Girl In A Fight: Exploring Fight Culture One Experience At A Time

When I originally started this blog, it was really to discuss what my experiences were in Systema , as a female, in the United States.
Things moved along in several directions, but I never forgot the one topic that really drove me here. I'd like to say my fight training began a few years ago when I stepped on a mat at my first Systema class, but that isn't the case.
Ever since I could remember, I loved to fight. And even when I didn't love it, I HAD to fight. And being female meant, that was not "ok".
From my earliest memories of my grandfather watching boxing on Spanish TV, I remember him sort of sparring with me off and on during commercials.I also remember feeling really, really guilty about sneaking around watching snippets of boxing.
That migrated to being slightly obsessed with military arts. I am not even sure how I knew about the military other than my brother had GI Joe "action figures" or that my Dad was in the Army, I just knew... I like guns,mud, and being loud. The biggest issue was that I am half Hispanic. Any Hispanic female will know that means... dresses, bows, long hair and primping..non-stop. That was NOT me. Luckily for me, my parents were divorced and my Dad owned a ranch in east Texas. This really meant one thing...I worked. Hard.
And any kid who is around horses knows that having horses means you work. Our chores were not divided by gender....I didn't stand around chasing butterflies. I picked up hay bales, rode bareback, got knocked around, bit and kicked by horses. Also, my Dad, was an adrenaline junkie. He had a high speed, high powered jet boat that we got to ride in all the time , which meant water skiing, water sports and getting the shit scared out of us when the boat felt like it was about to flip backwards due to speed.

My 'rastlin costume

To top it off, my Dad, was an avid wrestling fan. In Texas, we call it 'rastlin, but still. I got to meet several famous wrestlers as a kid, including Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant and many, many more. It also meant, our house was a constant , non-stop wrestling match. My Dad, was famous for his "claw" move and his hands, were enormous. He was extremely powerful and "trained" me to fight at a pretty young age. He threw me around, kicked, tossed and line drived me endlessly.
And, for what it's worth..at the time, I mostly hated all of this.
I was a nerdy, city kid. I preferred to read encyclopedias, drawing, working out complex math problems and trying to teach myself hieroglyphics in my spare time. There was not one thing I loved about my Dad's antics, because , ..he also had a vile temper(don't worry, he is a reformed angermaniac). And to make things even worse,I had an out of control, hyperaggressive, anger filled older brother. To make matters even worse, due to my parent's multiple marriages...at any given time, I had sets of step-brothers. Which means... I was the only female sibling to all this testosterone filled fighting and pecking order dominance. yay

always had scuffed up panty hose

I never sat around crying about it(unless I was really injured..which DID happen(thrown down a flight of stairs with roller skates on and bit through my tongue)), and I never felt like I couldn't handle anything. I did what any child of the '80's did... I took it,fought back,cried a little, and then hoped I could watch cartoons on Saturday.
Growing up like this, was really the only way I knew. I knew, I hated church because I had to dress up...I knew, I hated being quiet and being talked over by all the boys around me and I knew, there was not much I could do but learn to fight back.

This leads me to my first real school fight. I was in the 5th grade at an inner city school in Dallas. Her name was Cecilia and I will never forget it. Her boyfriend, Michael, kissed me on the cheek in the hallway. Back then, 5th graders, were still playing with toys, so even the idea that anyone had a boyfriend was weird...being kissed was even weirder. My best friend , Sharon, ran up to me in the hallway and told me Cecilia wanted to fight me after school. I wasn't too concerned, because my mom taught at the school, so surely, nothing would happen.
I was dead wrong.
By the time school was out, everyone was really amped up for this fight. Not only was I one of the only white(I am hispanic and white) kids in the school, I was a nerd and my mom was a celebrated teacher there. Cecilia was a bully, one of the bigger kids, and was known for fighting. On the way to the area behind the gym I kept thinking" ok, she's a Jehovah's Witness, I'm sure she won't hit me. She doesn't even say the Pledge of Allegance".--nerd thinking.
The closer I got to the location, the louder Sharon's voice got. "Girl, you just gotta get her....go all out!".
I wasn't even sure what that meant. I started to mentally pray the rosary.

Largely what I experienced in junior high

Before I made a complete turn of the corner, I felt a horrible sting to my face. I had been hit...hard. But not harder than any of my brothers or Dad hit me. When I slightly recovered and stood straight, I made eye contact with Cecilia. The look on her face was completely savage. She came barreling at me at a high rate of speed and all I could do was plant my hand on her face and squeeze. I remember feeling her eyeballs and mouth on my hand and it felt exactly like gutting a deer. As she grabbed gobs of my hair and clothes, I clung to her face and started swinging with the other hand, completely blindly. And speaking of blind...I had yet to get my prescription glasses, so I was damn near blind.
Once the gym coach pulled ME off HER, all I could think was how great it felt. I saw her laying there, flat on her back crying. I looked down and had all my appendages, but I knew I would be headed straight to the principal's office. Luckily, it was Mr. McCallister, who really didn't care and was ready to go home for the day. All he said was" she deserved it..she's a bully." . To this day, I am fairly certain my mom never found out about the fight. Although the following year, I was at a completely different school with a totally different demographic.
Along came junior high at another inner city school , or as what I like to refer to as "where shit went down". My nerd status was still maintained but the very first day of school, I was jumped. And again on the second day. By the third day, I realized, my skin tone was what was making me get my ass whooped. I decided to latch on to a few of the hispanic kids at the school who thought it was really cool that I was "white" but fluent in Spanish. They, were in a gang.
 "Getting jumped" became less frequent but the one-on-one fights increased. The severity of the fights got worse, and if I wasn't fighting, I was fighting for one of my friends. By 8th grade I already had a reputation for being a full on brawler.

At about this same time, my already raging brother, began experimenting with drugs. I did not have a safe place to turn to. Not one ounce of solitude or peace. Other than juvi hall.The violence was so chaotic and bad in my life, that going to jail was always a better option.

By my freshman year in high school(again, another inner city school), I had seen so many shootings,stabbings and random fights, I was no longer phased by anything. I was sent to go live in east Texas with, sigh...my Dad.
The smell of horseshit and early morning wake up calls he gave me annoyed me to no end, not to mention that the total population of the high school I went to in east Texas was 300. I was considered a minority because I was half-Mexican and that increased their total minority population to 9 students. On my first day, I was in a throw down with a female football player named Rhonda who already had some missing teeth.
The one thing about the girls at this school was, they were tough. Not like, gang member-shit talking tough, but like, fast pitched softball, rodeo girl who hunts , tough. While I was still in my element of fighting, I was oddly not in many fights at this school.
Before long, we moved to Austin where, I was shocked that an entire month went by and I didn't see or was involved in one fight at school. I spent the rest of my high school career, waiting to fight ( I even started one in science class...).My home life was a different story all together. And way too shocking to go into detail here, but let's just say, I was more than used to sleeping with one eye open. It was rare that the police were not at our house on a weekend. Rare.

Along with getting through all of it, I chose a specifically, physically brutal field to work in. I decided to become a chef. My culinary apprenticeship at times, resembled that of what a Marine would go through in boot camp. I still have a scar from a narrowly missed pan that was "tossed" at me by an instructor. Not to mention, getting yelled at, degraded and sexually harassed on a regular basis...this was, what I was told" all part of the industry". I sucked it up and did my time, and made it out alive and quite successfully. I spent years breaking my back, carrying loads of items, hauling bags of produce and yielding knives with the best of them. And I never cracked, which was perhaps why I was never in need of a job in that field. I loved every minute of it. It was familiar, vile and hard.

Fast forward to today. I am no martial artist, but really wish my parents did put me in some formal training. However, what would change? I grew up , literally, fighting. I read most Army field guides, played with guns and knives and spent a regular part of my childhood with bruises and cuts all over me. While I am not great at Systema, what I did love about it was that I was able to initiate my daily skills into fight skills if need be. The one thing missing, was my gender group.
I had the great luck to train with a few great women, but as a whole, there was no promise of balance for women, at least here in the States anyway. While my local instructors were quite phenomenal and female trainee friendly, nationally, there was not a large presence of females who trained. Even when I asked a leading international instructor if he could guide me to a few female instructors, he boasted there were none. He also told me "women are not warriors"...(I've referenced this in a few other blogs).

The more I asked around, the more I realized , there wasn't much of a niche for women and when I was shown what some women were doing in Systema, it was largely not even remotely like what the men were doing. Often times, I was pointed to "women's self defense" classes, that were taught by the same instructors who taught Systema, just you know... this was for women .
I didn't understand what I like to now call "gender divided training" until recently, when I traveled to Russia to train with Andrey Karimov, who explicitly believes in co-gender training for the purpose of creating social harmony and so the men don't aggro each other out of the room. In fact, Karimov himself discusses about connecting with feminine energy and creating a balance in men, so they do not turn into hyperaggressive males with no pecking order and something to prove. These men, are often super stiff, wound really tight, and have no concept of true movement, which some martial artists say is key in learning combatives. These are the guys you see super ,duper stiff in training videos, often times have veins popping out of their necks and talk about being soft, when really, they just look like they are trying really hard to make a poop.
And....this is also what I looked like training. Not to repeat too much, but my blog about wearing a skirt for 30 days, really drove this home. I was indeed, a hyperaggressive female at one point in my life and it really affects who I am today. To make things completely ironic, I have been approached by several males who teach "women's self defense" in hopes that I would help promote them.

The issue is, is this ok?
I honestly didn't know there was a stigma to girls fighting until I went to a friend's house when I was in 7th grade. She had a younger sister and there was absolutely no holes in the walls, anywhere. She didn't toss her sister into a wall, and they didn't "roughhouse". Usually, when I visited them, I was in shock at how quiet their house was. It seemed abnormal , to me. Later on,I realized this was normal, and what I was living, was not.But, what I lived through, got me through alot of social,psychological and physical issues later on in life(including evading an attempted rape, running out of a burning building, and many other traumatic events)... I never played victim or felt really sorry for myself, and perhaps, my combat like childhood , is what saved me.

When I think of gender divided training, I can only think of one thing..."how would a woman survive an attack if she hasn't been knocked around by a dude?". Luckily for me, while training in Russia, I had instructors that understood this balance and how to teach it.Training here was a different story.
While one woman who I worked with regularly was great, a few others were way too "light" for me. Either I felt guilty not working my best with them, or I felt like I wasted time training. To find a really balanced male to train with, was pretty difficult. My most favorite training partner ever, probably doesn't know he was just that. He was soft enough to guide me, yet firm enough to work with me. He could go slow or fast,and knew what my weaknesses were on the mat. When I stopped training in the US, I realized that this kind of male, would be really hard to find . My anticipation for what kind of training I would go through in Russia, became engulfing. My first day in training I noticed one thing... all the men with whom I was working with, were exactly like this ONE guy I liked as a partner in the US.All of them.
There were several determining factors I noticed right off the bat.

• None of these men were hyperaggressive males. 
• They could dance and sing and play musical instruments.(Karimov himself could sing high notes, often mimicked an old babushka and of course, danced.)
• They all had a sense of humor and they all were as powerful as our instructor.
• Almost all had been in the military. 
• None, tried to SHOW me what I was doing wrong or tried to overcorrect me
• None made the assumption that I had no idea what I was doing.

Training is indeed different there and the idea of gender division, or "women's self defense" did not exist at all, not in our group. It was "just fight..in a skirt". And that's what we did.
In the months since my return, I've been asked to support or back several women's self defense groups and/or programs. Normally, I would consider it, but when I asked the male instructors of these programs what their backgrounds were in , they'd often list and itemize their college credentials, or police training outlines. More often than not, these men, had never even heard of the areas of Dallas I grew up in,or they had been divorced several times, had no female children and none of them had lived in the slums of anything. Ever. Technically, I would be better at teaching "women's self defense" based on my survivorship rate,alone.
While yes, degrees count for a few points, life experience counts for alot more, IMO. I survived alot of actually being a female and being attacked. I don't live in fear and I don't walk around hyperaware. I am able to sustain huge amounts of pain(ex.breast cancer biopsy , no meds...), yet I am supposed to find comfort in the idea of this gender singular class, that will partner me up with , women who may or may not be fear mongered into training or women who , may or may not have already been attacked(which means, something during the class could actually trigger them). Out of all the "women's self defense" programs I've been sent to evaluate, not one , seems even remotely close, to what I went through in junior high , at the very least. Not one. Including Systema. Even then, only recently , I had the great honor of meeting  female Systema O.G.("original gangster") , Janice Bishop. She sent me a link to a video she was in , where she is clearly being punched and she is punching someone else, full force. I had goosebumps watching her footage. In fact, I cried..perhaps out of anger or perhaps because I didn't meet her sooner, or even worse, because no one had ever mentioned her to me. In three years of training.I personally was lucky enough to get punched by an amazing instructor named Marc Breese. Anyone in Systema knows what I mean when I say"lucky enough to get punched". His punch was so smooth and powerful, that I can remember exactly how I felt immediately after the punch and to this day, have not been punched as well as he punched me.
 Not that I felt incredibly isolated in training but it would have been nice to connect to the few women that existed in the art in the United States.
 Meanwhile, in Russia....my good friend, Olga Malkova is making waves with her phenomenal sword and whip work and I am 100% sure she will kick my ass even harder when I go back to Russia next year. Because, as beautiful and soft as Olga is, the men she trains with, WANT her to be phenomenal , if not better ,than they are.

And let's be honest, Ronda Rousey, really, really helped open up combative arts to millions of females everywhere, but even still... we seem to just not be able to get it right. Not only has she been called "cocky" "mannish" and" he-man", she really lost alot of us(women and men) when she published her "Do Nothing Bitch" mantra.Sigh. I guess saying " I'm not a Do Nothing Yet Intellectually Stimulating Female Who Can Fight" doesn't have a ring to it.

At the end of the day, as an instructor in all this, ask yourself how you train your students.Do you slightly groan under your breath when a woman shows up to class? Do you try to balance the men in your class regularly so when a newcomer female comes in, she won't be scared away? Do you offer gender divided programs, and if so..why? Do you think you(if male) are emotionally, psychologically and physically qualified to train and work with women?
Like I said before, I was extremely lucky to have my first tastes of Systema with some great instructors who were fair and amazing at finding a balance. There were times, I did feel completely stuck in the program here, but I felt that was more the overall "program" rather than the instructors. But I've also trained with men who were extremely aggressive and awkward with women in the class and guess what guys? It shows. And when those same men make "women systema" videos or "women's self defense" videos, it's really, really not a good look to any woman who's got a decent grasp of what female fight culture is about.

If you have a sister, daughter, wife or mother, think.... "what do I want for them?", how would I like for them to feel in a training environment ,would I want them to be grouped with other females like them , and how does that apply to a realistic fight situation? What is the BEST I can do for the women around me in training?".

I highly suggest we all take a deep look at the "combative arts" and stop dismissing women as ho-hum weekly practitioners, and really focus on doing the work, for your school, class or program.Recently, a female Systema instructor in Virginia was promoted on a news cast for her free women's self defense class that she offered in light of recent events in her area.This was a HUGE advantage for all of the females in training in the US, yet not really discussed that much overall, in gen pop.I for one, posted it and discussed it as much as possible in the hopes of at least, creating a buzz that "hey...we can teach this stuff too!".She is exactly the kind of woman who should teach a women's self defense class, to other women. But she is also the exception to the rule, as it were , in combative arts.
On another side note, there are many, many Combative Arts forums and discussion pages, that have very little , if at all, female presence. And it certainly shows by the Neanderlithic tone of conversation, in a weird way. While some men are completely snarky and catty, others have very little or no actual survivorship rate, not enough to teach Combat Arts anyway. And most, count the times they were in a drunken bar fight. If you whittle away all the "I can teach this because of A,B and C"...and we are left with people who have only trained in so many arts that they have convinced themselves they are good, OR if we ask for real, life experience...by default, women would be better instructors across the board. We deal with every day attacks on our emotions, psyche, physical pain(hello...menstrual cramps and childbirth) , forced to perform out side of our comfort zone(have you walked in heels and a skirt near a construction site??no??try it)...but most men on these forums ONLY argue about how much better they are than the other men , or , how much MORE "paid for" training they've had. Very few can have an intellectual debate about fighting.Most of these same men, don't even have a girlfriend, wife,daughter or significant other they would dare to try to DEFEND. Imagine that?...why are they taking combative arts if the only thing they combat , is the keyboard?
I never paid for any of my combative experience growing up.It was all free. So the overall question that gets trounced over and over is  "WHY DO YOU TRAIN?". It's asked in every single forum I've been on, and very rarely, does anyone say" to protect my family". If you take an honest look at your reasons for training, and the reason are not to protect others, then why ARE you training?
And guys, for what it's worth...a GREAT male Systema partner is really someone that treats us like a brother would(a normal one)...roughs us up, teaches us how to fight, then lets us try it out without ego or getting frustrated. Remember..you want us to learn just as much as we want to learn from you.

(thank you to M. Brock for being the best male partner of all time and to Janice Bishop and Tiffany Lee for pioneering women in Systema in the U.S. and to Emlyn, for without, I would not have even begun this journey)

Fear Mongering: How You Can Learn About Fear, For Free!!

Ever since I began my training in Systema, probably the one thing I heard over and over was the word "fear".
Now, just hearing that word, may make people start to slightly panic.That's right, if you tell people, "today, we are going to work on FEAR control", then you may get some reaction.
When someone says that to me, I immediately think of clowns.Clowns scare me. They are a legitimate fear.

Just found out this is Tim Curry, so that makes it ok.

But, in training, fear control is taught in different ways. Everyone is kinda more or less told that to control fear , they have to evolve and work through their own thresholds. Now this, as someone who has had several close calls with death, sounded completely foreign to me. How can anyone teach people how to control fear, if we all have different fear levels? How is this possible? How do you even know what my fear is, if you have just met me?
Well the answer is, it isn't fear control. It's panic control.But because that's more or less a subjective word, it is replaced with "fear". Why? Because the word "fear"sells. Quickly.If I tell you, "here, I will give you all the tools you need to defend yourself from getting attacked and to stop being scared", you may believe it. You will really believe it if you go to a seminar and watch others believe it.
But, if you've been in a close call, or near death incident, you may check your psyche.For me , personally, my fearful moments were not getting mugged, or jumped, or assaulted. My moments were: being in a burning house, hearing my son was in a horrible car accident, having a nurse tell me that I had a miscarriage.
That, is fear. Those precise moments. Also, alot of panic. But mostly, fear.There is no way, on earth, you can teach me to prepare for those moments. Why ? Because for the most part, I had no idea any of these things would happen to me . Those incidents happen so quickly, that your mind sometimes doesn't react right away(this is perhaps why PTSD sets in).
In training, in a classroom type environment(indoor or outdoor), it was impossible for me to experience even the same level of fear as any of my real life experiences. Class had a start and stop time and I felt completely comfortable getting thrown around, hit , kicked, stepped on. I did not ever experience fear. Nor would I want to.
However, across the board, the basic training for this fear control(fear of what, I'm not sure) , was breath holds. Breath holds, if you read about it in any Systema blog,book or see in a class, consist of burst breathing, breath holding, breath releasing etcetc, until you almost or in fact, do pass out. If you've ever played the "pass out game"(which many children every year die from), it is the same feeling. I've done this breath work and the results were horrible, not scary. I threw up in my own mouth once, I blacked out another time, and the last and final time I did it, I had the worst migraine I've ever had in my life. Was I scared? No.
Mad? Yes.Very. Why was I doing this? I knew what my fears were and there was no way this breaking psyche point of breath holding was going to get me there. Apparently, you are supposed to feel a sense of panic and be able to control yourself when you get to that point. The point when you should be gasping for air, you're supposed to hold out a little longer.
Um.Newsflash. I, like many people...suffer from asthma. Telling me "you know..stop breathing so you start panicking" is like telling King James how to write the Bible.
I KNOW how this feels. Again..even suffocating during an asthma attack, not the same fear as being mugged , in a fire, or hearing really bad news. Not even close.

actual picture from that day

Why? Because I have had asthma almost my whole life. I am a pro at asthma. I have the kind that no one wants. The kind that can be dormant for a year then provide me with another year of complete confusion and an array of medications.In fact, I am so calm, cool and collected during my almost choke-to-death asthma sessions, that even my own Doctor was concerned during a visit once when I arrived in her office and I was gasping for air. I was there for something completely unrelated to asthma and a certain airborne scent triggered me. By the time her nurse was checking my lungs, I was in full blown attack. My son sat and read his book and I calmly looked for my inhaler, while the doctor and nurse ran from room to room searching for a nebulizer. This is now what I feel is a result of lifelong exposure to the chaos that surrounds this disease. My calm demeanor during the attack is a result of years long panic and frantic not knowing what to do. Immersion therapy at it's finest. Because I was in a total environment with this disorder, I knew how to calmly and confidently handle the situation.
So how or what makes anyone who starts out in Systema think they can confidently handle a surprise attack? How can you train for fear, if you are not in a total "fear" environment? How do you even define your own fear levels , if you have not ever been in the situation of being attacked, randomly, unprovoked, and without warning.You know how you can do this?
Enlist.
That's right..sign up for any one of the armed forces and train. Train like you mean it. Train like you are fighting for something or someone . There are no Systema competitions, (other than the "my ego is better than your ego" ones, or "my gym has more participants than yours"), so why do any of us think we are training for a total fear environment? Because we bought into the marketing.
As I began writing this a few days ago, something really disturbing hit the news wire. A woman was beheaded in Oklahoma, by a coworker. While the level of " I told you so's" hit the internet, I sat and waited to see which martial artist was ready to capitalize on this. How did I know this would happen? Patterned behavior.
Within 24 hours a notable school here mentioned how their women's class switched to "anti-beheading measures"
Ummmmmm, what? How do you even begin to teach a class on that? Do they teach this class in countries that have frequent beheadings?  I don't know what was actually discussed in class, but a first thought would be teaching situational awareness, BUT , if you are already training in any martial arts , you should already have been taught that....I would think.
Unless, you need to be SOLD that you NEED to be taught how to protect yourself from a beheading. Other than donating all the class proceeds to the victim's family, I cannot imagine how this is possible. Unless class consisted of praying for the victim and witnesses, then I am completely , once again, face planting into my keyboard. Then, openly discussing that , this was your class topic...wha??
While I wish Systema here would stop targeting vulnerable individuals,and fear mongering groups of people,  I see the financial gain from it. Once I stepped back from the US Systema methods  and looked at international options, I realized..this is an American problem. The marketing for most classes usually consists of " protect yourself" or " know yourself" or " learn combat style", or even better, "advanced weapons training". And you know what I found? Some of the best, finest, most well rounded Systema groups and instructors, don't even advertise or have classes, AND..they will talk to you..for freeeeeeeee!
 I wish we would all question "what are we really training for?"
Are we all weekend warriors ? Are any of us really prepared for real live fear?
Everyone knows, being in battle, of any kind..is REAL fear training. A mom who's son just got diagnosed with leukemia...fear.
A mom, who sees her child's teacher on TV arrested for molestation. Fear.
A mom, who can't find her kid in a grocery store.Fear.
A dad, who's daughter goes missing after he tells her to break up with a certain male. Fear.
Seeing no movement on an ultrasound , after being pregnant for five months....fear.
Signing up for war......
These are all examples of real fear. Telling me that holding my breath until I vomit, or holding me down while six people are rolling over me..not fear. Not even close. Maybe , panic at best..but even then, class is only a few hours..so I know, it will be done.
If you have trained for Systema for more than three years, you could have easily joined the military. Not only would you receive FREE combat training, FREE uniforms and FREE travel, you would receive real live FEAR training. For free...in fact, this country will pay YOU(at some point, if you make it out alive).I dare any of us to approach any vet that just came back from a war and brag to them about how many Systema seminars we've been to, or who's school we just got back training from , or which instructor punched us while we sheepishly waited in line. Please..do tell a vet about your highly paid for combatives training, show them the shirt you paid for.See what happens.

As for myself, I will continue to face my daily fears of not knowing if I will ever recover from a spinal injection, or if I will ever heal from a tragic loss, or if I can financially maintain my household long enough for my body to get back into working order.This is fear.

Study the definitions alone, challenge yourself, your instructor, your life.

Fear is a vital response to physical and emotional danger—if we didn't feel it, we couldn't protect ourselves from legitimate threats. But often we fear situations that are far from life-or-death, and thus hang back for no good reason. Traumas or bad experiences can trigger a fear response within us that is hard to quell. 

Panic  suddenly destroying the self-control and impelling to some frantic action.

Bamboozled to deceive or get the better of (someone) by trickery, flattery, or the like; hoodwinked (often followed by into)

Learn about :
Psychological marketing .

Being Blindsided: How We Succumb to the Misguidance of Others

Today, I dropped my son off at school, in what I like to call "the drop off/pick up lane of doom". It is an intricate barrage of SUVs, small cars, students, angry parents, rushing parents, disrespectful people, and well...an all out nightmare. On any given morning or afternoon, you will hear honking, witness near fender-benders, and even see a few kids almost get hit by cars. The speed limit is 20 mph, but you'd think it's 200. I digress.
Today was very typical. I guided my car near the sidewalk so my son can unload his belongings and prance off into his morning limelight, while I sit and wait in my car for maybe 10 minutes to let some of the mania die down.
I carefully, always, inch my very brightly colored car into the street and turn onto whatever the nearest side street is to escape all this. This maneuver, requires a ton of skill, faith and patience, even thought it's just a simple turn.
You have to have full faith when going through this. Not in yourself, but in the person that *hopefully* will let you cut in front of them to make the turn. Usually, you are up against someone in an SUV , who is rushing to get out of there as quickly as you are. This person, must give you the "ok" to proceed, and if you do so, you have to assume they are helping you make a safe decision.
Assume.

I never assume the person who is telling me it's "ok" to go ahead and slide in front of them, is 100% trustworthy. Yet , everyday, when we drive..we , as a whole , do this.
While I was waiting my turn, a woman motioned the "ok" to proceed. I held my hand up , motioning back for her to wait. She flayed her hand at me again, with a bit of an aggressive tone. I motioned her to "wait" again.
What she didn't see, and what I was looking at, was a mom in a small car, on a side street, trying to slowly inch her way past everyone, who evidently, had a crying baby in the backseat. She kept looking back to the backseat, reaching down, looking back, reaching...trying just to get out of where we were. I had been there. Anyone knows, if you have a screaming infant in the backseat of a car, you just want to get home.
The woman, in the SUV, had become increasingly frustrated at my lack of following her command, and gunned her truck. At the same moment, the frantic mom, inched almost directly into the SUV. I was in the middle of trying to motion to the mom to stop, when this happened. Luckily no one was hurt and we all slid out of there as though it was just an everyday malfunction.
I pulled over and took a deep breath.THIS, was exactly what I just went through in my everyday life.

When we hear about things from other people, about how great they are, and we become interested..we may partake, sign up , attend..etc. If we like what's going on ,we become regulars, or attendees , students.This could apply to anything. Music, dance, yoga..martial arts...

When we follow leaders that we feel  may be a good match for us, we aren't really thinking much about it. If it feels right, we go with it. If they treat you poorly, we assume, it was something we did, and trek on.
We don't think much of their guidance into "traffic" . We put a ton of faith that these people,that act as though they know what they are doing, that's why we are all there. Nodding in unison.
We may be wrong....but no one says anything. No one questions it. Not in the open, anyway.
When you begin to get a better sense of "hmmm, that wasn't the first time I was mistreated(led into oncoming traffic), you start to really question yourself. Why am I here? What was I thinking? What have I been putting up with? And when you back away, as sad as it may be, you gain some clarity and insight. You see the bigger picture, ingest, and pick up the pieces .

When you get trapped by the misguidance and advice of several of these people at once, you feel one of a few things 1) surely, all these people can't be untrustworthy, 2)surely, they would stand by me as they said they would, 3) surely, they won't guide me into some traffic and leave me there to get hammered into. Surely, they wouldn't.
But they can, have and will. If this happens, alot of people suggest, just staying quiet, slipping away, and letting yourself become a victim , since..these , after all...are some pretty noted leaders.

In my experience, there is no right way to deal with getting led into heavy or dangerous traffic by strangers. At the end of the day, you are responsible for yourself and expecting people to remain by your side, is almost an impossible feat.
Take care of yourself, the best you can...it may be a fight, may mean you make some enemies, it may mean, you , by your own sword, determine your fate. But don't do what THEY want you to do. After all, they are the ones that took you there.

All experiences, are  learning lessons. Take what you can, from any of them. If you total your car, because someone guided you incorrectly, YOU will still be without a car. However...you may get another one,a newer one, or learn the bonus of public transportation. If you lose friends, because someone misguided you, you may realize, those people..really weren't your friends in the first place, BUT you will make new friends, and maybe even better ones...and , you will now officially know what to look for in a mentor( I hope).

This leads me back to Andrey Karimov.
Initially, I stopped training Systema with any schools, because I felt like I was not getting out of it what I needed. I wanted something a little more holistic, lively, fun..real.
I watched a few of Mr. Karimov's videos online , and noticed a few things:
1) kids- he has almost as many videos working with children(with adults) as he does of knife work, whip work, and other training
2)music-there is music(usually he plays the instrument himself) in almost every video. In fact,in our house..we walk around humming the familiar tune .
3)smiles-even some of what seems to be the most complex and face cringing moves, you will notice a few smiles and even laughter here and there.
4)camaraderie- Andrey has camps and all inclusive seminars. He does't seem isolated from his group. He is fully involved in what he teaches. FULLY.
5)passion. This man..is probably more passionate about what he teaches than I am about what kind of donuts I eat. If you knew me, you'd know what that means.

I couldn't ask for a better path to go down. I couldn't have hand picked a better person to talk to about Systema, than him. He gives me hope and encouragement ( even though I didn't think I needed it), far beyond what I could have expected. He is delightful , helpful and full of knowledge. At the very least, he is inspirational. At best, he forces you to really, really think.

Someone recently contacted me and said , " THIS man you are aligning yourself with is a bully!Just look at him, look at how he trainssss..LOOOOOK AT HIMMMMMM! I will help you , figure out what YOU want!!!"

I'm sorry, what?
A) I didn't ask
B)If he is so horrible, why has he spent so much of his free time talking to me, and showing me a part of his magically traditional life? (no instructor here, has done that.ever).
C)You TELLING me, that someone is a bully, then TELLING me I need to stop associating with him is, kinda by definition, now making you a bully.
D)Considering what I just went through with a group of male "martial artists" threatening, backstabbing and trash talking me, I'm still here, out in the open..I **think** I'll be ok.

At the end of the day...they are all life lessons. I will do as I please, step on some toes, make friends, make enemies, make choices.


But most certainly, I will NOT be misguided by anyone into oncoming traffic again.

To watch more of Andrey Karimov's work with children, check out this video:
Andrey Karimov children and adult combo class.
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To learn more about bullying and how to detect or stop it visit : Stop Bullying Now

To find out how to find a good martial arts instructor,  simple tips on choosing an instructor

The Battery Effect: How The Company You Keep Can Drain You

One of the most amazingly surreal things that I must point out immediately is that not ONE of any of the people (mostly men) who Mr. Karimov has connected me with, have been disrespectful or rude. Not one.
Considering the language barrier, the lack of knowing who I am, and the cultural differences, all, yes, ALL of the men who train, work with, or know him have all been the most delightful or helpful people ever.All of them.
Mr. Karimov himself has taken so much time from his schedule to answer any of my questions, has shown me archived footage, shared photos and even gone as far as to Skype with me! How cool is that? Very.
Considering , for the most part, I can't even get a response from one of the biggest Russian Martial Arts factories here..without jumping through a zillion hoops. Coincidentally, this is the same factory that I have dumped a ton of money into. Good luck trying to get on their forum , email list or getting a question answered.
This goes back to what I like to officially now call , " The Battery Syndrome". I am not sure of the direct origin of this phrase, but my fiancee told me about it a few years ago. Basically, if you are a fully charged battery, and you are around nothing but negatively charged batteries, then you too, will become a negative battery. If you are around positively charged batteries, you will remain positive. Perhaps even if you are a negatively charged battery and surround yourself with positive ones, then you will up your game. If you take the battery part of the equation and replace it with "humans", then there ya' have it.
Brings me back to what I have recently been through on this journey. Not that long ago, a school here in the U.S. posted a very sexually explicit, demeaning and disturbing "ice bucket challenge" video.
I.LOST.IT.
How on earth is this going to HELP women in Systema in the U.S.? If you read the comments after the video(now deleted), you would damn near think that this behavior, was completely OK by U.S. standards. And you know what....? It was.
As I sat in shock and watched the video , over and over, with the school's logo, insignia and owner partaking in the background, I noticed one MAJOR issue. Not one instructor associated with the international program said anything...not publicly anyway.
The fact that this was even an "ok idea" was completely absurd. I had just mentioned to several of my female friends who had been interested in Systema , that it was a completely balanced art, and that they would surely be welcome at any school. I was mortified. And to think some of the more sought after international instructors had daughters...just....ick. How would they feel that one of their largest earning schools/networks considered this an "ok" practice? What about respect , as a whole, for who you are representing as a school?
As I launched into an online melee of sorts over the whole deal, I had to ask....
How does this happen?
Batteries.
Some of these men, clearly do not take into consideration there are women who are eager , and willing to jump into a class and spend hundreds of dollars a year on a program that doesn't really have anything for them. We do it because we *think* it will help our self defense strategies. And , if you have the right instructor, it will. I was VERY fortunate to have an amazing instructor. Who , most certainly treated me the way he treated anyone else. He didn't care if I had female anatomy. He only cared if I was understanding the information. He only cared if I got it. He only cared if I showed up to class and participated. I was lucky.
How does this pertain to Mr. Karimov?
As I stated before, not one individual who I have met through him , has been even almost rude. Not one. My training here in the U.S., it is easier for me to count the 5 or so men who HAVEN'T been complete moral apes. Maybe Mr. Karimov has absolute standards in the company he keeps. Maybe, just maybe, he has expectations of his instructors, collegues and students. Maybe , this is Systema at it's finest. Maybe, this is how it realllllly should be.

The main prompt of writing this today also came on the heels of an online conversation I had with another martial artist. Midway through our chat, he said the following:

Man:" oh..oh you're a woman???!! I AM SO SORRY! I thought I was talking to a man! "
Me:"It's ok, I get that alot, I mean.. in person, with my hair up..although I think my profile picture doesn't really look masculine"
Man: "It wasn't really your picture, it was the manner in which you were candidly asking questions and debating my statements so profoundly"

This is an actual copy and paste with names deleted to protect privacy. This, really did happen.
The Systema Factory (I think I'm gonna just call it that for short) here in the U.S. has become a big one full of self absorbed, ego filled people who want to be on top. As I have reached out to "other" strains of Systema, I noticed something....the men..of the other versions, not so ape like. They kinda just want you to learn some basic information. Ok so maybe they don't have the best personalities or maybe it's BECAUSE I am female and not many women ask them technical questions, but you can kinda see , they are just eager, passionate people. In fact, I am going to go as far as to say, they have been far more valuable as a training resource than I could have possibly imagined. Including Mr. Karimov, to date, I have more than enough "other strains of Systema friends" than I could have possibly dreamed of. This makes me even question my own battery strength. While I have nothing really informative to share, the one thing these men have said to me was "thank you".
WHAT? Thank "me"?
I don't understand it either, but as a close friend of mine put it, "maybe you let them know there is something they are missing by being female and just talking to them about this stuff"
I hope so.
I really do hope standards of practice change here in the U.S. and I really hope instructors hold their students and themselves to a higher level or moral code than what has been put out there. As I continue conversations with Mr. Karimov and his instructors, I think that is the one thing we may have missed the boat on here. I am always amazed at how his instructors are amazed by my stories of anti-female sentiment, lack of incorporating women, and complete loss of the psychological instruction needed to become a decent practitioner.
Now, I am far from living a complete moral code of emotionally and psychologically healthy infused Systema, but am working my way there. It is alot harder than doing knuckle pushups, situps, squats, and rolls.
Also, there are some great, wonderful U.S. instructors out there. Amazing men, who have nothing but kindness emoting from their hearts. You will know them when you see or meet them.

The man with the huge smile, that's Andrey Karimov. 

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