The REAL teachings of Combat Chi Kung!

July 4, 2005

Doc, you're a man after my own heart! You put your finger on one of

my pet peeves about trying to teach traditional martial arts in this

modern world. Try telling a teenager that if they want to become

adequate, let alone master the art, they have to spend an hour a day

standing in some odd posture. YEAH, RIGHT SENSEI!!

Sounds like we had pretty similar experiences in terms of the type

of training we endured. After I had trained with my teacher for

about 10 years he called me on one Wednesday and " invited " me over

to train for the weekend. This was not all that unusual so I showed

up on Friday night expecting a weekend of training on some arcane

facet of Chen-style Liao Ja or some stupid weapon that I'd never

use. Instead, he spent the weekend reviewing various Qin Na drills

and striking combinations. The differences was that this stuff was

hurting like I couldn't remember when. The following week I started

getting REALLY sick....fever, chills, hallucinations and passing

blood. NOT GOOD! I called him and asked him if I was going to die

and if so if he was mad at me and had killed me. He laughed and told

me to come back for more training the next weekend. I told him to go

fuck himself, I'd had enough one year. He laughed even harder and

promised that he'd take good care of me and it would be good for me.

So this time when I got there he gave me this GHASTLY tea to drink.

He spent the whole weekend massaging various points and leading me

through a bunch of soft Qigong.

During that weekend he told me that my martial arts was OK but that

I had a good heart and would be a good teacher. He told me the

reason he had " tuned me up " the previous weekend was that I had to

know how powerful this stuff was and how badly it could injure

someone. He said that I needed to understand this if I was going to

teach it to other people.

I purposely always kept my student body small because I refused to

censor what I taught and I also refused to teach anybody that walked

through the door just because they had tuition money.

My, but this is a walk down amnesia lane for me tonight! ;') I

haven't talked this much about this stuff in years.

Ron

healingenergies-

essentialskills , " docspeed2001 " <docspeed2001>

wrote:

> One of the major distinctions between the more modern and the

older

> combat methods is that the older systems place emphasis on

physical

> strength and swiftness.

> But the older systems ALSO place equal stress on developing super-

> increases of overall, highly refined awareness quite likely to be

> referred to as extrasensory. This is in ADDITION to the sensory

> awareness associated with the purely physical aspects of the

martial

> arts studies.

>

> *

>

> To help make the distinction here, it can be suggested that some

of

> the modern martial arts methods that have been developed in this

> century have not lost their connection to the older arts.

> Principally speaking, Aikido is one well-known example in which

the

> older stress on extra-sensory awareness had not been lost.

>

> *

>

> Why the older arts have not lost their process of developing the

> superpower while the modern sport forms have is a point that needs

> to be addressed. This point was brought home to me one sunny

> afternoon in Japan.

> While walking down a quiet country street, my teacher turned to me

> and said: " Charles-san, we need to make a gentlemen's agreement. "

> Having already spent some time with the Japanese and their ways of

> doing things, I wasn't about to agree to anything until I heard

the

> terms.

> In fact, I tried not to look too interested. That way, if

agreement

> was totally unacceptable, no one would (hopefully) lose face. So I

> just nodded to wait and see what the " agreement " would be.

>

> *

>

> " You see, Charles-san, your training has to change now, and it

will

> be very dangerous. "

> You can imagine what I began thinking: DANGEROUS?! I was already

> nursing a cut where a very sharp and fast moving katana (Japanese

> sword) had grazed my hand. In those days, we generally trained

> with " live " swords - that is, very sharp steel ones.

July 5, 2005

I've been thinking a bit more about what you said, Doc, regarding

the development, in traditional martial arts, of awarenesses that

seem at first blush to be extrasensory in nature. From my experience

these extended sensory skills are a subset of a larger set of skills

that come along with the development of internal capacities (call it

Ch'i, Ching or whatever one's system dictates). It's been my

experience that the development of these capacities requires the

practice of exercises, drills, postures and so forth that could be

termed austere (read boring, monotonous and at times painful).

When given the choice between doing things like standing in the

posting posture, walking in a circle, performing simple katas at

snail-pace for hours on end, all the while paying complete and

undivided attention to breathing, posture, internal unifications,

external unifications, blah blah blah... on the one hand and jumping

around and making moves that vaguely resemble those of Jet Li,

Jackie Chan, (name the martial arts icon du jour) on the other hand,

most people go for jumping around, yelling, screaming, grimacing and

breaking various and sundry building materials. Which is all fine

and good, but grimacing yelling and breaking roofing tiles are not

the parts of the practice that develop real skill, at least not the

kind of skill that I'm (and I believe you're also) talking about.

So after having surveyed this situation over the decades that I was

in the biz, I'm not sure whether I should lament or rejoice over the

situation. Again, on one hand, I don't think I want a large number

of people to know what I (and probably you too) know about maiming

and killing other humans. On the other hand, perpetuating the

martial mediocrity that so pervades the industry will ensure the

eventual loss of a truly grand art-form. We here in the west have

been very good at taking a tradition from the East, making it our

own and in the process, improving it. Yoga is an example that

immediately springs to mind. But what has to be done in order to

perpetuate traditional martial arts skills in a way that makes them

appealing to the right people and at the same time keeps them out of

the hands of " morons, psychopaths and mental defectives " ?

I guess that I just needed to vent a bit and maybe solicit your

thoughts on the matter. Talking about this here has caused these

questions to resurface in my mind.

Thanks,

Ron