Capoeira Lessons

photo from www.hapkido.it

The first class today was mostly a history of capoeira. The instructor is a graduate of UN in philosophy, and mentioned the difficulty he's had trying to understand the essence of what he finally realized was a genre all to itself; it's neither dance nor sport nor martial art, nor anthropology, nor religion, but includes elements of all of these. I found a few aspects of the introduction especially intriguing. Here's what I took with me as we all walked out of class with a little extra spring in our step:

By falling you win. Falling teaches in a way that staying upright does not. If someone can fell you and chooses not to, this is actually harder to take than actually being knocked down (applies to other life situations, not just capoeira.)

Western people spend almost all of their time standing or sitting upright. We hardly ever bend over in a way that lengthens the spine. Put your hands to the floor, the ground, the dirt. Think of all the religions in the world that include this element: Islam, Buddhism, many indigenous beliefs. There's something about it that connects us to what came before.

Breakdance and capoeira spring from the same well of enslaved and marginalized peoples, and include many of the same elements. They both represent the exercise of freedom under difficult circumstances.

Capoeira on Wikipedia
Capoeira.com

But my favorite lesson from class today was the realization that at the very least, I'm not as awkward or self-conscious as I was at 18, or at 20, or at 22 (all median-ish ages of my classmates...), no matter how self-conscious I occasionally feel, especially being the strange bird I am here. That's something we should tell younger people at any age: it does get better, easier, and simpler. You worry less about how you are perceived, and care less about overheard comments directed at you. As time starts getting shorter, these things get filed under "useless time-wasting shit." That folder has been getting fat on my shelf lately.