Learn to fall

Our karate teacher, Mr. Babji taught some of my friends and me how to fall when someone lifts you on his back and throws you down. He told us that we should try to fall on the back and try to spread the impact across the whole back by rolling a little on the back. He told us that falling on our back causes less harm to the body than trying to break the fall using hands. This simple yet useful suggestion made me realize that in martial arts, as in life, falling is inevitable. That is why there are some techniques, some suggestions to minimize the hurt, the pain when the impact happens.

When someone says, "I got your back buddy", what they really mean can be correlated with the advice Mr. Babji gave us. In fact, isn't it that most of the times when we fall, we fall on our back (metaphorically and in reality) because nobody volunteers to fall, it just happens. While falling on our back, we can't use our hands to break our fall, we can't see how deep we'll find ourselves after its all over, how hard the impact would be, so we basically have no choice. One should just accept this situation but always have someone or something to make it easier for us. Friends, relatives, a pet or some hobbies like movies, music, sports, writing, workout, gardening etc. can be that cushion to make the fall bearable. We must have something to someone to come to, to share our success and seek comfort during disappointments.