A friend of mine recently asked for the primary reason for people’s interest in martial arts on his blog bamboosprintma.blogspot.com. I responded saying that initially it was for self defense, but now it was more a philosophical reason. After having posted my response, I started thinking about why I continue to take Arnis. Unlike many other arts that include a heavy dose of stretching and strengthening, Arnis is really focused on techniques. So while it can benefit me physically, it really is about self defense. At my age, do I really expect to have to many encounters where I need to defend myself? Probably not, but it is nice to know that I would be able to protect myself and my family if needed. But I guess really the philosophical part comes not directly from knowing how to disarm and subdue an opponent, but from more of the indirect aspects.

One is disciple, with a job, family and multiple other activities, the disciple to go twice a week and spend an hour and a half practicing the art. Another is the focus to push the body to be able to move and react with more power and more speed to increasingly difficult techniques. While this may not be a character building feat at 18, believe me it can be at close to 40. It forces you to focus and concentrate.

Finally, a third way in which practicing Arnis is that it develops mental agility. When you have to react to sticks coming at you at around 50 mph at times, you mind has to be able to react quickly. Even if you are practicing a drill, your mind has to work in conjunction with your body to make sure you block at the right time, you stop your stick before hitting your partner, etc. It forces your mind to stay sharp in other drills by coming up with new counters to counters.

I know this is just the tip of the iceberg and perhaps it doesn’t explain how this is philosophical (perhaps I’ll write about that next time), but at the least I wanted to describe how an art that is really focused on self defense technique has benefits that go beyond just self defense.