Original Post: 17 May 2014
The views in this article are those of the author.
By Iole de Angelis
I am fully aware of the issue that people may feel offended by the term “handicap” but be aware that the French government addresses sport issues related to disabled people as “handisport” and it is not my intention to offend anyone.
First of all, I want to explain the reasons why I want to talk about the practice of HEMA in the case of the differently abled people, as they are called in French. In fact, I belong to this category that has been called handicapped, disabled or differently abled. My handicap (obstacle) is not visible, and this fact adds a handicap to the handicap since “I do not look sick”.
Most of the time, when you talk about handicap, disability and so on, people think about wheelchairs, people who cannot see, people with learning difficulties and other visible issues. There are also other obstacles related to depression, to autoimmune diseases (like my case), to accidents, to personal stories (shocks and so on) that create great weaknesses or barriers for people that make it difficult to do certain things. Personally, I like the expression “handicap” since it means obstacle and “differently abled” since it means that to do something you need to find out a personal solution or you need to do it in a different way. I do not like the term “disabled” since it means “not able” because I am able to do things even if in some fields it is more difficult than for the average person.
In my case, I suffer with several autoimmune diseases (Lupus and others) and one of them almost killed me. I needed dialysis, I have a shunt for hemodialysis and in January 2014 I received a transplant. During dialysis I suffered a double detachment of the retina but luckily it solved by itself. So, I have first-hand experience of several kinds of handicap/disability and my purpose here is to talk about historical European martial arts and how they are open to differently able people.
In the past, warriors could suffer injuries that would lead them to lose parts of their body, but, in most cases they kept fighting since it was their way to gain the resources to live, so they learnt how to fight even if they had physical handicaps. One famous example is Lord Nelson. He partially lost the sight in his right eye in 1794. In 1797, as Rear Admiral, he lost his right arm during an assault on the Spanish base of Santa Cruz in the Canary Islands. He also received a severe head wound at the Battle of the Nile in 1798, after which he spent two years recuperating in Naples where he met Lady Hamilton. He used his injuries to his advantage: during the Battle of Copenhagen (1801) where, ordered by Admiral Parker to cease the attack on the Danish fleet because of early losses, Nelson raised a telescope to his blind eye and announced “I really do not see the signal”, before going on to destroy the fleet and preventing its use by Napoleon. It is a way to change a weakness into a strength and it is what a good fighter is supposed to do.
Admiral Lord Nelson
OBSTACLES AND HEMA
We rarely fight hand to hand for a living anymore, but many like me will not want to give up their martial art even if they suffer from a handicap or obstacle. In my case, if I receive a hit on my shunt I have a good chance to die for real and I need to find the right solution to keep my practice and preserve my life and well-being. Others might discover martial arts as a way to overcome their limitations. In some ways visible handicaps are easier to deal with, as restrictions are more obvious and easier to classify. This makes it, for example, easier to create competitions where fighters with a handicap can measure their skills.
The International Fencing Federation has created categories for people in wheelchairs and with impaired vision to compete in Olympic fencing. Invisible handicaps pose a particular challenge in martial arts, as it is often up to the instructor to determine if these pose a threat not just to the martial artist with the handicap, but possibly to others. Since they are invisible, the others may not be aware of the limits or the risks related to the practice with this person. Sometimes a warning is enough and sometimes it is not enough. I use myself as an example: if I explain to the other person that because of a microscopic polyangiitis ANCA, by the time the training partner has understood what I can and I cannot do because of my problems, it is time to change partners.
In other terms, invisible handicaps that pose no danger to others still imply a particular challenge: it is often difficult for other club members or the instructor to understand how the handicap affects the fighter. It is hard for somebody with an invisible handicap to explain that they cannot do certain things, and that this is not because they are lazy or overly afraid, but that they have real reasons not to take part in some exercises. It is easy to feel excluded and misunderstood. On the other hand, certain psychological and hormonal illnesses as well as certain drugs like cortisone might make fighting with the affected person unsafe since he or she may have no control or lose control and go berserk. In particular, berserkers (or berserks) were Norse warriors who are primarily reported in the Old Norse literature to have fought in a nearly uncontrollable, trance-like fury, a characteristic which later gave rise to the English word berserk. This may be good to slash people in a war, but it is not good in a martial art practice. On the other hand, martial arts can be beneficial for emotional well-being and aid the recovery of a person with a psychological illness, and it would be unfair to exclude them just because of their particular handicap. I personally have met a young lady who had a very difficult personal story (father in prison and so on) and thanks to a Japanese martial art she could avoid the downhill path she was taking, she ended in the French national team and she lives a normal life.
Other handicaps might make injuries that occur in free fencing very dangerous. It is for example extremely risky to get hits on the forearm, if one has a dialysis shunt. If you get a cut in your shunt you die in about 5 minutes and if you receive a hit you may not be able to have dialysis and thus you die. For such handicaps “Kata competitions” might be interesting. Wouldn’t it be great if such opportunities were available in historical fencing as well? In addition, Judging and refereeing can also be very rewarding, if one enjoys the thrill of the fight without being able to take part oneself. Luckily, not everything in HEMA is about competing. A large part of the spectrum of HEMA activity is historical research and study of the original manuscripts and their techniques. For this reason there is room for people with a large variety of skills, abilities and limits.
Everybody is valuable. This is why I keep up with HEMA: I find this aspect of HEMA is particularly fascinating and I am certainly not alone in this. It is important to carefully consider each handicap individually and adapt the practice to the limits of each person. Special equipment can help. For example, a person on dialysis needs to preserve their life-saving fistula or dialysis catheter. Consequently special protections for the arms or the abdomen are required. Transplanted people will need to protect their organ. People with cancer may find it useful to stop more often, people with heart diseases may find it useful to practice at a slower speed and so on. But since a sport activity improves all kind of physical conditions, HEMA is useful for people with health problems especially because it is quite easy to tailor and adapt the training.
In conclusion, given the many ways one can be involved in Historical European Martial Arts, this is an open world for whoever has a passion for history, research and/or physical activities. When you find the right club for you and you practice with the right people, you forget your handicap, you forget your problems (at least for a while). This is a most amazing moment and feeling, because I feel normal and I take a holiday from my limits since I feel that I have no limits.
Original Post: http://esfinges1.wix.com/e/apps/blog/hema-beyond-limits