Thriving is encoded in the actions of survival
Mother Nature’s seasons always remind me to trust the resilience of life. This has often been hard for me because fear has been my learned orientation since childhood based on certain family, societal, and historical narratives that I inherited that told me the world was unsafe, which drove me to study martial arts. Much of my own journey has been to learn to navigate these contradicting states of being – safety and vigilance – within myself and amongst others in the world. How do we learn to discern what’s safe and what’s dangerous? How do we trust ourselves to take the best course of action not just for our survival, but for the healthy thriving of everyone?
When I look back at the history of the Filipino Martial Arts, I also see a story about resilience and survival, but also a trust in life that’s helped me reframe how I see our shared history as people with heritage from the Philippines and my own journey towards healing and wholeness.
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.
While Kali went underground, it didn’t disappear. Just like seeds stay safe in their protective shell during winter until conditions feel suitable for emergence – our warrior ancestors found ways to hide and protect the arts so one day they could safely be seen and practiced again. There is, no doubt, collective pain to acknowledge in the suppression of these arts during colonization. And yet, I also want to acknowledge there is deep wisdom in choosing to hide something because you know and trust there will be a future time when it can be fully alive again.
In the past hundred years, Filipino Martial Arts has been emerging – adapting to the changing circumstances of history and now becoming widely practiced as a martial art throughout the world. Let’s summarize (very simply) the most recent century: It was used in combat during WWI and WWII in the Philippines… It immigrated with practitioners who were farmers in places like Stockton, California… It started to spread through instructors like Guro Dan Inosanto (amongst so many others)... and it found people like me – a random half-filipino girl from the suburbs of New Jersey, who just wanted to feel safe in my body and also feel some sense of belonging to a land my father left.
What if our ancestors operated with the wisdom that thriving is encoded in the actions of survival – and that thriving can and will come at a later, safer moment in time – like in future generations. Yes, I fully believe that the time for Kali to thrive is now – that it's meant to creatively express itself within bodies like yours and mine – a generation of diverse individuals living in the diaspora seeking meaningful ways to connect to “home," our bodies, and each other.
Even if you never pick up a Kali stick, I hope the story of how Filipino Martial Arts came to be here shifts something within you – as it did for my perspective of my own journey. If you’re feeling like something within you is missing – whether it's a connection to your Filipino roots or just an “aliveness” energy – trust that it’s still somewhere within you, that your body has found ways to protect it, and perhaps it's being disguised in ways you're unaware of in other channels of your life. But know that it’s not gone, and your body is operating with deep survival wisdom waiting for the right conditions for your wholeness to be expressed.