What Karate Means To Me

Before I started karate, I didn’t know one thing about self-defence or anything about karate itself. I would always fight my sister for no reason around the house and it would end in my sister getting in trouble. Because I would start arguments and get upset without defence, my parents and sisters thought I was a little aggressive. As a result, with the help of my parents I decided to pursue karate to finally learn about self-defence and help cope with my feelings.

So that’s when my parents suggested that I should start karate and think about how it would benefit me throughout the years. They told me that there was a karate school happening around the corner of Hillside, so then I tried out and started to begin that journey of my life. The first time I started, nothing made sense. I didn’t know what anything was – the technique, the words, what to do with my feet and hands – didn’t know anything. My face would turn red, and I would feel scared because I didn’t know anyone, and I didn’t know what to do.

My dad kept telling me that when he was little, he always wanted to go and experience the different aspects of karate, but he couldn’t because they didn’t have enough money, so I thought I could take on that journey and make him happy and so I did. He thought karate would make me strong, independent, and not be so aggressive. He kept giving me lectures on some nights when we have dinner and would tell me stories about him and would tell me everything about karate about how you have to be fast and calm and have to be ready in action if something happens. He was right. From that point on, he still gives me lectures and still tells me the same stories over and over again.

As the months went by, karate made me understand what the sport means and opened up a new meaning of it to me. The sport helped me build my resilience and excel in what I do. However, karate is not only just a sport, but also more about the art form that includes precise techniques and the focus on form and posture, and it’s like a dance that requires discipline and self-expression. I’ve now learnt not to take my mistakes as something horrible, but rather as something to grow and learn from. Without mistakes, I wouldn’t be able to know the meanings, the techniques and how it could be useful in the real world so with that, it has helped me through a lot of ways, even helped me with swimming and traditional dancing.

Karate has made a huge difference in my life. It made me feel like I’m a better person, it made me feel stronger and more independent, and it made me have more confidence in myself than I did in the past. This is because the past 4 years, I was just a 12-year-old girl who was scared of doing anything in front of my peers, but now karate made me who I am today. Receiving a black belt means taking responsibility of my actions, taking responsibility of teaching new knowledge to kids, and taking responsibility to understand different meanings and different techniques, so I can understand what it means to be a black belt. I don’t know what is going to happen in the future, but I know I am going to continue this journey onwards and know the different aspects of karate from which I still need to learn.

Gabriela Stojkoska began training at Shushinkai karatedo on 5th March. 2019, at age 11 years. She was graded to Shodan on 7th October 2023, at age 15 years.