markusan

They're not original. As Jay suggested have a look at some books on Buddhism, buddhist meditation, zen etc. It is a very different way of thinking to our usual western egocentric version of life. I've just tried a few of the ideas out and they work for me. I don't call myself buddhist though. That would be an attachment.

Non-attachment doesn't mean don't have friends. More that the nature of the friendship should be a serving one rather than a dependent one. We can analyse our relationships and judge if they are really two way or essentially self serving. A self serving relationship is an attachment, in a way you depend on it to define your self. I think you can judge non attachment in a friendship when you can let that person go and maybe not see them for years, and when they return pick up comfortably where you left off. Oh... and the path to enlightenment includes letting go of concepts like strength and weakness, they are subjective judgemets and not based in fact..

I don't think enlightenment means no attachment to anything, but dropping off attachments is a prerequisite to enlightenment, among other things. From what I can gather, enlightenment is about seeing things around us as they really are, not as stand alone things but as part of an infinite network of cause and effect. The buddhists and yogic tradition use the rainbow as an example. We see the rainbow and because our eyes see it and we are told it's a rainbow we consider it a real thing that exists. On closer examination we realise the rainbow is only light shining through water droplets, there is no thing called rainbow that has its own inherent existence. They say that if you examine the water and the light in turn you will see similar cause and effects and no inherent "thing" as such. To get to that state one has to rid oneself of all the preconceptions, judgements and assumptions that one has accumulated from birth...and the ones one has inherited. Drop off anger, jealousy, laziness envy etc. If you applied this to martial arts you would have to abandon any notion that your style is the best style, that there is only one way of doing things, that belts, traditions, clean gis etc are important. It's quite paradoxical because thinking they are not important is also a type of attachment. So one should be able to wear a clean pressed gi, tie their belt properly and follow a style without being attached to them. Most improtant is the dropping off of the ego, not in the sense of not being a show off, but dropping the negative parts of ones personality, attitudes, prejudice etc. so that one can see things clearly, not influenced and distorted by one's own baggage.

Running or any other repetitive exercise like cycling and swimming, shortens your muscles so it's important to do a thorough stretch after running. Same as training, you should always stretch AFTER training as well as before and during. If you are jogging then adding sprint work or interval training into your running program, stretch between jogging and sprinting and after your session. The golden rule is always finish with a good stretch...it can't hurt.

Are you suggesting that losing your life to a low life to prove a point is a good thing?

Is it valid to consider qi as a process rather than an "energy"?

I assume by this you mean does the Catholic religion condone meditation as a practice. I know some Christian denominations frown on meditation. Some branches of Catholicism embrace meditation and base their prayer on deep meditative practice. The Benedictines (White monks of St Benedict) for example are a Catholic spiritual community that practices Soto Zen meditation, one of the two main sects of japanese Zen meditation. There are practicing Benedictine Monks in the U-S who are also Zen Roshi (teachers) Whereas a japanese zen practioner might practice shikantaza or meditation on emptiness, the catholi cpractioner would use a subject closer to their tradition like Christ, experiencing God, or a concept like Kenosis, the concept of Christ being God and a man. The Jesuits also have a strong practice of meditation and contemplation. But theses sorts of practices have little to do with the martial arts.

I think enlightenment or nirvana may be substantially more than this. Enlightenment in the buddhist sense is being able to see life as it really is, not through the distortions of our mind, senses and karma. Meditation has nothing to do with sleeping. If one starts to meditate then falls asleep then the meditation is over. Unless, that is, the meditator can maintain consciousness and concentration during sleep, which is quite an advanced practice. During meditation the meditator is always actively aware and in control. In many ways their awareness, consciousness and concentration is heightened, not diminished as in sleep.

I would draw the line at any technique that draws blood. Not because it is ungentlemanly but because of the risk of hepatitis and HIV. That includes punching or striking the teeth, biting etc.

Good post WW. I can't agree more. I still suspect that Ki, like Karma and Hara is an asian word that has been very badly translated into english and its meaning has been turned into a bit of a fairytale. ITs sort of like saying machismo is some special energy field around a man that attracts women. Its obviously not, it is a combination of physical and psychological attributes that combine in some sort of harmony. But nothing magic. In war and peace Tolstoy tells the story of three people on a train platform. The question they are asked is "How does that train move". The scientist explains it has to do with combustion, steam pressure etc. The stoker says its "the fire". And a food seller on the platform says "the devil makes it go".

If the report by the CDC is the one that tested army recruits who stretched before exercise be careful how you interpret the results and how you compare it with MA training. I believe they were static stretching before doing things like running calisthenics etc, not extending their muscles to their full range of motion. I would argue that we need to stretch our antagonist muscles, eg hamstrings, because they are the ones that pull against kicks like the snapping front kick. It is the thigh muscles and hip flexors that lift the leg but the hamstrings work against it. It doesn't take much imagnation to figure what happens if you try a high front kick with cold tight hamstrings. The bottom of the hamstring crosses the back of the knee and attaches to the lower leg crossing the top of the calf. So stretching the calf releases the lower end of the hamsting. Th top of the hamstring inserts in the buttock area under the glutes and rotators so a hip and rotator stretch losens up that end. My theory is warm up first by jogging, situps, pushups, stepups etc(all short range of motion, followed by a calf stretch (and achilles) then a hip and rotator stretch, freeing up both ends of the hamstring. Then hit the hamstrings first with static then dynamic stretches. Then once the hammies are loose do a groin stretch and transition from one to the other (side split to front split). That's at the start of class At the end of class add a really good thigh and hip flexor stretch. Remember all our kicking, and stances like horseriding stance, shorten those muscles and if you dont stretch them after a session they become very short and strong, rotating your pelvis forward and causing lower back problems (sound familiar?) And as for the theory that static stretching doesn't work, ask a pilates teacher. Pilates was developed specifically for dancers doing similar full extension moves to those we do and it is based on static stretching and core strength.

Shorinryu, I think I'm one of those punchers who push off with their foot first. I've tried to break it down and I think the leg and hip start turning then the hand pushes out about the same time. But as far as I can tell the leg starts pushing before the punch lands. Doesn't your above quote sort of imply that the foot hip and shoulder movement precede the fist contact? I can't imagine making contact with the punch then driving with the foot. Could you clarify please.

Once you get the hang of meditation and, through regular practice, can drop into deep concentration at will, you can use it far more actively than for some kind of waking sleep. The idea is to reach a state where the usual mind chatter stops and you can think---yes think--about a problem or subject with great clarity. Zen monks contemplate koans or riddles in their meditation and that is by no means a passive process. Nor is it a logical one. The meditator focuses on the problem with single pointed concentration, and the answer comes, not as a thinking process or a logical progression, but as a direct experience. In the same way the meditator can contemplate a martial arts problem, or just about anything, and if the conditions are right, can reach some level of insight. Often the insight does not come during the meditation but at some point later.

Nice post Hudson. That is meditation in a nutshell.

two tips from the book of five rings, perception is strong sight is weak, and see close things as if they are far away and far away things as if they're close. To me this means do not focus tightly on any one thing. Keep your vision soft and central. It's simple geometry. if you want to see from their head to their knees with your peripheral vision you look mid torso. The giveaways are shoulders, hips, knees, hands. Eyes give away nothing if your opponent is competent. Do a quick test. Get your partner to stand dead straight and still. Look at their eyes and move towards them. Stop when you lose clear sight of their knees. Now shift your sight to about the sternum and notice how much more you can see. This is most important if you want to avoid a kick from your opponent's front foot. If I notice my opponent staring at my eyes I do a snapping front kick off the front foot. They invariably pick it up too late.

I was trying variations of this with a bujutsu sparring buddy of mine. I threw the right hook. He did what's described above then with his other fist hammered a glancing blow to my bicep and down to my bent forearm. It nearly pulled my shoulder out of its socket and put an S bend in my neck. The arm was useless. He then applied a wrist lock pushing my elbow to the floor. It was all over red rover. I was very surprised at the effectiveness of the trap and the blow.

I've practiced patterns and basics using the signwave approach and I'll admit now, I don't like it, but that's me. Imagine you are doing your basics parallel to a white wall. Now imagine you have a long pencil firmly embedded(blunt side in) in your ear. As you walk, and as your feet come together your head and body rise then as you step out and execute your move you drop down a few inches, The pencil projecting from your ear would trace something similar to a sine wave (maybe) along the wall. IT may increase power(the drop...not the pencil), but I'm not convinced. My main objection was that it was practised quite slowly, rythmically and not with power, with funny give-away breathing noises. Also it was practised indiscriminately. I can see the sense of dropping the body into a lunging punch or low block. But the club I was visiting also dropped down when executing a rising block...it just don't add up!

I'll come at it from a different angle. In your body's natural relaxed state you can feel tingling or vibrating sensations in whichever part of your body you focus on. You can also feel your pulse in the same way, again wherever you focus your attention. Most people are rarely that relaxed. If you practice relaxing and put your limbs in a position to maximise the blood/energy flow you will soon feel the vibration. As in Tai chi those positions are usually relaxed and consequently curved. The curvature allows more flow past the joints and the tendon cross-over areas. If you strike from such a relaxed position your attack should be harder and faster because of the lack of tension in the opposing (antagonist) muscles. This is very difficult if not impossible to do in the early stages of a confrontation because of the fight/flight response which tends to tense everything up and slow down response time. A good way to practice is to link relaxing with another trigger. I use my outbreath and practice relaxing each time I breath out. I still tense up at the start of a confrontation, but I find my recovery is improving with time.

The pain may seem to be in your elbow, but it is really in your mind/brain. The injury is certainly in your elbow, but the mind creates and registers the sensation. In the same way that images enter through the eye but are processed by the brain. So I'm not sure that meditating fixes the injury...it can help, but that is another process. But it does enable you to switch off or control your brain's response to the nerve signals. You can help healing by meditation by consciously relaxing the injured area. Less muscle tension means better flow of healing fluids, blood, lymph etc. This is a slower process than the pain control technique, which can be produced almost instantly with practice. There are a number of levels of sensation control. Through meditation you can seemingly completely switch off the sense. It has a subtle feeling of ignoring the sense as if you're still aware that it is there but are ignoring it. Another version is a feeling that you are standing away from the pain and observing it. This second version is very useful for intense pain like bone breaks where the pain hinders your ability to reach a deep meditative absorption. I know people with no experience of meditation who have naturally achieved this state as a reaction to a serious injury. And I agree with WW that you should find yourself a good teacher if you can. You can waste a lot of time if you take the wrong turn.

Muaythaiboxer, why do you change from one type of meditation to the other then back...just curious.

The idea of meditation is to limit your thoughts. Concentrating or trying to concentrate on a mantra in a foreign language or from a foreign culture will get you thinking about a lot, like a new toy so it will be counterproductive. Concentrate on something very familiar and mundane like your breath. If you must use a mantra stick to something simple like OM. It has a nice relaxing deep resonance about the sound. Only use a buddhist or hindu mantra if you know what they mean and why you are using them.

What I've read and seen of Lee is that he was a very dedicated student of traditional martial arts styles and part of that path was eventually transcending style. I don't think this means there is something wrong with japanese or chinese or korean style, more that learning a style thoroughly is part of one's development as a ma. As one develops skill and technique one develops one's own style, even if it is still within the strict confines of a traditional style.. Your own biomechanics and karma will give you a different punch to the next ma. I like to spend time on the heavy bag just punching for the greatest effect. Making tiny changes to stance and hip twist and wrist movent and comparing the result by watching the swing of the bag. Not punching with full force, but for technique. I like the one inch punch with the cocked wrist for in close but I like a lunging thrusting karate punch for closing longer distances quickly. I like to think of them as two different punches in my arsenal rather than different styles.

What is this??? If I'm fat tall and really old am I more powerful? Say 500 pound, 7ft tall 100 years old and i can press 1pound I have a power rating of more than 12. UMMM

Does anyone think that there may be other divisions, other then Western vs Eastern, that may also demonstrate large differences in popularity. Iknow personally that I prefer stand up fighting techniques rather than the BJJ, wrestling styles even though I'm convinced they are very effective. I just don't like getting up close and personal and rolling round the floor.

This is a very old and worn out argument. I started training in ITF TKD in 1973, with very rigid traditional instructors. In those days it was a style very similar to shotokan. In the ensuing decades I have continued to train in TKD but have cross trained with a number of other styles, adopted the things that have worked for me and abandoned some of the TKD stuff that was less effective. Most of the MAs I've trained with over the years have done the same. So to say that TKD is a sport martial art or to say it is anything in particular is an assumption. As always it gets back to the instructor and the student. I have trained with various karate styles and participated in open seminars with many other styles and have not noticed any great deficiency in the style of TKD that I train in but I try not to think in terms odf style, it implies limits. But there's nothing profound or new in that idea. Bruce Lee was saying the same thing 40 years ago. And I make it a rule never to bag out any other style because I may be able to beat some students of that style, but I know there's always someone better.