BODY PRACTICES: Boxing and Buddhism

Come on, hit me!” bellows a looming, well-muscled middle-aged man. “Don’t just stand there! Hit me as hard as you can!” Squared off against this bruiser at the BigTyme Fitness boxing gym, 57-year-0ld Dorothy Pedersen thrills at the invitation, feeling more confident and secure than she has felt in several decades.

“A lot of people think that boxing is just head-bashing or a form of beating someone up,” says Pedersen, who lives in Orangeville, Ontario, Canada. “But it’s not. At a deeper level, boxing is about balance, footwork, power, strength, precision. Your ability to defend yourself is at least as important as your ability to make contact with someone else.”

Over the years, Dorothy Pedersen has learned a lot about defending herself. Abused as a child, she wound up in two unsafe marriages, spending eight weeks in a women’s shelter after one of them. Simply walking down the road made her feel inadequate — even if nobody was looking at her. And yet she has always had a resilient spirit and has built a successful career as a business writer, speaker, and communications consultant.

Although churchgoing wasn’t a big part of her family’s routine when she was growing up, it was drummed into her, in the Scottish Presbyterian tradition, to be good, moral, and honest — or encounter heavy consequences.

As an adult, she began exploring New Age texts and ultimately found her way to Buddhism, which provided her with a compelling way to chart a moral course in the world. With its emphasis on compassion and caring for all sentient beings, Buddhism helped Pedersen put focus, perspective, and calm into her life. “Without Buddhism, my pleasure in belonging to the BigTyme family would be isolated,” she says. “With Buddhism, I see it as karma. This helps unify the painful aspects of my earlier life with the fun and enjoyment I’m having now. Meditation has helped me realize there’s so much I don’t understand about the magic of life, but that no longer makes me feel inadequate; if I continue to exude kindness and consideration every day, my efforts are not wasted. Every day is a Buddhist day,” she says. With the unlikely duo of boxing and Buddhism, she has built a deep sense of security.

COMMUNITY
Pedersen sees similarities in her relationships with the people at the boxing gym and in her sangha (Buddhist community). Among both groups, she has learned to trust and to enjoy the acceptance that comes from being part of a healthy community. “One of the things at the gym that is complementary to the Buddhist sangha is that the people there really care about you. For instance, if you’re doing an exercise with weights, someone will come over and say, ‘Just turn your hand this way a little to make sure you don’t damage your wrist.’ They look after you,” she says.

The nature of boxing is to respect hard work. After dropping out of yet another health club where being young or fashionable seemed to be requisite to get the training she wanted, Pedersen was glad to find the boxing gym near her home in Orangeville. Run by three-time middleweight Canadian champion Bryon Mackie, the gym was a comfortable fit from day one. “Nobody cared what age I was, what sex I was, what my abilities were — they only cared how hard I would try. That’s the typical boxer mentality,” she says.

DISCIPLINE AND BELONGING
Pedersen trains two to three mornings a week for about an hour. She skips rope, works the bags, lifts weights, runs, and spars with everyone from teenage boys who want to go pro to guys like the big-hearted brute who encouraged her to take her best shot. “Sometimes they hit me, but when they do, they pull their punches. So it’s only a light tap, just to let me know there was an opening, and if I’d been in a real fight, he could have really decked me. But nobody hits me hard. And that not only helps build my confidence, but also makes me feel incredibly safe.”

Whether her fellow boxers are helping her celebrate her birthday or encouraging her in the ring, Pedersen most loves the sense of belonging. “When people behave that way with you, you feel more confident, more secure,” she says. Add to that the endorphin rush that comes with each workout, and it’s no wonder that Pedersen credits boxing with helping her overcome the feeling of inferiority. “Even if I go in feeling dim,” she says of the boxing gym, “I come out flying high.”

Jennifer Derryberry Mann is a Minneapolis-based freelance writer, editor, and yoga teacher.

THE SCENT OF A GYM
One of the ironies of our quest for cleanliness and germ-free living is the enormous increase in allergies and auto-immune diseases. To keep our bodies truly healthy, there should be an RDA for dirt. And so, too, for sweat. The first thing you may notice in a boxing gym is the scent of bodies. When people box (or dance or train together), sweat flies. To the novice, the scent can be disconcerting. Unworked bodies don’t sweat much and if you are accustomed to artificial scents and have avoided contact with working sweat, you may favor the health club and even consider that air healthier than the earthy scents of a boxing gym. But if you take time to sense the air with more than just your nose, you may notice something different. We humans constantly check each other out. We do that naturally. Where people go to sweat together freely, you’ll likely sense much less body shame — and much more pure joy.
Stephen Kiesling