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Kung Fu Fighting Gives Nepalese Nuns a Voice

Nepal Religion
by Christine DeSadeleer Apr 19, 2010
A sect of Nepalese nuns is taking concentration to a whole new level.

Most of the people I know who have learned any martial art became entranced with the practice. Building concentration and powering up in a functional way seems to make people strong not only in body, but mind.

Which is why it’s pretty damn cool that some Nepalese nuns are practicing kung fu for up to two hours a day. At the Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery, just outside Kathmandu, these nuns work the same moves Bruce Lee did, and feel it’s “very helpful for” their safety. They also say it helps with centering them for meditation, which they do for long hours.

Plus, kung fu seems to give them a higher status as women in the area:

The confidence shown by these young nuns is unusual. Buddhist nuns in the Himalayas are normally seen as inferior to monks…so often nuns became basically just household servants for their families or working in the kitchens and the gardens in the monasteries.

Sometimes, it’s easy for me to forget that most eastern religions, similar to western religions, place women as second class citizens. It’s amazing how the power of learning a sacred art helps to lift women in both their own eyes and the eyes of men.

So it hardly comes as a surprise that “since nunneries have begun to offer better education and physical programmes like kung fu, the number of young women who want to become nuns has grown dramatically.”

Work it out, nuns.

Could the martial arts help raise the status of women in different parts of the world? Share what you think below.

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