Notes on the Journey: On Breaking Boards
- Lauren Lopp
- Reading time: 4 min
You don’t fear the raging river. You are the raging river.
The first time I broke a board was after I’d already been on the mat for several hours—our regular Saturday afternoon hour and a half session, followed by a three hour Rapid Assault Training class.
“Do you want to break a board?” My instructor asked as we were wrapping up for the day.
The important part to this story is, I’d already done some drills—in a manner that was at least correct-adjacent—and had successfully been able to remove a fully grown man from on top of me, so breaking a board?
“Yeah, sure, okay!”
We began with practicing palm strikes: him correcting my technique as I made contact with the mitt on his hand.
After a few practice strikes on the mitt, he grabbed the board.
“You want the heel of your palm to strike the center of the board. The tips of your fingers should just meet where mine are holding the board.”
I held up my hand to the wood. Lined up my strike.
“Remember, you’re not breaking the board so much as going through the board.”
Board, bring it on.
Previously, I’d watched other students at the dojo break boards as part of their Taekwondo testing. And what I’d noticed (and what I’d heard reiterated in stories from my instructors) is the tendency for students to go full throttle, and then, millimeters from the board, slow down out of fear of the pain. Essentially resulting in a very ineffective love tap on the board.
Just a little boop.
So, while I knew there might be a bit of a jolt when my hand made contact with that board, I figured it’d actually hurt more to hold back and slow down than to just power up and go through the damn thing.
You’ve heard the saying about reaching the point where the pain of staying hurts more than the pain of leaving? It’s like that. Sort of.
And, if I’d survived all the things I’d survived to make it to this very moment, then respectively board, bring it on.
I pulled my hands back to a fence. Took a deep breath.
Go through the board, Lauren.
Through. The. Board.
And I struck.
A very gratifying crack. My hand suspended between two pieces of wood.
I’d done it. I’d broken my very first board!
This would've turned my world upside down
Put it down to the timing of the Universe (she’s very insistent on teaching me lessons in a manner she deems timely), several weeks later I found myself on the other end of the board at the local university, where my ESD instructors partners with Project Safe, the school’s Center for Sexual Misconduct Prevention and Response, to teach self defense to students and faculty.
This was actually the very reason I’d become interested in teaching self-defense. When I learned that my instructors ran self-defense courses from time to time at the university, I’d volunteered my services. And by services, I meant my willingness to be thrown around and be a punching bag for the students to practice on.
Because not only did I know how important the work they were doing there was, I knew how much more accessible and less-intimidating this life-changing information could be to students—especially female and LGBTQ+ students—if they could work with a female instructor.
This information would’ve turned my world upside down at their age. It’s not hyperbolic to say that it would’ve changed the course of my life if I’d known it then.
If only we’d known the things we know now then…
The first night was a wash, no students showed up. But the next day, we got two giggling schoolgirls who very clearly wanted to be anywhere else but there.
(Though it’s been a good decade since I was in their shoes, I could relate. Getting me to participate in anything extracurricular in school required a heavy dose of bribery and a black belt in coercive tactics.)
I, for one, was excited. This was my first real life introduction to the ESD curriculum and how it’s taught.
After a quick dialogue about what violence is and how we sometimes might need to use it (we only had them for an hour), we moved on to the physical part of the class.
They were little Simba, my instructor, mighty Mufasa
We partnered up and began running them through knee drills before moving on to palm strikes. I held the mitt up, planting my feet to allow my torso to twist with the hits (little did my student partner know I’d only just learned how to hold it correctly five minutes prior to class starting).
I was part-observer, part-instructor as I followed my instructor leading us through the drills.
“Again,” Liz demanded as they hit the mitt. “Use your voice. Scream!”
Giggle, giggle.
“I mean it! Again!” Liz’s drill sergeant voice snapped them to attention.
That scene in The Lion King where little baby Simba tries to ROAR and it comes out a scratchy little prepubescent rawrrr? And then Mufasa comes in and blows the lid off with his roar? That’s where we were. They were little Simba, my instructor, mighty Mufasa. I was somewhere in between, grown up Simba on his way home to Pride Rock right before he kicks Scars ass.
Liz is much more, shall we say, forward facing than I am. She’s got gonads the size of the state of Texas, and not only does she know, you know it too.
I’m much more reserved, a little bit harder to read at times, much more preferring to work behind the scenes than in front of the curtain. (Once, when asked if I was the pretend vice president to my friends pretend presidency of the local yacht club, I said, dead-pan, “No, I’m deep state.” I don’t know where that came from, but truer words have never been spoken.)
“Yeah, it’s weird,” I said, picking up on the girls nervous energy. “It feels weird. We’re not used to doing it.”
I, too, had felt a tad bit ridiculous yelling as I’d demonstrated the palm strike. It was all still new to me, too.
But, I’d found, the more you do it, the more we break through those walls of how we’re supposed to exist in the world, the more we embrace our power, the better it feels, the louder we roar.
*cue Katy Perry*
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
You’re gonna hear me roar
The more we worked, the stronger their voices became.
And then for our finale portion of our evening: we broke out the boards.
All power, zero resistance
Liz handed a board to each of them with a marker. “I want you to write an obstacle in your life right now that you want to break through.”
Silence, then scribbles as they wrote on their boards.
“Now, you’re going to break these,” Liz said.
You could practically see their eyeballs pop out of their head.“Remember, you’re not hitting the board,” I recited my instructor’s words back to
my partner as I held the board in both hands. “You’re going through it.”
Though, my student plowed through her first board, Liz’s student resisted hard, falling over into fits of giggles when it was her time to break. Again and again, she’d line up her strike, only to slow down at the last second.
Again and again. No amount of encouragement, nothing thing we said was getting through.
Finally, reading her growing discomfort, I said, “What if I told you that if you broke this board, whatever it is you wrote on the board would just go away? Just like that.”
Her eyes lit up. “Now that’s something I can get behind.”
And then: all power, zero resistance, she broke the board on the next strike.
Laughter this time. Standing-up-straight relieved laughter. Bent over giggles, no more.
“Okay, we’re gonna do it again,” Liz said.
Oh, no not again, you could practically hear their internal dialogue as they deflated just a bit.
“Yes, again,” Liz said, making sure to make a show of spending extra time picking out boards before bringing them over to the students.
“You see this one is a bit thicker than the last one?” Liz asked my student.
She studied the board, nodding tentatively.
“Okay, again!”
I held the board. This time, she couldn’t get the board to break. We had to run it several times, amping up the power and the roar with each strike until she got it: the resounding, satisfying break.
(Breaking boards is immensely satisfying.)
The same with Liz’s student. Again and again, breaking down into fits of giggles between, until both students had broken both boards.
The truth was, the boards were all the same. They just needed to know they could do it, regardless.
“I knew you’d be good at this,” Liz said as we walked out to the car. “You’re a natural.”
I thought back to some of my ground-breaking instructions over the class.
Something about pilates and TaeBo? (Oh, Billy Banks … if you know, you know). I laughed. I wasn’t so sure.
“You saw what they needed and gave it to them.”
We each bring something to unique to the table, and that night (besides for my preference for working in the shadows), I began to see the value of what I brought: my ability to empathize, to feel what the other is feeling, where they’re at, and what they need.
You are the raging river, goddamnit.
There is an art to breaking boards. Rooted in solid technique: balance your weight, hold your fence, power from your hips, and push that energy all the way through—down your arm and through the heel of your palm.
Have you ever pushed open a heavy door with the palm of your hand? Then congratulations, you can break a board!
Technique does not an art make, however.
The art comes through the expression, the energy, the execution of the strike.
Your warrior cry erupting from your throat as you focus your force to affect the change you want to create in the world. (And if you’re not quite ready to unleash your inner Xenon: Warrior Princess or Gal Gadot Wonder Woman Amazonian cry out into the world? Trying yelling curse words at the top of your lungs. A well-emphasized four letter explicative as you hit something with your bare hands? You can’t beat it, honestly.)
I read somewhere (in an oracle deck, probably) that the wild otter doesn’t fear the raging river because the wild otter doesn’t fight the current, it flows with it. It’s the otter bred in captivity who simultaneously longs for and fears the rapids.
The world wants you to believe that you too are captive.
But make no mistake, you are wild. Cages and shackles be damned.
All you have to do is remember.
You don’t fear the raging river. You are the raging river, goddamnit.
So make the decision. Commit. You are going through that board.
Feel the fear. Harness that rage. Direct your energy.
And then, you do it.
And once you do it, no force on earth can tell you you can’t.