Danger

What is the biggest danger in Karate? It isn't injury at all. It's a swollen head. Perhaps it should be called a swollen ego.

Being an instructor feels a lot like being really, really important. Students treat you with great respect, and bow, and call you Sensei, and obey your every command. After a few years of this, it is too easy to start believing in your own wonderfulness.

Associations break up over the egos, and over imagined insults. My first association collapsed, and it sounds like the ISKF in Canada is currently facing the same kind of thing.

The good news is that some people manage to avoid the trap.

I've been trying to avoid stepping on our current Sensei's toes. Would hate our happy family to crack up over egos. Tonight I suddenly went, "yikes." I'd helped a beginner for a few minutes during class time without being so directed by the Sensei. Next, in Kata time I corrected the Brown Belt's form, and showed the Green a few moves of a Kata beyond the one he's currently supposed to be working on. Hadn't been asked to do that either.

Any one of those actions in a class would be no problem, but I'd done 3. Bit over the limit? Or was there a limit?

Then Sensei had us work in teams on self-defense techniques. I kinda got into it and started showing all sorts of advanced stuff to my group. Fancy stuff, fast and furious. I suddenly noticed I was off the leash and started to worry. Would our Sensei feel I was taking over too much?

At the class's end, she made it really clear that she was fine, and that she wanted to learn what I could teach about wrist locks, pain, and such.

She's only headed our club for a few months, and is improving as an instructor every class. She doesn't need to improve on ego control.

She's already there.