Thoughts
It is interesting how attached we get to our lives: For the last 6 years I have been living and working through a commercial school that has ingested and digested my life. I love everyone that I met, but found that the life style was out of pace with me. It is time to focus on the goal of perpetuating the art and science of Fook Yueng Chuan, as taught to me by David Harris and Fook Yueng, and that I have continued through my own experimentation and experience. I am looking forward to being able to work more closely with schools and instructors who are implementing this program in their schools.
In spite of this it has me in a state of shock, I don’t know if I am coming or going. It has been such an all consuming thin that now that I am out of it no longer a PMA school I am in confusion. We need some constants in our lives and that was it for me. Now it is time to focus on helping sustain the Art and support the instructors teaching it. It will come around and be better than ever.
Here is a good article on Victim Selection.
Here is a guy that does what he thinks is right even in the face of a Mugger. He believes in the concept of killing with Kindness. Way to go.
Some of Zach Mason’s Students in Denver Demonstrating variations on White and Orange Sash Forms, They are moving nicely and did a great job on the Video, Great Stuff Guys, thanks for Sharing it with us. Zach Mason is an excellent Instructor to reach Zach to train in the Denver area email him at kungfudenver@gmail.com
Steal the Balance on the First Beat
This is one of the center pieces of our method.
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved…Helen Keller
Yesterday I spent Three hours studying 50 fights that have happened here in Walla Walla, WA. They were all sanctioned in the ring with Police Officers and Medics in Attendance, a Ref, and an Announcer who said the Pledge of Allegiance and Announcing that we were in Walla Walla, WA, United States of AMERICA. The last bit seamed to me to be just a little over the top sort of like over commercializing Christmas, we are fighting here to honor those fighting men and women over there who are fighting over there, for our freedom to fight each other over here, A lot of fighting.
Anyway there was one fight that had a skilled Wing Chun man demonstrating Wing Chun to the camera, then getting in the ring to through a poor Thai Kick, a poor Cross, only to get taken down and tapped out in 45 seconds or so. His efficiency, directness, and effectiveness had flown out the Armory window as he felt the pressure to “perform” in the ring. I imagine that after the fight he asked himself, “why did I throw that kick, go out of my game?”.
Sometimes being direct is not effective, and being effective is not efficient, the guy who beat him up would surely have been corrected on technique back at the Kwan for poor the poor technique that had just flattened him. There are other things more important than technique, feeling, aggressiveness, sensitivity, awareness, and other things.
The Buddha had a comment on that, “The Truth is What Works”.
It is bothersome that sometimes we only work our technique to the point that it is affected and not really a part of us; Something that we do for show or in the Dojo, admiring our selves in the mirror. The guys who win in the ring particularly in the low level ring are the guys who are fueled by anger, aggressiveness, well developed strong bodies, while the guys that train in the arts perform badly. The Founder of Aikido said that Aikido most work in the worst situations or it is not Aikido. That said we have a lot of work to do, in order to make the Art of Peace as effective, efficient, and direct as low level street fighting. Something for us all to think about.
Nev Sagiba always has interesting things to say. Here is an article in the Aikido Journal that is worth a read.
“Why Budo? Why spend a life attending Dojos? Just to learn to fight?
Ben Shook is a Master Student of the Arts manifesting this largely through the medium of hand crafted furniture. He is an ispiration in his writings and the works of art that he births into this world.
The Stuff is Illusive, keep searching you will find it, it is not a linear path. Sensei refered to IT as a mystery wrapped up in an enigma.
Mr. Yueng, “Keep Searching”
Mr. Yueng told me that we are living in a time when skills that were previously kept hidden are now being taught openly. He explained that in China Martial Arts clans kept their skills carefully hidden, Sonny Umpad said the same thing about the different FMA styles. Now everyone is teaching openly from Okomoto in Aiki Jitsu Ropo Kai, to Fook Yueng Chuan students, to the Russian Martial Arts, to People teaching the ancient methods or Past Skills, of the indigenous peoples of America.
Past Skills is offering a very unique approach to learning the ways of living with nature a 6 month immersion living with nature. Students in the Yamabushi will learn flint napping, tracking, flint napping. philosophy, fire making and more, and maybe most importantly students will develop a life time love of nature and our relationship with it. (In the case of the Yamabushi Course for 2008 you only have til November 1st to enroll.)
Whether we expand our experience through a Mountain Retreat, a six month course in Yamabushi, an hour in Chi Kung or a month in another style of martial arts, keep on searching with a beginners mind, keep growing.
Blind Sided
By definition it is what we don’t SEE that Blindsides us. Pay Attention.
In Search of IT
Go to the best, learn from the best! That concept should guide our path and our choice of coaches, teachers, mentors etc. Fook Yueng stressed to me that one hour with a master is better than 100 hours with anyone else. Why? Even when you are training on your own or practicing with training partners your neural system has felt IT and you can spend the rest of your life chasing IT. If you have only seen technique and emulate it you are an actor. For years after training with Sensei Harris, Fook Yueng, Sid Woodcock, Kyama Sensei, Jesse Glover, Ed Hart, in Quiet Moments, or doing a practice I can still feel their pressures, movement and even relive smells in the room, the feeling of flying through the air effortlessly. It is amazing how many people train at their dojos and never are even aware that Martial Arts are not the same, it is more how you do something than what you do, that is important. Everyone can block or throw or punch but when you see, feel, a master doing it there is a quantum leap difference and it will affect you for the rest of your life. The Bible says as that by beholding we become changed. What you put in your neural system is what will come out. Some time take time learn some. Put quality in. Look for a school and a teacher that will give you rich neural food, not just a school that looks nice, has nice equipment, good looking instructors, clean mirrors, nice uniforms, a well stocked pro shop or what ever. If that is what I looked for I would never have met Ed Hart in his smoked filled living room drinking coffee and really caring if his students got IT! Countless people would not have walked through the alley across broken beer bottles to the black iron grate marked 1 down the stairs into a rich mix of thousands of punches far ranging conversations and sticking with a Master. I trained not in a clean sparkly dojo with people giving high fives, and yelling “You Rock”. There is nothing wrong with training in a positive environment I encourage it, just don’t make it the priority, it is secondary IT is primary. I trained for years in the basement of a community center being Uke (person who survives the gift) taking throws from David Harris one of the best, least well known, martial artists of our time on concrete, hundreds a night. People would come in look and leave saying they were looking for real Karate, a “real dojo”. When we look for training we should look for rich neural food, rather than a pretty dojo. We should be willing to sacrifice, travel take the time to learn some from a Master. Jesse Glover is still traveling and doing limited seminars. Jesse is a living legend not because of who he knew that he was Bruce Lee’s first student, he is a living legend because he saw IT, felt IT, and chased IT for his whole life. People pass around names all the time, saying, “I trained with Jesse Glover, met so and so got my picture taken with them, etc”, and then post that on a web page. Don’t waste your time, money and resources there, seek out the guy himself, there are people out there that are not that well known that have amazing skill find them. They are probably not teaching in a flashy dojo though they might be, they are harder to find but wow how worth IT.
FMA Digest Special Edition In Memorial Of the Life and Teaching of Sonny Umpad
This Weekend I invested a few hours watching episodes of “The Dog Whisperer” with Cesar Millan . It is obvious by watching the Dog Whisperer, that there are truely more than one path to the top of Mount Fuji. Cesar Millan has through obervation and trial and error found some of the keys that connect human beings to dogs through body language and as he says energy. It reminds me of the concepts we practice of Aiki and KiAi, the idea of feeling it inside then communicating it outside. Enlightenment through interation with our dogs.
I recommend “The Dog Whisperer”, as a study of ourselves, and our relationships not only with our dogs but with each other.
” Progress in martial arts training is rarely a linear progression as growth comes in spurts. The fastest and steepest learning curve is at the beginning, when all seems new. Even then, everyone has their own rate of learning. Some absorb information like a sponge while others struggle to squeeze in each drop.” Jeff “The Stickman” Finder
Jeff Finder is a long time Martial Artist and great writer who was also a good friend to Sonny Umpad. I would encourage you to take a look at his “Stickman’s Escrima Blog” he has some well thought out observations.
“If you are on a Path it is not your Path”. - Joseph Campbell
What makes you Tick? Makes you do what you do? It is helpful to learn from those who have gone before but, should you stay on that road because it was trod by those Giants of the Past? Learn from them, then make a new path, one uniquely your own, one that will inspire those who get their inspiration from following you. Then inspired they will move on, on past you.
“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him” — David Brinkley
Maintaining the intention of success, moving forward with confidence towards our objective using the criticisms of others as a coach to improve our character, this is the path of a warrior. There is a saying that everything happens for our benefit and is here to serve us, that helps when at first things seem to overwhelm, it changes our view and shows life to be what it is, an “opportunity rich environment”.
As Fook Yueng used to say, “Sometime Take Time Learn Some”.