Eels writhe wildy, where my intestines once lived. Hissing vile creatures. Of a muted hue to match the dark place that birthed them. They knot inside my navel, thrashing, coiling, churning. Their snake dance conjuring forth a sentiment of despair, lost hope and melancholy. Serpentine blackness, swishing embryonic.
The sullied tips of fingernails, claw at outside skin, yet fail to penetrate and pierce. Merely drawing heated red welts across my abdomen. Helpless to stop the scaly maelstrom as eel dances atop eel, within.
Took almost the entire week off work and was happy that PF could come over so I could spar a bit.
Warmed up with Chi Sau.
Moved on to Chair Sparring. Starts off a bit like Rock’em Sock’em but teaches upper body evasion and it’s a lot of fun. Kept having to scoot my chair forward so I eventually put PF’s chair-back against the wall.
Moved on to some boxing. Cooled down with some more Chi Sau.
Was a good time had by all. Gave some, took some, learned some.
“Your career criminal / person with violent proclivities does not need martial arts / combat sport training to be extremely skilled in their own environment. They are “untrained” from a martial arts / combat sports / consensual fighting perspective; but their experience in the context we are discussing (crime and violence) makes them far more skilled than the allegedly more sophisticated martial artist whose expertise derives from another area and who lacks that experience.” Iain Abernethy (Karateka)
When shadows reappeared in Mordor in the third age, it gave rise to a reawakening. The evil that had dwelt in the lands “dying but no yet dead” became revitalised. The rebirth happened quietely, outside of the gaze of the shire and was led by Saruman.
Gung Fu is never meant to spill into the public domain. Its effectiveness relies on its technical aspects remaining firmly behind closed doors so as to enable its underlying principle to function; deception.
The purpose of *dissimulation is simple. As Gung Fu men, realise that deception is one of the key traits of a successful street aggressor and so our training, although mostly physical, is presented in a way where we train to out beguile the attacker. A good example would be to place the hands in a preparatory position evoking the non-verbal cue of submission and tricking the attacker to believe that we are being compliant. And it is from this position that we launch our non-telegraphed pre-empted strike, be it a punch delivered to the nose, jaw or neck, or a well-timed kick delivered to the groin or knee. A central maxim in Gung Fu being ‘sien faat jai yan’ – (move first to gain the initiative).
So, to create an environment in which our Gung Fu skills can operate, our aim is not to reveal the intention behind our actions, be it in training or the street. If the general populace has no idea as to how Gung Fu works, then they are unable to prepare a defense against our attacks or a system of movements to counter-act our skills.
Disguise what you do under a veil of secrecy and overall, do not allow the techniques of Gung Fu to become public (biu jee but chut mun).
*Dissimulation is a form of deception in which one conceals the truth.
“Make techniques as simple as possible, avoid complexity for the sake of looking good and constantly look for ways to perform a technique with less movement.”Jesse Glover, describes the essential elements ofGung Fu.
A feeling of awe is hard to describe. Something that grows in the pit of your stomach and makes your skin tingle with excitement. When I first met Jesse in 2004, I remember this overwhelming feeling of awe.
(Jesse Glover far left, Bruce Lee center, Ed Hart far right)
I fight those who want to harm me. I fight to make a living and support my family. I fight to keep my relationship alive. I fight for my rights as a human being. I fight the barbel across my upper back. I fight for my family values. I fight to live my dreams. I fight to find out my true nature.
“To sleep, perchance to dream-” Shakespeare’s Hamlet
There is work to be done. Plans to be drawn, a certain dark strategy to be employed. Tonight my mind will enact, what my body will do tomorrow; punching and kicking, toiling and sweating. My mind rehearses what must happen at dawn. Body twitching, motor units of muscles initiated, yet not fully recruited and the central nervous system primed. I extinguish all doubts and remove all notions of failure by allowing my minds-eye to successfully project all the physical training that will follow upon waking.
Most people lay still, under the cloak of night, allowing sister sleep to steal them to foreign lands. Mine eyes are fixed open, mine mind fully awake. A nights work lies ahead. Magick and torment. Gung Fu and damnation.
“And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever” (Revelation 20:10, KJV).
I have to give that woman in the gym 10 out of 10 for effort. The underlying principle of her workout was perfect, she was doing short bursts of intense activity. The thing that beguiled me however were the wide array of exercises she was doing. Skipping, jumping side to side over some hurdle, lunges with her arms flapping in the air. Was it all necessary?
After brainstorming an idea as to how to work a particular dynamic for fighting, I think I found a rudimentary solution. The dynamic I was attempting to simulate was the push-pull type movement often seen in streetfights, ice hockey fights and stabbings where the assailant holds on to clothing (or a limb) and strikes repeatedly with the other, dominant hand. In classical Gung Fu, we are taught to grab and pull; ‘lap sau’ (grabbing hand) and it is often coupled with a simultaneous strike being issued. Now the idea wasn’t to establish a counter, but more rather to mimic that actual dynamic because I am a firm believer that you should work the same (or similar) skills that have proved effective in the street (do what the assailants are likely to do, but better).
The solution I came up with was a simple one; wrap a towel (to mimic grabbing clothing) around a heavy bag (or body opponent bag) which you:
1) hold, and;
2) pull – suddenly and explosively (really focus on establishing a firm grip), and;
3) hit repeatedly with the other hand. This can be done in sets where you say grab and suddenly pull, while hitting 3 times with other hand.
***for any readers who are interested in Gung Fu, Wing Chun, Fight Based Drills, Exercise or Nutrition (what we do and how we do it!); contact myself (HDS) or CTK through this blog. One Love!!!
I was driving in my car the other day and a woman comes on the radio and starts telling me how important breathing is! Not like there was any actual content there, it was just a disjointed emotional rant scientifically calculated to sell HMO Medical Insurance. That’s when I realized, I hate breathing.
Think about it, animals don’t breathe. Dogs don’t breathe, they pant. Cats don’t breathe, they purr. Pigs snort. Birds just flap their wings and the sky rushes in and out. Can you image what would happen if fish tried to breathe? Whales and dolphins have a special whole for blowing, think about that, they only exhale!
When we sleep we don’t breathe, our whole bodies shrink and expand, either that or we snore.
If you run for a quarter of a mile the pretense of breath control is completely abandoned.
You might as well try to lower your heart rate by watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
When a child wants more air, she moves around, she wiggles, squirms, jumps, rolls, skips…
The Chinese invented breathing in the 6th Century in order to teach children to read and write. It was a trick to get them to sit still, and the first lesson—As one dips the brush in the ink inhale, then hold as the brush touches the page, and exhale as the brush lifts away from the paper.
And no doubt we could lay a bit of blame on South Asia. If a guru is going to encourage his disciples to live in a cave and sit still for 12 hours at a time, then sure, weird permutations of “in” “out” and “hold” may be the order of the day. But I seriously doubt that yoga, as a movement art, if it really did exist in the forgotten past, had much to do with breathing.
By the way, none of this view comes from a lack of trying. The problem is that posture and breathe are simply inseparable. Try to change a person’s posture, and three to five breaths later they are back in the same position. Try to change a person’s breathing and three jumping jacks and a booty shake later they will have reverted.
The problem of teaching can be divided into two general categories, (1) challenging the already motivated, and (2) spoon-feeding the wayward. In the first case it is the teacher’s hope that the student will surpass the teacher in unexpected ways and fortify not just their own experience but the entirety of the art in the world. With the latter it is hoped, against the odds I might add, that the natural curiosity of the student can be stoked with inspiration.
After many years of teaching I have found only one reliable way to inspire people; grab them by the scruff of the neck and the feet simultaneously and play them like an accordion. Alternately one can grab the chest hair and the seat of the pants. Thus, by manual manipulation, inspiration can occur.
Just in case there are a few readers who think they may be able to improve their breathing, the Daodejing has this to say: “To use the heart/mind (xin) to direct the breath (qi) is called forced!” Laozi (chapter 55).
And randomized double blind controlled studies do tend to back this assertion. If the purpose of breathing is to get oxygen into the blood, one might think that better breathing would get more oxygen into the blood. But it turns out that VO2 max (the maximum amount of oxygen a given person can get into their blood) is set early in life. Athletes, even adolescent athletes, plateau in measures of VO2 max after only a short period of training. Improvement is not an real option. Which brings to mind a useful adage for handing out items to children which may not be of equal size, shape or color: You get what you get and you don’t get upset!
Inevitably, when a new adult student begins studying with me, they will ask about breathing. Oddly enough, this question is sometimes lodged as a protest, as in “Why don’t you teach anything about the breathing?”
While babies do not breathe, they do begin to sigh in the first few weeks of life.
For those readers who 1) wish to dive into the unknown with their eyes wide open, or (2) have more than a year of non-conceptual meditation, or (3) have something on the order of 10,000 hours of internal martial arts practice – I venture this:
There are three types of breathing; The lungs breathe, the body breathes, and the mind breathes. There is nothing special to know about the lungs unless you are sick. To develop wild animal flavor in martial arts practice or in life, every part of the adult body must be trained to shrink and expand. Once that ability is attained, the intent to do it must be discarded. If the body is empty – meaning (1) empty of intent -xu, and (2) empty like a container- kong, then qi will fill and surround the body. This is the fruition of non-action (wuwei). Once this experience is discovered and established the spacial mind comes into play. The spacial mind begins by breathing and gradually becomes more lively and animated. The body, effortlessly following the qi, will shrink, expand and spiral seamlessly as the spacial mind moves.
“Heaven and Earth are like a bellows.”–Laozi
——————————————————————–
Scott blogs here, and he teaches here and his bio is here!
I’m told that I’m skilled at teaching Gung Fu. Perhaps this has more to do with how I teach, as I do not believe myself to be particularly gifted. The way I teach involves me simplifying things to their essential components. Once the technique is deconstructed, I provide the raw form of the movement to the student and ask them to work with it through repetition and experimentation to make it theirs. The movement is then ‘destruction tested’ by pitting it against increasing levels of resistance. If the individual can continue to make it work against resisting opponents, the technique becomes part of their personal armoury.
My vision of Gung Fu is a simple one, a system unique to the individual. Just as no two people are the same, their Gung Fu is also expected and encouraged to be different. For example, the wind-up and delivery of a punch can be vastly different between two students, even if the raw form of the movement is presented similarly to both.
All of my students can hit and move well. And I have been pleasantly surprised with my new female students in particular who have learnt how to throw their bodies into their strikes with enough aggression and velocity to become effective hitters.
There is also another key to how I teach; I place the burden to get good squarely on the shoulders of the individual. I do not pander to them and I have little concern with whether they practice or not. Ironically, what I’ve discovered is complete autonomy can be very motivating in and of itself. Students are encouraged to approach Gung Fu with a sense of purpose and I am proud to see them taking steps on a path to self mastery.
One love!
I owe where I am today to my Gung Fu instructors; Leung, Kwok-Keung (Hei Ban Wing Chun Kuen) and Jesse Glover. Jesse emphasizes that each person should create their own “mini-system” of functional Gung Fu and his method epitomizes the essence of Gung Fu; ‘skill acquired through hard work’.
“…. It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.
…. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008)
“So…are you actually fixing my complaints or is this just a band-aid approach?”
Great question. It’s a great question because it leads into a dialogue that is fundamental to healing. It’s often said in Chinese medicine that a practitioner is treating the root cause of the complaint, not just the symptoms – but this is kind of a misnomer.
Imagine, if you will, a patient who drinks like a fish, smokes like a chimney, eats garbage and comes to me for acupuncture. Yes, for that patient, I am nothing but a band-aid approach so that they can keep living the lifestyle they so seem to enjoy. But I’m not here to judge and sometimes the patient that I think is in the worst kind of state starts to follow the path of re-balance.
After high levels of activity, the outside of a person starts to feel good and it will be mirrored on the inside. Often a simple act of lifting weights or martial arts will help re-balance a person and will unconsciously lead them to make healthier choices overall. However, we as a people, slip back into our usual habits.
It’s the same with acupuncture. The one-hour-per-week gives an internal boost and the patient is left feeling elated. Stresses are eliminated, energy is regained and sleep is restful. However, if the unconscious healthy choices aren’t noticed, they won’t become habit.
The goal is to heal a patient. In order to take on such a task, the patient must be cognizant of what is happening internally and how it’s being manifested externally, ie: in the way they act with their environment. This is hard to do, especially in a world that teaches us that everything ‘out there’ will keep us happy – only distracting us from what’s ‘in there.’
So am I treating the root or the branch? Only the patient determines that.
There are a variety of excuses one can make for an injury. The causative agent in my case is fairly obvious; striking knuckles hard against a heavy bag. Of course this self-destructive activity has a degree of inevitability when it comes to injuries. If I could close my eyes and will my left hand to self-recover I would, but even I am aware that Magick has limitations.
The desire to hit the bag is already overwhelming, but this would be foolhardy. Better to rest than exacerbate. Most people empower injuries allowing symptoms to become stifling. But the way I overcome this dilemma is by identifying with the rest of my body which remains intact and not empowering the injury by making it the focus of my attention. After all, I have a variety of fully functioning, injury free limbs that can be trained in the interim. This ‘opportunity’ to focus on other aspects of my training has arisen out of the injury and therefore may be a hidden blessing.
All it took was a subtle shift in focus.
Now for an utterly pointless, unrelated, yet profoundly sexy picture;
