Newsletter 857
Armor in the Martial Arts (part two)
It’s Saturday!
Time to work out ALL-L-L-L day long!
Hey, look at the title,
Armor in the martial arts…part two?
I thought I’d written everything I wanted to,
then thought about it,
and realized I was only half done.
You can check out part one on MonsterMartialArts.com (the blog)
But let me finish the article right here.
I told you the secret of taking punches
was easily learned by just doing the forms,
doing techniques out of the forms,
and practicing breathing.
Let me splain.
When you breath,
you breath out when the body expands,
and in when the body contracts.
Or,
you breath out when you strike somebody,
or when you are getting struck.
This is simply aligning the
in and out’ of breathing
with the expansion or contraction,
so to speak,
of the body.
But it is a major alignment.
Just remember that you must breath as if to the tan tien.
The tan tien is the energy center an inch or two below the navel.
Now,
oxygen will not reach the tan tien,
it will go to the bottom of the lungs and stop at the diaphragm.
But…this starts a sensation of energy
that continues downward from the diaphragm
and condenses into the tan tien.
When you breath like this,
hold out your arms in a relaxed manner,
and you will feel a tingle in your finger tips.
This is an indication that
as you focus on the tan tien
it creates energy,
and this energy can be cycled through your body.
Now,
we come to the interesting part.
You can,
by just being aware of a body part,
direct energy to a body part.
Become aware of your right index finger,
and you will feel a sensation in your right index finger.
If you don’t,
you just need to practice directing your awareness
until you do feel the sensation.
I spend a lot of time,
quite serious here,
just thinking about my right index finger,
then my left,
then my right,
and so on.
Just feel the awareness wake up the finger,
making it tingle,
and begin to glow with energy.
When you practice forms,
by breathing like this,
you are putting energy into the body part
used in the form.
The fist,
the foot,
the block,
etc.
When you do the forms
you learn how to breath.
when you do the techniques,
and somebody strikes you,
you become aware of the place being struck.
Again and again and again.
First you tighten the muscles,
but,
because of proper breathing,
you are directing energy into the site.
Eventually the energy you are pushing through the body
goes there automatically.
First into the fist,
or foot or whatever,
then into the body part being struck.
Somebody hits you,
and the energy just slides through the body.
Sometimes you can feel it moving.
Sometimes it just sort of erupts into a shield,
a deep sort of shield,
that stops the strike.
It usually takes a while to get this ability,
but it won’t take long if you know what I am saying here.
When I learned
nobody told me,
took me years.
But by the time I made black belt
(about 3 1/2 years)
the energy was moving,
going to where I was going to get struck.
And the pain of getting struck totally stopped.
People would hit me
and there was literally no effect.
Other guys in the school just accepted this.
They were going through it, too.
People on the street were sort of amazed.
It is not the same as taking a punch in boxing.
In that discipline you tighten the muscles.
In the martial arts,
probably because of the kind of strikes we were taking,
the muscles would tighten,
but the important thing was
the energy moving under the surface.
Okay,
that is the other half of the article,
what I should have told you yesterday.
Better late than never, eh?
So,
if you have a copy of the book I wrote,
the ‘Kang Duk Won,’
(amazon or, possibly, the Monster website on one of the courses)
then you can pick it up,
do the forms,
do the techniques,
and you’ll get there.
You’ll have to practice,
ignore fellows who say,
‘You won’t see that on the street!’
Because you are going deeper,
looking for other abilities.
And,
to be honest,
you can make that art work on the street,
but you have to commit yourself to the art,
you have to work to make it work.
But the Temple Karate course is better.
I give you more forms,
forms aimed at that building this sort of ability,
plus a few other abilities.
The forms are slightly tweaked to be more efficient,
and I show you how to make it work.
You see me do it on video.
But,
up to you,
either way is excellent.
And,
if you think you have enough data,
you could just try to apply stuff I’ve said,
including today’s blog,
to other arts.
Karate works best,
but there is usually too much degradation of form.
The Kang Duk Won,
as I studied it,
bypassed the Japanese influence,
stayed with some of the chinese internal practices,
and is about efficient as it gets.
Kung fu,
I don’t know.
That is really going to depend on a lot of factors.
But there you go.
That’s the way,
all you have to do is dig in and commit yourself.
Have fun,
Have a great work out,
and I’ll talk to you next.
http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/temple-karate/
Al
http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/temple-karate/
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