perfect, being able to actually complete a technique the first day I learn it, bouncing around in randori with my friends… those things remind me the excitement I felt as a child. Let’s tap into that child-like feeling we get when we’re doing something new, meeting someone new, and taking the next step forward in our lives.

Welcome to the week of being child-like. Happy reflecting!

*Because it is the holiday season, we cannot promise to post questions every day, as we writers also have lives to spend with our families. We will do our best, though, as we are excited to share in this journey with you!