My experience learning martial arts has been so many things. It’s hard to sum up an experience that is constantly changing over the years. Overall, it’s been transformative, challenging, humbling, and incredibly fun. I feel the most valuable insight that I’ve learned through martial arts is that it can be a mirror. It is a practice that will reflect back to you everything that is going on inside you. Anything in life can be a mirror, but I feel really grateful that I gravitated to an embodied practice that keeps me both healthy and safe. For me, martial arts is a doorway for deeper learning about myself, and it’s also a vessel for expansion to learn about the world and other cultures.

In this episode, founding member, Kristen Cabildo of Chrysalis Kali Collective talked about listening to our own body and healing from collective trauma as a community.

5 years ago on this day, I received my Black Belt in JKD and FMA. This moment in time marked a big turning point for me in my journey — it basically made me confront (shatter) all my narratives and embodied beliefs about achievement and power. Up until this point, I was striving hard to reach “feeling good / safe enough” through physical training, which I thought would happen once I got to Black Belt level. Instead, it spurred a personal breakdown (breakthrough) that completely inverted my training. At this moment, 5 years ago, what really happened is I got my White Belt — an initiation into the Inner Journey. Rescuing inner parts of myself has been more challenging than navigating outer opponents, but I feel like I’ve gotten a few stripes on my White Belt these past couple of years. 😂 Bridging the external practice with the internal one is my new JKD/FMA journey. And I feel so grateful for the supportive community at UMA where I’ve been able to express my unique martial art story.

“Pay Salutations” Kali inspired performance at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts designed by CKC member Caroline Garcia

In Los Angeles, Jamie Yancovitz trains her students at parks under swaying palm trees; meanwhile, in New York City, Kristen Cabildo trains hers in the backyard of her brownstone apartment. They're two women on two different coasts but with one calling: to create a safe space for other women, particularly Filipinas in the diaspora, where they can learn self-defense skills as well as the history and cultural heritage of their ancestry — all through Filipino Martial Arts (FMA).

Last week, Tim Hollenbeck and I received our instructorship under the legendary Guro Dan Inosanto. We spent four days at our first instructor camp at his academy in Los Angeles, California. Guro's school, a training facility/museum hybrid, has walls full of plaques honoring Guro's contributions to the arts, photos of the people he's trained with in his lifetime, and banners of the martial art systems represented at the academy. Guro teaches technique through the lens of a historian.