A perspective on things

http://sciencehack.com/videos/view/BBsOeLcUARw

A film dealing with the relative size of things in the universe and the effect of adding another zero.

I like this. Makes me remember just how much of nothing there is within us, that we are not a solid as we are in the habit of thinking.

As above so below, or the macrocosm microcosm concept from Taoism.

The essential differences between a man and a woman

Let’s say a guy named Roger is attracted to a woman named Elaine. He
asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A
few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy
themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a
while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one
evening when they’re driving home, a thought occurs to Elaine, and,
without really thinking, she says it aloud: “Do you realize that, as of
tonight, we’ve been seeing each other for exactly six months?”

Look Here

Frustrations and Rewards of beginning the Martial arts

I noticed a good post today about someone just starting out in Aikido,

Firstly, there’s frustration. Aikido is very frustrating for me. I’m not particularly good at picking up even what is going on in a technique, much less how
to do it. Sure I’m just beginning. Sure this is a skill that requires
development, just like anything else. Sure I’ve gotten better at it
even in the few weeks I’ve been observing. But ego rears its ugly head:
“I should be picking this up faster!”, right?

From here: Aikido Week #3

There is no doubt that he raises a lot of points that we can all relate to.

The one about observation is one that I can especially relate to at the moment; training BJJ over here and learning from / training with Brazilians means that I don’t have the first clue what they’re saying (my Portuguese is much much worse than my Japanese, which is also pretty bad!). BJJ is completely different from what I’d done in the past, which was mostly; If you go to ground, get the fuck up as fast as you can! So I’m having to rely on my eyes, the problem here is that everything you see is interpreted and filtered by your mind according to past experiences, notions etc. This doesn’t help when you’re trying to learn.
‘Beginners mind’ is a good goal.

On self defence / self defense

munting around on the Interwebs at work today, I felt the need to respond to a post I saw here

This is a portion of the original post:

I think I finally mastered the knife disarm!

Self defense seems so imprecise to me…the attacker will never be in
the same exact position that you’ve practiced, so much of defense, I
feel, is improvised on the spot. Since I dislike improvising anything
(can’t everything come with an instruction manual?) I struggle with all
the “what ifs” (especially, when it comes to things like “what if I
miss in disarming him?”)…….

This is such a common theme. Really most self defence can be summed up in a single word, bullshit, and sometimes; bullshit that will get you killed.

Really, self defence in a nutshell should consist of how to stay the fuck out of dangerous situations, and then, only if you’ve messed that up, how to punch, knee, headbutt, bite, elbow and gouge as hard and as much as required to make the threat go away. Obviously if you’ve got time, a continuum of force idea could be introduced and legal issues addressed. but I digress.

Anyway, here’s my reply:

“Self defence seems so imprecise to me”

If you think about it, what you really mean is that it’s too precise. ie; the attacker has to have their arm in exactly position A, otherwise technique B wont work.

100% foolproof [insert weapon/body part etc here] defence is not a realistic goal, exactly because of all those ‘what ifs’ you’ve mentioned. Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security.

The ‘improvisation’ you’re talking about is the goal of self defence and martial arts in general. You need to respond without thinking to the situation as it evolves, and it will evolve and change far, far too fast for you if you’re trying to remember a technique from amongst a list of hundreds that you’ve memorised.

On the other hand; if you have learned and practice a set of principals and internalised them, then from these you can rely on your self to adapt spontaneously to the fight.
eg: If someone taught you that 2 + 3 is 5 and didn’t explain the function of the ‘+’ sign then you would only ever be able to answer 2+3, you’d be stumped when some one asked you to do 5 + 7!! however, if they taught you the principal that the ‘+’ means to add the values together, you’d be able to do any addition you wanted.

But, you can’t just be told that, you need to put in the practice adding things before it comes naturally.

to bring this back to martial arts; the first 2 + 3 you do is like this ‘knife disarm’ technique you’re learning; you can only do the disarm successfully within very fixed parameters.
After a while and you move on to disarm number 2 and 3 etc. you are still confined to the new parameters of the techniques.
After a number of these techniques you will start to see a common theme, the principals of knife defence. This is where you learn what the ‘+’ does, and how you can make it yours.

These principals that you should be trying to discover are not set in stone. some people may like to trap the knife close to there body, some may like to deflect it and counter attack. each has it’s benefits, but the only measure of correctness is if it works for that person.

It’s from these principals come the answers to the ‘what ifs.’

Remember, the overriding goal is to stop the person from harming you. however you get there is good, as long as you do get there.

Shit, this turned out to be quite long. It’s an important point though. The take home message is really run as fast away as you can if someone comes at you with a knife (Principle number 1!)

Good luck in the training!