How to Achieve an Aikido Moment of Enlightenment

In 1925, Morihei Uyeshiba was 42 years old. He had many visitors, for everybody knew he was a phenomenal martial artist. One day a naval officer came to call, and their discussion became an argument.

The naval officer held that no one could dodge a sword, and O Sensei held that it was possible. The two squared off, argument became reality, and O Sensei proved that it was possible. After the match, Morihei stepped to a well and doused his head with a bucket of water, and had a moment of profound realization that was to shape the martial arts forever.

The essence of this realization was that men are brothers in spirit, and should all get along. Undoubtedly, other martial artists over the ages have experienced similar realizations, but Uyeshiba’s realization was crucial in history, and unique to the founding of a specific method. Aikido is a method which results in people realizing that they are brothers in the spirit.

The essence of this method is that one should duplicate the motion of an attacker, and join to it. The reality is that if you do this in the physical, the mind starts to go along with it, and you achieve a Uyeshiba Moment of Enlightenment. This has become a proven method, with Aikido spreading across the world and providing moments and levels of spiritual peace and harmony.

This universe is filled with objects that fly through space. Unfortunately, most people, and most arts, collide. Thus, Aikido allowed a method of no collision, but of control of trajectory to the benefit of all.

Ultimately, I realized that this method can be done more efficiently, logically, and I created Matrix Aikido towards that end. The idea behind Matrix Aikido is not a reduction of the analysis of the flow of objects, or bodies, in the universe, it is a concentration of the method through scientific intent.

In classical Aikido it takes years, decades, to achieve sufficient flow in one’s thought to enable one to have a Uyeshiba moment. This is because it takes time to learn the stylized movements of Aikido. To negate this I began teaching my method from concepts, and the result is that the student doesn’t memorize techniques, but rather creates them as he goes along.

The martial arts are taught through methods that are arrangements of random strings of data. Matrixing puts aside those stylistic arrangements in favor of scientific rendering. There is no disservice to O Sensei in a method that enables one to achieve what he achieved at a faster rate, there is only the call to teachers of the art to augment their teaching methods with my discoveries.

The Three Levels of the Martial Arts

If you are into the Martial Arts just to fight, to beat people up, to beer over the latest UFC results, this article is not for you. If, however, you think the martial arts are a vehicle to become not just physically stronger and mentally more awake, but maybe even enable you to evolve as a human being, then this is the article for you. This is a straightforward and logical look at the three major steps of the martial arts.

The first step of the martial arts is the body level. This is nothing more than making sure you have all the necessary body parts to do the martial arts, and that they are in working condition, or close to it. To get started on the first level one need merely understand that, on a base level, the martial arts are nothing more than calisthenics.

To make if from the first level to the second level, however, one needs to accomplish something called CBM. In the past masters would refer to this as using the body as one unit, which was correct, but lacking in working description. CBM means Coordinated Body Motion, and it is when you use all the body parts together.

With CBM all body motion starts at the same time. And, all motion stops at the same time. And, all motion from start to stop must take into account and relate the size, mass, length, arc, and so on of individual parts and motions.

When one accomplishes CBM, especially through the classical forms of most classical systems, one’s intention is released. Intention is your will, your desire to achieve something, the working part of the essential idea of whatever it is you are striving for. This is commonly, and with varying degree of error, called Chi. That chi, or intention, can be viewed from many different viewpoint on any level of the arts is what makes it so confusing.

Having CBMed one’s body, the next step is to CBM one’s art. I call this process Matrixing, and it involves an actual science. When one starts to matrix their martial art they must examine all moves, all forms, and follow certain scientific principles to align that art. Like CBM before, one must take into account all motions and align them to the concept of the form.

One could say that CBM is for inside the body, and Matrixing is for outside the body, and while they wouldn’t be entirely correct, there is a sizable amount of truth in the statement. The Martial Arts, you see, while they work, could work a lot better. There has been so much intermingling of cultures and vested interests and viewpoints and so on, that the martial arts are a bit mixed up.

When one accomplishes the second step of the martial arts, and matrixes what he is doing, the true beauty and glory of the martial arts opens up. Senses expand, people see what they were unable to see before, and the blind man awakes. CBM, finding out about Matrixing, human desire to strive and accomplish, these are at the heart of the martial arts, and these are what the true martial artist must seek to understand and employ on his journey to enlightenment and the truth of his soul.

The Hardest Hit in the World…and My Revenge!

We all want to have the hardest punch. We want to know that, in the event of muggery, thuggery or whatever, we can get the job done. What we don’t want is to be on the receiving end of a world class slobberknocker.

The fellow who delivered this dastardly strike, it was actually a kick, was my friend and fellow karate classmate. His name was Gary, and we were freestyling, and I threw a kick, he parried, and he side kicked me in the ribs. It was a powerful, classic strike, and I could feel my ribs bending, and it was the hardest strike I had ever experienced in the martial arts.

Truth, to this day, I have no idea why my ribs didn’t break. But I couldn’t breath, couldn’t talk, and I should have stopped and taken a breather, told Gary to kick with less force, seen to my protection. Being young, dumb, and full of…vigor, I continued.

Cleverly, I turned to the other side and continued to fight. I kept my range, circled, went tactical, and after a minute I could breath. Then I did something very stupid, I attacked.

I thought I was recovered enough, and I threw a side kick. Gary scooped the side kick and threw his own side kick. He was shorter than me, and his kick came up, hit me in the groin, lifted me off the ground.

Thirty years later, on a trip to the doctor for a routine checkup, he noticed that one of my testicles was shrunk. Yup, I knew that, and I knew as the doctor made his observation exactly when it happened. That second kick that Gary threw was the hardest strike I have ever experienced, it would have broken my ribs, but it didn’t hit my ribs, instead, it just squashed my apples.

At the time, I just continued to freestyle, survival mode got me through, but, eventually, I was to have my revenge for his out of control ways. He left the school, actually went to another school and taught, and then, six months later, he came back. I had not left, I had continued learning, and I had accomplished something I call Coordinated Body Motion, CBM.

All parts of the body move as one unit, and it is slow at first, but once one gets it, it is not just fast, it breeds intuitive responses. Freestyling with Gary at this later time I began kicking him, and kicking him, and kicking him, and because he didn’t have CBM, didn’t have intuitive responses as developed by Classical Martial Arts, he couldn’t block my kicks. I kicked his ribs until they bent, but I didn’t go beyond, he was, after all, my friend, and though friends make mistakes, they should always watch out for each other.

Monster Newsletter #273–February Fool’s Day!

Good Morning!
Good Afternoon!
Good Evening!
Whenever you get this it is good,
because you know
you are about to have the best work out of your life!

I mean,
if you keep doing work outs,
the work outs get better,
and that’s the big secret.
Just…keep…going!

Now,
it has been an interesting weekend.
I took out an ad on Martial Talk,
one of the forums on the net.
You’ll see it in the karate section.

I’ve stayed away from forums in the past,
because they tend to be collecting points for people with opinions
who want to talk down on you.

That said,
there is a wealth of information available,
a huge resource of knowledgeable people,
if you can avoid the bully boys.

Now,
it took me a week to figure things out,
and I’m still blurry,
but I figured I at least knew enough
to get my feet wet.

So I said hi,
and got attacked for spamming,
being a gimmick,
and so on.

Now,
I know there is suspicion on the net,
One should always be suspicious of anonymous masses,
but there are people there,
underneath the masses.
And it is people,
unique individuals
who do the martial arts.
Not masses.
Not mobs.
Not…bullies.

Besides,
I know that anybody who attacks me
doesn’t understand what I’m doing,
That’s okay,
I didn’t understand what I was doing
when I first set foot
in my first dojo.

We all start somewhere,
eh?

So I think I’ve got things fairly defused,
hopefully I’ve avoided the mob mentality,
and am making an impression on the individuals.
We shall see.

The point is,
and I thought about this time and time again,
over this weekend,
traditional is fine,
as long as it doesn’t bind.
If it binds,
you must set it aside.

This is almost a point of personal sanity.

I mean,
I want you to think about it,
if you guide yourself
only by the words of dead people,
you are as good as dead yourself.

It’s an art!
Where is your create?
You’ve got to create
to keep it an art!

But I know some of these fellows
are just holding on to the structure
that is traditional art
a little too tightly.
That’s all.

They aren’t bad,
and all I have to do is be polite,
and keep putting forth correct information.

The structure of the martial arts is tweaked,
good information is all it takes
to reset the structure
so that it keeps pumping out
the best martial artists in the universe.

So,
I’ll keep you updated,
It’s a lot of fun,
and reading the threads,
it sounds like people are willing to look
beyond the words of a few critics
who are attacking
when they haven’t even taken a course.

Cross your fingers for them.

Now,
let’s move into some martial arts.
Got a letter from a fellow,
said he had trouble remembering forms.
This happens.
Believe me,
this happens.
When forms haven’t been matrixed to make them true,
and related to functioning techniques,
they can be downright bizarre.
Not to mention weird and odd.

I think forms are important.
I think forms,
fully matrixed,
are a prayer.

But,
if you have trouble with forms,
start with the easiest form you know,
and just do it,
don’t try to learn anything else,
just do that one form.
Do it until you can do it backwards.
Not the reverse sequence of blocks and such,
but the actual reverse flow of the motions of the body.

Don’t try to learn something complex.
the mind doesn’t like complex,
learn something simple,
and learn it on an intimate basis.

The Iron Horse (Tekki, Kima Chodan, etc.)
is a simple form,
but the founder of karate spent some ten years learning it.

And,
if you want a simple form,
look through the articles section of the Monster and find House.
That simple form
done forwards, backwards, right, left, on the knees, with a stick,
and so on,
can be done two man,
with steps, in place, and
with other geometry.

But it is simple,
and you must hold to the simple.

The reason the mind likes simple
is because when you boil down the motion
you will find a simple concept.
One of the secrets of advanced martial arts,
is the ability to reduce all motion
to simple concepts.

Find the idea behind what you are doing
and it will make sense,
or
at least,
you can get rid of it with clear conscience.

Okey doke,

a couple of things,
newsletter is getting big.
I’m probably going to start putting it out on two days,
break it down to two groups,
and keep google from messing with me.
If I put out the newsletter,
even though I stay within their parameters,
they frequently shut down my mail.
I don’t want to go to servers
who specialize in newsletters quite yet.

When I expand to the Monkeyland Gazette,
I probably will,
but,
we’ll see.

Right now I am pinching pennies,
doing whatever I can
to get enough money set aside,
so I can get a truck and camper,
and set out on the Great Matrixing Tour.

I need to come see you.
(If you want,
I ain’t gonna show up on your doorstep,
less you got the mat out,
and let me know.)
I don’t want to be in your face,
I respect anonymity,
and who the hell wants some old man
comin’ around
telling you stuff?
Eh?

On the other hand,
have you ever heard of somebody who sells you a thirty dollar course,
and then travels across the country
in a vast conspiracy of quality control?
Hah!
I MUST be nuts!

Anyway,
I have people from Colorado,
Maryland and Arkansas,
so far.
Might take me a while
to get out to Maryland,
but I can start hitting the close places.

Okey doke

Here’s a link,
it is for Matrix Karate,
which is the template for matrixing,
sets forth the simple forms
that resurrect the mind and heart
and set one on the true path
of the true art.

Matrix Karate

You guys have a great work out,
and remember,
you will get where you are going
by working out,
so take two steps,
and work out twice.

Al
)

PS–If you want a great article that leads on to real power in striking, try googling, The Secret of Three Depths in Striking!

Maybe you are the “cool” generation If coolness means a capacity to stay calm and use your head in the service of ends passionately believed in, then it has my admiration.
Kingman Brewster, Jr.

Power Karate Kicks in Five Logical Steps

It makes no sense to let an attacker get close. If he’s got a knife or club, or just a better punch, the best strategy is to kick low and hard and keep him out of range. The problem is that many Karate schools do not teach the right way to use the legs.

A couple of things to remember before we get into making your kicks powerful. Practice high so you have strength and flexibility, but keep your kicks low in a fight so you don’t get a leg caught. And, the best strategy is to avoid the fight altogether whenever possible.

Practice kicking over a chair. This will train you to raise your knee high. When your knee is high your foot can go straight in and deliver the goods, and not arc up and scrape the body.

Turn your hips into the kick. Always turn, or tilt, your hips so that the weight of the hips is committed to the action. This will also give you a little more reach, and it will help put the whole body into the action.

Kick with the ball of the foot. I know many people like to bash with the instep, but they end up spinning around out of control. Kicking with the ball of the foot forces the artist to be an artist, and it concentrates more weight into a smaller striking area.

Bring the foot all the way back. Snap that foot back so that an opponent can’t grab it. This also tends to leave more power in the target.

Practice planting your foot on the target, then pushing. This usually means you will alter the kick, for this exercise, so that you can place the heel on the body of your partner, then push. This trains the exact muscles needed at impact.

Kicks are your first line of defense, don’t just practice these techniques a few times and forget about them, practice them hundreds of times a day for each kick. Whether you are training in Karate, or Tae Kwon Do, or Kung Fu, or whatever, a well placed kick can save your life. So practice, and look at your kicks, invest awareness, study the physics of a kick so that your kicks are effective and end the fight before it can even start.

The Source of Power in the Martial Arts Revealed!

Everybody wants power! They want to be strong, able to jump in the mixed martial arts ring and toss around an attacker like a rag doll. The problem is that nobody knows what power really is.

Everybody confuses this concept of power with strength, or big muscles, or other things. But power has nothing to do with muscles or strength. The truth of the matter is that Power has to do with stabilizing your body as a motor.

A motor is two terminals between which there is tension. Whether it is a push or a pull, the tension between two poles creates a motor. Push on another body and you have a motor, love somebody and you have a motor, and so on from the smallest to the largest objects in this universe.

In the world of physics as we know it, a motor, unless held in place, will move as result of the forces it is creating and using. A car motor has brackets which hold the machine in place, lest it flip over and fall on the ground. A helicopter has a tail rotor to hold it in place.

In the martial arts one must hold oneself in place to weather the onslaught of combat, or to launch an attack. That is the purposes of stances, incidentally, not to make strong muscles, but to fix the body in place, or to launch it through space. Once one learns how to use stances to do these things one is able to use energy much more efficiently.

Now boxing, or the UFC type of fisticuffs, does not use stances, and they waste energy, and do not build energy. Thus, they must rely on the strength of individual motors such as biceps and triceps and hams and gluts and so on, which provide tension across the bones and enable them to move. At this point, unless there is an accident of colliding with the whole body, the only power provided is the weight of the arm, but when you hold the whole body in place, or launch it as a unit, you use the weight of the whole body, and this is efficiency.

The point here is that to enable the body to create true power, you must use a stance, and you must sink your weight whenever you do a technique. Whether you strike, or kick, or block, you must learn how to sink the weight when doing so. This will lock the motor of the body down, and actually cause the energy generator of the body the tan tien to create usable energy in wholesale amounts.

I know everybody wants to hit people and win trophies, but MMA fighting doesn’t create energy, it only causes the destruction of bodies. Thus, a practice of Karate, or Shaolin, or especially the wudan arts, results in massive power, and with enhancement to the body, and not damage. No offense to the big muscle fellows out there, but we are talking about true power here, the kind of power that lasts all day long, and does lead the student of traditional arts, such as karate or shaolin or wudan, to higher levels.

Learn the Martial Arts Ten Times Faster!

It took me seven years to get my black belt in Karate, but it only took my instructor two and one half years to get his black belt. I always wondered at this discrepancy, but it wasn’t until I began to take apart martial arts systems that I understood why. It turns out that there are several reasons why it takes people longer and longer to get their black belts, and to truly learn anything in the martial arts.

When I took apart the system I had been taught I found two systems. I had not only learned the classical system of ten forms that my instructor had been taught, but I was learning an additional system of seven forms that my instructor had made up. I was also learning several other forms that my instructor had thrown into his teachings just because he thought they were valuable.

This is rampant throughout the martial arts. Ed Parker, for instance, of Kenpo fame, started out with simple karate forms. When he ran out of material to teach he started importing vast amounts of kung fu into his teachings.

Now the problem is not one of learning material, there is endless material out there. The real problem is separating the material into logical slices. Each of the slices must represent a logical look at an art.

If we were talking dance, we would be separating ballet from ballroom from whatever. If we were talking music we would be separating jazz from blues from so on. In the martial arts we must actually separate karate from kung fu from aikido from wudan…and so on.

When you separate the martial arts, you must understand the difference between basics and stylistic differences. You must understand that karate blocks, for instance, go out from the tan tien, and wudan type blocks are rotated off the turning torso, and silat blocks are slipping types of blocks, and so on. If you don’t understand these differences the arts remain complex and are difficult to absorb.

If you don’t understand these differences then you are mixing arts, and different ways of moving the body, and different ways of using energy, and so on. Thus, a peach becomes indistinguishable from an apple from an orange, and so on. Thus, the arts become a mush which the mind refuses to digest.

Understanding these differences, the arts become very easy to absorb, and the mind just absorbs and catalogues everything easy as pie. The martial arts, you see, are only illogical because we have made them so. Separate Wudan into Wudan, or karate into karate, or shaolin into shaolin, and the martial arts canbe learned in a matter of months, not years.

Why the Martial Arts are a Perfect Method for Enlightenment!

The martial arts have long been held up as a vehicle for enlightenment. Indeed, this is the goal at the end of the path of The True Art. This article is about why this is so, and to enable the reader to reach the end of that path all the sooner.

Enlightenment is when light emanates from the individual. In that light the enlightened sees the world in a different light. His perceptions are different, and he has a superior viewpoint, an enlightened viewpoint.

If enlightenment happened because of motion, then all motion would result in enlightenment. Gymnastics, ballet, swimming, all would result in an enlightened individual, but they don’t, so one must ask oneself, What is different about the Martial Arts that they result in enlightenment?

What is different is that there is combat, and when one understands the essence of combat, one becomes enlightened. What is the essence of combat? One could sum up the subject by saying that when one finally understands he is opposing himself, he becomes enlightened, and a study of the martial arts does eventually result in this.

The universe, you see, is a vast space filled with objects. Every object in the universe has a direction. It is only in the martial arts that one actually engages in the study of the directions of objects from the viewpoint of one who creates the direction.

A fist flies at you, and you go through a range of emotions. Eventually, you give up emotions so that you can analyze. Thus, you rise above base reaction and become cause.

A person threatens you, he holds a weapon and stalks you, and you must divine the direction before it manifests. You must look at the world as it is, and not through some fantasy, and thus you look at the world you created. Thus, you rise above being the flotsam and jetsam of a universe awash with random motion, and thus you take the reins of your own destiny.

There is no motion in this universe, you see, that you have not created. That star shines for you, because of you, if it wasn’t for you, there would be no purpose for that star to shine. And through the tempering of form, the steeling of will, the martial artist engages in combat, to give up combat and become what he truly is, an enlightened being free to enjoy the universe.

The Method of Using Yoga to Master the True Martial Art

There are two paths in the martial arts. The directions are sport, and art. One of these leads to decay, the other leads to enlightenment.

If one does the martial arts as a sport, he engages in contest, and that actually defines the difference between sport and art. If one practices the martial arts as art, he is attempting to conquer himself. Subdue the self, or subdue another, the difference is easy to see.

If one is attempting to subdue another, he is holding the world responsible for his problems, not taking responsibility. Wether the accumulation of wealth, or just trying to beat somebody down, the student is not using the art the way it was designed, as a mirror for the soul. It is the soul, the individual, the spirit, the I AM that is the point of the martial arts, not defeating somebody else.

When one is doing the art as sport, he is making a strong body, and then risking that body to destruction. When one is doing the art as art, he is obsessed with finding out the truth about himself. He is engaged in defining what impulse is behind the muscle and quiver of fighting.

The True Martial Way can be defined by the degree of motion within the art. A young man studies the excessive motion of Karate and Shaolin and that type of art. As the student ages, he practices tai chi, slowing his motion down, trying to take responsibility for his every action.

Eventually, man becomes tired, still, and begins to think life. At this point he has become motionless, a person who watches motion, and this is where he finds the truth. In motionlessness, he sees the truth of himself.

When one does Yoga one is exercising, making the body strong, but not through mock fighting. This does create a weakness, as the universe is motion, and we should study motion to understand life. That one weakness aside, yoga does encourage progression to the heart of the matter.

Putting the body in postures, breathing, watching, we slowly become aware of who is doing the watching, who is creating the posture. We find the I AM that is behind all the motion of the universe, and thus we become spiritual, souls, individuals unique and creative and filled with passion. We could wait, and grow old, or we could pursue violence until we run out of violence, or, we could just accelerate the process with yoga, through posture and slow breathing, and find out who we really are.

The Secret of How to Build Chi Through the Martial Arts!

I am going to tell you the truth about this thing called Chi in this article. It is an easy truth, but you are going to have to give up all your mysticism. No matter if you study wudan or Shaolin, you are going to have to think logically and actually change the way you have been thinking.

First off, this thing called chi is a catch basket. It is a real thing, chi exists and can be used, but everybody confuses it by calling whatever they don’t understand chi. If somebody puts out a candle with a fist at ten feet, it is the chi, but if somebody makes all the green lights, it is also the chi, so the subject of chi has been thrown around and totally confused.

To make chi one must make their body into a coordinated unit, I call this Coordinated Body Motion. In ancient times people would just say use the body as one unit, but that doesn’t describe what one is actually doing. One must break the body down, piece by piece, and understand it piece by piece, if he is going to use it as a whole unit.

All motion must start at the same time. The fist and the foot move forward at the same time. There is no backward push to give forward movement, the movement is merely forward, and at the same time.

All motion must stop at the same time. The fist and the foot stop at the same time. There is no staggering or swaying, the weight simply plants down at the point of impact.

The parts of the body must move according to their weight and length. The hips, being heavier than the foot, must still achieve a smooth arc of motion that begins and ends at the same time as the foot. The fist having a longer arc than an elbow, or a shoulder, must still start and stop at the same time as the elbow or shoulder.

When the body starts and stops at the same time, and all the body parts are properly calibrated for the length of distance they must move and the amount of weight that must be moved, then you will achieve CBM. Coordinated Body Motion is the secret of this thing called Chi. CBM will release Chi.

When you move with Coordinated Body Motion your attention will be off the body and on the target, and then intention will flow. Intention is Chi. Intention will fill up the body with energy, and give you those amazing abilities that true martial arts possess. Of course, this is just the first step, an easy step, and to make your way to the end of the Martial Arts, and to find the True Martial Art, no matter whether you study Aikido or Karate or whatever, you must find the remaining steps of The True Martial Arts.