Kissing a Dolphin

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Bahamas for the weekend to get away from my kids and chores. While the majority of the cruise was a bust, my entire weekend was redeemed when I got to swim with dolphins.

In Freeport, there is a place called Unexso that has diving tours and dolphin encounters. If you are ever  on the Grand Bahama Island, you have to look this place up. The people are fabulous, and the dolphins are amazing. 

http://www.unexso.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=1

It was storming, and raining, and just plain ugly the day we were in the Bahamas, but 1 hour before our scheduled swim with dolphins it finally stopped raining. The water was still murky, but the dolphins were playful and ready for me to jump in.

In the movie Dolphin Tale, they  tell a story about children being turned into dolphins so "they can play forever." This is so true to the Dolphins. While swimming with them, I would spin, they would spin, I would swim on my back, they would swim on their back, I'd go underwater and they would nudge me back up...they just loved to play. Just being around them made me feel 20 years younger.

After the free swim with the dolphins, we got to do some tricks with them. It was fun to interact with them, and get them to do tricks (kinda like playing with a puppy). 

My favorite tricks were getting them to hug me and to kiss me.

In addition to the dolphins being great, the trainers were colorful. They were not your typical G rated SeaWorld trainer. There were locals with an amazing sense of humor. They made us laugh for the majority of the trip.

I had the best time with the dolphins, and am dying to get to swim with them again. How can you not be happy when you are around dolphins?

The Problem With Taekwondo

For those of you that do not study Taekwondo, Taekwondo means the way of the hand and the foot. Very traditional Taekwondo focuses on punching, striking, and kicking. It does NOT involve grabbing, throwing, or wrestling.

The problem with modern Taekwondo schools is they try to incorporate the grappling and throwing of other martial arts. We saw how Bruce Lee took bits and pieces of different martial-arts to create something new. That is okay, I guess. I think Bruce Lee is pretty cool, but I do not like the idea of combining the martial-arts. The main reason: Tradition gets lost!

Traditional Taekwondo provides us with all the tools we need. If we can master Taekwondo, we do not need to learn how to grapple or throw people across the room. I personally think it's more fun to kick them across the room anyway. I've heard so many times that Taekwondo is not practical, but this could not be any farther from the truth. I think all the martial-arts have strengths and weaknesses based on the practitioner. If you are not good with your legs but you are great with your arms, then an art that uses more arms would be more efficient than Taekwondo in that situation. I personally prefer Taekwondo, and I know through forms that Taekwondo can teach me all I need to know. (I don't know it all...I still got a long way to go).

The forms (poomse) in Taekwondo teach us all we need to defend ourselves. The strikes, punches, and kicks alone reinforce how we can hurt an attacker. If practiced correctly and often, the basics in forms will make sure we can respond effectively in any situation. Plus, blocks can be blocks, blocks can be strikes, strikes can be release moves, kicks are kicks, and those weird moves that instructors pass over actually are great release moves. By release moves, I mean if somebody grabs you, you use that move to get away. For example, the big move in Koryo before turning to the last bar (I affectionately call this "pretty burst") is a way to get out of a hold. Forms alone teach us all we need, we do not need to add Hapkido, Judo, or Jujitsu to Taekwondo.

Still, Taekwondo schools all over the US are not teaching students how to effectively use Taekwondo. They rush through the basics and the forms to get to the "fun stuff." The commercialization of martial-arts forces instructors to keep things "fun" so students don't leave and train at the other school 1 block away. The popularization of UFC/MMA has forced many Taekwondo school owners to incorporate grappling just to keep students in the building. It's all about money and profit, which is why I HATED owning a Taekwondo school. It made me sick to go against everything I believed in just so we could pay the electric bill.

I wish there was a way for Taekwondo to get back to basics. I miss it!