Short story: Susan meets up with an old Karate master, after her teaching of her first karate class, in real life, as an instructress.

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Susan Smithers had taken up karate at a young age, encouraged by her father to do so. She had risen quickly through the ranks, and had good skills, and she was now a newly graded black-belt instructor level Karate teacher herself. One Friday night, Susan was in the change room, changing into her uniform to help take the karate class that night. Then another woman came in, and she told Susan that tonight’s head instructor, Kelvin Singleton, wasn’t coming in. “Do you want me to cancel the class, or can you take it on your own,” she asked Susan. Susan said that she will be fine. She thought that she would show them something different, some holds that her Dad, (a polished jui-jitsu expert, in his own right, and the reason why Susan was now a rather proud black-belt ranked instructress, at this school now too), had taught her, the naked stranglehold, the headlock, an arm-bar technique, as well as a little known hold, known as the Indian death lock, and a few more besides this too. Then, after the class, feeling rather pleased with herself, and how her class had gone, Susan was walking along a street, and an old Indian man came up to her, telling her that he was a karate instructor too. He was teaching a unique style of karate, that he had called, “Kaorudo”. He said that in Japanese this meant, “Good folding way”. He said that on the human body, there were certain parts that folded at a point, “the elbow is one,” he said. “There are a few more pertinent ones to use too,” he went on. We remember them by the word, “skean”. “This stands for stomach, knee, elbow, armpit, and neck,” he then said. “It is at the point of their bending that you strike them. The stomach point is a couple of inches then below the belly button (The point where you bend over from, when touching your toes). The neck point in the hollow just above the breast bones, where the neck first starts, and bends forwards from. The armpit point is right up into the soft hollow between the arm and the shoulder, and the other two points are pretty obvious, and do not need further description.” He said that if you hit these folding areas directly on the inwards folding position, like for example, the back of the knee, or the inner soft part of the elbow, opposite the point of the outer elbow, this could do great nerve damage to the person. “You use an eagle beak technique to hit with he said, where all four fingers and thumb are touching in a point, held together tightly to strengthen them. This is good for all of these areas, even the knee one, if you can reach it, but the other four points are usually more readily accessible, he went on.” The old master then frowned, as he said quietly to Susan, “I have been involved with martial arts for over 60 years, and I have found now that the best defence is more to walk away, to fold your steps backwards, and to meekly submit, or be flexible in your life, not to stand so rigidly that others try to cut you down to size then.” “I have incorporated the folding back of your whole body into my teaching system now too.” He said this, with almost a tear in his eye, as he folded back, and disappeared quickly into the crowd of street people walking past. Susan now had the material that she would teach to the students in next Friday's class. The old Indian man seemed to have picked Susan out of the crowd to talk to that night. He had given her a special message, that she would long remember about the true spirit of karate. Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced freely from the free media site: pixabay.com