Martial Development

The Rise and Fall of Mesmerism

The following passage is excerpted from “The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine” by Anne Harrington—a recent addition to my recommended reading list.

The End of Medical Exorcism in Europe

Appreciating the interweaving religious, philosophical and political stakes [in 18th century medicine] is important, because it can help us make sense of an episode whose significance we might otherwise misinterpret: the showdown between the German exorcist Father Johann Joseph Gassner and the Viennese physician Anton Mesmer.

Gassner was an exorcist whose ability to cast out devils was legendary. People came from all over to be healed, and in dramatic public performances—witnessed by crowds from all sectors of society—Gassner would oblige. Official records were made; competent witnesses testified to the extraordinary happenings. All agreed on the basic facts. On being presented with a supplicant, Gassner would typically wave a crucifix over his or her body and demand in Latin that, if the disease he was seeing had a “preternatural” source, this fact must be made manifest. The patient would then typically collapse into convulsions, and Gassner would proceed to exorcise the offending spirit.

Sometimes he added flourishes to this basic routine: in one dramatic instance, for example, he ordered the demon inside a woman to increase the poor woman’s heartbeat and then to slow it down.

Steven Seagal Redeems Himself As Cock Puncher

Steven Seagal as Cock Puncher

Where did Steven Seagal go wrong? His early movies—Hard to Kill, Out for Justice, Under Siege—reinvigorated the action genre, with their breathtaking displays of no-holds-barred Aikido.

His next two-dozen films weren’t so well received, or so I hear. I didn’t watch them myself.

It wasn’t the thin plots or dull acting that eventually turned me off Steven Seagal’s work; it was his characters, or rather his character.

You Know What’s Stupid About Wing Chun Kung Fu?

For far too long I’ve sat idly by, twiddling my thumbs and respecting the right of others to form thoughts and opinions independent of my own, and I can’t take it anymore. I’ve got to speak up about the many things that annoy me or I’m going to go crazy. Take these new credit cards with the microchips in them, for instance. Man, those things really get my goat—trying to improve a device that was working perfectly fine as it was. Even worse are those wrappers on CDs that take forever to open. But you know what I hate the most? The one thing that makes my blood boil whenever I see it? Anything beyond my mental capacity, that’s what.

Robbie Lawler’s Ruthless Wing Chun

EliteXC Primetime, headlined by Kimbo Slice and Gina Carano

I’ve always known that, sooner or later, the Chinese art of Wing Chun Kuen would be represented in a professional mixed martial arts bout. I just didn’t expect to see it in MMA’s historic prime-time debut.

Robbie Lawler

On May 31, 2008, “Ruthless” Robbie Lawler forever settled any reasonable doubts about Wing Chun’s viability in real combat. And he did it by accident.

So You Think You Can Dance?

In 2006, I saw a few episodes of MTV’s reality TV show Final Fu. At the time, I thought the performers displayed physical competence, but not greatness, and I found the level of demonstration and competition disappointing. Head judge Ernie Reyes Jr. praised his players’ abilities to throw a variety of high kicks.

When I subsequently watched auditions for Fox’s televised dance competition, So You Think You Can Dance, I was both delighted and appalled by the disparity in standards. Somehow, I had expected martial austerities to result in a deeper achievement, when compared to the frivolous motivations of dance.

Defend Yourself the Taoist Way

Pick up an issue of Black Belt or Inside Kung Fu magazine. Watch a self-defense DVD. Browse a martial arts website. If you had to write captions under each picture, what would they say?

My hands are deadly weapons.
I am nobody’s victim.
Don’t mess with me, or you’ll regret it.

These poses remind your would-be attacker what they stand to lose. And sure, they are intimidating, to a degree.

The problem is, your attacker doesn’t harbor any intention of losing, and so the potential downside may just be disregarded.

Investing in Loss, Investing in Ego

Manjusri, destroyer of illusion
Credit: Jpatokal

“Tell me, Subhuti,” Buddha inquired, “Can an arhat think to himself: ‘I have attained the realization of an arhat’?”

Subhuti, his disciple, replied, “Of course not. With such a thought, he would be grasping to the illusory notions of an ego, a personality, and an individual self. Any so-called arhat who holds these notions is a fake.”
~Diamond Sutra

The meaning of “investing in loss”, as originally recommended by the late Tai Chi master Cheng Man-Ching, was to neutralize a superior force through the practice of non-contention:

Now when I say, “Learn to invest in loss,” who is willing to do this? To invest in loss is to permit others to use force to attack while you don’t use even the slightest force to defend yourself. On the contrary, you lead an opponent’s force away so that it is useless.

Against genuinely applied force, the method is so difficult to apply that it usually fails; thus, it is called a loss. After becoming familiar with every misapplication of wuwei, the non-contention principle, one can eventually start using it correctly and effectively; thus, it is called an investment.

Investing in loss can be a tiresome and disheartening method, but it is a reliable one. Sadly, the term is often misapplied as a catch-all justification for fruitless endeavors. Not every loss qualifies as an investment.

Postel’s Law of Sparring

My teachers have disagreed on many things, but in these two points they are all in accord:

If you want to excel in martial arts, you must touch hands (spar) with as many people as possible; preferably, hundreds or thousands.
For a great achievement, you must use the correct training methods in a disciplined fashion. Avoid deviant and inferior methods, and refuse to entertain the people who use them.

In theory, there is no contradiction between these two ideals. In practice, compromise is required. Nobody agrees on what the correct training methods are, and everyone measures their progress by a different standard—except for those who reject the concepts of “progress” and “standards” altogether.

Of all the frustrations that hinder interaction among martial artists from different schools, lineages and styles—money, reputation, physical safety—this is perhaps the most difficult to address: everybody else is practicing incorrectly!

Chuck Norris and Google: The Facts

How do you think Google established their complete dominance of Web search? Superior engineering? Nope. Shrewd business strategy? Guess again. They have a secret weapon…

Chuck Norris built Google’s first data center from a roll of barbed wire, a pallet of lumber, and a side of raw beef. The barbed wire was just for snacking.

A recent Google Health survey has identified the three most common medical diagnoses in the United States: Chuck Norris’ Right Leg, Chuck Norris’ Left Leg, and Other.

Guo Lin’s Qigong Cure for Cancer

Excerpted from Qigong Fever: Body, Science, and Utopia in China by David A. Palmer

There were no officially sanctioned qigong activities in China until its rehabilitation in 1978, after the end of the Cultural Revolution. However, one woman, Guo Lin, an artist and cancer victim from Guangdong province who had cured herself by practicing qigong during the 1960s, was brave enough to teach other cancer patients in the parks of Beijing as early as 1970. Her ‘New Qigong Therapy’ inaugurated a new, collective form of qigong teaching and practice that would later be adopted by most qigong masters. Guo Lin can thus be said to have triggered the qigong wave of the 1980s.

Born near Zhongshan, Guangdong in 1909, Guo Lin was trained as a young girl in traditional body technologies by her paternal grandfather, a Taoist in Macau, where her family had fled following the 1911 revolution. Later, as a student of landscape painting, she visited several holy mountains; the breathing technique she used when climbing the steep slopes would become the basis for her future qigong method.

In 1949 Guo Lin was hit by uterine cancer, which was treated by hysterectomy. The cancer recurred in 1959 while she was teaching at the new Beijing Painting Academy. Guo Lin remembered the techniques that she had learned in her youth, and decided to practice them to treat her cancer.