THE MYM METHOD WITH KRISTEN CABILDO
Reposted from Master Your Moves blog by Danny Indio.
Kristen Cabildo is a woman of many talents and a modern-day renaissance woman. What makes her unique is that she is a well-rounded artist who can speak the language of violence, as well as, of healing. And like a warrior monk, she knows that training in martial arts can do more than just teach you how to fight. That is why I was so eager to ask her questions on how to learn and practice martial arts to your fullest potential.
BIOGRAPHY
Kristen Cabildo is a martial artist with 20 years of training and experience. Her background and specialties consist of Jeet Kune Do (JKD), Boxing, Muay Thai Kickboxing, BJJ, Savate, and Silat. She has been fortunate enough to have trained with top instructors from around the world. She is a certified apprentice instructor in Jeet Kune Do and Filipino Martial Arts (FMA) under Guro Dan Inosanto. In addition, she is an apprentice instructor in JKD and FMA in Martial Art Research Systems (M.A.R.S.) under Guro Ron Balicki and Diana Inosanto. She currently teaches at Unlimited Martial Arts in Brooklyn, NY. When not teaching people, she works as a trauma-informed social worker, personal trainer, and intuitive coach. She believes that our bodies hold our personal and collective histories, and through an intentional mind, body, spirit practice, we can retell our stories based on healing and transformation. With her training, teaching, and coaching, Kristen hopes to inspire others to build strong bodies to support conscious minds and resilient spirits.
You can learn more about her and her work through her websites: kriscabildo.com and chrysaliskali.com. Instagram: @chrysaliskali.
THE MASTER YOUR MOVES METHOD QUESTIONS
What was your experience learning martial arts like?
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.
What were the tools, methods, or ways that helped you learn the most?
Reminding myself to always come with a beginner’s mind and childlike curiosity has been a helpful approach to learning. This perspective encourages me to see and practice old drills with a fresh perspective. It keeps me excited about practicing the basics.
How long have you been practicing martial arts? Teaching martial arts? What teaching methods or tools do you find helps students learn the most?
I’ve been practicing martial arts for 20 years and teaching for the last 4 years. I feel very new to teaching, so this is a new frontier for me. When I take classes from different instructors, I now pay extra close attention to their styles of teaching, their approach to students when correcting them, and even how they phrase things. I’ve been asking myself: what do I value in an instructor, and how do I embody that? I feel really grateful that I am learning how to be an instructor under the guidance of Sifu Phil Cruz. He reminds us to use this formula with students: “praise, correct, praise.” Meaning, point out what they are doing well, make a suggestion to improve their performance, and then reaffirm they are doing a good job. Positive reinforcement, in my experience, is a superior teaching tool and better motivator than criticism.
How long did it take you to gain proficiency in martial arts (i.e. feel like you can use it in a fight or teach it to others)? How did you know you were proficient?
One of my initial motivators to study martial arts was that I wanted to travel solo around the world, but that felt really terrifying to do as a 21 year old woman of color with a small stature. At that time, I already had 4 years of Kung Fu training in college, but I did not feel like I could defend myself in a street fight situation with that experience. After a few years of focused training in Jeet Kune Do, Filipino Martial Arts, and Muay Thai, I decided to take my first extended trip traveling around the world. Feeling competent enough to defend myself gave me the confidence to travel, and that felt like my first indicator of proficiency.
What advice would you give to a beginner who wants to be as proficient as you at martial arts? What about someone who has stagnated?
Consistency with training over a long period of time helped me gain proficiency. However, I learned the hard way about overtraining, and I don’t recommend training through injuries. So I would recommend consistency with discernment. Meaning, if you’re sick or injured, rest and recover properly. There are other ways to train that aren’t physical, like working on visualization or reflecting on your progress through journaling. You might find that you come back to your physical practice with a fresh perspective on old drills or a deeper gratitude for all the ways your body can move, work hard, and heal. If you’ve made martial arts a lifelong practice, then training for longevity is not only smart, but it’s kinder on your body, and will make you a more well-rounded martial artist.
Do you track your workouts and goals? Why or why not?
I used to track my workouts, but I don’t anymore. I’ve found that being too rigid or fixed in my goals or my approach hasn’t been enjoyable. I feel like it’s important to aim for something, but I also feel it’s important to remain flexible because life might have other plans for you. I’ve found that on my way to a goal, I learn more about myself, and it’s ok to be open to changing course.
Whose guidance was most instrumental to your growth?
When I understood that everything is a mirror, I was able to look back on all my instructors with the perspective that everyone taught me something about myself.
What do you think are the best ways to guide a student in their journey?
Lead and live by example.
Has your martial arts training benefitted you in your physical, mental, and spiritual/moral development? How?
Again, martial arts has been my mirror – beyond recognizing my personal strengths and weaknesses. It has shown me my ethics and values, my relationship to violence, and my internalized cultural narratives about power. I am using martial arts as a practice and container to consciously and intentionally heal, change, and rewrite all those things.