June updates

A reminder that tomorrow is the Mata Sa Bagyo potluck picnic in Pittsburg, Ca. This is open to the FMA community in general and the Serrada community in particular. I'm hoping people will attend what is becoming an annual gathering, which bring me to ....

... something I've discussed here before, which is the lack of support for so many events happening here in the NorCal FMA community. Last weekend there was a Balintawak seminar in Pleasanton, a town conveniently located between the East Bay, San Jose and central valley communities such as Stockton and Modesto. Once again there was an astonishing (to me) lack of turnout. There were about a dozen members of the Tabimina Balintawak club that sponsored the event, and there was me.

Sorry if I'm preaching from a soapbox here, but for years I bemoaned the lack of events such as this in our region, a chance to see top instructors from related arts sharing their knowledge with the rest of us. Over the past year or so there have been many opportunities to attend events like this, but participation has been so sparse that the promoters are now shying away from the effort involved to make these happen. Besides posting on my blog calendar, I also directly emailed nearly 50 people about this event, letting them know there was a steep discount if they mentioned my blog. Of those, exactly NONE showed up. For $50 they could have had 5 hours with grandmaster "Nene" Gaabucayan of Teovel Balinatawak Arnis; for $10, the cost of a movie, they could have watched.

This was an excellent seminar with a top instructor. I often say an event like this is a success for me if I learn one thing new. By that definition, last Saturday was more than just a success because I picked up a few good ideas. It's too bad nobody else has the time or desire to do the same.

For those who live in S.F. or on the peninsula, a reminder that there is a two day Richard Bustillo seminar this weekend. If anyone from here attends, let me know. I'd like to hear about it, and maybe it will relieve some of this sense of futility about such events.

Dog tricks pt. 2

I knew my dog was quick, but now I have proof.

Normally my dog trots, about my jogging speed, or lopes along at what is my running speed. About once a month she hits another gear. I'll look up and there she is at the park or beach, flying impressively ahead of a pack of dogs. Still, she prefers to stop and sniff; she'll stand for half an hour over a gopher hole if I let her. Sometimes she'll catch them, other times she's just fascinated to watch. One day I even saw the gopher touch her nose twice without consequence!

On Memorial Day we were near the end of a long walk when I stopped to talk to two ladies who were helping look for a lost dog. I turned a minute later to call my dog but she wasn't there. I called and called for perhaps 2-3 minutes when I spied her over 100 yards away. She was running and I saw what I thought was a small dog. "Oh good! She's playing." Then I realized she was chasing a jack rabbit, the first I'd ever seen at the Albany Bulb (a wild landfill being slowly strangled by the park bureaucracy).

I started running toward the action while calling my dog when suddenly the rabbit headed straight towards me. Perhaps it understood that by doing so, I'd have a chance to grab the dog. The rabbit actually changed directions a couple of times right in front of me but my attempts to snag the dog's collar were futile.

I could see with every cut the rabbit made that my dog was closing the gap, a few inches at a time. While she was perhaps 6-7 feet back when I first spotted them, as they made the last cut in front of me the distance was less than half that. At this point I took off running after them, understanding what the outcome was going to be.

About 50 yards into the weeds the rabbit tried one last cut and the dog cut it off and pounced, coming up with a limp rabbit in her mouth. I was about four running strides behind, yelling "DROP IT!" My dog started to run off and then thought better of it and did as told, turning towards me in submission. I grabbed the collar and snapped on the leash and led her a few feet away from her prey. I looked back and the rabbit was watching, panting hard from under a clump of dry weeds. I didn't see any blood on either animal so we quickly left, hoping the rabbit could recover without being found by another dog.

Meanwhile my gal was panting heavily with her tongue out, which I'd never seen her do before. She kept that up for 15 minutes and slept quite well when we got home. I guess I can't sing Elvis' "Hound Dog" any more, since she HAS caught a rabbit. I've never seen a solo dog run one down before, though I've seen two dogs team up to do it. I've certainly never before had a dog with this combination of speed, agility and endurance. I was quite impressed and she seems to have a new sense of her prowess as well, which means I've had to go Alpha on her once or twice to let her know she's still #2 in my house.

We went back the next day to make sure there was no sign of a dead rabbit; the field was clear. I guess jack made it home ok. The birds (mostly red-wing blackbirds) made a big racket while we were out there though. It was as though they recognized my dog as the "almost" killer and were putting out the word.

What was so impressive was the drive and determination to complete her task once she was in motion. As martial artists, we could learn a lot from that.

Dog tricks

Just yesterday at the beach an adolescent male ridgeback stole my dog's ball and wouldn't let it go. He kept running farther away while chewing on it vigorously. That kind of ruins my game with my dog,to say nothing of how fast some animals can ruin a good ball. Then too dogs sometimes get into a scrap over something like stealing a toy. I figured these two dogs combined weighed about 130 lbs. and my bitch was shadowing him pretty closely, so forestalling any escalation seemed a good idea.

When I finally got close enough to the ridgeback to be able to make a move, I yelled "DROP IT!" which worked, slightly to my surprise. Of course he went right for it again, which is why I wear stout boots for dog walks. I stepped on the ball and said "LEAVE IT!" and "OFF!" while crowding him off the spot.

Mind you this can be risky; I've stepped away from a dog or two if they seemed especially determined. I don't relish my toes as a chew toy. I'd never met this dog before, and particularly being young and rambunctious, I couldn't be not entirely sure he knew or would respond to common commands. By the same token I didn't think he'd be overly dominant yet.

I believe that a dominant tone of voice is really the key to grabbing control anyway. In most circumstances, when immediate attention is required, from either man or beast, a strongly projected"YO!" seems to be universally effective in establishing one's presence.

What reminded me of yesterday's experience was an email that arrived this morning with a similar theme (a nice synchronicity!) In it was a story about a man who was attacked by a dog. He retreated behind a car and shouted "SIT", which worked! Just about every dog knows that word, unless it's been taught in German or Spanish or Vietnamese, etc., but even then it's a word they might very well have heard and recognize.

The point is, use of a common command in a strong voice can be a valuable trick. Pitching a hand up high over a dog's head (or towards one further away) reinforces this with body language; as a dog's nose goes up, the other end tends to go down.

There are similar psychological tricks in fighting. For instance, grapplers learn to release holds when their training partner taps out. On the street, this could aid an escape. The better response, from the grappler's point of view, would be to stop increasing pressure or ease back a bit, but not to relinquish control unconsciously.

The idea is to control direction of attention. NLP is useful because it teaches modalities of consciousness. Applied Kinesiology or similar body therapies are good for learning pressure and release points. Lead the mind, the body follows. Lead the body, the mind pays attention.

Serrada and Wing Chun

Alex Castro has written an interesting post comparing Serrada and Wing Chun. He was one of a number of people who trained with me who also trained under Wing Chun grandmaster Chris Chan.

Nice to be able to reference writings of someone with whom I've worked in the past, especially one with such a solid and varied background ....

Alex Castro's Serrada Blog

There's a new escrima blog by Alex Castro which I've linked in my sidebar. Alex trained with me for a couple of years when he started escrima. Since then he has lived mostly down in Texas, with some time spent briefly back here in California. Though he is writing from a Serrada perspective, Alex offers insights from a much broader perspective. He is a talented martial artist who was deeply involved in Shuai Jiao when I met him. He's often left thoughtful comments on my posts, so I'm happy to see him writing his own.

Wally Jay's 90th Birthday Dinner and Seminars

If you want to catch the action, make your dinner reservations for Friday June 15 now! This is the date of Wally Jay's 90th birthday banquet at the Hong Kong East Ocean Restaurant in Emeryville, one of the Bay Area's finest and most scenic Cantonese restaurants.

An event for Wally Jay attracts the very best the martial arts world has to offer, with exhibitions and seminars on Saturday and more. Here is a flier for the event.

PS - If anyone is interested in going in on a table, let me know ....

Snap/Cut (slight update)

Normally I practice with a natural flow, keeping tight but exploring how things like footwork, body angle and alignment, weight distribution, etc. all are components that contribute to the outcome of any specific phase of an encounter. In other words, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

I decided this morning to break my movement down to the lowest common denominator, stripping techniques down to the absolute minimum. I used two tools in this exercise. First was a blade; specifically one made for me by Sonny Umpad. It was playing with this that got me into a creative space, feeling the balance, hearing the “swoosh” through the air.

The second tool was a mirror. Live time feedback, how we did it before video. Great for checking alignment, seeing what others would see. Just don’t fall in love with your own image …

Here’s the exercise: stand in front of the mirror; fine-tune your best alignment with that “opponent”. Do each movement of a technique extremely mechanistically, as tight and minimalist as possible. Don’t worry about speed; that always comes with familiarity. This is about precision, identifying start and stop points, how to get from one to the other as efficiently as possible.

Kung-fu practitioners talk about tendon strength as being more important than muscles. That's because their elasticity can generate a powerful pop in striking, but puts great stress on these connective tissues. Muscles grow and increase strength faster, making one look and feel strong, buta danger is if one part of the system overwhelms another. A possible sign of steroid use is when bulked up athletes constantly tweak tendons and joints, which have not yet caught up in development. It takes time to handle as much power as one can generate, so don't rush and risking injury.

Make each movement a “snap”; just go from touch at one point - SNAP – to touch at the next point. Don’t worry yet about trying to string it together, just feel each snap. The whole body should move together as one, every part doing what it should do, going where it needs to be. It’s a bit choppy at first, but it defines your tightest options within the technique.

Example: On a Serrada inside block there are essentially five moves: parry, counterstrike, hit under the arm, hit over the arm, lock (en garde) position. Each of these movements has an apex in time, where the energy of that move completes itself and begins turning into the next. This is the moment of impact where a blow discharges energy. Too many people think past that to the follow through, but that is relative, depending on many factors including the design of your technique.

I’ll postulate a theorum here: The least amount of movement necessary at the end of the chain has the most control. Everything preceding the strike – root, foundation, trunk, branches and stems – has done everything to maximize the potential at the end, so there is less final adjustment and therefore a finer degree of tuning. More like a bullet than a boomerang ;)

Back to the exercise …. So I’m practicing using the target in the mirror and I start picking up a distinct rhythm as I’m linking together the snaps in a technique (specifically an inside block for angle #1, a tip-up defense common to most systems). The first move snaps hard and rebounds to the next position, which cuts with a slower tempo. An inside block would start as a parry/counter in snap/cut timing. In Serrada our next moves would be to cut under and then over the arm, so that’s the next snap/cut pair. It’s important, especially on this one, not to skimp past the first impact point (snapping upward into the arm) just to get to the next. It isn’t a race, it’s about being effective, so each move gets dialed in.

Why is this important? Well, besides making each strike potent in its own right, it also allows us the versatility to respond more effectively to unexpected changes. Having a good base means having resources available. If your base is weak, you are fighting yourself as well as an opponent.

To continue the exercise, there are now two phases, to which we’ll add a third. The first phase is snapping to each move individually to dial it in. The second phase is snap/cut in pairs. The third phase is turning the in-between transition points into snap-cut combos. In our inside block, we would now look at the counterstrike/upward cut as the snap/cut, and then the downward chop and lock position as the next snap/cut.

Each sub-pattern within the larger framework becomes more focused, utilizing more sudden “shock power.” Now with a sense of continuity between each of these points, begin doing triplets. This would be parry/counter/upward cut, then the forward spin cut/abanico/turn-and-check (the last 3 – abanico, turn, check) are all components of returning to our lock (en garde) position.

Can we just snap each and every hit? Probably, but will it be targetted well enough to be effective or just a flurry of motion? Eventually our patterns become so ingrained they are natural and unconscious, and that kind of tight, focused speed comes from an inward sense of touch and balance; proprioceptive qualities.

A whole technique should be strong in all components. What you don’t see (or know or understand) CAN hurt you, which is why every detail in techniques is important. These are the elements that comprise the polishing process. If we want to have longevity in the arts, eliminating mindless errors minimizes careless injuries. The best techniques don't just strike an enemy, they protect us internally as well. Deepening our self-understanding elevates our process on multiple levels. We may never use everything we practice in a real situation, but the better our attributes, the more we improve our chances.

Kali Means To Scrape

Recently there were some online forum discussions on disarms. Some folks feel they are impractical, usually, I think, because people put too much emphasis on the technique by itself. I personally think they are good to know as finishing moves, but don’t ignore other things that take precedence (like striking or otherwise gaining control). My argument was two-fold, that 1) its better to know and not need than to need and not know, and 2) if we don’t practice the hard things, it’s certain we’ll never gain those skills.

Recently I had a chance to view Nick Papadakis’ video “Kali Means To Scrape.” One old grandmaster, manong Legaspi, had had his arm shattered (and permanently crippled) at the outset of a fight, yet still managed single-handedly to drive away multiple opponents after disarming one and taking his knife.

His story gives me new appreciation for Angel Cabales’ teachings that take control of an opponent's weapon rather than just discarding it, or worse, thinking it cannot be taken at all. Angel’s reasoning was so we could use it and nobody else could pick it up. Legaspi’s story exemplifies this possibility. After all, it saved his life!

Sonny Umpad DVD from Dog Brothers released

Yesterday a student gave me his copy of the new Dog Brothers DVD "The Grandfathers Speak: Maestro Sonny Umpad." I have to admit it was bittersweet watching this, appreciating the value of preserving his legacy, missing the man. The interview parts are sometimes difficult to understand because Sonny had a strong Visayan accent and was close to his untimely death from cancer at the time. On the other hand, the archival footage of Sonny in his prime is simply amazing, even if the old 8mm film stock was less than stellar. The breadth of his teaching can be seen in the footage of students working out with sticks, staffs, knives and swords; be sure to check the "Extras" for more of that.

Wednesday Evening Class Update

My Wednesday evening class is moving to a new location in Pleasant Hill, the Gracie Sports Center at 150 Longbrook Way #D, Pleasant Hill, Ca. 94523. Class time is 7:30-9:30pm starting next week; fees are $75/month.

This is exciting because for the first time in many years we will be working out in a well-equipped martial arts gym which includes mats, heavy bags and even a boxing ring. Cesar Gracie is a world class fighter and trainer to other top competitors, and I hope access to his facility will inspire those of us who use it toward greater levels of achievement as well.

Out In The Cold

On the last Tuesday of April I found out that the weekly class I’d been teaching Wednesday nights for the past two years was getting cancelled at the end of the month. In other words, the next day was my last class there. I’d had a feeling this was coming through a series of increasingly clear hints, but still, that was abrupt. Heck, even the husband of the site’s owner didn’t know this was coming, and he’s been taking my class.

It isn’t easy finding a new location. I jumped on the internet last week, spending a couple of days looking up schools and community centers, making calls and leaving messages. Out of perhaps a dozen places where I left messages (sometimes more than one) I got two return calls. One place is pretty far from where we’ve been training, an inconvenience for my steady students though possibly better for one or two occasional ones. The other guy expressed a lukewarm interest and hasn’t returned any subsequent attempts to contact him.

Considering the high cost of renting a place here in the Bay Area, I’d think there’d be more interest in utilizing down time for facilities. Then again, prime times are limited. A few places I reached were happy to let me use Saturday afternoons, but how many people are willing to commit the heart of their weekend to taking classes? The failure of so many quality seminars gives me that answer. As for bigger community centers, I don’t know why they don’t answer messages, unless it’s the “We already have Tai Chi” mentality that I’ve encountered a few times at those places.

It’s difficult enough to sustain a class even with a stable environment. I figured at least we’re heading into nice spring weather following a dry winter, but lo and behold, this first Wednesday of May is supposed to rain. Some people would perhaps shrug this off as minor adversity, but I’m just not excited about holding class outdoors when it’s cold, wet and dark. Until this gets resolved, I guess I’ll be trying to get by just my private lessons and we’ll see who’s still around when a new group location becomes available.

MAMBA articles

Those who read this blog know I am interested in the mental and spiritual aspects of martial arts. My M.A. in holistic health education explored healing, somatic psychology and spirituality through the relational perspective of quantum physics. Hypnotherapy, in which I’m certified, has furthered my belief that the mind and body are not separate but rather different frequencies of energy expressing self-reflective qualities.

In a sense I see physical reality as the manifestation of many vortices, little energy black holes defining specific points of energy in the matrix of the universe. We record the experiences we attract through our minds, encoding the memory within the physical structures of our bodies.

Physical training in martial arts gives us skills, but how far we go in pursuit of those skills and how we choose to use them or integrate them into our lives are personal choices, which underlie the activity itself. Furthermore we make these choices constantly throughout our daily lives. We think of ourselves as single entities when in fact we are complex organisms constantly adapting to our environment through evolving physical and emotional states, of which our conscious awareness is itself a final product.

From time immemorial, warriors have strengthened themselves through rituals which strengthen beliefs, attitudes and convictions, allowing them to become role models in their societies and to deal with the consequences of their actions. There are those who argue that the FMA are only about practical and efficient methods of physical combat, ignoring the rich tradition of anting-anting and oracion.

In fact, a warrior mindset is invaluable for maximizing physical attributes. As the saying goes, “it’s the size of the fight in the dog, not the size of the dog in the fight.” Without desire and focus, what will be achieved? With it, what cannot be? Whether we acknowledge it or not, training affects us on a multiplicity of levels. If we do acknowledge it, we may gain insight faster because we align our attention consciously with deeper values.

A recent link submitted to the yahoo group “csemt-serrada_escrima” revealed a treasure trove of articles on shamanism, hypnosis and martial arts by James Overton Sr. whose website is at mamba-ryu.com. MAMBA stands for “Mastering the Art of Mind and Body in Action”. Nice acronym for a very well developed version of what I’m aiming towards through my “Self Empowerment Practice And Theory” (SEPAT) © .

SEPAT coincidentally spells “TAPES” backwards, a nice metaphor for hypnotherapy as a way to “unwind” or deprogram limiting beliefs. In Tagalog “sepat” refers to a “wild child”, another nice metaphor for letting loose our innate curiosity and sense of freedom.

As martial artists, our best attribute is to reach freedom in movement, to be responsive to the flow of energy. The paradox is we gain control by giving up control, just letting things happen. We can still be aware and making decisions, but they are natural and constrained, like a car driving along a road. We can think about what we are doing, but we needn’t think about how we are doing it.

Our bodies are responsive to our minds. The more our minds are free, the less inhibition on the resources the body can utilize. It is easy to see with beginners how their “stuckness” in movement is the same in their mind. Peeling away resistance allows one to see more possibility. Fear is a limiting factor; recognizing it is empowering if used as a way to control the energy of the emotion.

The Roundabout – It’s A Riot!

Sometimes a twist on an old drill yields interesting results. This drill is something I came up with recently in a class. Originally dubbed “the riot drill” or the “barroom brawl”, we now mostly use the term “roundabout” to describe the process itself.

Often when people drill techniques, they pair up and take turns feeding strikes to each other. If there is an odd person out, as happens in class, this can turn into a threesome, feeding strikes to each other in a circle.

Sometimes we turn this into a game where we might feed back randomly to either partner. This gets closer to the “roundabout” but we are still dynamically locked in one-to-one with a partner and giving ourselves time to complete techniques. In most drills the pattern is to automatically engage the person who just attacked us, but the attack you just neutralized might not be your most immediate priority if another is coming in. In a brawl or riot one might have multiple opponents swinging away freely from any direction.

One solution, commonly seen in Aikido randori, is to direct the first opponent into the path of any successive attackers, solving two problems at once (finishing the first while engaging the second).

Back in the 70’s the BKF had a drill where everyone in the room would fight everyone else at random, a training exercise specifically for surviving such a melee. I’ve been in riot situations where everything was chaos. Who is nearby can change by the second as the surging mass of a crowd moves individuals in its current.

This drew my attention to the idea of how to train for randomness. The roundabout drill seems a way to introduce this factor into training by manipulating the variables of speed and direction. Getting to the details, the new idea works like this –

In a three person circle:

Person A feeds a strike to Person B.
Person B gets a single block/parry/deflection …..
But instead of counter-striking back at A, he throws that strike at Person C!
Person C then takes that incoming blow and counter-strikes towards A, etc.

It’s a bit like playing “telephone” where a message goes around a circle. More people can be added but too many will slow the drill, negating much of its value. If there are more than five participants, I suggest breaking up into smaller groups.

It sounds easy, but here’s the nitty-gritty. When we trade techniques such as in lock-and-block or numerado, the timing is several beats or moves in the counter, then maybe even a timing break to reset before a strike is returned; we have time to see the pattern creating the next incoming attack.

In counter-for-counter sparring or sumbrada, it’s pretty much one-for-one continuous rhythm. Either a counterattack is a logical outcome of a defensive position or it is not. In either case we can learn to either anticipate or follow the intentions of our opponent.

In the roundabout, the strike you just fed is coming back on the third beat, which is faster than what we experience in most normal technique exchange, and much less predictable than the rhythm of counter-for-counter. Coming from a different direction, however, and off an angle unrelated to the strike you threw just a second ago, you must quickly reorient and adapt from one person to the other.

This can accelerate going around a circle, and the speed it acquires plus the redirection of attention raise the difficulty factor significantly. Doing this in a continuous direction creates different challenges from a typical two-on-one type of drill, because each person has to maintain the same kind of focus and attention.

Giving a single counter to our attacker before turning to hit the next person can slow the pace of the drill, but the biggest challenge is to defend, turn and strike. If nothing else, this forces us to break and reexamine our ingrained responses in a new way.

Finally, changing directions is important because it reverses our left-right feeds and receives. As the drill emphasizes immediate responses, we tend to receive an attack with the side closest that person, and attack on our opposite side. This affects where our movement is open and how we reach across our body.

Drills can get hypnotic, which is good for building neuromuscular memory, but sometimes when people go into flow trance their conscious mind tends to check out. Redirecting attention rapidly from one opponent to the next helps break tunnel vision and broadens the scope of our potential reactions. If we stop trying to control everything and just watch and monitor the direction things unfold, we have a better chance of keeping a clear mind. That “one mind” is important because mental conflicts cause glitches that break our flow.

Back Online

Sorry I haven't posted for a couple of weeks but I had a computer problem; it was crashing intermittantly, causing me to lose data, emails etc. I suspected a hardware problem and code indicated memory or motherboard but none of the diagnostics showed anything, so I started uninstalling recent software updates. I finally found a program that reads the SMART (self-monitoring and reporting technology) software on my hard disks. It turns out my backup disk, an old one, was about to crash from causes that had nothing to do with the data or disk surface itself (why diskcheck and Spinrite didn't help). There went a week of long hours and late nights, leaving me to play catch-up during tax time. If anyone tried to contact me and didn't get a reply, this is why.

A reminder of the tournament in Stockton this Sunday , which includes demonstrations of Filipino dance and martial art styles.

Next Saturday is an opening in Oakland for the IESA and UMA organizations. Check the calendar for this and other updates.

Starting from the bottom

How aware are you of your feet? Experienced martial artists always recognize the importance of footwork, because it is the foundation of everything you are doing above it. Balance, stability, positioning, power, all rely on this.

Here are some thoughts I had yesterday about walking. It’s the most common daily exercise, even if it’s just getting up in the morning and going about your business.

When you walk, do you just put your foot on the ground, or do you pay attention to how and where you place it? Do you slap it down flat, or do you roll forward from heel to toe? Does your foot roll from one side to the other as you shift your weight? Do you distribute your weight evenly on both feet or are you weighted more towards one side of your body? If you are not sure of these questions, look at the bottom of an old pair of shoes. How they are worn will tell you a lot about your habitual patterns of stepping.

What are some things to do to enhance our awareness of our feet? One is to spend some time applying TLC (tender loving care) to your feet. After all, they deserve some attention after the daily grind of getting you where you go.

Massage your feet, paying attention to areas that are sore. According to reflexology, we have 72,000 nerve endings in our feet that happen to map out our internal organs. Massage will not only make your feet feel better but is also a way to affect organic imbalances elsewhere in the body by getting energy to flow better.

Since body parts are interconnected by tendons and ligaments, feel free to work from the toes upward, releasing tension as you go. Besides the toes, areas that often create problems are the arch and ankle.

Bend and flex your toes. You can do this while massaging the feet, and also while standing barefoot and rolling one foot at a time on the balls and knuckles. I frequently do this before putting on shoes, so my feet are de-stressed and ready to go. This is also good for warming up the ankle joint and calf muscles.

Speaking of shoes, they should be fit properly and be comfortable. Poorly fit shoes can bind and restrict movement of the bones and muscles in the feet and cause permanent distortion and damage.

Walk barefoot (or in socks) a bit each day, allowing the feet to stretch and spread naturally. If you notice pain or soreness in part of your step, that’s a clue to work out whatever tension is in that area. Letting something like that slide can become chronic, and eventually you’ll wonder why walking has become so painful.

As you walk, pay attention to how you center your weight, letting yourself roll forward with each step. For brisk walking, reach with your stride, and as you push off with the toes at the end of the step, allow yourself to feel the stretch in the front of the hip and thigh to complete the movement. Opening up this joint is important for athletic performance.

As for the knees, we tend to lock them when standing or walking slowly. When you walk more quickly, let them relax slightly, keeping a bit of flex. A lot of people experience knee pain, especially as they get older, and this is another area where a little attention can have strong benefits.

So this was a simple prescription for walking – push off with the ball and toes of the foot, relax the knees, stretch the front of the hips. See if it doesn’t improve balance and mobility in your martial arts movement as well.

Validation

Sometimes the universe has a funny way of validating things.

Last night as I was laying in bed ready to go to sleep, I began having visions of a carjacking, and thinking about ways of foiling it so that the perp was badly hurt, like deliberately crashing the car. I haven't had thoughts about carjackings in perhaps a dozen years.

This afternoon there were helicopters over my house for well over an hour, and when I called the sheriff's dept. about something else, they said they were a bit busy at the moment. It turns out some guy tried a carjacking at a gas station right around the corner from where I live. When the cops arrived ( and they hang out at the Starbucks across the street, which is probably why they were right on top of this) the guy refused to put down the two knives he was waving, so they shot him once.

He's expected to survive.

The point of yesterday's blog is that everything is interconnected, and on deep levels that we rarely acknowledge we have access to connection. Based on a few emails I got back this morning, it's hard for some people to acknowledge on any level, even though this is within the conceptual realm of quantum physics.

As martial artists, we strive for attributes to elevate our skills. Some are innate, like genetic predispositions such as height. Others can be manipulated, like physical conditioning. We can develop the physical senses, such as touch, but things like mental sensitivity develop on levels that are even less readily apparent. Psychics (the real ones) are no different from the rest of us, just more attuned to subtle vibrations. Think Yoda feeling a disturbance in The Force. Warriors have had mystical experiences since time immemorial.

When we listen, our vocal cords resonate with the words we hear; we essentially speak back the message we are hearing. Even deeper, there are mirror neurons in the brain that fire sympathetically with those of other people. As science pushes back the boundaries of knowledge, the mysteries deepen.

Angel Cabales used to say that a high escrima skill was like reading your opponent's mind. He may have been more accurate than we knew.

Transmutation

Yesterday I watched my dog watching a gopher push dirt from a hole.
This morning I watched my cat eat a rat he had killed.
This afternoon I had a vision …

As I was playing with my dog, I thought of her watching the gopher.
I thought of the gopher pushing out dirt, excavating tunnels and rooms.
I thought of why gophers need a lot of tunnels, and suddenly I envisioned a snake;
Not the whole snake, just the head poking through a hole underground.
Tough nose, nasal slits, hungry eyes, darting tongue; death.
I realized I had became the gopher in a moment of life or death,
Fighting against an overwhelming foe
If cornered
Or perhaps to save the young …

And then I became the snake, hungry yet patient, willing to wait to strike, willing the prey into fatigue and resignation, knowing the outcome in advance.

I became the gopher again, living through dying, surrendering into the belly of the snake and joining the life force there, just energy ever changing and permutating to take on aspects of new forms. Gopher becomes snake; snake is gopher.

Snake dies, snatched by an eagle to fly away to be eaten. Remains fall to the ground, some now digested, the eagle playing a part. The nutrients and essence enrich the soil, and now gopher/snake/eagle waves upright in the breeze as tall grass.

Cows come by, eat the grass; we humans eat the cows.

Each of these I saw in progression, time rushing forward like seconds on a clock. Each one felt real, not separate but the same, the energy rushing through each connected to all which preceded, back into infinity.

Every molecule, every atom, has a history that we do not know! There are vibrations imprinted that are part of what makes us who we are, and everything we see, feel and touch.

I always interpret, and martial arts is my metaphor, so this is how I want my martial art to be: crafty, like the gopher, who survives by creating back doors to escape; patiently relentless like the snake; swift and sure like the eagle; resilient like grass; strong and life-giving like the cow; sensitive as a human, seeking wisdom of awareness through the pinpoint of consciousness.

Imagine martial arts as not about fighting but as a way of being aware of life. Not awareness itself, which is deeper, but a way of knowing it is there. If we seek completeness in our art, it must exist in our mind. To exist in our mind, we must feel it in our spirit. To feel it in our spirit, we must be aware. To be aware is to understand there are those truths beyond our limits and trust our intuition.

Flow is not flow when we think about flowing, though it can point the way. It is flow when we have access to all, when we become aware of being more than who we are when we think of who we are. It is more because it uses things that exist where our minds do not go, except by letting go.

Anything can have flow; nothing can “have” flow.
It comes but it cannot be taken.
Flow is what takes you with it, not what you contain.
You ride it by letting it show you what it wants to reveal; if you try to force it, it will show you only what you already know.

Swap meet/Seminar cancelled

Just a quick note that this upcoming weekend's last minute seminar and swap meet has been cancelled because too few people pre-registered to cover basic costs. Too bad, folks. WE are the FMA community, and we lose when this happens.

I would like to point out that there was no shortage of instructors willing and ready to teach. That leads me to wonder: where are their students?!!

The value of something like this is a chance to grow by learning what OTHERS are doing in the art. As GM Angel Cabales used to say about Serrada, it isn't designed for fighting other Serrada folk (which would be silly, as it is such a relatively small group) but to face other fighters from other systems, and that takes experience.

Those teaching should be encouraging their students to participate, learn and grow. If not, is it to protect their own "rice bowl" or to protect their ego from fear students will like something else better?

On the other hand, times are tough. Bridge tolls went up 33% in January. Gas rose $.45/gallon this past month. Within minutes of four gasoline refineries, I'm seeing the highest gas prices in the country. This winter's fuel bill was double that of last year. I don't care what the government says about inflation being low, I know discretionary incomes are evaporating; I hear the lament from students who quit because they no longer can afford training at the 1985 prices I charge.

Meeting Mushtaq Ali

The martial arts world can be a curious place. In its most elemental state it is about the quest for personal power. One can say that about politics or business, for that matter, but martial arts distill this down at the primal level, dealing with physical ownership of one’s personal space on physical and emotional levels.

Whatever the reasons people come to train, the arts act as a filter that reveal our personalities. Some come to validate themselves by testing their courage. Many earn recognition through hard work and dedication, which might be rewarded by titles or rank, though some aggrandize themselves with the illusion of such achievement.

At its best, martial arts strip away pretense. We learn success through failure, enduring challenges of pain and frustration to refine ennobling characteristics of perseverance and fortitude. There is a saying that “the nail that sticks up gets hammered down,” referring to the process by which the ego is put in place by the reality of experience. So it is that those who rise authentically to positions of leadership are often very genuine in their dealings, demonstrating humility that reflects accumulated wisdom of direct experience.

This weekend I finally got to meet Mushtaq Ali, the “Traceless Warrior,” who embodies those qualities I admire most in anyone, not just martial artists. It is said of angels that “they can fly because they take themselves lightly,” and so it was refreshingly delightful to experience the unpretentiousness with which he shares his broad skills and knowledge. I’ve always been picky about those with whom I train, and so though I’ve known Mushtaq for a few years online and by reputation, it was more than a little gratifying to feel my expectations were not misplaced.

The orientation of this seminar was interesting as it was not geared towards those already immersed in S.E. Asian martial arts. The majority of participants are involved in Scott Sonnen’s Circular Strength Training (CST), as is Mushtaq, and this seminar was sponsored by D. Cody Fielding, a certified trainer in this system. This brought an interesting dynamic to the weekend.

First, the participants overall had a very deep sense of kinesthetic awareness in body movement. Mushtaq joked a couple of times about the California mentality, but in truth this was an unusual group even for here, which included body workers and energy healers. At times it felt more like a gathering of somatic psychologists in the ways in which the participants were able to tap into and articulate subtleties of their class experience.

Second, because of the nature of this group, Mushtaq proposed to do an experiment, which was to teach a complete martial system in one day. Now before some of you get huffy or indignant, let me point out that a martial system is not the same thing as a complete and detailed art. By focusing on fundamental principles, the goal was to impart a framework that can be filled out through later experience.

The first day did not even touch on martial arts, but was oriented to ways in which we learn, and how the body and mind interact. Skill is based on sensitivity to a changing environment, and so the first session was devoted to visualization and movement exercises designed to promote integration of left/right coordination in order to accelerate the physical learning curve. Most people are unconscious of their own movement, creating habituated and often limiting gaps in both mental and physical responsiveness. Deepening self-awareness increases one’s potential by accessing those hitherto neglected resources. This is a key to Mushtaq’s concept of “splitting time,” which is a significant aspect to controlling centerline as well as the larger kinosphere (the space around us which we can fill with our movement).

Day Two was devoted to principles of movement in martial arts. Keys around which drills were practiced included the three dimensions of physical movement, nodes of rotation and integrated body movement. Weapon orientation was addressed in terms of point up, forward or down, and outward, center and inward. Exercises were done first with sticks, progressing later to blades. It was fun to watch the progression in skills of participants over such a short period of time.

Many martial art systems overcomplicate these natural tools with formalities that feel counter-intuitive until thoroughly mastered, a process which can be artificially elongated. Yes, there is the necessity of time to develop physical conditioning and responsive techniques, but if one can build on natural movement, the whole process becomes easier.

I’ve long been a believer that self-defense skills are innate. We all know how to shoo a fly away, or wipe a cobweb from our face, building blocks for more powerful applications. I’ve taught core movements in as little as a single session, even taking raw beginners to a high level of sensitivity to empty hand flow in an hour or so, but in general I teach Serrada inductively, using the specific techniques to derive the general principles.

My Tai Chi teacher, the late John K. Wong, was a master at going straight to the underlying principles as a way to create and develop technique. He showed us how to improvise on the fly through sensitivity according to basic precepts, and Mushtaq is the first person I’ve seen in many years to use this methodology.

This seminar was a bold yet crafty way to maximize the limited time available in a weekend workshop. Too often people are taught a bunch of fancy techniques which are quickly forgotten. By presenting simple and easily remembered techniques within a logically memorable framework, Mushtaq gave participants enough clues for years of development. Though this does not negate the value of further guidance and instruction, it was a gift of great value. There are far too many in the martial arts who can parrot movement mindlessly, without that sense of “aliveness” that is so apparent in truly competent practitioners. As one instructor watching another, I truly admire Mushtaq Ali for the skills to impart such a lesson.

A Traceless Warrior Visits the Bay Area

This coming weekend the San Francisco Bay Area is fortunate to have a rare visit from Silat master teacher Mushtaq Ali. Some of you may be familiar with his Traceless Warrior Blog which is listed on the right side of this page. Others may know of him through comments in various forums by folks like Steve Van Harn, a top tournament competitor from the Midwest. The point is this - if you know of Mushtaq, you will probably be excited at this opportunity to absorb his teaching, and if you don't know about him already, then it's time to see what the buzz is about. I myself have never met him, but we've corresponded about technique and philosophy over the years and he's been high on my list of people in the martial arts I'd like to meet. I'll be there, and if any readers make the seminar, I hope you say hello. Be sure to check the FMA calendar for details!