18/06/2026
I often tell my grown up students something that is explained in a great way here.
🧘♂️
“Martial arts must be started as children.”
We often hear this sentence.
In my case, this is exactly what happened. I started when I was a child, and I have never stopped since. But after many years of teaching, I have understood that the heart of the matter is not age.
What truly matters is the ability to change.
Of course, when we meet a person whose body has been strongly affected by a dysfunctional lifestyle, by injuries, or by other physical limitations, the first step must be to restore, as much as possible, a condition of balance.
But beyond this, the central point remains the same:
as adults, are we still able to change?
When we start as children, practice guides us through a silent transformation. We are still in a phase of physical and mental development. The body and the mind are naturally more open to being shaped by experience. After some time, there is no longer a clear separation between formal practice and daily life. The discipline begins to structure the way we move, the way we perceive, the way we react, the way we relate to ourselves and to the world. The body and the mind are slowly formed through the constant stimulation offered by the practice.
For adults, the process is different. Very often, adults approach martial arts forgetting that these are disciplines of transformation. They want to learn them while keeping intact the characteristics, habits, tensions, and patterns they have already built over the years. They learn the technical aspect, sometimes believing that once the technique has been acquired, the desired change has already taken place. But this is not enough. We must allow the tool we have chosen to transform us. And the most difficult place to change is not the training hall. In the school, the context itself may create the temporary illusion of transformation. For a few hours, we enter a space that supports us, corrects us, and pushes us in a certain direction.
But genuine practice begins when this experience starts to permeate every moment of the day.
The way we stand.
The way we breathe.
The way we listen.
The way we react under pressure.
The way we interact with our surroundings
The way we deal with discomfort, conflict, fatigue, fear, and desire.
At that point, practice begins to invade daily life. And for an adult, this can be frightening. Because real practice does not only ask us to learn something new. It asks us to let go of something old. A superficial practice can still create small transformations, and this already has value. But these small changes should not be confused with the deeper transformative potential of body-mind practices.
If you want to begin a path in transformative disciplines, you should not ask yourself whether you are young enough to start.
Ask yourself whether you are willing to change.
Practice is every instant in which we allow the discipline to reshape the way we live.
Become a child again in your heart and mind, and your body will be transformed as well.
Mauro Antonino D'Angelo
