By Jiuliano Leon*
Have you stopped to think how many teachers were necessary until you learned your first armbar? Have you tried measuring the chain of teachings and energy used throughout history until that knowledge reached you?
Can you even fathom how small we are in history?
Yes, your knowledge has only been possible because countless samurai, warriors, monks and masters taught countless students, who became masters, until it reached the instructor that taught you.
And that is why, when you decide to teach, you help extend this flux of teachings for at least another fifty or hundred years. If you add honor, character, love, discipline, compassion and the search for truth to your technical teachings, you really can transform the world. Because learning and teaching are also a way to make yourself into a mechanism for changing society.
Being a teacher or sensei of martial arts is, thus, having countless questions and only one certainty: that a black-belt can change the world every day.
For that, it’s necessary to count not on a thousand unusual techniques, nor to know two hundred effective moves, but rather to keep in mind that you are but a sensei among the many that came before – and the many that will come later, without a shadow of a doubt.
Oss!
*Jiuliano Leon is a teacher of judo and BJJ trained by Alliance Rio.
The post How many teachers did it take for you to learn an armbar? first appeared on Graciemag.