Martial Arts

by

A Longer Carrenza

Doing a 15 to 20 minute Carrenza can be a good cardio workout, as well as letting you get creative and spontaneous, or just working your fav moves and experimenting with others. Shaved a few secs due to people walking in to get wipes, kettlebells, etc. Plus, it’s fun!

Updated Practice

Updated practice 10/26/2020

I get out of the house and went into my own world, my own head, for about an hour. This is a practice I do to prevent utter dullness of mind when I find myself a little too sedentary and occupied with the cares of the world. Sometimes it’s not even martial, it’s mystical, it’s like a vacation! With social isolation for the past year almost, I should be doing more of this. Sometimes the music in my earbuds is Chill and new age, sometimes an old school Jimi Hendrix playlist. Either way, I end up refreshed.

by

Back to training, sometimes life gets in the way.

Well we’re back to training.

I’ve been working for Habitat so I’ve been inconsistent.  Some of you have been away or occupied with life events and duties, but looks like we’re all settling in so we can start training together again.  I’ll be regular at Black Lightning unless I post differently on Facebook, and we have a Sunday morning group meeting in Campbell Park with Guru Aldon leading.

Let’s do our thing and have some fun.

by

KARATE!

Doing some Karate Style movement in a gi.

I don’t move like this much anymore and it made different parts of my body sore.  At my best, I combine some Karate, Kickboxing, Kali & Silat movement in my carrenza or kembangan, or call it freeform kata!  It doesn’t often look like the classical or indigenous manner of movement.  After a flowery motion I might jump spin crescent kick into a 1-2/round kick combo, then into a lankha/juru.

Yep, it’s a westernization of eastern concepts, but the east can take that and reclaim it back.  After all, some of the martial art boxes are artificial and more nationalist that humanist, therefore they can be expanded.

by

MASTER

Book Recommendation:  Martial Arts and Philosophy: Beating and Nothingness.  Graham Priest

“MASTER”

Reading the above book I came across the subject of “Master.”    book   Most martial arts amateurs and novices have a pre conception of what a “Master” is, looks like, how they act and so forth, mostly based on the chop socky movies of the 70’s and 80’s.

Practicing martial artists have certain expectations of what it takes to be a master based on their own experiences in the art.

However, there isn’t a single defined point or universally established standard at which one crosses over from being a martial arts student/practitioner to a master. There are too many variables involved.  A discussion on the subject is a good thing.

Martial arts are culturally and continually evolving human activities. Codifying them puts them in the realm of history and causes them to lose contemporary validity.

For example, it’s commonly thought that a high degree of physical skills and abilities is necessary for mastery.  Is this absolutely valid?  Maybe not.  In the old Asian movies the white bearded old sage can still fly through the air doing multiple acrobatic kicks, can fight multiple opponents with one hand while stroking his beard with the other.  Idealistic but not realistic.  Age, illness, injury, and handicaps would then nullify someone being a Master

However, in Western Boxing, and even in developing MMA some of the best trainers (instructors/masters) are substantially older men who would have a hard time fighting their way out of a wet paper bag.  But, they are “Masters” sought after by the mega million dollar professional fighters. The fighters are the competitive athletes, the trainers are the Masters.  So, incredible personal physical skills is not the singular bar by which to measure a Master.

An encyclopedic knowledge of the art is also expected; in the book the author calls this the complete knowledge account, which includes “secret knowledge.”  A problem with that is that the arts are evolving and the secret knowledge of yesteryear is common knowledge today.  Masters also often add and subtract techniques and teachings from the arts as they increase in knowledge as well.  They don’t stop learning and developing either.

Honestly, I cannot teach someone everything I’ve learned in the martial arts to this day.  I am no Master but that amount of material is measured in terms of a life time, my life time.  One of the greatest things I can teach is for a student to learn as much as they can in their own lifetime!  And their material does not have to match or mimic mine.

How do we measure mastery in other fields of study and practice?

Mr. Priest uses the philosophical position that mastery generally involves “knowing that,” knowing how,” and “having the physical ability to do.”

“I think that mastery essentially involves both knowing that and knowing how, but that it doesn’t essentially involve the physical ability to do.”

Part of the misconception with mastery is equating it with performance.  If an expert kicker loses a leg is he no longer an expert?  Can he not still teach and bring another person to mastery through his experience and instruction?  I would suggest that he can, and his mastery is not affected by his lack of ability to perform the particular skill.

My own thoughts on the matter include a couple of other things.  Age for one.  The Japanese/Okinawan Karate traditions had some time and age restrictions concerning masterhood.   I believe those are important.

Martial arts unlike visual arts become an integral part of a person’s lifestyle.  Your martial arts infuse every aspect of your life, how you think, what you value, your disciplines, your perspectives. No so with painting or sculpture.  No one under 50 should be considered a Master.

I remember in my early days someone who was called “Young Master.”   He and his crowd were serious but I considered it a joke.  This person was in their mid 20’s, and had some martial skills, but lacked some important life experiences.  He could kick better than I, but I had been in the Marines and knew a few things about hurting people he didn’t.  In a martial skill sense he might beat me, but in a whole life sense, he wouldn’t have known what hit him.  Martial arts and whole life experience are symbiotic.  You can’t be a martial arts master and otherwise be an insensitive, uninformed, inexperienced dumbass.  You need life’s experiences on love, loss, uncertainty, challenges, and achievements.  Those come with time and age.  Did I mention I don’t believe in anyone under 18 being a BlackBelt?  Black Belt used to signify maturity, not just physical skill level.

Then there’s also the matter of Humility.  People I’ve known that I would call Masters in any field have been people very aware of their own frailties.  These are people who are aware that the universe is expanding and what fit tightly in a box today has a lot of room for growth tomorrow.  They learn more every day.  They’re aware that art is a spiritual endeavor that has no end.

The “Masters” that I see, mostly obese, strutting around grasping their thick belts with tons of stripes for all to see, generally lack this quality of humility.  They don’t appreciate that their skill sets are sloppy, slow, lacking power, and they have failing memory.   They have banked on their past and not realized that martial arts are about the present, and try to impose their past as a qualification of their mastery.  That is not humility and those are not masters.

I’ll resume reading the book, and encourage others to pick it up…

 

Related articles
by

Meditation and Martial Arts.

While most types of meditation have overall benefits for any individual’s body and mind, practicing martial artists can require something more.

There are meditation practices that want you to “be absorbed” in the object of the meditation.  It may be an image, a mantra, a sound, a thought, etc. That absorption may be counterproductive in the context of a personal life and death episode.  Fighting is not an activity in which to be absorbed in “your self” or any irrelevant external, because of the little matter of the other self: your opponent or attacker, who is trying to hurt you.

Other types of meditation are “Guided.”  I’m not a big fan of guided meditation. Generally meditation is about going within and listening to the silence within yourself and that’s hard to do while having to listen to someone “without.”

There are trance styles of meditation.  Again, you’re attacker is not in your trance, he’s outside of it looking for every little opportunity to hurt you.

Vipassana is a mindfulness meditation where you exercise awareness, but you start at a very superficial level with a sort of verbal awareness of your body, then progress to awareness of your environment, and of your mind.  It may take some time to get to the level of awareness useful in a fight.

So which meditation types are better for a martial artist to practice?  The ones that emphasize immediate, 360 degree, internal and external awareness.

I found that most in Zen meditation.  I have a friend who is a former Tibetan Buddhist Monk and martial arts master.  He says Tibetan Buddhist meditation is about awareness as well.  I don’t know, but I’ll take his word for it, I’ve trained martial arts with him.

Here is the essence of Zen meditation as taught to me by a Zen Master “Shut up.  Don’t move muscle, don’t move mind.”  I’ll add to that; don’t fall asleep!

In the Zen meditation hall you sit up straight with good posture.  Your eyes are half closed gazing at a spot on the ground a few feet in front of you. You breathe naturally.  Your mind may wander but you let it wander back to awareness of the breath or an anchor point called a Koan.  You do not space out, go into trance, get lost in bliss, or fall asleep.  That’s cause there’s a monk who paces around the meditators with a flat piece of wood, whose job is to help keep you wake by smacking you on your traps if you nod out.

You are, you have to be, aware.  Aware of the point you’re focusing your gaze on, aware of the thoughts passing through your head, aware of distractions being distracting, aware of the monk silently pacing around you, aware of the other meditators in the room, all while maintaining a stable center.  That stable center is your posture, your breath, your gaze, your koan.  That stable center is your spirit.

Prior to Zen, I trained with a Jain Guru. I was taught silent and out loud mantras.  I was taught breathing methods, I was taught gazing and visualization, I was taught prayers and invocations, I was taught how to direct my imagination. Valuable stuff no doubt, but in the immediacy and chaos of a fight, less useful.

Do you need to know meditation to know how to fight? No.  But this is not merely about being a fighter, it’s about being a martial artist.  Soldiers of all sorts fight. Boxers fight.  Wrestlers fight.  MMA’ers fight.  No problem.

But being an artist of any sort is beyond mere craft.

Artistry calls forth the Spiritual.  It calls for inspiration, reflection, flow, an aesthetic perspective.  It calls for harmony with something greater than us, for a desire to communicate and share.  These intangibles are little to no part of the rock’em sock’em fight culture.  Yes, anyone and everyone can fight, but not every fighter is a martial artist.

To go from being a fighter to being a martial artist in any of the fighting “arts” requires going into the Spiritual.  That’s where meditation comes in. And, perhaps all meditation methods converge at some point, so that in the end they’re all good.  But for the martial artist’s immediate needs and particular goals, meditations which emphasize awareness from the outset may be the best.     awareness

That way in a fight you will easily and naturally factor in your opponent, their strengths and weaknesses, your own strengths and weaknesses, the environment, the swirl of energy and emotions, the flux of openings and closings, your own fears and pains, the skill levels of both.

Your body can act, your mind will think without being stuck in thoughts, your plans are continually evolving and even disregarded, your attention is not shaken, you have confidence because you are in the moment, you have acceptance without abandonment, you have 360 degree focus of all these things simultaneously to help with your judgments.

Someone has said “everybody has a plan till the get punched in the nose.”  That’s because it’s their center that has been knocked out of whack.  With awareness meditation training, your center (your self), will not be the thing knocked out of whack.

Training in awareness you will realize, as the Bhagavad Gita says, that the self “Cannot be pierced by a sword, burnt by fire, drowned in water, or withered by the wind” my off the top  paraphrase. That gives you tremendous freedom to fight skillfully, intelligently, in flow and in harmony with all existence and creation.

You are not just a fighter, you are a martial artist.

Training Silat

Training Silat