The Price of Fear

Years back, due to bullying in childhood, I experience a “shock” that collapsed part of my young ego, creating a phobic response to sparring. Not the action itself, which I enjoyed, but everything leading UP to it: preparation, traveling to the event, waiting to be called, etc. It was horrible, and nothing I did seemed to help. I left school after school because of all the raging fear-flames in my gut. I went to therapists, gurus, teachers, hypnotists…everything. And nothing helped.

Then one day I was visiting a Shorei-Shito-Ryu karate instructor named Terry Letteau, who my brother in law Patric was training with. And as I had done countless times, I listlessly asked Terry if HE knew a solution to my issue.

And to my enormous surprise, he said “your problem isn’t fear. Your problem is lack of clarity.”

THAT was an answer different from anything I’d ever heard. “Lack of clarity?” I asked. “Is there a solution for THAT?”

“Sure,” he said. “you just visualize a glass tube filled with water. There is glitter suspended in the water. You wait until the glitter has settled to the bottom, and see what you see.”

I was gobsmacked. How could it be that simple? But I’m the kind of person who doesn’t just think “that can’t work” I think “I’m going to try that and see if it works.”

And I did. It took somewhere between six and eight weeks of daily practice (from 20–60 minutes a day) to get that water to still, and the glitter to settle.