by Jon Baklund
April 26, 2005

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The great thing about the martial arts is that it pay’s you back in many ways through out your life, not only with the training to defend your self, the physical fitness or the study of the science of what the human body can do and is capable of, or just the fun times that you have while you are training.

Martial arts gives back to you in many more ways that I think some times go unnoticed, because we all live busy lives & we are all influenced by our environment. Some times we are so busy and or influenced by our lives that the gym is the only place that we spend the income that our martial arts training has given us.

What I mean by this is, that we have been given many systems in our training that we are sometimes not aware of. I titled this article “Physical, Mental, & Spiritual income from the martial arts” to make a point, if you have income from something that means that you have the ability to spend it, or at least you should give some of it away.

Let’s start with the physical income that you get from the martial arts, a person that trains consistently 2 to 3 times a week will develop coordination, physical prowess, strength in motion, & physical fitness, among many other skills and physical attributes. Unless you are playing a highly physically demanding sport such as professional football or basketball or maybe in the military going through buds training for the navy seals, I don’t know of any other thing that the average person can do to develop these type of physical traits. This is a very big pay back to you the martial arts practitioner “physical income”.

Let’s move on, mental income. The definition of this to me is that once you have learned something it is yours forever. Thus if you have trained extensively in the martial arts & continue to study your mental bank account continues to grow. This to me is one of the best aspects of training, because you not only learn about martial arts. In the process of learning and training you work with other people so you get to see and learn about othersthought process’s while you are growing your mental income. This to me is especially helpful in life, as in the martial arts realm you want to train with a diverse group of people, some strong, fast, slow, quick, skinny, big, stiff, & flexible, these are just some of the parallels drawn in daily life of the people that we meet. So the better you get at adapting to various partners in the martial arts realm, the more mental capacity you will have in the life realm to deal with all of the different personalities that you will encounter, this is “mental income”.

As we begin to talk about the spiritual income, note that I make the distinction between “spiritual” and “religious” I am not speaking about “religion” or a “religious system” I am however speaking a bout spiritual is the sense that when you first begin some endeavor whether it is in the martial arts or some other sport or maybe just a physics major trying to understand Einstein's equations, you will at some point hit what people will call a “wall”, or in better term’s a different level of thought process. This is where you need to let go of preconceived notions and allow a flow of open thought process, just as with the physical sensitivity drills, if you try to force it or use strength you just get bound up or hit.

This is the place where most people just stop thinking about it. I believe if you continue in your endeavor, in this case martial arts training and you open your mind to what is possible, the spiritual income begins to flow. This is the place where true growth happensand is why I wrote this article, because you will hit the proverbial walls in all three area’s in your training and you need to continue forward. When we are constrained by ourenvironment sometimes it feel like “the gym” is the only place that we can be ourselves and express our physical, mental and spiritual prowess or understanding.

I challenge all who read this article to integrate your knowledge from these three areas into your life so you can freely share with others your income from these areas so others can grow as you have.

I said the phrase “thought process” earlier in this article, thought process is truly a spiritual thing because it reveals how open one is to change or to stay the same, how accepting one can be of others, or how bias one is. When we all truly attain an understanding spirituality this world will be a better place, this is "spiritual income".

So get into the gym and work on all of the areas that you would like to grow in.

You can find Jon teaching at MKG at least once a week, his favorite part of the curriculum is Jun Fan/Jeet Kune Do Concepts

Jon also has much time training under martial art greats such as Guro Dan Inosanto, Master Chai Sirisute, Larry Hartsell, Erik Paulson, Jean Machado, Pa Herman Suwanda, Tuhon Bill McGrath, Rick Young, Mark Preston, Sifu Francis Fong, Nino Bernado, Training at the Degaberg Academy in Chicago.

Certifications:
• Instructor Level II Minesota Kali Group - Rick Faye Kali, Jun Fan Martial Arts, JKD Concepts, Muay Thai, Kali/Silat & Maphilindo Martial Arts.

Other Certifications & Accomplishments
• Married with one child
• 1995 Executive protection training course: CQB Services Dennis Martin/Marcus Wynne
• NLP Trainer Teir 6, Process development for Inomanti Project, currently teaching NLP for business & marketing, personal relationships, & family connectedness. NLP Comprehensive- Colorado
• Remote Veiwing Trainer Teir 6, Trainer Remote Healing & Remote Influencing process, Currently Trained over 300 people, Process development for Inomanti Project Original training at Farsight Institute in Atlanta GA through instructor level
• Master Level Meditator - Instructor