Comment by marttt
"I self-taught myself Martial Arts (JKD, Karate, Taijiquan) from books when i was young."
This is very interesting and impressive. How common would you think a complete self-study of martial arts actually is? I've always thought this cannot be done alone -- or, it would be extremely easy to get lost or head to some wrong direction, eventually harming yourself mentally or physically. Akin to how a common suggestion about yoga or meditation (I used to exercise vipassana daily for quite a while) is that the first, basic principles should be taught by a good master. Possibly due to personality type, I've always wanted to challenge this assumption, though.
While learning martial arts on your own, what did you do to overcome more serious mental blocks or standstills (provided you had any)? Did you ever feel that "books are not enough"?
Looking back, that self-study of Martial Arts has been the single most defining time period (I did this in the late 80s to early 90s in India) of my Life and has directly led to my Physical Health, Self-Confidence, Self-Reliance, Mental Fortitude and Persistence in the face of hardships today, all of which are fundamental to Life. I did the above along with a study of Yoga and to this day maintain a large collection of books (of Yoga/Martial Arts/Ayurveda/Siddha/TCM/Qigong/Acupuncture) dealing with both Physical Techniques and Mental Aspects/Theory behind them.
The key aspects in learning were Overwhelming Drive (the motivation was to learn to fight like Bruce Lee :-), daily practice of basic blocks/punches/kicks, slowly progressing through the movements of the shadow-boxing/Kata routines given in the books and no self-questioning/self-doubt/no-comparing with anybody else. I also had a good friend who was also very interested in Martial Arts (he eventually joined a Shotokan Karate school) and so we would practice/encourage each other. One defining lucky moment was coming across E.J.Harrison's "The Manual of Karate" (which was a translation of a Japanese text) where the author explicitly states Karate is useless without makiwara style training/conditioning. I took that to heart and made a canvas pillow with coconut-matting, tied that to a tree (a small one which could vibrate and absorb your hits) and would train with full power on it. This worked so well that my basic punches/kicks became more powerful than my Shotokan-training friend who only did non-contact practice. To this day i can generate very good power relative to my size. Reading Gichin Funakoshi's "Karate-Do : My way of Life" was also instrumental where he mentions his two teachers and their instructions; Master Azato would tell him to think of his limbs as swords so that he went through his opponents and Master Itosu would tell him to harden/condition his body so that he could absorb any blow. Next it was Miyamoto Musashi's "The Book of Five Rings" which led me to studying Martial Arts mindset/strategy/theory and validated my approach since he was also largely self-taught in many disciplines (the concept of "Hyoho/Heiho" acquired in the study of one discipline is internalized and then used to study other disciplines effectively/effortlessly).
Today you have far more resources and avenues open to study Martial Arts but the main points i mentioned above must be kept in mind even though many teachers may not teach you those. As mentioned in the quote above, Mastery is always dependent on "one's own incessant self-cultivation".