Neil Krishnan 1st Degree Black Belt

The most visual parts of Kungfu are the forms and physical movements, and it is easy to only focus on those parts. But Kungfu extends past this studio room into how we live our lives from how we complete a school project to how we choose what to eat. For me, Kungfu taught me diligence and self-reliance.

Every week I do Kungfu, but to do well at this art requires time and effort. Self-reliance played a key role in my development as I had to make the most of each lesson, especially during the pandemic. I could not wait for someone to tell me I was doing a movement incorrectly or not practicing a detail right. I had to examine myself, see what I was doing wrong, and fix it.

This extended naturally into piano another of my favorite hobbies. Recently, I was learning the 3rd movement of the Moonlight Sonata, a fast and long piece with a lot of arpeggios, long series of notes up and down the keyboard. In one section, there was a new rhythm I hadn’t encountered. Whereas before, I might have glossed over it waiting for my teacher to show me the trick to playing the polyrhythm because of Kungfu, I knew I had to fix my mistakes and be self-reliant. So, I worked on it for hours and hours, failing countless times, and finally it clicked in my brain.

The best part about self-reliance is that learning for yourself gives you a unique intuition for problems. Whenever I am struggling with a math problem, I try to never look at the answer. If I keep at it and work on it, I find a solution. Sometimes it is the same as the answer, but sometimes it is different. But if I look at the answer, I am stuck into a pattern of thinking, and my thinking is not as flexible.

In conclusion, self-reliance is an important value from Kungfu, and it extends naturally into all parts of life from piano to mathematics. Practicing it, makes you a more flexible problem solver.

I would like to thank my parents for supporting me constantly throughout my Kungfu journey. I would also like to thank Shifu Andy and Shifu Winston for constantly helping and supporting me.