You have two responsibilities as a Martial Artist.
Meet new people & make new friends.
Do this for yourself.
Your art was not created in a vacuum and you cannot grow in one either. Get to know people who train different arts and you will get better because of it.
Do this for your art.
People discover other martial arts through the people who embody them. no-one can discover and appreciate your martial art unless they have friends who are highly skilled in that art.
Do this for the Martial Arts.
Segmenting the martial arts by style, lineage or method only weakens us all. Bickering, infighting and petty politics drives people away from all martial arts.
Seek out opportunities to meet martial artists you would not normally interact with.
Find events that are dominated by Martial Arts Styles you have little or no experience with and get to know the people there.
The more people you get to know the better your art will be.
This is why Kuntao & Silat are as effective as they are. Because of all the mixing, intermingling, “cross contamination” and exposure to the arts from India, Tibet, Thailand, China, The Philippines and of course Indonesia & Malaysia among others.
Now a lot of that exposure was through warfare, piracy and other forms of violence.
Ideally we use other methods. Like friendship and cooperation to get that exposure.
Of course, you need to train hard and study good material so you can be a quality representative of these arts.
I recommend starting here:
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