Regular Martial Arts Practice Keeping Inner Demons & Violent Impulses At Bay

This is my personal experience and if any of you are suffering from similar conditions, do follow up with your mental health provider as each person’s mode of treatment is different but I sincerely do wish that you draw some inspiration and give martial arts a go.

The motivations for wanting to learn a fighting sport are endless however, there is one area that is not talked about much and that is fighting mental health struggles, as I like to call it, one’s inner demons, with the aid of martial art. As someone who intimately understands and has ventured down the dark recesses of the human mind where monsters live, waiting to emerge and satisfy their destructive & malevolent desires.

Of course, these monsters are metaphorical and not literal. I have battled depression for nearly half a decade and It knocked me to my knees and tore everything apart and lit my world on fire.

I had instances where I thought life was not worth living and perhaps it was time to end it however I had always been a fighter and firmly believe in the saying, “tough times do not last, tough men, do.” And that was what pushed me into the arena of boxing for the very first time in 2017.

I desperately needed a way to emerge out of my darkness and conventional treatments proved futile in my case a buddy of mine who had trained for a decade in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu threw a suggestion to pick up boxing and he promised things would be better.

I was skeptical but living with the demon of depression that gradually sucked my sanity and soul was excruciatingly painful and thus I began boxing.

Within a few regular sessions, I noticed that I was able to gather and channel all of the frustration, pain, regret, and despair that laid dormant in my being, into fighting itself and that was a total game changer for me. During sparring, shadow boxing, and bag work, I visualized the demons I had been fighting in my head during those sessions and it was not a matter of just learning how to defend myself. It became a focus on fighting and beating down the very forces that were oppressing the nature of my being and I fought and trained with vigor, which previously was nowhere to be found within me.

It is my firm belief that regular martial arts practice truly boosts and speeds up mental health recovery and builds a strong foundation that comprises resilience, patience, discipline, and respect.

Violence is an innate force in the fiber of our very being and to deny it, is a massive folly. It is very primal and it seems in this modern era of laptops, gaming, and creature comforts, most have never been acquainted with violence, which isn’t an ideal thing. Of course, senseless violence is a different matter altogether but controlled violence provides a setting to channel one’s aggression in a safe space to let it out. Anger issues and destructive impulses are no strangers to me and I can attest to the statement mentioned above. I used to be terrified about my impulses and didn’t have an outlet to release them nor did I know how to do it and that itself would cause me massive anxiety.

However, once I began hitting the bag, fear turned into acceptance and I was able to sit with those impulses, channel them into my training and then totally forget it by the end of the session.

The practice of combat sports is a hot topic in this era, be it boxing, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, or Mixed Martial Arts, and the purpose for learning varies wildly.

I have known friends of mine who learn and dedicate themselves to their chosen martial art, to cultivate discipline and esoteric spiritual values while others simply want to break out of their monotonous life and meet new friends.

You can also find out how long it takes to get a black belt and what animals you could beat in a fight with videos.