Gee, a lot of the people at the dojo are getting so COCKY! the intermediate student exclaimed, one evening, after class.

Yes, personalities change, dont they? I replied with my best, Kung Fu wise man impersonation.

Really, she continued. Theyre way different people than they were when we started!

I just grinned.

Unquestionably, the martial arts change people, or people change themselves when they commit to practicing them, and these alterations become quite evident at the intermediate stages of development.

While, of course, youve heard about of the outcomes of training: fitness, toughness, concentration, improved self-confidence, and the ability to walk down dark alleys all by yourself, late at night; these are just some of the pluses that are touted by dojos.

But there is a DARK SIDE, as well, and you begin to see it about two years into ones development.

Heavy pressures are placed on peoples families and friends and even work mates and employers by the suddenly bold, and perhaps brash, students. Instead of meekly fulfilling their predetermined roles, they become, like clothes theyve outgrown, misfits.

Like adolescents who surprisingly question authority everywhere but in their peer groups, students' contacts outside of the training hall dont know what to make of them, now that they are as difficult to herd as cats.

Training consumes more time as it becomes advanced and refined, straining the ecology of relationships where people may not have had that much face time to begin with.

Suddenly, unions that held together with only the adhesion of habit, start to fray, and martial artists see they are on a path that is solitary, but more fulfilling.

The dojo becomes home, and its inhabitants, their families. And frankly, theyre happier there than they were where they used to spend their discretionary time.

Fractured families and broken homes, at a certain level, seem to become as commonplace as bruised hands and feet. Yet, practitioners are smiling, as they morph from one state of being to the next.

Dojos are a canvas on which their hidden feelings, hopes and fears are painted. By seeing themselves in a new light, possibly a more objective one, aspiring martial artists are treated to a rare insight: seeing exactly how unhappy theyve been.

How they deal with that information is perhaps even more character building than anything else they will learn, on or off the mat.