Unlocking human potential through martial arts
ENGLEWOOD, CO—After months of being taught to develop courage, inner strength, and other values of the martial arts, Daniel Finkelstein finally achieved the self-confidence necessary to stand up to his parents and quit taking karate lessons, the area sixth-grader reported Monday.
Did you really think we want those laws observed? We want them to be broken…We’re after power and we mean it.
Martial artist: are you an inherent threat to decency, morality, and public safety? No?
We, your elected government, say yes.
Make no mistake, martial artist: your avocation violates several contracts, agreements and laws. Never mind the combative trivia of kicks, punches and takedowns; how will you defend yourself against us, the shameless political opportunists who would punish you for your crimes?
This Pigua Tongbei warm-up exercise is an old favorite of Mike Martello—Director of the Wu Tang Association of Belgium—and a new favorite of mine. It will loosen and strengthen your core: waist, back, shoulders and hips.
Last weekend, I attended the third annual World of Martial Arts demonstration in Seattle. The event featured local Karate, Hapkido, Iaido, Tai Chi, and other groups.
As in previous years, the show had some positive qualities, and a few negative ones. In the spirit of constructive criticism, I would like to offer some suggestions to participants in future demonstrations.
While conducting some unrelated research, I recently came across an book written by the disciple of a blind kungfu master. I was gratified to read his advice, so similar to that which I received from my own martial arts teachers. I’ll explain why in a moment; first, a few quotations:
On the primacy of coordination…
The principle of “divide and conquer” may have some validity in those branches of education concerned with knowing rather than doing, but in the education of the artist, “integrate to coordinate” should be the battle-cry.
Demonstrating the ability to make one single movement by genuinely coordinated means, is worth more to the growth of the student than showing them now to negotiate any supposed technical difficulties by the employment of “end-gaining” methods.
Clumsiness in general, and technical failures in particular, have no other origins than in the making of simultaneous contradictory gestures.
Samurai Trilogy: Musashi Miyamoto (3 films)
Based on a true story, Samurai chronicles the transformation of a violent, headstrong youth (played by Toshiro Mifune) into one of history’s greatest swordsmen. Samurai won the Academy Award for best foreign film in 1955, and is regarded by many as Japan’s own Gone With the Wind.
Every person’s body has an aura (light). All living things have auras. Even nonliving things have auras. Physicists refer to the aura as a field, a space which contains active magnetic or electrical lines. The aura of the human body is the qi field of the body. Some individuals are born with the ability to see auras. Others are able to see auras with qigong training, as well as after a session of meditation. With the ability to see human auras, it is possible to understand the workings in the human body. Depending on the colors and the intensity of the aura around the individual, the condition of the individual can be deciphered.
With the ability to see auras, one can also decipher the depth of another person’s energy cultivation. The aura of Laozi was described as purple. The auras of Sakyamuni Buddha and Avalokiteshvara (Guan Yin) were described as a ring with multiple radiating colors. Drawings of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary also showed auras. Indian yogis, Chinese Daoist and Buddhist cultivators all have large beautiful auras.
Training Methods:
A few weeks ago, Priscilla Palmer graciously included me on her list of top personal development bloggers, and invited me to contribute a few more entries. In her words, “This list should include any blog you feel can benefit us in our growth process.”
I’ll take this opportunity to mention some of the articles I’ve read and enjoyed over the past few months:
With respect to all the other members, the complete personal development list is far too long to repost here; if you read all that stuff, you won’t have any time left to practice martial arts! Here is the subset that most clearly relates to topics we discuss here at Martial Development:
There are two kinds of agnostics in the world. The first are lazy and ignorant fools; the second reject the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza.
On further consideration, maybe there is only one kind of agnostic?
Baruch Spinoza was one of the great thinkers in the history of the West, celebrated by his peers as a “prince of philosophers”. His work recognized a unity of the human mind and body, science and spirituality, God and Nature, in a manner more commonly associated today with Asian than with European thought.
Like the Taoist sage Lao Tzu, Spinoza was a champion of Monism.
If you must endure long-term exposure to truly dangerous circumstances, your personal security preparations are guaranteed to fail eventually; the only question is when and how they will fail.
Generally speaking, a personal security plan is vulnerable to two types of failure. In a negative failure, your underreaction or poorly chosen response leaves you open to attack. An overreaction, or positive failure, turns you into the aggressor and your alleged attacker into the victim. Reducing the likelihood of one type of security failure increases the probability of the other.
Personal security is a classic trade-off scenario. Risk cannot be eliminated; managing it intelligently will encourage slight rather than catastrophic self-defense failures.
A well-managed self-defense plan exhibits these characteristics: