Self-defense is more than just learning how to fight.

Learning situational awareness, and how to read body language and your environment are self-defense strategies.

Movement has ancestral memory.

Training can act as an amplifier of old feelings, thoughts, and fears that you have stored in your body. Training in martial arts can bring up a lot of our “stuff.” For example, how you physically respond to a punch coming towards your face, your feelings about getting hit, and then the thoughts that follow – can be like little windows into your past.

One of the reasons I love Filipino Martial Arts (FMA) is the adaptability and the resourcefulness of the art throughout history. Kali teaches concepts that can be applied to our everyday lives, concepts that transcend time. For example, once you learn the basic striking angles, you can apply these angles to any weapon. The stick, the sword, your fist 👊🏽, an umbrella, trash can lids — anything can be a weapon.

If you were an ancient warrior of the Philippines, what would your weapon of choice be? Which weapon would call to you? Would it be a heavier dual handed sword like the kampilan, a headhunter’s weapon? Or a bow and arrow, allowing you to stay hidden and shoot from a far? Or would it be a bolo, an all-purpose blade for farming and fighting?

The Filipino Martial Arts was always originally a bladed art, meaning our ancestors used swords, daggers, spears, axes – weapons with a sharp edge. However, after the Spanish colonized the Philippines, they established a law that forbade locals from carrying long blades. Traditional swords that had both practical and spiritual meaning to the community, such as the kris and the kampilan, were banned. That’s when our ancestors who practiced the warrior arts decided to use rattan sticks (like the ones we practice with today ) instead of blades, hiding martial movements in choreographed dance and theater.

Chrysalis Kali Merchandise Launch!

When we exercise, we’re gifting ourselves a strong and agile body that can move with less pain and more ease as we age. However, beyond the physical benefits of working out, it’s been finding the deeper meaning in movement that keeps me consistent with training. Whatever your current reasons are for cultivating an active lifestyle, I'd love to share with you five transpersonal reasons to move your body that help me stay the course.

New year, new logo!

I chose the image of two overlapping circles, also known in sacred geometry as the vesica piscis because it represents the divine feminine. This symbol has been found throughout ancient history in different cultures across the world, and mathematically contains other shapes (including the triangle, as you can see below). Also, in some circles (no pun intended), this shape is called the Eye of the Crocodile. Did you know that in some indigenous traditions in the Philippines, the crocodile is the guardian of the underworld and bridges the physical and spirit realms?

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.