Georgia (Grim) Brain, Australia
This week in GKR Stories, we speak with Georgia Brain from Victoria, Australia. Georgia shares with us the challenges she faced in class being deaf and how her instructors and the GKR community have helped her overcome and thrive in the class environment and beyond.
I joined GKR on a whim after meeting two Sensei’s at my local shopping centre. I needed to find a form of exercise that kept me interested and engaged, and having done extensive martial arts in my teenage years, it helped me remember how much I loved it. I signed up on the spot.
My fitness level at the time was non-existent. I was heavily reliant on a walking stick and I had no stamina. My brain remembered but my body thought I was crazy. My progress was slow but I took the opportunity to enjoy the journey. I remember the thrill of earning my orange belt and the sense of accomplishment that came with it.
I needed to take a year off due to health issues and moved from Melbourne to Ballarat. I was initially concerned about this disrupting my karate training but I quickly found my place in the GKR family again after discovering classes close by. I started to train 3 nights a week.
The biggest hurdle I have faced is that I am deaf with a lowercase ‘d’, meaning I have some hearing but essentially in class settings I become completely deaf. My Sensei made sure to show me what to do but I still felt isolated, often missing counts and instructions.
One of my Sensei’s, Sensei Mick, expressed a desire to learn Auslan (sign language) so he could ‘talk’ to me during class. I showed him a new sign or two each week and before long, other sensei’s wanted to learn too. My youngest daughter, Sensei Mick and I, set about creating a dictionary for the Sensei and Sempai to learn Auslan at their own pace so they could talk to me as well.
Not all Auslan signs translate to Karate terms so we had to adapt some signs and create others. The end result was a resource that was by far more comprehensive than I imagined, but it has been a life changer for me and I think for the instructors as well.
I love my GKR family, they have embraced my language and are making such a positive impact to my enjoyment of the art.
Watch Georgia tell her story in the video below…
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