Igniting the Joy Spark
Click Click. Spark. - I felt it.
I had gloves on and I was “sim” fighting a sixteen year old young woman - as part of her blue belt test.
You know the click when you light a grill or a camping stove? You know, when you hear the whoosh of the gas and then you click the lighter or the ignitor switch. And then the fire starts?
This is a story of finding my way back to my love for jiu-jitsu. An older, deeper, more respectful kind of love. A love more in balance with love for my actual self. (At least I’m hoping I can maintain this balance). A love in balance with my other loves (the great outdoors) that re-energize me and keep me grounded and connected and at peace.
I first discovered - saw - the joy spark while doing jiu-jitsu. I had had an acupuncture appointment and then went to class - in the old Rockledge gym where I first started training. Can’t remember if I was a blue belt or a purple belt. I felt this energy exchange between my two hands. Could almost see it really. I mean, truthfully, I could see it and feel it. Go ahead, think I’m strange. It’s become a marker for me in a sense, am I doing the right things, am I on the right path - for me. Am I experiencing joy? Is the joy spark firing?
Joy comes when the mind and body are integrated. And not just the mind and body for me - mind, body and the environment. There is an exchange and movement of energy. Environment can be nature - or it can be the people around me. It can be knowledge. It can be that flow state.
There is a natural ebb and flow to life.
As you survive through life (should I say thrive? Maybe it’s more positive to say thrive? . . but it isn’t always all sunshine and lollipops . . .) you’ll come upon cross-roads. Cross-roads are those mini-seasons of transitioning from one thing to the next. It might feel like entering a valley coming down from one peak before seeing the next to climb in front of you - or it could feel like entering the pit of despair, a pit of mud, a wall of foggy weather.
The thing about cross-roads - that I’ve decided - is that you can get better at that them - or maybe its more accurate to say to expect them and to understand what they are. You can get better at seeing or sensing them coming. Even get better, perhaps - though I’m still working on it - not avoiding them, on accepting that they are a part of life.
Cross-roads are essential for growth.
And I don’t mean growth in the American achievement-oriented/productivity way. I mean the kind of growth where you become more you, where you leave behind a caterpillar version of you and you emerge like a butterfly.
I’m so mixing my analogies here aren’t I? We’ve got joy sparks, cross-roads and butterflies emerging. Stay with me.
The thing is, even if you can see the cross-roads coming, you can’t just rush through to the other side. You can’t avoid pain and discomfort.
There really might be a mud pit there. Or the signs are confusing, or North feels like South. Sometimes you do have to wallow a bit. To wait. Because the spark hasn’t arrived yet. The caterpillar hasn’t fully dissolved so the butterfly can emerge.
It’s the liminal state. I kind of love the liminal state concept. It’s the moments after something ends and the new hasn’t begun. It’s the waiting. It’s watching the spring rains fall but the peas haven’t emerged yet. It’s feeling the chill in the air, but the leaves haven’t fallen yet. It’s smelling coffee made by someone else, but you haven’t left the warmth of the blankets yet.
But it requires patience. It requires not fixing. It requires not having the answer. It requires sitting with the uncomfortableness of not knowing what comes next. It might require actual sitting.
Which is super hard for me.
Relson always says to relax - and count the stars. Wait. Patience. You can not cheat the process.
What is, is, and what will be will be.
In August 2020, I wrecked on my bike, on a bridge I biked over probably 100’s of times a mile from my house. It was wet and slippery and I went down like it was black ice, my wheels going out from under me. I gouged a mark in the wood, slid across the rusty metal threshold and the left side of my head bounced off the asphalt.
My helmet cracked.
That crack would expand to my life and my relationship with jiu-jitsu.
My relationship with jiu-jitsu - and after 14, 15? ish years at that point it was a relationship - had become complicated.
There was of course the pandemic and the move to online training and its resulting complications.
But before that. I was already burned out pre-pandemic. I started having vertigo in 2015 (?). (In hindsight, it really started in 2009 after a different concussion from a car accident). It would ebb and flow and not always be classic vertigo, but I’d feel like I was in a fun house. I was seeing flashing lights, and zig zags and kaleidoscopes, and sometimes a black curtain would cross my vision. I didn’t know where my body was in space. I’d be in a meeting and it would feel like the floor dropped out from under me. I couldn’t focus on people’s faces. Overhead lighting, and loud noise bothered my brain. By 3pm on Mondays I’d have a headache.
I was exhausted.
But was still assisting with jiu-jitsu classes that started too late and ran too late to get solid sleep (and now I’m a sleep evangelist!). Still assisting with running a school - website, zen planner, student recruitment, equipment and inventory management, running kids class and women’s classes and private lessons.
On top of a full-time job that had gotten bigger over the years. There were days when I’d think, oh, I think I can rest in 10 days. Hussle culture at its prime.
By brown belt my own training fell to the wayside. I felt an obligation to show up. To show up for the new women, for kids, for the students., for the owner and my instructor. Because jiu-jitsu really can change your life. And I wanted them to have that opportunity and experience, to discover all the lessons I had discovered.
But I took it too far.
I forgot my obligations to myself and my own health.
I dealt with it like I’ve always dealt with it - barrelling through, pushing on, ignoring. Going and going and doing. Because I refuse to be defeated by inanimate objects (as if my body is an inanimate object??). Because I would sleep when I was dead - says my coffee mug.
Can’t stop, won’t stop.
And here I had thought I’d developed a “healthy” relationship with my body.
But I was still punishing it for not keeping up with me or with what I like to imagine can be accomplished in 24 hours, 7 days a week.
Until “the universe” slammed my head into the ground. And said “STOP”. Really loudly.
A break was forced on me. I couldn’t exercise. I couldn’t be online. I couldn’t stand with my eyes closed and not fall over. I couldn’t think. I didn’t have ideas, couldn’t form a strategic thought. Couldn’t manage emotions. I tried to turner the oven burner on with the light switch in the kitchen. I couldn’t make anything more complicated than scrambled eggs, like my scrambled brain.
I couldn’t exercise because my heart rate or blood pressure would spike and I’d get dizzy and nauseous. It exacerbated my previous existing yet undiagnosed vestibular migraine condition.
I finally saw a neurologist and got a plan together and medication.
A year later, August 2021 I hoped to ease back to training. I practiced a bit in the basement with a friend. Tried to do a slow motion take down to mount.
Hours of headache and pukey feelings resulted.
Fuck.
I was back to biking some, took up kayaking.
But a year into post-concussive syndrome and I couldn’t do a break fall.
I couldn’t change height - going from standing to ground.
I couldn’t turn over.
I had to keep my eyes on the horizon.
I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get back the ability to fall without fear, to fall without feeling like my brains were going to smash against the insides of my hard (stubborn) skull. And any progress I had actually made would be lost.
A bridge and turn is the most basic, fundamental, important move in jiu-jitsu.
I couldn’t do that either.
Not only was I at a crossroads, I couldn’t even see the other side. I could no longer fill the role I had been filling at my school, and since I couldn’t give, teach, assist - I had no more jiu-jitsu home to go to.
I had no place to train for recovery besides my own basement.
My relationship - as a blackbelt - to jiu-jitsu cracked.
It wasn’t giving back despite all I had given.
Except - there were sparks of sunshine, of warmth, of simmering. The spark - the light under the bushel.
A friend of mine from another school invited me to teach a group of highschool homeschooled girls self-defense.
Spark.
Another friend had college friends whose daughters were in girl scouts, and wanted to do a workshop.
Spark.
Oh look, I can breakfall without vomiting. Sweet. spark
Another friend, her Daisy troop - online self-defense class. spark
Work - Take Your Kid to Work Day self-defense class- spark
Other schools reached out - but I wasn’t ready.
I was still waiting. I was still in the liminal phase.
Jiu-jitsu is for everyone - but was it still for me?
I honestly didn’t know.
But I waited. I moved on. I went back to my first great love, the outdoors.
Took up teaching kids to bike and leading kayak tours.
Because I love teaching, leading, guiding, and creating community. Spark.
Then I got a FB message, or a text message.
Tori - what are you doing? We are opening a new school. Lets talk.
Okay it didn’t read that way exactly but close enough.
Hooyboy -
Fear -
Jiu-jitsu is calling. Teaching is calling.
Community is calling.
Did my hips even move anymore?
Was the Vestibular Migraine issue controlled well enough?
I had fear of “would my claustrophobia return?” Would I embarrass myself? Would I panic?
The rust was deep and embedded. And I didn’t know what was underneath it.
Time to go big or go home I thought.
Time to find out if jiu-jitsu was going to continue to be a part of my life - or was it just a phase, a time, a season?
Just about 3 years not training due to the pandemic, post-concussive syndrome and vestibular migraine - and waiting for the right road.
The road looked wide open and inviting.
And I had thought starting jiu-jitsu was hard.
Jiu-jitsu is all about setting the ego aside. Time to show up.
Time to set my ego aside and get tapped by blue belts and white belts, while my jiu-jitsu brain tries to reform connection and excavate that previous buried knowledge.
My ego sits outside in the parking lot, front seat of the Honda Fit. (If you want to get back to training, there is room in the back seat for yours). Sometimes it tries to peer through the windows and open the door to the academy, and it has to be lead back to wait for the car ride home.
At least the demons are no longer lurking in the corners waiting to pull me down in the abyss. (that’s another blog post).
And so - I found myself recently on a September day, just taught kids class, and then women’s and now it was time to put on the gloves and attack a sixteen year old who has been training since she was like 4.
And I didn’t think about if I would want to puke afterwards (vestibular issues are tricky), or if I would hit my head, or if my back would hurt, or my shoulder would hurt. Or any other myriad worries and concerns.
We just scraped and had fun.
Because jiu-jitsu IS fun.
Spark
Spark
Burn
Fire
Welcome back joy spark.
See you all on the mats.
(Like literally see you on the mats - come train!)
Extra special thanks to Naqi, Anton, Ted - for inviting me into your jiu-jitsu home, and to Michelle, NIna, Jasmin, Elizabeth, Brandie, Jeannie, Gabriel, Brett, Ali, Kyle, Kris and Muhummad for being so excellent to teach with - and for lettting your passion and jiu-jitsu joy shine through on the mats and inspiring me to keep at it.
