Three Life-Changing Things I Learned Training With a World Champion Boxer
Boxing with seven-time world champion Michele Aboro at a Zen temple in Hawaii
For a few weeks in October, I had the honor of training with Michele Aboro, the champion boxer and kickboxer, at Daihonzan Chozen-ji, a Zen temple and martial arts dojo in Hawaiʻi.
Born in South London, Michele was a pioneer in women's boxing, getting started at a time when it wasn't yet legal for women to box professionally in England. After moving to the Netherlands and later Germany to train and compete, Michele retired in 2001 a seven time, undefeated world champion (21 wins, 12 KO in boxing; 32 wins, 23 KO in kickboxing). To watch videos of some of her old fights is to almost feel sorry for the women across from her in the ring—she is just so far beyond them in power, precision, speed, and drive.
Since I began training in Zen in early 2018, I've always done some boxing, but I've mostly done other martial arts like Kendo (Japanese fencing), and fine arts like ceramics and Japanese tea ceremony. Martial and fine arts are core parts of the approach to Zen training at Chozen-ji, where they function to accelerate the transformative impacts of intensive meditation and other practices.
While the global pandemic delayed Michele's arrival in Hawaiʻi and at Chozen-ji, training with her was something I'd hoped for and did my best to stay in shape for over the better part of the past six years. All my other martial arts training and intensive Zen training still did not approach how physically demanding—and exhilarating—training with Michele Aboro would be, though.
During Michele's three week stay at Chozen-ji, we added a five day long boxing intensive to our regular class schedule. Each day began inside the large martial arts dojo where we sat in forty-five minutes of seated meditation. As we do every day at Chozen-ji, we sat with our eyes open, all facing the center of the room and with totally erect posture, not moving. We also sat in the evenings.
At 6:15AM, 10:00AM, and then again at 7:30PM, we had boxing sessions focused on footwork, strength and conditioning, defensive maneuvers, and punch combinations. In all, it was two hours and fifteen minutes of meditation and five hours of boxing each day—and a rollercoaster of sore and swollen muscles, fatigue, adrenaline, and excitement throughout those five days.
Before we'd started out, Chozen-ji's head priest had talked about how people usually associate words like "peaceful" and "calm" with Zen, and "violent" and "aggressive" with boxing. Flip those around, he suggested, and you might get something better resembling what both Zen and boxing are like in their truest forms. I learned during my time with Michele that to excel in boxing is to find calm and control even in the most chaotic situations. She really does not approach boxing just as a sport, but as a Way (translated from the Chinese word, Tao). Through boxing, she believes that people can gain insight into not just their own habits, but also their true nature and even absolute reality.
Because Michele has taken the same intense, focused, and wide open approach to life that she has to boxing, I gleaned some deep wisdom from her that I found relevant to much more than just boxing. And I culled it not so much in what she said, but in how she lives and treats others.
Here are the three most important things I learned from training with world champion boxer Michele Aboro:
[ #1 ] Know your (true) limits.
Michele has a remarkable understanding of how training in boxing can create a profound shift in knowing one's true limits. By "true", I mean neither inflated by ego or ignorance nor short shrifted by fear or lack of confidence.
On one hand, she explains, beginning boxers are often stumped by why they can't do something simple like extending their arm properly to throw a jab. They get it conceptually, but they just can't get their bodies to do it. This can open a beginner's eyes to the disconnects between what she imagines her body can do and what it can actually do. And this can catalyze an important shift in her relationship to her own body, and sometimes much more.
As a student progresses, she also experiences what it's like to surpass her perceived limits. Through repetition, quality instruction, and grueling physical conditioning, even a beginning boxer can soon be doing things she would have thought were impossible: sparring, taking a punch, and performing at unexpected heights.
It's hard not to underscore what a big shift this can create. With good teachers and a caring community, it's possible for people to learn where their true, not just perceived, limits lie—and which limits aren't actually a matter of strength or flexibility, but spirit. At the same time, cultivating sensitivity to our bodies means not pushing ourselves blindly toward injury. In this way, we learn to push our minds and spirits past any limit that isn't real.
[ #2 ] Know who you are and do what needs to be done.
When Michele stopped fighting in 2001, she went back to school to get a degree in audio engineering. She later worked at a famous concert venue in Amsterdam and then toured with several bands. Her motivation for studying audio engineering was, surprisingly, to learn to serve others.
As a fighter, she said, she had always been taken care of by her manager, her coach, and her corner team. Now, she wanted to learn how to take care of musicians sharing their art—and she did everything from mic their instruments to drape them in bathrobes as they came offstage, drenched in sweat, so they wouldn't catch cold. Throughout the time I spent with Michele, I always saw her jumping up to do whatever needed doing with this same spirit, thoroughly humble.
And yet, alongside this humility and what seems like an automatic impulse to be useful, I don't think Michele ever lost sight of who she is. Back when posing nude and doing fashion shoots was almost required for female pro fighters, Michele refused to be sexualized in service of her boxing career. In doing so, she was making a clear statement: "I am a fighter and I'm here to fight, not do all this other fluff."
Yet now, as a mother of a rambunctious six-year-old, she is seemingly game for anything, including the very fluffy. As dissonant as it can feel to see a world champion serving as valet for her daughter's giant stuffed Pikachu, such a sight was not only a daily occurrence in my three weeks with her, it was a reminder of how much Michele understands herself, the moment, and how she can best be of service.
[ #3 ] The deepest bonds come from the toughest forging.
Ninety minutes after the end of our intensive five days of training, Michele was on a red eye flight to Las Vegas to be inducted into the International Women's Boxing Hall of Fame. She later said that while she felt honored to be inducted, one of the things most motivating her to make the six-hour overnight flight was seeing women she'd fought twenty-five years earlier. Rather than feeling any animosity towards them, Michele said that she felt incredibly close to them, her former rivals.
"Nobody else knows what we went through together in that ring," she said, and she commented on how many women fighters keep in touch long after their pro days are over, texting and calling often.
The Zen training I do at Chozen-ji does not meet a real boxing match in life-or-death stakes, but it does a more effective job than anything else I've found at creating situations that test and challenge me to my core. In the process, I've learned to use my breath, posture, and concentration to stay calm and in control in the midst of chaos. And out of that arduous training—including during these five days of boxing with Michele—I've found the people I want at my side, whether it's to go into battle, build a movement, or celebrate life's greatest joys.
It's hard to put into words how precious that is to me, after a lifetime of always being a little too serious and a bit too intense for my surroundings, always trying to soften and change who I am to fit in. I don't only recognize the feeling of joy and freedom visible in Michele's face in the photos of her reuniting with her fellow fighters—awesome, powerful women who trained to be champions, day in and day out, even without the promises of money and fame available to their male counterparts. No, it's more than mere recognition. Her smile feels like it's stretched across my own face. It embodies how I feel inside every time the old crew reassembles for some of our more intensive Zen training, which is: home.
Now that Michele's gone back to Aboro Academy and her home in Shanghai, I'm trying to retain everything I learned from my time with her—not just the boxing techniques, but the sense of constant hunger to learn and grow that sprang naturally out of my exhaustion and nonstop activity. She promises to come back in 2024 for another few weeks of training, and more opportunities to share this unique discipline of "Boxing Zen" appear to be on the horizon.
Until then, I'm going to every boxing class I can, doing my strength and conditioning, and working the bags regularly. And, as I live at a Zen temple, I am meditating every day and getting ready for more intensive Zen training like the week-long sesshin coming up in a few weeks. With all of the chaos erupting in the world, the calm I find working the heavy bags, finding more strength with my improving alignment and form, is a sweet respite. I also find a purposefulness in sparring practice, even if I still struggle to see the punches coming and maintain my focus. These actualize my conviction that, in life, there is always more training to do. Every challenge and opponent I encounter bears more lessons and opportunities to realize my True Self, and I am determined to be ready.
"Nobody else knows what we went through together in that ring,"
Reminds me of a quote I heard a UFC fighter say once. Something like "You have a very interesting internal dialogue with another man/woman when you're fighting them"
I used to wrestle for 8 years (a little bit in college, too) and this saying is so true. There's so much that's being communicated in the pressure you apply, how the person's breathing, little hesitations, etc. that's super interesting to think about. You don't have to talk to the person to know when they're beaten or when they've given up. You can just feel it by how they're moving. Crazy. Great post!!! I'm subscribing!
“Flip those around, he suggested, and you might get something better resembling what both Zen and boxing are like in their truest forms.”
Absolutely!