Best of The Zombieslayer

The Best of The Zombieslayer

The Warrior and the Healer

August 20, 2005

Back in Northern California in the mid-90s, they had a traditional JiuJitsu dojo not too far from where I lived. The guy who got me into Thai boxing told me I had to learn wrestling too, and JiuJitsu was the best form of wrestling. So I took some JiuJitsu classes with them.

They weren't the best wrestling dojo I've been to. They weren't even the best in town, but I joined them because they offered one thing that nobody else in town offered - massage. I was already injured, having torn cartilage in both of my knees from a sloppy football tackle (done by me, entirely my fault). That's another story for later though. I had no medical insurance at the time, so I just dealt with the daily pain and tried my best to ignore it.

Now, a lot of warrior types are hot-headed meat-heads. I won't deny that. They saw massage as a waste of time, especially the young ones. Usually when the class ended and the optional massage class began, everyone under thirty except me would take off. Sometimes I'd get the instructor one on one and man, that guy knew how to loosen up your muscles.

Massage is a healing art, as is acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, and some others. Many people scoff at healing arts, dismissing them as New Age garbage, but I'm sold, especially when an acupuncturist a few years later healed my knees to 100% where American doctors offered surgery. Unless I'm dying, I'm not going under the knife.

Most medical insurances barely cover healing arts and some don't at all. The current plan I have covers $500 of massage a year, with me only paying a $10 deductible. You can bet your heiny I'm taking advantage of that.

Well, as my luck had it, almost a decade later, we moved back to that same small town and I was excited to go back to that dojo. I immediately signed up for a month by month membership and guess what? The old instructors were all gone and the new ones didn't do the massage part of class anymore.

See, this is the beef I have with the warriors. They neglect healing, until they're in their thirties and forties. I see it all the time on fighter's message boards. "Hey, anyone know a good chiropractor in Ventura County? All these years of boxing and being a plumber I think have hurt my back." Well, no ****, Rocky. Maybe if you took healing seriously when you were younger, you wouldn't have severe back problems today.

On the other side of the fence, a lot of healer types are hippies, who usually dismiss the warrior spirit as something outdated and evil. They wrongly think we can solve all the world's problems with diplomacy. I won't argue this here, for you know how I feel about violence and war. They have their place.

Why can't someone be both? Why does everyone have to be one or the other? Not only that, why must one mock the other? Can't people realize that both are just as important?

Shootin' Political Correctness in the head since May 2005. If you're soft skinned or weak at heart, you might want to try elsewhere.