BY KATIE MARSHALL

My martial arts renaissance happened a little over 2 years ago. I was looking for something to wake me up from my autopilot existence of snoozing my alarm, half-assing it at work, and maybe hitting the treadmill for half an hour afterward. I was searching for a way to not just do more, but to be more. I found it in the Nan Sho Budo system at the Southern Pine Institute of Martial Arts in Greensboro, North Carolina. I study several styles, including Progressive Arnis, Tai Ji, and others that I learn while attending seminars and gatherings across the country.

Martial Arts is powerful. Train enough and you will see everything in your world differently than you did before. It bleeds into everything that you do like water color paint on paper. Nothing will be the same, especially not you. From meditation to facing your fears to practicing the same move literally thousands of times, the Martial Arts encourage us to embrace our inner power and become exactly who we were meant to be, but not without knocking us down a few million times in the process.

While I am in no way expert, nor do I ever expect I will be, not even when I’m 80-years-old and doing Tai Ji in the park or levitating up stairs, I do know that Martial Arts is so much more than kicks and punches. Here is what the Martial Arts have taught me about life so far.

Read all 20 here.