Martial Arts: Sacred Mountain Fighting and Healing Arts

STRENGTH AND EMPOWERMENT

Sacred Mountain Fighting and Healing Arts | 202 S San Francisco St.

MACKENZIE CHASEE

For Sacred Mountain Fighting and Healing Arts owner and head instructor Matthew Banks, the martial arts was a gateway to finding himself.

He realized the importance of self-defense following an incident his freshman year at Northern Arizona University.

“I went to the gym for a while and got kind of bulked up then realized I still didn’t have the confidence – the self-awareness that I was looking for,” he said.

One day, on the way to his regular workout at the campus gym, he passed a group of people in the basketball court practicing karate forms – different stances, footwork, striking techniques, and blocking and avoiding movements.

“I stuck my head in and they said, ‘Come on inside,’ and I never looked back,” Banks said. “That was 2000.”

Fourteen years later, he opened Sacred Mountain in Flagstaff’s Southside neighborhood to provide a resource for others in the community looking for empowerment and strength.

Students ranging from as young as 4 to upwards of 70 currently attend classes held by instructors with mixed martial arts training and a passion for helping others. Shaolin kung fu, Tai Chi Chuan, practical self-defense and traditional Chinese lion dance are among the disciplines taught at the center, with many students embarking on a lifelong journey to explore different aspects of the art.

“It’s something that’s accessible for everybody,” Banks said. “I really do find that those students who stick with it for more than six months tend to stick with it for more than six years.

“If I have students that have achieved their black belt, we don’t just continue in the exact same thing; we actually start teaching them an entirely different kind of system and modality of martial arts, and that really helps keep our students engaged and having a lot of fun,” he continued. “And then once they do that for a while and they learn, learn, learn all this new stuff, they realize that, ‘Hey, that old stuff we were doing, we just scratched the surface.’ The Chinese martial arts world and that sphere is just so rich, there’s so much you can absorb in there.”

Sacred Mountain has made many adjustments to keep everyone safe throughout the COVID-19 pandemic while continuing to share the joy of martial arts. Instructors created videos to send to students before Zoom became the go-to platform for live, virtual events, and later welcomed students back onto the mat with masking and social distancing in place as vaccines became widely available. At the end of the day, tuition-paying students needed to receive the same careful guidance and training they had come to expect, whether in-person or through the screen.

As a staple in the Southside neighborhood for almost a decade, Sacred Mountain

NEMEC PHOTOGRAPHY

The Best: Martial Arts Training

1. Sacred Mountain Fighting and Healing Arts 2. Maximum Martial Arts 3. Southside Athletics/Flagstaff Krav Maga

is proud to be part of the community and regularly gives back in many ways. Women’s self-defense classes, regular fundraisers and more serve to strengthen Flagstaff. A recent event, 40 for 40, asked people to make a donation for each of the 40 forms Banks demonstrated with students for his 40th birthday at a local park, which raised $5,800 for Flagstaff Shelter Services.

“We really like to reach out and do things that are going to impact the community directly,” Banks said.

And Sacred Mountain’s impact has been felt and acknowledged since the beginning.

“We opened in 2014, May 5 was our first day of classes, and we took second at Best of Flag that year and every year since,” Banks said with a laugh. “This has just been such a long time coming. It’s a really neat honor to be here and we’re just going to continue serving our community and being part of Flagstaff for many, many years to come.”