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Coach Michael L. Werth Sensei – A Memoir
April 15, 2009

Who Am I?

When I was six years old, I asked my father, “Daddy, can I take karate lessons?” “No,” he said. That “No” stayed in my spirit for 18 years.

When I was 24, I got together with a group of friends in graduate school and we talked about taking martial arts. We talked about how karate was strong and focused on working with your hands. My Israeli friend, Thalia, said, “I want to be strong.” Then we talked about tae kwon do and how agile you learned to be, and my friend Thalia said, “I want to be agile.” Finally we talked about aikido, and how graceful it was. My friend Thalia said, “I want to be graceful.” We decided to try out aikido first. I said that I would find some places and let them know about it.

The following week on Thursday morning, January 24, 1991, I found an aikido dojo and my first martial arts teacher, Mr. Glenn Webber Sensei and started my first practice with another aikido student, David Ahern. Our school was called Rhode Island Aikikai. My friends didn’t join me. I never looked back and still train to this day. My father’s “No” from 18 years before no longer possessed me. I turned from adolescent to adult that year.

For the first 7 years, I trained and learned many things about the martial arts. By that point, I was training 6 or 7 days a week. Then, I started to have problems with my back. It hurt more and more. I trained harder and harder. I believed that I could break myself up into bits and then rebuild my body. I was hoping to destroy my life’s past disappointments, struggles, and foolishness that I feel had characterized much of my life. I thought that the solution to my problems was to break what wasn’t whole and then remake it again in a new and better way.

Unfortunately, this path was misguided. The pain grew to the point where my spine began to destabilize. Walking became difficult. Working at my desk as a Technology Resources Manager became excruciating. The pain became so great that I began to fear the slightest contact with other people. At aikido practice one night, when my Sensei started to work with me, I folded up and fell down. Finally, I had to stop training.

For 3 months, I lay on my back without moving, watching television. I began to get hooked on shows like Touched By an Angel. For 3 months, I lay there in tremendous pain with no improvement in my condition. After 7 years of rigorous training, and not taking care of my body, I could no longer move freely. I was truly broken.

After the 3 months, I was watching an episode of Touched By an Angel, and there was a particularly moving scene. The actress on the show, Roma Downey, was performing the climactic scene of the show, where the protagonist must make the choice to change and move forward or be lost forever. “God loves you, Michael,” she said in her glowing and joyous way. I cried and cried.
After that episode, I turned off the TV and I was determined to change my life and move forward. The next day, I made an appointment with an acupuncturist from Russia to get some help. I met with Dr. Alex Tatevian, DA, for 10 visits. Nothing seemed to work and I couldn’t make progress.

Finally, I signed up for a membership at Bally Total Fitness in East Providence, and decided that I would start to try to rehabilitate myself through weight training. I went that same day for my first workout, and selected the seated iso-lateral bench press to begin. I put 25 lbs of weight on each side and sat down in the machine. I put my hands on the handles and started to push. Lightning flashed through my body and spirit, and all my acupuncture points lit up on fire along all the meridians that Dr. Tatevian had worked on. The acupuncture was WORKING, but only if I were willing to help myself by stepping forward to do the work of healing and change.

For 3 more months, I lifted weights, and the healing processes began. I knew that I could no longer afford to continue to destroy myself, but that I needed to heal. For the next 7 years, as long as it took to take my body apart, I worked on taking care of my body, strengthening, and healing.

After the 3 months of Touched by an Angel, and the subsequent 3 months of acupuncture and weight lifting, I was able to return to aikido training, but not like in the past. I used all my knowledge of martial arts and my new path to heal my body to create a new way of training to gradually build myself up. This process took about 7 years to mature and complete. After reaching bottom at that difficult time, and realizing that I had to lift myself up and move forward, I realized after all these years that being “touched by an angel” really meant that I had to be willing to accept myself as an agent of change in order to regain grace.

A few more years have gone by since then, but I continue to train and grow in the martial arts. I’m not as young as I used to be, but I have learned to be strong, to take care of my body, and to help others learn martial arts. I use my strength in martial arts to work hard day and night in the public schools to help young people learn as many skills as I can teach them, as many as they will accept. I also work hard to improve the schools that I have worked in, to make them better places for teaching and learning so that students can get greater challenges to help them grow.

One thing that I learned in the martial arts is that it can take a life-time to master a single skill, but it must be worked on tirelessly for a life-time to achieve it.

While I know that I haven’t quite fully realized all that I am and can be in this world, I know who I am. I am a martial artist. I train 4 days per week and teach other students all that I know. This is what I do and how I conduct my life. My life is a way of discipline, training, hard work, and perseverance until I achieve my goals. This way of the martial artist works for me. I am for this journey to discover all that I am and can be. Who Am I? I am a martial artist.