The Day I Couldn’t Break His Finger — And Why That Changed My Life

The following is a guest article written by one of our UMF Academy students, Zahne Castley. We wish to express our gratitude to Zahne for sharing such a personal story.

Could you break a finger?

If you’re a woman, and you’ve ever tried a Krav Maga class at UMF, you’ll know there is a point where Sifu Pablo has us standing in a circle. The boys are all off practicing a different drill. After talking about the mechanics of how to break a finger, he looks us in the eye and asks “Could you do it? Could you break a finger if you need to”. I respond “Yes. Now”.

I want to tell you a story about a time before this. When I had my hand grasped and wrapped around the middle finger of the man that attacked me. And I couldn’t break his finger.

The Backstory…

Before I tell you that story, I need to tell you a few others, because the context is a bit important for how I got to where I went, and to where I am now. Before coming to UMF three and a bit years ago, I knew nothing of martial arts. I grew up on the outskirts of a place that had a population of about 350 people. I went to school with the same 15-20 kids in my class from Kindy to Year Nine. Physical activity was the 1km walk from where the bus dropped me off, up the long hill to our home. It was hiking to the front paddock, stick in hand, to test the trapdoors on the trapdoor spider nests. It was trying whatever sport the new PE teacher taught. It was jobs at home, looking after animals or going on adventures (and mischief) with my sister on our farm. I later moved to the big smoke (literally) of Mount Isa where there where a few more sporty options - I was an active, but not particularly sporty young person. Martial arts just wasn’t on my radar - outside of watching many hours of Monkey Magic or later watching that 90’s biopic of Bruce Lee’s life (more for that handsome dude that played Bruce than anything else).

It wasn’t until I was a 26 year old young Mum that I became much more interested in physical activity. My robust and otherwise healthy hubby was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma and we had to move from the Outback to Townsville for the seven months of his treatment. We had a nine month old baby and it dawned on me, if things went pear shaped for my husband and his treatment, I could be my son’s only person. It also struck me that my lovely man was not able to move his body in the ways he wished because of the severity of his chemotherapy. I felt a responsibility to use the gift that was now so obvious to me, my physical body, well. A love affair with running began - out the doors of the Leukaemia Foundation accommodation, around the hospital and on the pathways of Douglas. It began tentatively - I would duck out in the evenings after I breastfed my baby, and put him to bed. It continued after my hubby’s treatment finished and we moved back to the land of big skies and sulphur stacks. It continued when I was pregnant with my second baby, through some of my own health challenges, and it became a consistent way I returned to myself. When my children were little, I fit running in either in the early mornings, before dawn or in the evenings after their bedtime. It became a place for me to shuffle through my thoughts, to be absolutely alone (my general preference), to relieve stress, and to have a personhood outside of my role for others - Mum or Psychologist.

I was training for my first half marathon when this all changed. It was a regular morning, I got up at 4:30am, skulled a black coffee and headed out. Everything was typical, I stuck to the main roads, that were well lit. I felt safe, as I had done this many hundreds of times before. I was 8.5km into a 10k run and was tackled from behind by a stranger - who then dragged me from the path, pinned, attacked and sexually assaulted me. All I knew to do at the time was yell, a lot. And as my intro pointed out, at one point, I had the man’s finger. I thought about trying to break it, but I could not bring myself to. I thought this was where I would die, and imagined saying goodbye to my husband, my six year old son, and my four year old daughter in my mind. It was violent, and it changed me.

The aftermath of this event completely removed my softly held assumptions about people. As anyone who has experienced something traumatic knows, it can make your world shrink. For me, my world got smaller over the following seven years. My running, which was a previous lifeline to both physical and mental health, shrunk completely, as I felt so unsafe. I relied on my husband much more than I ever had. I was hyper-vigilant a lot of the time. As a psychologist, I knew deeply how to deal with intrusive thoughts that would occur that were related to the attack. I didn’t expect the degree of physical response over very benign things - the sound of a lady running behind me in Woolies; how rocks on the ground looked when the light shone in a particular way; literally the shifting shapes of shadows when I tried to walk at night. My body would become extremely dysregulated, and would take hours to settle.

The Turning Point

I happened upon Krav Maga in a romance novel I read one time - the protagonist was a bit of a badass and I am prone to admiring badass women. It wasn’t until my family and I moved from Mount Isa and settled in Townsville that I started playing with the idea of trying. I had to do something to make my world a bit bigger again. I also wanted to know if I was ever put in a similar situation again, I could absolutely take care of myself and escape. I never wanted to feel victimised in that way again. And I really, really missed running.

I happened upon Krav Maga in a romance novel I read one time - the protagonist was a bit of a badass and I am prone to admiring badass women. It wasn’t until my family and I moved from Mount Isa and settled in Townsville that I started playing with the idea of trying. I had to do something to make my world a bit bigger again. I also wanted to know if I was ever put in a similar situation again, I could absolutely take care of myself and escape. I never wanted to feel victimised in that way again. And I really, really missed running.

I knew how to deal with intrusive thoughts, to sit gently in my emotional discomfort and grief. What I had to get better at were the intense physical responses that I would have, that were triggered by the intensity of the stuff I was learning - as Krav Maga requires some stress inoculation. I had to learn how to sit in physical dysregulation, and teach myself strategies to come back from that. The exposure to intensity in class, was absolutely essential for me to trust myself to respond effectively in a violent situation. For that reason, for a good lot of that first year at UMF, I had to convince myself to go - every single class. It was difficult, but it slowly became very, very fun.

Parallel to my training at UMF, I started to push myself out the door running more again. At just about a year after beginning Krav Maga, I ran my first marathon. That whole first year felt like a massive slow band-aide being ripped off - very difficult, but very necessary.

From about the time my second year at UMF started, I felt so much more settled, I didn’t have to push myself so hard to go to classes, it was a part of my weekly routine, and it had become the place where I saw and trained with my friends. I decided to take on Wing Chun next - followed by Muay Thai Kickboxing (which I have very recently switched to BJJ). Martial Arts had become a place of learning, growth, and so much fun.

I have now had the chance to experience the grading process of Wing Chun, and feel the wonderful paradox of conscious incompetence - feeling accomplished with what I have learnt - but recognising how much I still don’t know. My last addition, BJJ, feels like a massive win - as so much of it involves being pinned down, it shows me how far my body has come, in terms of its relearning of safety.

My running continued after my first marathon - and since starting at UMF, I have now run another dozen half marathon races, many 5k and 10k races, and literally thousands of kilometres in training. Running has resumed its place as my thought shuffling, alone time, nature exposure, and general tonic for mental and physical health.

I have been treated with such dignity throughout this time by my instructors - Sifu Pablo and Emilio, though I have not been pandered. Their expectation that I would challenge myself has been essential as I am sure I would not have pushed myself where I needed to without their encouragement (and insistence). The UMF family have been so integral to my healing, most of them without even realising it. I am grateful, and I plan to continue to grow, and learn through martial arts for years to come.

You may see me around UMF, and if you do, you are more then welcome to talk to me about my experience, I know that I am not alone in it. Training here has helped me understand that confidence isn’t something we think our way into - it’s something we practice again and again, until it finds a place to live in our body. My world is a lot bigger again. I move through it differently now, with more awareness, more humility, and a deep respect for what I am capable of when I chose to step into discomfort instead of away from it.

Before I was attacked, I was overconfident about how I might respond in a violent situation. Training has shown me the difference between imagining what we might do, and knowing what we can do.

Do you think you could break a finger?

Written by

Zahne Castley
Registered Psychologist

• Bachelor of Psychology – James Cook University
• Post Graduate Diploma of Psychology – James Cook University
• Master of Applied Positive Psychology – University of Melbourne