Learning to fall.

Some of my most impactful and crucial memories I made, were in my Grandfather’s Judo club when I was little. I was a very addled child. I was spastic and uncontrollable in school and amongst my peers. At home, and unleashed on the neighborhood I was even worse. I didn’t initially take Judo very seriously but I most certainly took my Grandfather as someone who didn’t play around at all. The difference was that he adored my brother and I and had a very stern but loving approach to trying to teach discipline. He and my Grandmother were some of the first people to really resonate with me and make me think critically about how my actions affected others, and how those actions would have repercussions in kind. Interestingly, it also instilled in me that those repercussions weren’t a bad thing, but rather a form of respect for others. I fought authority at every, and I mean EVERY turn to that point but I just couldn’t bring it to their doorstep. The love I felt for them and that they showed me gave me the greatest gift of all, a sense of empathy.

For the first few years I admit, I found it hard to pay attention at the club. I was 6-7 years old and primarily wanted to go to the pool and swim during class. It was alluring being able to just use a giant pool at will and I had to be forced, a little, to participate in the first part of class. This was important even though I didn’t realize it at the time. The first part was a traditional bow-in and stretches followed by practicing technique and landing, (Kazushi & Ukemi) and usually ending with Randori (sparring). The most important thing I didn’t mention was we practiced breakfalls. Breakfalls are one of the most crucial skills in martial arts. Landing techniques with the goal to decrease or avoid injury. I was taught that learning to fall is not only the most important thing I would learn here, but one of the most important things I will ever learn in my whole life. I didn’t understand the…. gravity of what that statement meant at the time but you can bet your ass it was gravity that helped solidify that knowledge into my brain over the next couple decades of life. Falling became a bit of a passtime for me and a teacher of hard lessons.

Eventually I made a conscious decision to start listening to my Father and Grandpa and started working on actual technique with them and the club. I was being praised for my insane flying breakfalls and violent, cartoon-like landings. It was funny but they saw potential. That helped me actually start cultivating the skills to start doing Ukemi and even light Randori with people in the club. I even ended up signing up for a couple tournaments and actually placing pretty well once I was more established. I was learning control. I still went to the pool sometimes, but these trips became more of a way to swim laps and condition myself as part of training.

Having some direction was a hell of a thing so by the time I hit middle school, I was ready to take on more combat sports and wrestling seemed like the best avenue to do that while utilizing my current skill set. I had a blast while also learning how to work with a team. I learned humility and how to overcome personal hang-ups about self worth and expectations. I was a little bit different in the way I approached wrestling with my judo background. I used a lot of throws in contrast to mainly shooting being drilled at the time to get points and takedowns and my team and I had a lot of fun at meets and practice with my outside the box, but effective style. It was a really good time in my life at practice. At meets. Learning its ok to lose, to fall, and to try again. Train harder. What wasn’t going too well for me at the time was behind the scenes. At home.

You see, martial arts were like a glue to reality for me. At a young age, I noticed something wasn’t quite right with Mom. She had one of the most severe cases of alcoholism anyone had ever seen. Over the years it just got worse and worse. The club had even become a way that my Dad, Brother, and myself could find peace at for a few hours a week. I was 13 years old when I and a friend decided to steal one of her 6 packs of Milwaukee’s beast (yes I meant to say that), and headed out to the graveyard down the road to drink all of them. That was also another crucial moment in my formative years. I’d hit many mats, floors, and even concrete at that point but it was those first three beers that marked my actual fall. That buzz was the best feeling I’d ever had in my life and one I’d unknowingly chase right to the grave. A fall I had no technique for, and no plan for landing. Gradually I drifted away from clubs and mats, and started drifting into anyway I could find to alter my brain chemistry with alcohol and eventually other substances. By the age of 16 I was downing so much alcohol at parties it was like a spectator sport. I wasn’t falling anymore, I was plummeting.

Things got bad after my Grandparents passed and we ended up closing the club. I fell so far away. Losing them meant I lost the only safety net I had to sanity. My mother’s drinking became so severe that it tore the family to shreds and forced my dad out of his shop in Port Huron to come back home. There was no hope, no help coming. The cops came, and they left doing nothing. In 2012 she passed away leaving a trail of broken hope and burning piles of misery in her wake. My own alcoholism progressed so bad through my 20s that by 30, my liver was shutting down and I was blacking out constantly. I needed to stop. I needed to stop falling.

If you try and catch yourself with your hands, arms outstretched in panic, you’ll get hurt. You’ll shatter your small bones in your hands, fracture and dislocate things. You have to practice flowing with gravity. Absorbing the impact correctly and being mentally aware enough to enact the right moves and techniques at a moments notice. I noticed going through my car windshield drunk one saturday evening that I still did a breakfall. It was so ingrained into my system that even blackout drunk, hitting a guardrail at 40 or so mph, I still used good form. Another crucial lesson. That discipline was still in there latently and saved my life. In 2018 It happened again. I crashed into the liquor store, right next to my own house. The store my Grandfather built and ran for years. It hit me hard that I was tired of this life, tired of feeling like my arms were outstretched in panic trying to catch myself from drinking. I needed to break my fall finally. The next bottom might be permanent.

I went to rehab. I took it seriously. I didn’t stand in front of the judge saying I messed up this time. I said I didn’t want to die. I was sick and in pain and it was ruining my life. Getting the certificate that I passed my probation was an eye opening experience for me. I never thought I had the fortitude to accomplish something like that. I felt for the first time that I wasn’t in freefall. That I’d hit the ground already and I was instead, ready to get back up. Another mid-air turn I decided do to avoid impacting again during this time was to integrate myself into AA groups to help understand why I resorted so heavily on alcohol. I even chaired a meeting for 2 years doing my best to provide honest and caring service work to the community. AA isn't something that is largely in my life, that’s a story for another day, but it was a crucial stepping stone in my journey that led to me really looking deep within myself for answers to long buried questions about my purpose and identity.

So what does learning to fall mean to me now? It means I took that information about breakfalls and tried to apply it to other aspects of life. No matter what, gravity is a force of nature that hits us all. Balance and flow are keys to living in a sound mind and frequency. Without them, we tend to find ourselves out of control. Freefalling. Its not just about the force of gravity on your physical body, Its about how we fall in our minds. I thought that intrinsically, alcohol was the only way I could make myself feel better in times of desperate pain or grief from my situation at home. I masked who I really was with it for all kinds of reasons. Pain, fear, lack of self-esteem and self-acceptance, pressure from peers and society to fit in under a false narritave. I understand now that to land comfortably, because we all fall, we have to be somewhat comfortable before that happens. It helps to be resolute in the face of turmoil great or small. We are rarely prepared for the fall, the loss of a loved one, or a car smashing into us in a twisted, pagent, of metal and burning wires. What we can do is have the mental fortitude to stay calm enough to get out of harm’s way, pick ourselves up and rebuild from the rubble, and If you’re lucky, to have the strength to want to reach out and take another’s hand with grace and dignity rather than watch them fall as well.

That’s what learning to fall means to me.

With Love, Henry Ciul