How Can You Develop Empathy in Children With Martial Arts?

The trend is changing, and now the parents are trying to shift the direction and attention of their children towards some physical activities that have a lot of benefits for them. The most prominent of these activities is martial arts training. Parents start training their kids in martial arts such as boxing, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Muay Thai, and many others, so that they can get numerous benefits that are going to help them throughout their lives. Among many of these advantages or qualities they get, one of them, which is often neglected and people don’t seem to care about, is empathy. The martial arts training provides these children with a complete environment in which they can develop this great quality. They have the opportunity to connect with other colleagues emotionally. This reflects their real life as well. They are not restricted only to the gym. So they start portraying all their qualities and benefits in their real life in front of everyone while dealing with different life matters.

Empathy reflects how much you are able to understand the feelings and emotions of another person. It can be your friend or family member, or just a random person. In empathy, you are not laying your own opinions in front of another person. You are seeing the situation in the world from another person's perspective. In this way, you can better understand what they are feeling at the moment. Empathy is all about sharing and understanding each other's feelings.

Martial arts is the best way to develop empathy in yourself. But how does it develop? Let's dive into the details. The following are some of the points that will explain how you can develop empathy through martial arts training.

• If you observe broadly about the martial arts, you will see that it is only about two things. The first one is a success, and the second one is a failure. So you are winning or losing. This is very important for you to have in your life. But obviously, you should experience this in games or physical activities. This teaches you a lot.

• If you are only winning, how can you understand the feelings of the person who lost? If you are only losing, then how can you understand what it means to be a winner? So the goal of martial arts is to teach you to feel both as a loser and a winner. When you are doing both, then you will also understand every feeling.

• This way, the next time you win against your opponent, you will not be making fun of them. Instead, you will be understanding and encouraging them.

• This reflects in your real life as well. You start understanding every person in an area who lost or won against you. You start developing and showing empathy towards the people.

• The second way martial arts develops empathy in you is by teaching you patience and understanding. It is very necessary for you to have these qualities. Patience gives a person a lot of things. You can learn how to pass through a tough or challenging situation with ease. This is only possible if you are patient enough. You can deal better. You can better think about the strategies and better ways to pass through.

• In martial arts training, you are not going to be the same as your fellows who are getting training with you. Instead, everyone is learning and training at their own will, pace, and motivation. So you can get discouraged while seeing others getting much ahead of you. In such cases, you need to show some patience. If you don't, you will also increase your speed or pace of learning and training moves and techniques.

• What will be the result of this increased pace? The disaster. You will be wasting your time and money. At the end, you will observe that you don’t know any technique properly. Instead, you have wasted all of this time trying to cross others. So you must be patient. This patience and understanding start reflecting in your real life as well.

• In martial arts training, you are not just training or practicing moves and techniques. You are doing a number of things. One of these is the building of a community. You are having a lot of people around you who are also doing the same thing that you are doing. They are also learning the same thing, and this is martial arts. So you are having some similarities with other people. This makes you and other people close to each other emotionally. You both start liking each other, and eventually you become friends with them.

• In this way, you, along with all your colleagues, become a community. This community is not just a name with no use. You all develop an emotional connection with each other. You start understanding each other’s feelings. If one person is feeling down or not able to progress, there is a complete community available to help that person grow in their journey.

• So you have a back of a big community. When a person loses, other people don’t make fun of them. Instead, they support them and try to get that person back into their form. This community is not only restricted to the BJJ academy. This goes beyond the gym and starts helping each other in their real lives as well. So the next time you get stuck in any difficult situation, you are not alone. Instead, you have a lot of friends who can help you emotionally or with anything else you need at the moment.

• The fourth thing you learn from martial arts training is leadership. This also builds and develops empathy in yourself. As a leader in martial arts, you have certain roles and responsibilities, and one of these roles is your good behaviour towards anyone you are supervising. You cannot just start ordering and punishing.

• You have to lay the foundation for beginners. It is your responsibility to teach everyone that they can do the training, and it is not at all difficult for anyone. They just need to give some time to training, and that time should be regular. If you are having good behavior towards the beginners, then you can enjoy their success. Otherwise, you will get nothing out of them.

• Moreover, you can do teamwork, and in that teamwork, you can be the leader. You can lead the work. Guide others, have good behaviour with them, and ultimately, you will learn and develop empathy in yourself. This empathy you will learn will also translate to your real life as well, and you are going to show this in all your life matters with everyone.

• The fifth benefit you can get from martial arts training is the development of an intelligent and strategic mindset. This is helpful in all aspects of your life. In your daily life, you are always experiencing mixed situations and moments. These can be easy, moderate, or difficult. So the one thing that you need at all costs for dealing with such tough and challenging situations is intelligence and a strategic mindset.

• The reason is that if you are intelligent enough, then you know or can find a way to deal with and get yourself out of the situation. On the other hand, if you are not that intelligent or do not have a strategic mind, then you cannot pass through that situation successfully, and the result will be that you will experience a lot of stress, which will have many negative effects on different parts of your body. So it is a very crucial element in your martial arts journey.

• Now you know that intelligence and a strategic mindset are two very important qualities for you throughout your life. But how can you get them with martial arts training? Let’s discuss.

• During the training, you practice the techniques and learn new ones regularly. So continuously, you are increasing the list of techniques and movements you have mastered and can execute in a match. When you spar or grapple in a professional Brazilian Jiu Jitsu match, for example, you have a full list of techniques in your mind.

• Obviously, you cannot make any move outside of this list. This is where the element of intelligence and strategic mindset develops in yourself. During the match, you need to run your mind like a machine because you need quick, rapid, and accurate responses. You need to think about which technique you should execute in a particular situation that will have a good effect on your opponent.

• This step requires very deep thinking and intelligence. You have to deeply observe which technique is the most effective at a particular point. At the start, you might not be good at this, and you will be making mistakes in every match multiple times. But this does not mean that you cannot do this. You should keep trying to do this, and eventually you will be able to think about the exact technique that you should execute in a particular situation, and this will motivate you further. So eventually, you will learn how to do it with an intelligent mindset.

• This helps in developing a very strategic mindset, which will also reflect in your daily life matters. So with martial arts, your mind changes into a machine that can think deeply, put out correct responses, and provide very effective and accurate strategies to help you deal better with your daily life issues.

It is often said that the best age to learn anything is at a younger age. Because of this age, you can learn and understand things easily and deeply. This is the effect of age you must consider for your children. They are having the best time understanding anything new. There are a lot of things you can teach them, but the best thing is empathy. Being a human, we must all be empathetic enough to understand the feelings of a person near us. We should be able to share feelings with each other. That quality should also be in the children who are just starting their lives. This will make their base, which will be helpful for their entire life. So the best way, as we just discussed, to teach children empathy is martial arts training. This training will equip them to be empathetic towards their neighbors, people, friends, and family.

Empathy reflects how much you are able to understand the feelings and emotions of another person. It can be your friend or family member, or just a random person. In empathy, you are not having your own opinions in front of another person. You are seeing the situation in the world from another person's perspective.

The following are some of the points that will explain how you can develop empathy through martial arts training.

• Facing setbacks, but also success

• You learn patience and understanding

• A support community

• Learning leadership roles

• Developing an intelligent and strategic mindset