One question which I receive almost every week from interested practitioners is:
"Should I continue to train in other, technique-based styles along with my Systema or will it impede my growth and impede my training?"
Often, many practitioners take an indignant hard-line here, feeling that Systema is just that, a system, complete in its own right and not needing assistance or embellishment. For some, perhaps it is. Even for these, Systema is not always available in their area and while training groups and DVDs are essential aids, instruction and guidance, larger training groups and equipped facilities, all play important roles in training.
Beyond the question of availability, many practitioners maintain this dilemna even where Systema is available or else maintain a guilty duality as they secretly continue to train in alternate styles. First, I believe it is important to address the importance of epistemology or learning theory. We all learn differently. As I've written elsewhere, some of us rely on visual imput, auditory instruction, or kinesthetic involvement more than others. Similarly, some prefer the organic, free flow of Systema and the fact that there is less specific instruction. Others appreciate having a clear foundation and being told specifically to do a specific thing a specific way. To use the analogy of Kenpo master Ed Parker, the role of technical styles is like learning music: first we learn to read notes and to play them individually and in combination. Then we learn to play other people's compositions. Finally, we jam and write our own music. It's important to understand that what is right for you may not be right for another. At my own school, I teach both Systema and technique based systems (Jujitsu). I also teach very technical, established curriculums for law enforcement. In each, it is possible to vary the method. I am known as being a rather technical Systema instructor and somewhat intuitive Jujitsu instructor but I am certainly not close to the most intuitive. I appreciate technique. Some students thrive in Systema and hate Jujitsu. Others vice versa. Some love both for their individual value. This is the first thing to take into account.
Secondly, realize that even in Systema, some manner of technique is necessary. The worst type of practitioner in my opinion is the one who lacks any technical understanding. There is a way to punch and kick, to apply a lock, there are specific escapes, etc. At some point, some level of mimicry, albeit not necessarily strict, is required. We all need a base. If there is a large failing that I see globally in Systema practitioners it is a lack of technique. We still need a thorough foundation in all facets of training.
Third, I submit that concrete technique is important. We can train the body to be adaptable and adaptive, so that it develops an intelligence of its own, but tactics and solid strategy still plays a role. In our last class, I was teaching escape from the dog pile (multiple attackers heaping on top of you on the ground). I explained that natural reflex can help us with the minute adaptations and flow through the pains and blockages but that at some point, we can feel blocked. Despair can set in. Here, cognitively having a goal, whether it be breathe, or move continuously, or whatever you choose, is important. Having a breathing technique or specific agenda keeps you focused. This is a technique.
Fourth, I am an advocate of periodically sampling other styles. Train with boxers, wrestlers, jujitsu and judo people, etc. This helps us stay fresh in our perspective. Remember what Zig Ziglar said: "A rut, ain't nothin but a grave with the ends kicked out". Be careful about getting into a training rut by challenging your outlook.
In the end, I believe we can all benefit by training in technique styles if for no other reason than to solidify our love of our chosen style. Remember, in the end, there are as many Systema as there are practitioners. Make yours following your own recipe and using the ingredients that you have available.
Training is truth,
Kevin
Friday, June 5, 2009
Friday, May 1, 2009
Resistance in Systema Training
One aspect of Systema training which is often misunderstood is the role of slow training. As practitioners already know, Systema advocates the frequent use of intentionally slow and mindful training. Naturally, all things must be learned more slowly at first. I would doubt that even Systema’s greatest critics came running out of their mother’s womb. They crawled first, then walked, then eventually ran. Slowness is a natural by-product of a brain and body coping with new information. The greater argument comes from the idea of how much slow training is necessary. Many ask, once a student knows and understands something, what advantage can there be in continuing to go slow?
The answer lies in the goal of slow work, which is to allow the student to explore and discover. Memorizing specific technique, takes thousands of repetitions just to ingrain a natural reflex. Before that point, any technique remains a conscious intention which means that any interruption of conscious thought will interrupt the pattern of that technique. As Mike Tyson said: “Everyone has a planned until they get punched”. The goal of slow training, is to bypass this long road or repetition by allowing the student to discover more transcendent attributes and principles—how do their fear reflexes manifest? What movements make them nervous? How does tension arise, spread and affect their bodies? These are universal truths that govern not only all movement, but our entire lives. These truths bypass any understanding of mechanical technique. Through mindful slow training, the student can most easily identify and erode these responses, replacing their fear with familiarity. They can redirect and replace bad habits, rather than reinforce them. The gains from an individual drill translate to improvement in all area of function. Rather than learning a specific technique for a single wrist grab escape and another for an escape from a choke hold, the student learns to feel how they grow tense and restrict their movement in any hold which continuously improves their ability to deal with every hold and every situation.
While the advantages of slow training are widely known to those who practice it, in my experience, confusion sometimes arises in consideration of the role of resistance in training. How much should we resist and when? This is a topic of immense importance and so I would like to submit a few concepts for your consideration:
1-In slow training, it is essential that participants move at symmetrical speeds. If the attacker is moving at 25% capacity, be cautious about defending at 50% of your ability. In reality, the fastest human is separated from the slowest by slight degrees. Very few humans are literally twice as fast as a healthy human being. This is a common fault of much slow training.
2-Respect the laws of physics. Pay attention to the trajectory of your attacks. A real attacker will be swinging like an enraged gorilla. There will be little room for tricky, twisty flicks and jabs. Attacks can certainly be short and fast, like someone speed stabbing you in the gut with a screw-driver, but they will rarely snake through the air 15 different ways before hitting you. Even the best heat-seeking missiles need time to adjust and track their targets. Also, avoid striking the air and then remaining frozen in space as your attacker runs around you peppering you with hits. Move continuously and congruently.
3-Work with contact. Most of the problems outlined in point 2 quickly melt away if you employ some degree of contact in your work. It is important to work within your limits. Communicate if you require more or less with your partner. The purpose of training is to add understanding and eliminate fear, not to add tension and confusion. This begets the question, how much resistance is necessary? Initially, when acquiring a new concept or movement, cooperate with your partner until they can physically express understanding. It is important that this is physically expressed. Many people rely on their cognitive intelligence, verbally insisting that they understand without expressing the movement. Prove it. Until the body can match the mind, stay slow and compliant. Once the movement is understood in the body, you should not let your partner succeed 100% of the time. If you are training with resistance and your partner is never getting hit and never fumbling or getting caught off guard, you are not challenging them. How many champion boxers can you name that have won all of their fights without getting hit? The reality is, things don’t always work out like we planned. Certainly, we don’t want to repress our partner either. If I am teaching a child, I won’t simply use my size advantage to keep them at pay. Partners must be allowed to experience success. They should succeed the majority of the time, simply not all the time.
4-Seal the training with success. I like to bring every training session from an education phase to a rehearsal phase of experimentation and increasing resistance, to a brief period of intense testing. Often, the testing phase is brutal and students are over-whelmed by the reality of certain scenarios. NEVER END YOUR TRAINING WITH FAILURE. If students are constantly getting stabbed, punched or shot while stress testing their material, do not let them leave the gym dead. Seal the experience with success. Always finish by slowing things down so that they can apply what they have learned. This is critical to self-image and self-esteem.
5-Debrief the troops. Whether you hold kroog group discussion or talk one-on-one with individuals after the training or even days later by email, be available to share your experiences and answer questions. Different people process information differently, but everyone is helped by expressing their experiences.
In the end, remember that slow training is among the most powerful training technologies available to us, if it is correctly employed. As the old military expression goes: “slow is smooth and smooth is fast”. The fastest way to hurry up, is to slow down.
The answer lies in the goal of slow work, which is to allow the student to explore and discover. Memorizing specific technique, takes thousands of repetitions just to ingrain a natural reflex. Before that point, any technique remains a conscious intention which means that any interruption of conscious thought will interrupt the pattern of that technique. As Mike Tyson said: “Everyone has a planned until they get punched”. The goal of slow training, is to bypass this long road or repetition by allowing the student to discover more transcendent attributes and principles—how do their fear reflexes manifest? What movements make them nervous? How does tension arise, spread and affect their bodies? These are universal truths that govern not only all movement, but our entire lives. These truths bypass any understanding of mechanical technique. Through mindful slow training, the student can most easily identify and erode these responses, replacing their fear with familiarity. They can redirect and replace bad habits, rather than reinforce them. The gains from an individual drill translate to improvement in all area of function. Rather than learning a specific technique for a single wrist grab escape and another for an escape from a choke hold, the student learns to feel how they grow tense and restrict their movement in any hold which continuously improves their ability to deal with every hold and every situation.
While the advantages of slow training are widely known to those who practice it, in my experience, confusion sometimes arises in consideration of the role of resistance in training. How much should we resist and when? This is a topic of immense importance and so I would like to submit a few concepts for your consideration:
1-In slow training, it is essential that participants move at symmetrical speeds. If the attacker is moving at 25% capacity, be cautious about defending at 50% of your ability. In reality, the fastest human is separated from the slowest by slight degrees. Very few humans are literally twice as fast as a healthy human being. This is a common fault of much slow training.
2-Respect the laws of physics. Pay attention to the trajectory of your attacks. A real attacker will be swinging like an enraged gorilla. There will be little room for tricky, twisty flicks and jabs. Attacks can certainly be short and fast, like someone speed stabbing you in the gut with a screw-driver, but they will rarely snake through the air 15 different ways before hitting you. Even the best heat-seeking missiles need time to adjust and track their targets. Also, avoid striking the air and then remaining frozen in space as your attacker runs around you peppering you with hits. Move continuously and congruently.
3-Work with contact. Most of the problems outlined in point 2 quickly melt away if you employ some degree of contact in your work. It is important to work within your limits. Communicate if you require more or less with your partner. The purpose of training is to add understanding and eliminate fear, not to add tension and confusion. This begets the question, how much resistance is necessary? Initially, when acquiring a new concept or movement, cooperate with your partner until they can physically express understanding. It is important that this is physically expressed. Many people rely on their cognitive intelligence, verbally insisting that they understand without expressing the movement. Prove it. Until the body can match the mind, stay slow and compliant. Once the movement is understood in the body, you should not let your partner succeed 100% of the time. If you are training with resistance and your partner is never getting hit and never fumbling or getting caught off guard, you are not challenging them. How many champion boxers can you name that have won all of their fights without getting hit? The reality is, things don’t always work out like we planned. Certainly, we don’t want to repress our partner either. If I am teaching a child, I won’t simply use my size advantage to keep them at pay. Partners must be allowed to experience success. They should succeed the majority of the time, simply not all the time.
4-Seal the training with success. I like to bring every training session from an education phase to a rehearsal phase of experimentation and increasing resistance, to a brief period of intense testing. Often, the testing phase is brutal and students are over-whelmed by the reality of certain scenarios. NEVER END YOUR TRAINING WITH FAILURE. If students are constantly getting stabbed, punched or shot while stress testing their material, do not let them leave the gym dead. Seal the experience with success. Always finish by slowing things down so that they can apply what they have learned. This is critical to self-image and self-esteem.
5-Debrief the troops. Whether you hold kroog group discussion or talk one-on-one with individuals after the training or even days later by email, be available to share your experiences and answer questions. Different people process information differently, but everyone is helped by expressing their experiences.
In the end, remember that slow training is among the most powerful training technologies available to us, if it is correctly employed. As the old military expression goes: “slow is smooth and smooth is fast”. The fastest way to hurry up, is to slow down.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Thoughts on training from Matt Thornton
As most of you know, we will be hosting Matt Thornton, president of the Straight Blast Gym International for a seminar in mid June. Beyond being a world class MMA coach who has supported the likes of Randy Couture, one of the first non Brazillians to earn a black belt in BJJ or one of the most contraversial and trend-setting JKD practitioners on the planet today, Matt is also a deep thinker and articulate proponent of cutting edge teaching and training methodoligies that have radically changed the way many practitioners look at their training (and I'm one of them).
Below are a few thoughts taken from his Blog, http://aliveness101.blogspot.com/. Enjoy:
[During Isolation drills that work on specific attributes or techniques, students are encouraged to be quiet...]...
Verbal communications is discouraged for a number of different reasons:
- It is distracting, drill time is the time to allow the body to work..
- It can used as a tactic by students who are too lazy or out of shape as a means of evading the workout.
- Its not only okay to be unsuccessful sometimes during drills, its required. If you are successful 100% of the time, then you are not working against enough resistance. So there is no reason to stop and have a conversation mid drill about why something is failing. That will occur post drill time.
The students at my gym know that when the music turns on, and the stop watch or timer gets going, it’s time to be quiet and drill. I encourage each student to help their partner by correcting mistakes physically, not verbally. That means that if your partner is having real trouble with a particular drill, you ease up a bit. Once you see they have it, you then reverse the process and turn it up a bit. This brings me to one of the most important points as it relates to Alive drilling. All Alive drilling should incorporate progressive resistance. The key word there is ‘progressive’.
One thing I often say prior to working drills at my seminars is that if you are working with your partner, and you are a purple belt and they are a white belt, and you completely shut them down during the entire drill, then you are a dick. This usually gets a bit of a laugh, but it’s a solid point. You want to create a culture in your gym where athletes learn how to work with each other. Having a drill partner who just falls over and allows you to score every time, sucks. Likewise, having a drill partner who dominates you to such a degree that you are completely unable to work the material, also sucks. Both are really pointless. What we want to do is create an environment where all the students learn how to ratchet up or down the resistance they are giving during a drill, without having to stop and have a conversation about it.
This idea of using drilling time to actually drill is of crucial importance and something that tends to be inherently more understood by Jujitsu people as they are acclimatized to "rolling" and resistance sparring. In Systema by comparison, there is a greater danger in my experience latent in the idea of Slow Work. I speak about this routinely in class. Students get lost in the attitude of slowness, in the idea of slowness rather than in the spirit and purpose of it. They slow everything down and become so precious and retentive about maintaining the four pillars that they never taste reality. As I have said elsewhere, effective stress innoculation relies on three phases:
1-Education: Understand why you are doing what you are doing;
2-Rehearsal: This is what Matt refers to as the drilling phase. Do the damn work. Get into it. Max out the reps. Encounter some alive resistance and get on with it. Leave the ego and the aesthetic fixations at the door. This is a time for function--not fantasy, fashion, or philosophy.
3-Testing: This is the integration and stress innoculation phase against resistance. Again, this is a time for doing. There will be time enough for evaluation when the cycle rebegins and we go back tot he drawing board to re-educate, rerehearse what we've discovered and retest.
Effectiveness on the mat begins with understanding in the mind. Those students who come to the gym with an attitude to learn, expose themselves, fully and without ego, to their limits, to failure and to revelation. Those who hide, hide in all things and in all ways, finding ways to cheat in the push-ups, finding ways to skip cardio drills, find ways to pontificate, chatter and explain what doesn't need to be explained. There are times to teach and then other times when indiviudlals must simply be allowed to learn.
For an unprecented opportunity to experience this method, please visit our home page at http://www.montrealsystema.com/ to download our flyer for Matt's upcoming seminar. Space is very limited and this will be an incredible opportunity for performance enhancement.
For more writing by Matt, please check out his blog at http://aliveness101.blogspot.com/
Below are a few thoughts taken from his Blog, http://aliveness101.blogspot.com/. Enjoy:
[During Isolation drills that work on specific attributes or techniques, students are encouraged to be quiet...]...
Verbal communications is discouraged for a number of different reasons:
- It is distracting, drill time is the time to allow the body to work..
- It can used as a tactic by students who are too lazy or out of shape as a means of evading the workout.
- Its not only okay to be unsuccessful sometimes during drills, its required. If you are successful 100% of the time, then you are not working against enough resistance. So there is no reason to stop and have a conversation mid drill about why something is failing. That will occur post drill time.
The students at my gym know that when the music turns on, and the stop watch or timer gets going, it’s time to be quiet and drill. I encourage each student to help their partner by correcting mistakes physically, not verbally. That means that if your partner is having real trouble with a particular drill, you ease up a bit. Once you see they have it, you then reverse the process and turn it up a bit. This brings me to one of the most important points as it relates to Alive drilling. All Alive drilling should incorporate progressive resistance. The key word there is ‘progressive’.
One thing I often say prior to working drills at my seminars is that if you are working with your partner, and you are a purple belt and they are a white belt, and you completely shut them down during the entire drill, then you are a dick. This usually gets a bit of a laugh, but it’s a solid point. You want to create a culture in your gym where athletes learn how to work with each other. Having a drill partner who just falls over and allows you to score every time, sucks. Likewise, having a drill partner who dominates you to such a degree that you are completely unable to work the material, also sucks. Both are really pointless. What we want to do is create an environment where all the students learn how to ratchet up or down the resistance they are giving during a drill, without having to stop and have a conversation about it.
This idea of using drilling time to actually drill is of crucial importance and something that tends to be inherently more understood by Jujitsu people as they are acclimatized to "rolling" and resistance sparring. In Systema by comparison, there is a greater danger in my experience latent in the idea of Slow Work. I speak about this routinely in class. Students get lost in the attitude of slowness, in the idea of slowness rather than in the spirit and purpose of it. They slow everything down and become so precious and retentive about maintaining the four pillars that they never taste reality. As I have said elsewhere, effective stress innoculation relies on three phases:
1-Education: Understand why you are doing what you are doing;
2-Rehearsal: This is what Matt refers to as the drilling phase. Do the damn work. Get into it. Max out the reps. Encounter some alive resistance and get on with it. Leave the ego and the aesthetic fixations at the door. This is a time for function--not fantasy, fashion, or philosophy.
3-Testing: This is the integration and stress innoculation phase against resistance. Again, this is a time for doing. There will be time enough for evaluation when the cycle rebegins and we go back tot he drawing board to re-educate, rerehearse what we've discovered and retest.
Effectiveness on the mat begins with understanding in the mind. Those students who come to the gym with an attitude to learn, expose themselves, fully and without ego, to their limits, to failure and to revelation. Those who hide, hide in all things and in all ways, finding ways to cheat in the push-ups, finding ways to skip cardio drills, find ways to pontificate, chatter and explain what doesn't need to be explained. There are times to teach and then other times when indiviudlals must simply be allowed to learn.
For an unprecented opportunity to experience this method, please visit our home page at http://www.montrealsystema.com/ to download our flyer for Matt's upcoming seminar. Space is very limited and this will be an incredible opportunity for performance enhancement.
For more writing by Matt, please check out his blog at http://aliveness101.blogspot.com/
Monday, April 20, 2009
10 COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT RUSSIAN SYSTEMA
The Russian martial art of Systema is a relatively new art in Western consciousness. Having been previously classified during the Soviet era, it was only first revealed beyond the country's borders in 1993. Even then, early promoters needed to work to establish its credibility as even many government and military officials refuted its existence. Today, it is widely established and has grown exponentially beyond its borders but still in the youth of its expansion, it suffers from many misconceptions and misinterpretations.
10-The art is a hybrid of Asian styles: Not true. Systema was formally created following a detailed experimentation and exploration of the Asian arts by the government. Naturally, it does therefore contain influences and responses to Asiatic systems. It's chief foundation however comes from the synthesis of uniquely Slavic cultural folk systems, including ancient Cossack traditions which trace their origins to the 10th century.
9- Systema is purely a military art: Systema was certainly designed initially for the military and is still employed by Special units within Russia as well as individually practiced by professionals around the world, however there is much greater depth than simply hand-to-hand fighting. Many people see the senational highlights of training in forests and lakes, in camoflauge with weaponry and assume there is no place for civiians. In reality, the greatest advantages of Systema comes from its unique teaching approach, its emphasis on breathwork, biomechanical efficiency, relaxation and healthy function. Through this, it provides a total health and personal protection system that is at once simple to learn and sophisticated in its profound depth.
8-Systema is exclusionary: Many myths have been propagated about Systema being less than inviting towards non-Russian or specifically non-Orthodox practitioners. This is simply a feeble attempt at counter-marketing. A quick survey of Systema's instructors worldwide and the location of its affilitate schools will show that Systema is enjoyed by practioners around the world, regardless of their cultural origins or religious denominations. While every instructor may bring their own life experiences to bear in training, there is nothing inherent in Systema that requires the adoption of specific relgious or cultural beliefs.
7-Systema is all about no-touch knockouts and chi blasts: All Systema training addresses the relationship between the psychological and the physical. This includes a very small portion that addresses the role of reflexes and fear responses. Some drills do employ deception and influence quite similar to hypnosis to show students how easily the mind and body can be tricked. Others use stimuli and responses in a playful game of exaggerated movement to help students learn to free their responses from fear. All of these games are simply training devices and can only be helpful within the context of a training environment with partners that one trusts. While these can translate indirectly into strategies for combat, they have little direct translation to combat technique--not unlike fakes in boxing can play a role but cannot be relied upon as a trusted tactic. Sadly, some instructors from other styles have chosen to exaggerate the importance of these drills and to sensationalize them, claiming or implying that they are somehow combat relevant. Adding to this is the unfortunate translation of "psyche" to "psychic". Ultimately, these drills are of little consequence in the more practical side of things and once experienced can be quickly understood and integrated to their proper role and importance.
6-Systema advocates body hardening: Systema believes that contact should begin early in training, with slow but incremental increases in the amount received. This includes a use of exercises that teach practitoners how to absorb punches, largely to the body. Many viewers wrongly assume that this means Systema advocates some Russian version of Iron Body Chi Kung. Again, nothing could be further from the truth. Punch absorption in Systema is more of a psychological drill than a physical one. It is designed to show students the role that fear plays in responding to pain, particularly through the use of stances and flinch response. Punch absorption reveals to the student their invidual responses to fear and pain and teaches them how to safely and effectively deal with them. The end goal is not to make the body "tougher"--in fact, all Systema combat techniques adovate yielding to force rather than stopping or absorbing it. Furthermore, by striking the human body rather than an inanimate bag, students learn to adapt to an ever-changing surface. In actual application, students would rarely employ so much punching or target the body so heavily. Strikes to vital areas are emphasizes far more. To some extent, punch absorption has become a parlor trick that is over-valued by some instructors. In reality, strikes to the eyes, throat and groin can never be "absorbed" or conditioned against. These drills simply appear to be more sensational on film and so have been promoted to saturation.
5-Systema is based on "natural movement" so anything goes: In Systema, natural movement does not refer to simply any action we do automatically. Rather natural movement refers to movement that is optimally efficient in its freedom from fear. When a human is relaxed and healthy and balanced, he or she will move to the greatest degree of their inherent capacity--this is what is the ideal every practitoner seeks. Initial reflexes are often tense and stiff and quite the opposite of natural or effective movement and so training seeks to chip away at the inessential tension. As instructor Martin Wheeler has said, Systema is not the art you learn, it's the art you remember.
4-Systema has no technique: This is not entirely correct. Yes, Systema does advocate principles over pattern, but some degree of technical training is still required. There is a better way to kick, a more efficient way to punch, etc. It would be more correct to say that Systema does not employ choreographed drills or fixed patterns of movement. Students are taught the biomechanical reasons why a specific technique works and then led to their own individual interpretation of that principle.
3-Systema training is always slow: Systema does make a strong use of "slow" training. As the old military expression touts, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Every training experience in training has the potential to either erode fear or else to add to it. Training quickly, while helpful for testing, does nothing to improve responses in the immediate context. When you train quickly, you reinforce your existant responses. Like learning to walk, swim, ride a bike or drive a car, Systema advocates slow work where practitioners provide unchoreographed stimuli and explore various responses. Contact is introduced first to understand the effect this has on the psyche, distance and timing and speed is added second. While much of Systema training is done at slowly speeds, faster training is certainly essential in the formula.
2-Systema does not advocate sparring: This misconception stems from the previous point about slow training. At faster speeds, all movement becomes closer in type and more familiar. Simply promoting the end result does little to highlight the distinctions in Systema. In the end, there are only so many ways the body can inflict harm. The true greatness in Systema is the manner in which it approaches learning and training. The slow training approach is a huge benefit, but equally important are theoretical education and pressure testing phases. Sparring is definitely essential, against weapons, empty handed attacks and multiple attackers.
1-All Systema is created equally: There are numerous major lineages of Systema now known outside of Russia. The Ryabko Vasiliev lineage from which I hail is renown for a more intuitive approach to training and the heavy use of contact in application. This stems from the detailed and intensive military experiences of our founders. Other lineages are far more scientific and theoretical than practical and still others are promoted by practitioners with little to no actual ability or experience. These realities can be seen easily in their work. In the end, there are as many Systema as there are practitoners. Each student and teacher combines their own unique life experiences with the art, as with any style. The distinction with Systema perhaps is that there is simply more room for this interpretation and application than in many other arts.
Training is truth,
Kevin
10-The art is a hybrid of Asian styles: Not true. Systema was formally created following a detailed experimentation and exploration of the Asian arts by the government. Naturally, it does therefore contain influences and responses to Asiatic systems. It's chief foundation however comes from the synthesis of uniquely Slavic cultural folk systems, including ancient Cossack traditions which trace their origins to the 10th century.
9- Systema is purely a military art: Systema was certainly designed initially for the military and is still employed by Special units within Russia as well as individually practiced by professionals around the world, however there is much greater depth than simply hand-to-hand fighting. Many people see the senational highlights of training in forests and lakes, in camoflauge with weaponry and assume there is no place for civiians. In reality, the greatest advantages of Systema comes from its unique teaching approach, its emphasis on breathwork, biomechanical efficiency, relaxation and healthy function. Through this, it provides a total health and personal protection system that is at once simple to learn and sophisticated in its profound depth.
8-Systema is exclusionary: Many myths have been propagated about Systema being less than inviting towards non-Russian or specifically non-Orthodox practitioners. This is simply a feeble attempt at counter-marketing. A quick survey of Systema's instructors worldwide and the location of its affilitate schools will show that Systema is enjoyed by practioners around the world, regardless of their cultural origins or religious denominations. While every instructor may bring their own life experiences to bear in training, there is nothing inherent in Systema that requires the adoption of specific relgious or cultural beliefs.
7-Systema is all about no-touch knockouts and chi blasts: All Systema training addresses the relationship between the psychological and the physical. This includes a very small portion that addresses the role of reflexes and fear responses. Some drills do employ deception and influence quite similar to hypnosis to show students how easily the mind and body can be tricked. Others use stimuli and responses in a playful game of exaggerated movement to help students learn to free their responses from fear. All of these games are simply training devices and can only be helpful within the context of a training environment with partners that one trusts. While these can translate indirectly into strategies for combat, they have little direct translation to combat technique--not unlike fakes in boxing can play a role but cannot be relied upon as a trusted tactic. Sadly, some instructors from other styles have chosen to exaggerate the importance of these drills and to sensationalize them, claiming or implying that they are somehow combat relevant. Adding to this is the unfortunate translation of "psyche" to "psychic". Ultimately, these drills are of little consequence in the more practical side of things and once experienced can be quickly understood and integrated to their proper role and importance.
6-Systema advocates body hardening: Systema believes that contact should begin early in training, with slow but incremental increases in the amount received. This includes a use of exercises that teach practitoners how to absorb punches, largely to the body. Many viewers wrongly assume that this means Systema advocates some Russian version of Iron Body Chi Kung. Again, nothing could be further from the truth. Punch absorption in Systema is more of a psychological drill than a physical one. It is designed to show students the role that fear plays in responding to pain, particularly through the use of stances and flinch response. Punch absorption reveals to the student their invidual responses to fear and pain and teaches them how to safely and effectively deal with them. The end goal is not to make the body "tougher"--in fact, all Systema combat techniques adovate yielding to force rather than stopping or absorbing it. Furthermore, by striking the human body rather than an inanimate bag, students learn to adapt to an ever-changing surface. In actual application, students would rarely employ so much punching or target the body so heavily. Strikes to vital areas are emphasizes far more. To some extent, punch absorption has become a parlor trick that is over-valued by some instructors. In reality, strikes to the eyes, throat and groin can never be "absorbed" or conditioned against. These drills simply appear to be more sensational on film and so have been promoted to saturation.
5-Systema is based on "natural movement" so anything goes: In Systema, natural movement does not refer to simply any action we do automatically. Rather natural movement refers to movement that is optimally efficient in its freedom from fear. When a human is relaxed and healthy and balanced, he or she will move to the greatest degree of their inherent capacity--this is what is the ideal every practitoner seeks. Initial reflexes are often tense and stiff and quite the opposite of natural or effective movement and so training seeks to chip away at the inessential tension. As instructor Martin Wheeler has said, Systema is not the art you learn, it's the art you remember.
4-Systema has no technique: This is not entirely correct. Yes, Systema does advocate principles over pattern, but some degree of technical training is still required. There is a better way to kick, a more efficient way to punch, etc. It would be more correct to say that Systema does not employ choreographed drills or fixed patterns of movement. Students are taught the biomechanical reasons why a specific technique works and then led to their own individual interpretation of that principle.
3-Systema training is always slow: Systema does make a strong use of "slow" training. As the old military expression touts, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Every training experience in training has the potential to either erode fear or else to add to it. Training quickly, while helpful for testing, does nothing to improve responses in the immediate context. When you train quickly, you reinforce your existant responses. Like learning to walk, swim, ride a bike or drive a car, Systema advocates slow work where practitioners provide unchoreographed stimuli and explore various responses. Contact is introduced first to understand the effect this has on the psyche, distance and timing and speed is added second. While much of Systema training is done at slowly speeds, faster training is certainly essential in the formula.
2-Systema does not advocate sparring: This misconception stems from the previous point about slow training. At faster speeds, all movement becomes closer in type and more familiar. Simply promoting the end result does little to highlight the distinctions in Systema. In the end, there are only so many ways the body can inflict harm. The true greatness in Systema is the manner in which it approaches learning and training. The slow training approach is a huge benefit, but equally important are theoretical education and pressure testing phases. Sparring is definitely essential, against weapons, empty handed attacks and multiple attackers.
1-All Systema is created equally: There are numerous major lineages of Systema now known outside of Russia. The Ryabko Vasiliev lineage from which I hail is renown for a more intuitive approach to training and the heavy use of contact in application. This stems from the detailed and intensive military experiences of our founders. Other lineages are far more scientific and theoretical than practical and still others are promoted by practitioners with little to no actual ability or experience. These realities can be seen easily in their work. In the end, there are as many Systema as there are practitoners. Each student and teacher combines their own unique life experiences with the art, as with any style. The distinction with Systema perhaps is that there is simply more room for this interpretation and application than in many other arts.
Training is truth,
Kevin
Monday, January 26, 2009
Survivors, Not Killers:
Originally published in Dragonmind, The Psychological and Philosophical Attributes of Warriorhood, by Kevin Secours 1999. All rights reserved.
“And so they [the warriors] are transfigured, made strangers in the society they protect.”
—Georges Dumezil—
In our discussion of the warrior’s mindset, we’ve seen the importance of understanding our brains and the way they affect our learning process, specifically in the re-engineering and improvement of reflex. We’ve also discussed the fundamental need for defining our limits in every aspect of our lives to achieve assertiveness and consistency. Now, I would like to address the psychological implications inherent in harming and the potential effect on self-image and overall health.
Warrior training requires us to confront and overcome our natural limitations. Perhaps the greatest of all of these limitations is the natural reluctance to harm another human. Humans are not designed to crave violence or to commit it without remorse. It may be hard for some readers to believe this, given the horrors we regularly observe on the evening news and in the world around us, but research has shown that a psychologically healthy human naturally possesses a subsystem of inhibitions designed to guard against harming their fellow species.
We see proof of these inhibition consistently through so-called “primitive” tribes that still exist around the world today. In his book The Code of the Warrior, author Rick Fields recounts the experience of anthropologist Robert Gardner on his expedition in 1961 to study the Dani, a native tribe indigenous to New Guinea. During his time with the Dani, Gardner was able to witness an instance of warfare, which remains to this day perhaps the closest live example of Neolithic combat ever recorded. Gardner writes of a battle that occurred on a largely ritualistic level, with nearly 500 warriors taking the field. Combat proceeded in turns, with fanfare and ceremonial dress and volleys of arrows and spears being thrown to and fro. He recounts large intervals of shouting and bravado from both sides. At last an arrow killed a single warrior, ending the battle. Although a few others were also wounded, the battle was immediately ended with the death of a single warrior. At that point, the score was considered settled and although the losing tribe would carry the burden of eventually avenging the death of their fallen comrade, the context of the battle was never allowed to exceed the objective of a single kill.
This account is very different from how we think about modern warfare. There was no long-term agenda or hidden objective. There was no desire to occupy the land of the fallen adversaries or to steal from them. The Dani battled to defend their land and assert their ownership, without sacrificing their acute sensitivity to their own human frailty. They were deeply aware of what they stood to lose and sought to fight only enough to define their limits without destroying their own potential to survive the aftermath. They were merciful in victory, never diminishing the losers’ right to live.
Many animals manifest similar habits in battle, placing an emphasis on brandishing fangs and growling to show their power, but always remaining reluctant to engage. Even when violence does break out, the victor will usually inflict only the amount of harm necessary to survive. In short, a predator only defends the territory it must defend and hunts to kill only what it can eat.
Do these examples of “natural violence” seem strange to you? Do they seem somehow divorced from what we’ve become as a species? If the idea of humans naturally being reluctant to harm seems difficult to believe, it’s only because many of our natural inhibitions against harming have been dangerously stripped away in our society. There are consequences to harming another human. Regardless of how conditioned or desensitized we may or may not be, we all carry vestiges of these natural inhibitions in our genetic makeup. This is how we are designed. A true Warrior must address the potential cost of learning to harm. To be effective, we must be able to access our entire being to find the strength to sustain this discipline of Warriorhood. This includes our mind, body and spirit, complete with functional emotions and the security of a healthy self-image. Correct training should prepare the Warrior for the violence they may need to commit without creating an appetite or insensitivity for that destruction.
Even if we look at feuding children, we see that arguments can often be settled with little more than a harsh word or a push. Most children have the incredible ability to quickly forget differences and then move on. Their emotions and spirits are as supple as their bodies. As we grow into adulthood however, many of these natural instincts become stripped away. We pervert our self-image. The media confuses our judgement and distorts our values. In a desperate attempt to reclaim our sense of play, many binge on destructive fitness fads, harmful diets and supplements, gorging ourselves on intense blasts of entertainment, ingesting too much sensationalism, craving more and more scandal in our evening news broadcasts and larger and larger doses of violence in our movies. We want more of everything and we insist on having it all as quickly as we can until at last we’ve forgotten our true desires and human sensitivities.
In his book On Killing, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman analyzes the psychological implications of teaching our soldiers to kill. Grossman explains in stunning detail how the military used reflex-conditioning methods to increase firing rates (the success rate with which soldiers fired at the enemy) from 15% in WWII to 50% in Korea, and 90% in Vietnam. The radical improvement, while proof of the effects of the basic conditioning methods, did not come without a matching radical increase in psychological impact. Grossman claims:
“War is an environment that will psychologically debilitate 98% of all who participate in it for a length of time. And the 2% who are not driven insane by war appear to have already been insane—aggressive psychopaths—before coming to the battle-field”. [Grossman, p 49]
Once more we find dangerous proof of the failing of the Behaviourist school of thought. Yes, operant conditioning can reinforce desired behaviour, but for how long and at what cost?
Grossman’s work is by far the most comprehensive and accessible on the subject that I’ve encountered. It is absolutely required reading for anyone serious about the cost of harming our fellow man. In his study, Grossman details the increased psychological difficulty involved in the various ranges of killing. He shows how distance facilitates the act of harming. The closer ranges, including what he terms Hand-to-Hand and the so-called “Sexual” range are the most offensive to human sensitivities. The closer your opponent is to you, the harder it is for most humans to kill them. This is because it’s harder for your brain to deny the atrocities it is causing. Experiencing the warm splash of your opponent’s blood, the desperate spasms of their death throe or their final gasp of breath is vastly different from watching a flash of light on a monitor as a missile strikes.
Modern military conditioning understands this natural inhibition all too well. In response, it has sought to facilitate the act of killing by maximizing the distance between the soldier and their victim. When possible, the most obvious method involves literally maximizing the physical distance between a soldier and his or her opponent. Increasingly powerful weapons allow the grunt in the muddy trench to be replaced more and more by the sniper on the hilltop and the sniper to be replaced by the fighter-jet pilot. Now automated clone planes can even do our dirtiest work, safely controlled thousands of miles away from the battlefield, cocooned in the sanitized bunker, defense intellectuals can act like a god, sending judgement down from the heavens, without little more than a phone call. Our natural inhibitions have in effect been bypassed in the process and killing has been made easier.
When physical distance is not possible, military researchers have had success emotionally separating the individual from their victim. In fact, methods for increasing emotional distance are far more universal since they can be applied equally to the common foot soldier who is forced to engage at close range and the waiting country back home whose support or opposition can determine the ultimate strength of the government who is commanding the violence. Emotional distance involves factors that include “social distance” and “cultural distance”, where emphasis is placed on racial and ethnic differences to dehumanize the victim further. The very language of war is riddled with terms like “Jap”, “Gook” or “Commi”. Death becomes “collateral damage”, wars become “campaigns” and the real carnage becomes lost in clever euphemism. Dehumanizing the enemy is a practice as old as the Roman Empire vilifying their enemies as “barbarians”. These practices are obviously effective in lessening guilt in the individual, but they do little to resolve the actual violence. In fact, they generally increase hostility.
Propaganda and stereotypes are irresponsible short cuts. The benefit of over-coming inhibition pales in comparison to the risk of developing or subscribing to discriminatory habits. The objective of the warrior should be to adapt to circumstances, to remain mindful of the moment, to remain genuine. Discrimination, in all of its forms, is a mindless reflex and not an authentic reaction to what is before you. Remain open to the uniqueness of each experience.
Still, some level of psychological insulation is necessary for the Warrior, particularly in what Grossman terms “Moral Distance”. The self-defence artist must define their limits in advance. This includes increasing your awareness of the value of your life by putting the “self” in your self-defence training. It also involves becoming empowered by the challenge of overcoming the injustice of an attack on your well-being. It is important to affirm that you did not initiate the circumstance leading to violence, to reinforce the habit of detecting danger sooner and when at all possible, to avoid it. By doing so, you become more likely to avoid violence and more psychologically justified in retaliating should you become required to do so. As my first master often said: “If you do not start a fight, it is impossible to lose. If you truly defend yourself and your ideals, you have already won.”
On a far more profound level, if you can remove yourself from the cycle of pressure and violence entirely, you can become more able to transcend the emotions of violence completely. As Master Peter Ralston wrote: “There is no such thing as a fight and there never will be.” In every action, we must move without judgement. The moment you allow hatred or anger to enter into your mind, regardless of the situation, you have lost the control, rational thought and moral judgement that defines you as a warrior.
Exercise #11—The Role of The Warrior:
Revisit your list of limitations from Exercise #5. Ask yourself, have any of these limits changed since you took your inventory? Once you have reconfirmed your list of limits, ask yourself what repercussions could your foresee experiencing from each experience:
-Can you imagine acting in a way you had not expected?
-What if you responded with more violence than you had intended? How do you think you would handle the knowledge that you had lost control?
-Do you think that distinctly breaking a bone on your attacker, gouging their face or biting them would cause you more remorse than simply striking them?
-Do you think it is realistic to expect yourself to survive a violent encounter without experiencing personal injury?
-If you were injured during your retaliation, struck repeatedly or cut, how would that effect your memory of the ordeal? Would you still be able to remember that event as a success?
-As you consider the ramifications harming, have your limitations changed? Has this awareness made you less or more willing to engage in violence?
Originally published in Dragonmind, The Psychological and Philosophical Attributes of Warriorhood, by Kevin Secours 1999. All rights reserved.
“And so they [the warriors] are transfigured, made strangers in the society they protect.”
—Georges Dumezil—
In our discussion of the warrior’s mindset, we’ve seen the importance of understanding our brains and the way they affect our learning process, specifically in the re-engineering and improvement of reflex. We’ve also discussed the fundamental need for defining our limits in every aspect of our lives to achieve assertiveness and consistency. Now, I would like to address the psychological implications inherent in harming and the potential effect on self-image and overall health.
Warrior training requires us to confront and overcome our natural limitations. Perhaps the greatest of all of these limitations is the natural reluctance to harm another human. Humans are not designed to crave violence or to commit it without remorse. It may be hard for some readers to believe this, given the horrors we regularly observe on the evening news and in the world around us, but research has shown that a psychologically healthy human naturally possesses a subsystem of inhibitions designed to guard against harming their fellow species.
We see proof of these inhibition consistently through so-called “primitive” tribes that still exist around the world today. In his book The Code of the Warrior, author Rick Fields recounts the experience of anthropologist Robert Gardner on his expedition in 1961 to study the Dani, a native tribe indigenous to New Guinea. During his time with the Dani, Gardner was able to witness an instance of warfare, which remains to this day perhaps the closest live example of Neolithic combat ever recorded. Gardner writes of a battle that occurred on a largely ritualistic level, with nearly 500 warriors taking the field. Combat proceeded in turns, with fanfare and ceremonial dress and volleys of arrows and spears being thrown to and fro. He recounts large intervals of shouting and bravado from both sides. At last an arrow killed a single warrior, ending the battle. Although a few others were also wounded, the battle was immediately ended with the death of a single warrior. At that point, the score was considered settled and although the losing tribe would carry the burden of eventually avenging the death of their fallen comrade, the context of the battle was never allowed to exceed the objective of a single kill.
This account is very different from how we think about modern warfare. There was no long-term agenda or hidden objective. There was no desire to occupy the land of the fallen adversaries or to steal from them. The Dani battled to defend their land and assert their ownership, without sacrificing their acute sensitivity to their own human frailty. They were deeply aware of what they stood to lose and sought to fight only enough to define their limits without destroying their own potential to survive the aftermath. They were merciful in victory, never diminishing the losers’ right to live.
Many animals manifest similar habits in battle, placing an emphasis on brandishing fangs and growling to show their power, but always remaining reluctant to engage. Even when violence does break out, the victor will usually inflict only the amount of harm necessary to survive. In short, a predator only defends the territory it must defend and hunts to kill only what it can eat.
Do these examples of “natural violence” seem strange to you? Do they seem somehow divorced from what we’ve become as a species? If the idea of humans naturally being reluctant to harm seems difficult to believe, it’s only because many of our natural inhibitions against harming have been dangerously stripped away in our society. There are consequences to harming another human. Regardless of how conditioned or desensitized we may or may not be, we all carry vestiges of these natural inhibitions in our genetic makeup. This is how we are designed. A true Warrior must address the potential cost of learning to harm. To be effective, we must be able to access our entire being to find the strength to sustain this discipline of Warriorhood. This includes our mind, body and spirit, complete with functional emotions and the security of a healthy self-image. Correct training should prepare the Warrior for the violence they may need to commit without creating an appetite or insensitivity for that destruction.
Even if we look at feuding children, we see that arguments can often be settled with little more than a harsh word or a push. Most children have the incredible ability to quickly forget differences and then move on. Their emotions and spirits are as supple as their bodies. As we grow into adulthood however, many of these natural instincts become stripped away. We pervert our self-image. The media confuses our judgement and distorts our values. In a desperate attempt to reclaim our sense of play, many binge on destructive fitness fads, harmful diets and supplements, gorging ourselves on intense blasts of entertainment, ingesting too much sensationalism, craving more and more scandal in our evening news broadcasts and larger and larger doses of violence in our movies. We want more of everything and we insist on having it all as quickly as we can until at last we’ve forgotten our true desires and human sensitivities.
In his book On Killing, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman analyzes the psychological implications of teaching our soldiers to kill. Grossman explains in stunning detail how the military used reflex-conditioning methods to increase firing rates (the success rate with which soldiers fired at the enemy) from 15% in WWII to 50% in Korea, and 90% in Vietnam. The radical improvement, while proof of the effects of the basic conditioning methods, did not come without a matching radical increase in psychological impact. Grossman claims:
“War is an environment that will psychologically debilitate 98% of all who participate in it for a length of time. And the 2% who are not driven insane by war appear to have already been insane—aggressive psychopaths—before coming to the battle-field”. [Grossman, p 49]
Once more we find dangerous proof of the failing of the Behaviourist school of thought. Yes, operant conditioning can reinforce desired behaviour, but for how long and at what cost?
Grossman’s work is by far the most comprehensive and accessible on the subject that I’ve encountered. It is absolutely required reading for anyone serious about the cost of harming our fellow man. In his study, Grossman details the increased psychological difficulty involved in the various ranges of killing. He shows how distance facilitates the act of harming. The closer ranges, including what he terms Hand-to-Hand and the so-called “Sexual” range are the most offensive to human sensitivities. The closer your opponent is to you, the harder it is for most humans to kill them. This is because it’s harder for your brain to deny the atrocities it is causing. Experiencing the warm splash of your opponent’s blood, the desperate spasms of their death throe or their final gasp of breath is vastly different from watching a flash of light on a monitor as a missile strikes.
Modern military conditioning understands this natural inhibition all too well. In response, it has sought to facilitate the act of killing by maximizing the distance between the soldier and their victim. When possible, the most obvious method involves literally maximizing the physical distance between a soldier and his or her opponent. Increasingly powerful weapons allow the grunt in the muddy trench to be replaced more and more by the sniper on the hilltop and the sniper to be replaced by the fighter-jet pilot. Now automated clone planes can even do our dirtiest work, safely controlled thousands of miles away from the battlefield, cocooned in the sanitized bunker, defense intellectuals can act like a god, sending judgement down from the heavens, without little more than a phone call. Our natural inhibitions have in effect been bypassed in the process and killing has been made easier.
When physical distance is not possible, military researchers have had success emotionally separating the individual from their victim. In fact, methods for increasing emotional distance are far more universal since they can be applied equally to the common foot soldier who is forced to engage at close range and the waiting country back home whose support or opposition can determine the ultimate strength of the government who is commanding the violence. Emotional distance involves factors that include “social distance” and “cultural distance”, where emphasis is placed on racial and ethnic differences to dehumanize the victim further. The very language of war is riddled with terms like “Jap”, “Gook” or “Commi”. Death becomes “collateral damage”, wars become “campaigns” and the real carnage becomes lost in clever euphemism. Dehumanizing the enemy is a practice as old as the Roman Empire vilifying their enemies as “barbarians”. These practices are obviously effective in lessening guilt in the individual, but they do little to resolve the actual violence. In fact, they generally increase hostility.
Propaganda and stereotypes are irresponsible short cuts. The benefit of over-coming inhibition pales in comparison to the risk of developing or subscribing to discriminatory habits. The objective of the warrior should be to adapt to circumstances, to remain mindful of the moment, to remain genuine. Discrimination, in all of its forms, is a mindless reflex and not an authentic reaction to what is before you. Remain open to the uniqueness of each experience.
Still, some level of psychological insulation is necessary for the Warrior, particularly in what Grossman terms “Moral Distance”. The self-defence artist must define their limits in advance. This includes increasing your awareness of the value of your life by putting the “self” in your self-defence training. It also involves becoming empowered by the challenge of overcoming the injustice of an attack on your well-being. It is important to affirm that you did not initiate the circumstance leading to violence, to reinforce the habit of detecting danger sooner and when at all possible, to avoid it. By doing so, you become more likely to avoid violence and more psychologically justified in retaliating should you become required to do so. As my first master often said: “If you do not start a fight, it is impossible to lose. If you truly defend yourself and your ideals, you have already won.”
On a far more profound level, if you can remove yourself from the cycle of pressure and violence entirely, you can become more able to transcend the emotions of violence completely. As Master Peter Ralston wrote: “There is no such thing as a fight and there never will be.” In every action, we must move without judgement. The moment you allow hatred or anger to enter into your mind, regardless of the situation, you have lost the control, rational thought and moral judgement that defines you as a warrior.
Exercise #11—The Role of The Warrior:
Revisit your list of limitations from Exercise #5. Ask yourself, have any of these limits changed since you took your inventory? Once you have reconfirmed your list of limits, ask yourself what repercussions could your foresee experiencing from each experience:
-Can you imagine acting in a way you had not expected?
-What if you responded with more violence than you had intended? How do you think you would handle the knowledge that you had lost control?
-Do you think that distinctly breaking a bone on your attacker, gouging their face or biting them would cause you more remorse than simply striking them?
-Do you think it is realistic to expect yourself to survive a violent encounter without experiencing personal injury?
-If you were injured during your retaliation, struck repeatedly or cut, how would that effect your memory of the ordeal? Would you still be able to remember that event as a success?
-As you consider the ramifications harming, have your limitations changed? Has this awareness made you less or more willing to engage in violence?
Thursday, September 4, 2008
The Map is Not The Territory
As a professional educator, I've dedicate a significant amount of my energy and attention to studying, deconstructing and improving the method of instruction used in my approach to the martial arts. As I'e said elsewhere, the martial arts as a whole are often hugely guilty of clinging to antiquated, teacher-center, memorization-based learning. Often employing militaristic models, with a single instructor standing at the front of obedient rows of students, school often border on cultish if not purely delusional. Granted, these approaches are effective at breeding faith--the military successfully uses similar mechanisms to achieve a strict chain of command. Religion as a whole often employs similar hierarchies which ultimately terminate in an infallible, unquestionable origin to achieve the same end result. It's no surprise therefore that the martial arts should share such tendencies, particularly given their historic relationship to both religion and military traditions, and the politics and ideologies that so often burden these circles.
My approach to instruction is not to perpetuate a tradition so much as it is to coach and guide athletes in physical and emotional growth. I believe strongly that while experience can point to measurably more effective methods (I hestiate to use phrases like "universal truth"), ultimately every practitioner must forge their own personal system.
There is a concept in Neuro-Linguistic Programming that echoes this exact sentiment. It is often referred to as "The Map is Not The Territory". Simply put, we are all unique individuals. Our perceptions shape our experiences. Everything that we do is evaluated and judged by the filter of our conscious and unconcious minds. Everyone has different beliefs, opinions, ideologies and goals. As a result, when two people look at the same map, they can interpret it differently. The map is only a guide, prone to varied interpretations. In the end, it is not the actual territory.
In NLP, emphasis is placed on permitting us all to have our own unique perspectives and interpretations. How we read the map is not important. What is most important is that we regularly assess whether or not we're using the right map at any given moment. Are we sure we're headed in the right direction?
When I consider what I believe an effective map should be for martial training, my goals can oscillate somewhat. As a foundation, I know that I believe martial training should be healthy. Every training experience should erode a little more fear away and replace it with familiarity. It should quietly chip away at our inner anxiety and not add to it. Certainly, training can sometimes be physically demanding and our practice is not without its risk of injury, but ultimately, it's important in my perspective that training is logical, healthy and sensible. It should build the body over the long run and not detract from total health. I hold this truth to be self-evident and refuse to adopt training methods that violate this principle.
Other schools are fixated solely on self-defense--self-defense by any means. Finding the fastest shortcut to survival. I think this is misguided in most situations. Granted, self-defense training is essential. Honestly facing our fears is integral to becoming a better human and growing as individuals. However, as I have also stated elsewhere, the likelihood that any of us will get accosted by a knife wielding attacker in an alleyway is quite low in most cases. Stress and illness however will assault us all, as will aggression and coercion to some degree. We can all gain advantage from knowing how to resolve stress, become more assertive and walk with more confidence. Certainly, effective survival skills are essential, but they cannot in my opinion outweigh healthy and sensible training methodologies.
Clarity is very important in my approach. I've never felt that I have so much spare time that I can afford to learn ineffective self-defense techniques. Nor have I ever felt so healthy that I believe I can spare a little extra health. I personally need to know that what I am doing is heading me in the right direction. I need to understand the map I'm using. In my experience, too much of the martial arts is based on opposing concerns: confusion rather than clarity. Esoteric bunk, hierarchical distortion, hidden knowledge and ultimately a fear to test and measure what has been blindly adhered to. Therefore as an educator, I would like to emphasize a few essential guideliness to help practitioners in their own training.
Principle 1: If someone is able to do something, so are you. We've all seen someone do something amazing and exclaimed: "I have no idea how he did that" or maybe even "I could never do that". This is natural to a degree. The moment we begin honestly accepting and believing this however, these believes become dangerous and limiting. If someone is able to do something, we are all able to learn that same skill or ability to some degree. No master or ancient sage is so untouchably gifted that their skill level is unachieveable. Environments where these sentiments are promoted are generally cultish and unchanging and likely less concerned with effectiveness and your personal well-being than with their own self-agrandizement.
Principle 2: If you want to have the ability you see in someone else, the easiest way to get it is to follow the same path. This is naturally not the only way--there can be many paths up a mountainside, but if someone did something a certain way, following the same path is the surest and most obvious way to achieve the same ability. This is why surrounding yourself with excellence is so important.
Principle 3: People do not always know what makes them top achievers. If you ask your teacher how he acquired a certain skill, his or her instruction can certainly play a helpful role. It can however also have nothing to do with his actual skill. Ask and listen by all means--the more maps you have to cross-reference, the more intelligence you end up having--but remember to look and to see. Studying habits and behavior are always the most honest and reliable method. If my teacher tells me his vegetarianism is the secret to his energy but then I observe him eating meat, then obvioulsy my observations will discount his own assessment and lead me to look for something else.
What I've described here are three very simple and self-evident learning principles. The tragic reality however is that far too often they are entirely absent. Too often, students train with the secret belief that they will only ever get "so" good--they are operating beneath a pre-determined ceiling and have accepted they will never be as good as their teacher. Rather than respectfully listening and looking, they simply wait for instruction. They take their teacher's words at face value and fail to distinguish between respect and blind adoration. This is a very common illness affecting martial training in particular. Teachers are guides but they are human and prone to errors of interpretation. While guides can massively help with a journey, they cannot do the walking for you.
In the end, Nietzsche said it best: "The student who remains a student, repays a teacher poorly."
My approach to instruction is not to perpetuate a tradition so much as it is to coach and guide athletes in physical and emotional growth. I believe strongly that while experience can point to measurably more effective methods (I hestiate to use phrases like "universal truth"), ultimately every practitioner must forge their own personal system.
There is a concept in Neuro-Linguistic Programming that echoes this exact sentiment. It is often referred to as "The Map is Not The Territory". Simply put, we are all unique individuals. Our perceptions shape our experiences. Everything that we do is evaluated and judged by the filter of our conscious and unconcious minds. Everyone has different beliefs, opinions, ideologies and goals. As a result, when two people look at the same map, they can interpret it differently. The map is only a guide, prone to varied interpretations. In the end, it is not the actual territory.
In NLP, emphasis is placed on permitting us all to have our own unique perspectives and interpretations. How we read the map is not important. What is most important is that we regularly assess whether or not we're using the right map at any given moment. Are we sure we're headed in the right direction?
When I consider what I believe an effective map should be for martial training, my goals can oscillate somewhat. As a foundation, I know that I believe martial training should be healthy. Every training experience should erode a little more fear away and replace it with familiarity. It should quietly chip away at our inner anxiety and not add to it. Certainly, training can sometimes be physically demanding and our practice is not without its risk of injury, but ultimately, it's important in my perspective that training is logical, healthy and sensible. It should build the body over the long run and not detract from total health. I hold this truth to be self-evident and refuse to adopt training methods that violate this principle.
Other schools are fixated solely on self-defense--self-defense by any means. Finding the fastest shortcut to survival. I think this is misguided in most situations. Granted, self-defense training is essential. Honestly facing our fears is integral to becoming a better human and growing as individuals. However, as I have also stated elsewhere, the likelihood that any of us will get accosted by a knife wielding attacker in an alleyway is quite low in most cases. Stress and illness however will assault us all, as will aggression and coercion to some degree. We can all gain advantage from knowing how to resolve stress, become more assertive and walk with more confidence. Certainly, effective survival skills are essential, but they cannot in my opinion outweigh healthy and sensible training methodologies.
Clarity is very important in my approach. I've never felt that I have so much spare time that I can afford to learn ineffective self-defense techniques. Nor have I ever felt so healthy that I believe I can spare a little extra health. I personally need to know that what I am doing is heading me in the right direction. I need to understand the map I'm using. In my experience, too much of the martial arts is based on opposing concerns: confusion rather than clarity. Esoteric bunk, hierarchical distortion, hidden knowledge and ultimately a fear to test and measure what has been blindly adhered to. Therefore as an educator, I would like to emphasize a few essential guideliness to help practitioners in their own training.
Principle 1: If someone is able to do something, so are you. We've all seen someone do something amazing and exclaimed: "I have no idea how he did that" or maybe even "I could never do that". This is natural to a degree. The moment we begin honestly accepting and believing this however, these believes become dangerous and limiting. If someone is able to do something, we are all able to learn that same skill or ability to some degree. No master or ancient sage is so untouchably gifted that their skill level is unachieveable. Environments where these sentiments are promoted are generally cultish and unchanging and likely less concerned with effectiveness and your personal well-being than with their own self-agrandizement.
Principle 2: If you want to have the ability you see in someone else, the easiest way to get it is to follow the same path. This is naturally not the only way--there can be many paths up a mountainside, but if someone did something a certain way, following the same path is the surest and most obvious way to achieve the same ability. This is why surrounding yourself with excellence is so important.
Principle 3: People do not always know what makes them top achievers. If you ask your teacher how he acquired a certain skill, his or her instruction can certainly play a helpful role. It can however also have nothing to do with his actual skill. Ask and listen by all means--the more maps you have to cross-reference, the more intelligence you end up having--but remember to look and to see. Studying habits and behavior are always the most honest and reliable method. If my teacher tells me his vegetarianism is the secret to his energy but then I observe him eating meat, then obvioulsy my observations will discount his own assessment and lead me to look for something else.
What I've described here are three very simple and self-evident learning principles. The tragic reality however is that far too often they are entirely absent. Too often, students train with the secret belief that they will only ever get "so" good--they are operating beneath a pre-determined ceiling and have accepted they will never be as good as their teacher. Rather than respectfully listening and looking, they simply wait for instruction. They take their teacher's words at face value and fail to distinguish between respect and blind adoration. This is a very common illness affecting martial training in particular. Teachers are guides but they are human and prone to errors of interpretation. While guides can massively help with a journey, they cannot do the walking for you.
In the end, Nietzsche said it best: "The student who remains a student, repays a teacher poorly."
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Acquiring Calmness
“If you want to be happy, be.”
—Leo Tolstoy—
I’ve always felt that one of the great tragedies is that people are willing to dedicate time and attention to learning how to do 1,000 absolutely inane and incidental things, without ever spending any serious time to learn about their own selves. We’ll gladly lock ourselves in our houses to memorize technical manuals so that we can use our new I-Phone or spend hours on our computers, watching TV or eating until we can’t move, but where is the time for ourselves? All day long, from the moment we wake up, most of us behave like sponges, absorbing everything in the world around us and it’s no surprise that the world leaves its mark. When is it our turn to enjoy the moment?
The Emperor Marcus Aurelius said that every day, the successful man must take time to retreat into the self, into the sanctuary of his own mind. This idea has always stuck with me. All day long we are constantly consuming--stimuli is attacking our senses every minute of the day. It's so important to give those muscles a break at some point and just reverse the flow of our senses and stop the one-way road of consumption. Even if only for a moment, we need to integrate, digest, cleanse and ultimately trigger the reverse flow of energy. We need to digest what we've eaten and in a good many cases expell it completely. We need to reflect, express and ultimately to share.
For me, this processing of inner truth has always been what meditation is about. It's simply taking time to be aware of what's going on, to become mindful of the moment. As many already know, I spent a few years of my young adult life training with and virtually living with my sensei. During this time I had ambition to spare, but was pretty clueless in all other respects. I knew there was something great there in my study. I thought I knew what I was getting--even what I wanted to get, but I was massively off the mark. Were you to ask me then, I would have likely given you some flowery answer about what meditation was, but in reality, it was usually just that thing I needed to get through in order to train or be taught by sensei. Kneeling on fidgeting knees, shifting and fumbling with my own anxiety, I was rarely ever very present. So sensei kept me there, banging my head against that virtual wall until slowly the truth started to sink in and the tension started to melt away. True to form, it took me a few years to even realize what had happened and longer still to recognize what I had been before the whole process began.
Thanks to this experience, I understand people when they say: "I've tried meditating, but it's just too hard." So many people have tried. So many people try to hard. They lack the guidance or correct support and then end up quitting and in the end only succeed in reinforcing another speck of negativity in the mirror of their self image. This is nothing less than a tragedy. Meditation is such a powerful, life-giving tool and despite what modern marketing masters and sacred institutions would try to convince you of, it doesn't need supervision and it's absolutley FREE.
As a martial arts teacher, I meet people every week who think that learning to be calm is something beyond their reach. “I wish I could just learn to relax” they tell me, or “I’ve tried to meditate, but I can’t.” This is insanity. Every single one of us already knows how to meditate, how to reflect, how to shine with the magnificence of our true being. We’re born with this natural power. We play with it without giving it a second thought as children, every time we make a discovery and stand with awe and wonderment. I recently watched my nephew reading from a science book out loud as he slurped on a green lolli-pop. The book was describing the unique swirl found in every finger print. He read the loud aloud, then stopped. He took a good deep look at the print on his thumb, then took another slurp of his lollipop, then back to his thumb. A huge smile overtook his face. It was the pure essence of mindfulness, of joy and of self-discovery. He didn't require any sacred ritual to get there.
We carry with us the greatest power we could ever ask for—the power to think and consider and understand. Unfortunately, sometimes we let ourselves get distracted from the reality of just how simple this really is. First off, no one technique can guarantee total calmness, particularly in the midst of a crisis or hostile situation. This is obviously not what people want to hear and admittedly this is far less marketable than the other sensational claims out there on the market today, but this is the obvious truth and anyone reading this who thinks for a moment on the topic, knows this to be true. Absolutes are the first sign of a lie. Correct combat training can help you maintain control during a conflict, but physical technique alone cannot ensure success. There is an essential component of psychological training that must be observed.
The most common element that's lacking in training to acquire calmness is visualization. I like to use the analogy of heat. Heat is an energy—it can be transferred. Cold is not an energy—it’s the absence of heat. In the same way, I view chaos as an energy. Chaos spreads likes a disease. It’s a cancer in the very purest sense of the word. The smallest amount of chaos can destroy the greatest amount of harmony like a drop of poison in a glass of drinking water. Harmony is the absence of chaos. One doesn't need to create harmony. One does not have to go out of their way to find harmony. Harmony is a universal constant. It's always there. The only way to appreciate it is to uncover it and strip away whatever’s covering it. You don’t become calm so much as realize that inner calmness is already there. Most of us were naturally calm in the womb. The moment we moved out into the world, other influences threatened our calmness and made us uneasy. Mediation is the proces of stripping those influences away and getting back to the calmness that's already waiting inside of us--it's not about adding rules, rituals or complexity.
Exercise —Freeing Your Thoughts:
I can’t emphasize the sheer importance of this method of visualization enough. It begins with your daily meditation. If you want to acquire mindfulness of nothingness, or of the movement of your Chi, your Prana or of your breath, and a foreign thought enters into you mind, that’s okay. This is a natural thing. Simply label the thought as “thinking” and allow it to run its course and then slip away. No thought is too great that it won’t be remembered. Trust in your mind’s natural ability to store information and allow the thought to pass. It will come back to you. If you can think of it once, you WILL think of it again. See yourself writing the thought down in your mind as clearly as if you were using an actual pen and paper and then move on comfortably.
Once you begin to experiment with the unlimited power of visualization, affirm success in everything that you see. Too often we dwell on our mistakes. We linger on what we perceive as failures and in so doing we continually weaken our self-image with negativity. One of the first steps to true happiness is to allow your errors to fade away and to accept change and the passage of time. In their place, celebrate your victories, from the smallest to the greatest. Celebrate them daily. Celebrate them from minute to minute. By remembering yourself succeeding you will create a history of achievement that will pave your way into a future of success. You will effectively create the habit of succeeding.
Life must become a waking meditation. Suzuki Shosan wrote that the monk’s mindset is superior to the warrior’s for the Warrior simply acquires mindfulness during combat, whereas the monk must always be mindful. Regardless of the degree of crisis and stress about you, train yourself to recognize your body’s natural state of being. Your physical balance plays an enormous role here and acts as a psychophysical link. Psychological and emotional imbalances can lead to disruptions of physical equilibrium. For example, depression can create profound slouching. Ego can inflate the upper chest and shoulders. Absent-mindedness or nervousness can lead to needless movement and activity. The reverse is true as well. Physical imbalances can contribute to emotional unrest. It’s difficult, if not impossible to achieve a state of mental and spiritual harmony if your physical structure is not centred and at peace. Practices like yoga are dedicated specifically to the cultivation of the link between emotional stability and physical equilibrium. Meditating in a row boat might be soothing, with the rhythm of the waves inducing relaxation; meditating on a mechanical bull—likely not so soothing. For this reason, it's important to stand comfortably, naturally, never posing. Avoid artificially imposing a stance on your body. Stances will unbalance both your mind and your body. They are symptomatic of fear and are a vain attempt to achieve invulnerability and total readiness. Instead, simply feel the individual components of your body being "stacked", one atop the other and feel yourself above the earth and beneath the sky. Similarly we should walk comfortably, sit naturally and lie as the body feels naturally inclined to lie.
We all carry the power to improve any aspect of ourselves, anytime, anywhere. Regardless of whether or not we choose to subscribe to this realization or to maximize this power, it is a power that is continuously being exercised in the world around us by those who are successful. Simply taking a moment every day, or perhaps many times per day, to submit to the greatness of this truth, to affirm the potential of your own being as the wonderful mechanism that you are, to smile and to be alive and incarnate in that instant, is the truest and purest essence of meditation. This is an undeniable power that you have always had and will always possess. No one can instruct you in your own self with more expertise than you can. You are the world’s leading authority on you. Listen to what you have to say.
“I will not allow any wound to penetrate through the body to the real me. My body is that part of me which can be injured; but within this fragile dwelling-place lives a spirit which is free. And never will that flesh drive me to fear, never to a role that is unworthy of a good man.”
—Seneca—
—Leo Tolstoy—
I’ve always felt that one of the great tragedies is that people are willing to dedicate time and attention to learning how to do 1,000 absolutely inane and incidental things, without ever spending any serious time to learn about their own selves. We’ll gladly lock ourselves in our houses to memorize technical manuals so that we can use our new I-Phone or spend hours on our computers, watching TV or eating until we can’t move, but where is the time for ourselves? All day long, from the moment we wake up, most of us behave like sponges, absorbing everything in the world around us and it’s no surprise that the world leaves its mark. When is it our turn to enjoy the moment?
The Emperor Marcus Aurelius said that every day, the successful man must take time to retreat into the self, into the sanctuary of his own mind. This idea has always stuck with me. All day long we are constantly consuming--stimuli is attacking our senses every minute of the day. It's so important to give those muscles a break at some point and just reverse the flow of our senses and stop the one-way road of consumption. Even if only for a moment, we need to integrate, digest, cleanse and ultimately trigger the reverse flow of energy. We need to digest what we've eaten and in a good many cases expell it completely. We need to reflect, express and ultimately to share.
For me, this processing of inner truth has always been what meditation is about. It's simply taking time to be aware of what's going on, to become mindful of the moment. As many already know, I spent a few years of my young adult life training with and virtually living with my sensei. During this time I had ambition to spare, but was pretty clueless in all other respects. I knew there was something great there in my study. I thought I knew what I was getting--even what I wanted to get, but I was massively off the mark. Were you to ask me then, I would have likely given you some flowery answer about what meditation was, but in reality, it was usually just that thing I needed to get through in order to train or be taught by sensei. Kneeling on fidgeting knees, shifting and fumbling with my own anxiety, I was rarely ever very present. So sensei kept me there, banging my head against that virtual wall until slowly the truth started to sink in and the tension started to melt away. True to form, it took me a few years to even realize what had happened and longer still to recognize what I had been before the whole process began.
Thanks to this experience, I understand people when they say: "I've tried meditating, but it's just too hard." So many people have tried. So many people try to hard. They lack the guidance or correct support and then end up quitting and in the end only succeed in reinforcing another speck of negativity in the mirror of their self image. This is nothing less than a tragedy. Meditation is such a powerful, life-giving tool and despite what modern marketing masters and sacred institutions would try to convince you of, it doesn't need supervision and it's absolutley FREE.
As a martial arts teacher, I meet people every week who think that learning to be calm is something beyond their reach. “I wish I could just learn to relax” they tell me, or “I’ve tried to meditate, but I can’t.” This is insanity. Every single one of us already knows how to meditate, how to reflect, how to shine with the magnificence of our true being. We’re born with this natural power. We play with it without giving it a second thought as children, every time we make a discovery and stand with awe and wonderment. I recently watched my nephew reading from a science book out loud as he slurped on a green lolli-pop. The book was describing the unique swirl found in every finger print. He read the loud aloud, then stopped. He took a good deep look at the print on his thumb, then took another slurp of his lollipop, then back to his thumb. A huge smile overtook his face. It was the pure essence of mindfulness, of joy and of self-discovery. He didn't require any sacred ritual to get there.
We carry with us the greatest power we could ever ask for—the power to think and consider and understand. Unfortunately, sometimes we let ourselves get distracted from the reality of just how simple this really is. First off, no one technique can guarantee total calmness, particularly in the midst of a crisis or hostile situation. This is obviously not what people want to hear and admittedly this is far less marketable than the other sensational claims out there on the market today, but this is the obvious truth and anyone reading this who thinks for a moment on the topic, knows this to be true. Absolutes are the first sign of a lie. Correct combat training can help you maintain control during a conflict, but physical technique alone cannot ensure success. There is an essential component of psychological training that must be observed.
The most common element that's lacking in training to acquire calmness is visualization. I like to use the analogy of heat. Heat is an energy—it can be transferred. Cold is not an energy—it’s the absence of heat. In the same way, I view chaos as an energy. Chaos spreads likes a disease. It’s a cancer in the very purest sense of the word. The smallest amount of chaos can destroy the greatest amount of harmony like a drop of poison in a glass of drinking water. Harmony is the absence of chaos. One doesn't need to create harmony. One does not have to go out of their way to find harmony. Harmony is a universal constant. It's always there. The only way to appreciate it is to uncover it and strip away whatever’s covering it. You don’t become calm so much as realize that inner calmness is already there. Most of us were naturally calm in the womb. The moment we moved out into the world, other influences threatened our calmness and made us uneasy. Mediation is the proces of stripping those influences away and getting back to the calmness that's already waiting inside of us--it's not about adding rules, rituals or complexity.
Exercise —Freeing Your Thoughts:
I can’t emphasize the sheer importance of this method of visualization enough. It begins with your daily meditation. If you want to acquire mindfulness of nothingness, or of the movement of your Chi, your Prana or of your breath, and a foreign thought enters into you mind, that’s okay. This is a natural thing. Simply label the thought as “thinking” and allow it to run its course and then slip away. No thought is too great that it won’t be remembered. Trust in your mind’s natural ability to store information and allow the thought to pass. It will come back to you. If you can think of it once, you WILL think of it again. See yourself writing the thought down in your mind as clearly as if you were using an actual pen and paper and then move on comfortably.
Once you begin to experiment with the unlimited power of visualization, affirm success in everything that you see. Too often we dwell on our mistakes. We linger on what we perceive as failures and in so doing we continually weaken our self-image with negativity. One of the first steps to true happiness is to allow your errors to fade away and to accept change and the passage of time. In their place, celebrate your victories, from the smallest to the greatest. Celebrate them daily. Celebrate them from minute to minute. By remembering yourself succeeding you will create a history of achievement that will pave your way into a future of success. You will effectively create the habit of succeeding.
Life must become a waking meditation. Suzuki Shosan wrote that the monk’s mindset is superior to the warrior’s for the Warrior simply acquires mindfulness during combat, whereas the monk must always be mindful. Regardless of the degree of crisis and stress about you, train yourself to recognize your body’s natural state of being. Your physical balance plays an enormous role here and acts as a psychophysical link. Psychological and emotional imbalances can lead to disruptions of physical equilibrium. For example, depression can create profound slouching. Ego can inflate the upper chest and shoulders. Absent-mindedness or nervousness can lead to needless movement and activity. The reverse is true as well. Physical imbalances can contribute to emotional unrest. It’s difficult, if not impossible to achieve a state of mental and spiritual harmony if your physical structure is not centred and at peace. Practices like yoga are dedicated specifically to the cultivation of the link between emotional stability and physical equilibrium. Meditating in a row boat might be soothing, with the rhythm of the waves inducing relaxation; meditating on a mechanical bull—likely not so soothing. For this reason, it's important to stand comfortably, naturally, never posing. Avoid artificially imposing a stance on your body. Stances will unbalance both your mind and your body. They are symptomatic of fear and are a vain attempt to achieve invulnerability and total readiness. Instead, simply feel the individual components of your body being "stacked", one atop the other and feel yourself above the earth and beneath the sky. Similarly we should walk comfortably, sit naturally and lie as the body feels naturally inclined to lie.
We all carry the power to improve any aspect of ourselves, anytime, anywhere. Regardless of whether or not we choose to subscribe to this realization or to maximize this power, it is a power that is continuously being exercised in the world around us by those who are successful. Simply taking a moment every day, or perhaps many times per day, to submit to the greatness of this truth, to affirm the potential of your own being as the wonderful mechanism that you are, to smile and to be alive and incarnate in that instant, is the truest and purest essence of meditation. This is an undeniable power that you have always had and will always possess. No one can instruct you in your own self with more expertise than you can. You are the world’s leading authority on you. Listen to what you have to say.
“I will not allow any wound to penetrate through the body to the real me. My body is that part of me which can be injured; but within this fragile dwelling-place lives a spirit which is free. And never will that flesh drive me to fear, never to a role that is unworthy of a good man.”
—Seneca—
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