My Story so far by Léonie Therrien Tremblay

My story with IL Shim starts in August 2010. I had been in Australia for 4 or 5 weeks and I was looking for an ITF club where I could train. At that time, I had one thing in mind: being part of my country team, and hopefully, represent Canada in the individual sparring event at the next World Championship. I left Canada with a heartbreak, just had my first concussion from a sparring match on a day I should not have been on the floor, still, I kept riding my bicycle full on to go to work and had an accident and broke my teeth just before my flight for Sydney… Ouch. As my aunt says: « I was not aligned».

My Taekwon do journey so far has had ups and downs and it is normal. The head of the painting department in my home University who is in a wheelchair and makes pretty damn good art said one day: Living is going up, keeping the balance and suddenly we are being slapped in the face and we fall. And then we stand up on our feet again, get stronger, and then, again, we take another hit, fall, then stand up, and so on. Let’s say at that moment, I felt I’ve been slapped and was trying to go back on my feet. The only way I knew would work is by escaping my homeland in order to shake myself, to break patterns and start from scratch.  

And you know, whoever you are and read my story, I don’t intend here to talk about moves and medals and sparring matches and being champion and that sort of stuff… One thing I learned at IL Shim, is that your martial art, is not really the kicks, the belt color and the performances. It is much more what you do the rest of the time in your life that will crystallize while you train, while you interact with your training partners, while you talk to your teacher. Of course learning the technique and challenging yourself are noble and beautiful things. Wearing your Dobok, washing it, looking in the eyes of someone when you bow, paying your fees on time, be there when you say you will, etc, my point is that ALL these things are important and not only the power of your kick and the speed of your punches.  

When I went to my first class in Parramatta, it is this philosophy that I recognized in the teaching of Master Daher. I did not really know what it was but it had something I was looking for since I left my first Taekwon-Do school. He had the people to sit and he started talking about the Do, or «the Way» if you prefer. While most of the time in clubs you hear about Tae Kwon, «jump, kick and punch» but the Do, or all that is spiritual, the wisdom through discipline, is missing.  

Today, more than a year has passed since I started my training with IL Shim. During this year and a half, I have the feeling that everything has changed in my Taekwon-Do practice and my attitude toward it. Before, the only thing I wanted was to win. Doing a lot of competitions has a weird way of making you strong and weak at the same time. But that is another topic. The idea here is the impact that joining IL Shim had on me. Let’s say being trained by a Master for 4 months before going to the nationals in Canada last year helped me big time. A lot of people came up to me afterwards and told me how surprised they were at my quick evolution. I will not tell you if I won or not, because this is not important. Nevertheless, what is very important is that I sparred at the height of my capacity, to my full potential at that moment, in full awareness and I was feeling just right.  

To continue my story, following some sort of a timeline, I spent a winter 2010-11 in Canada preparing myself for the World Championship in New Zealand. Let me tell you one thing: that was not the same. Of course the team training was great, but I was travelling 3 hours every week to the next city to train with my former teacher when I was not in Montreal, (600 km from where I lived), at Eclipse Taekwon-Do. The rest of the time I was training by myself at the Gym. When I came back in Australia after New Zealand, I understood that I could never forget about IL Shim and that it would be hard to train somewhere else. I’m not saying that IL Shim is the only and the best. Perhaps IL Shim is not suitable for everybody, but it is sure the right place for someone who’s looking for some kind of spiritual development through the body and a martial art system. To me, it is obvious that when one is at the right place, doing the right thing, with the right people, it is the optimal experience.  

There’s some inner voice that tells you when you are into a state of optimal experience. You don’t need to research from noon to 2pm, it is the voice of wisdom that speaks and we all have it. So once I realized that I found a good environment to practice, training partners and a teacher with whom I could learn more about Taekwon-Do and myself, I just had to make sure I stick around and stay in Australia as long as possible.  

Of course life brought me some other experiences, acquaintances, challenges here in Australia, but the grounding of my life in this country, what I am now, every good thing that happened to me, are due to the strength and confidence I gained at IL Shim. Without Master Daher’s help and patience, and the support from Mr Tyson, Mr Ken Harris, Michael Jasser, all the other members of the club, and the joy from kid’s classes, nothing that I have had accomplished in Taekwon-Do, academically, socially and professionally, would have been possible. 

When we had instructor courses in Canada, we used to make fun of how dear and missing Master Tran was saying: «Taekwon-Do, is a tool, for social development!» He was so right. I’m saying this because to develop socially, you must know yourself. It is a very basic rule, taught within Buddhism, Yoga, and many other philosophies and religions. And with IL Shim, it’s like speeding up the process by going to the source to get knowledge.