Media Moments: Eyesight Loss and Danger Cannot Defeat the Power Within

Paul Miller, founder of Lehigh Valley Martial Arts and Active Learning Centers, was featured by WFMZ 69 News this week for guiding Sights for Hope clients through a self-defense lesson focused on confidence, awareness, and the power within each individual to respond to danger.

Miller, who also is Sights for Hope’s Board President, has dealt with visual impairments for most of his adult life and has been completely blind for more than 20 years. He has practiced martial arts for more than 45 years, is a fifth-degree black belt in karate, and has trained more than 1,000 black belts. Miller founded Lehigh Valley Martial Arts in 1997 and founded Active Learning Centers, a childcare center that uses martial arts to teach life lessons, in 2002. The businesses operate in five locations and have approximately 175 employees.

Miller taught that the most important keys to a person’s self-defense, regardless of their eyesight, are awareness of their surroundings, proper balance, and leveraging their body’s inherent strengths. He also stressed that the ability to defend oneself is not defined by the threat encountered, but by the confidence, preparedness, and power each person already possesses within themselves.

Miller’s client life skills lesson exemplified Sights for Hope’s dedication to helping people live with dignity, confidence, and independence no matter how they see the world.

WFMZ-TV is an independent station that covers all or part of Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Carbon, Monroe, Schuylkill, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and, Montgomery counties in Pennsylvania; and Warren, Hunterdon, Mercer, Burlington, Camden, and Gloucester counties in New Jersey.

Image: A news camera operator with earphones films beside a reporter in a leather jacket.