(VISS is the Vancouver International Sword Symposium. It is hosted by Academie Duello )

I sat there on the first morning watching Matheus teach. I remember when he was just starting out—long and lean, certainly athletic, and bold. This weekend his goal was to teach a long and complex form called the Primo Assalto, meant to be performed with a large sword called a spadone. The form is composed of ten sections and is foundational in teaching how to take the initiative, close distance safely, and respond to an opponent’s strikes.

It is certainly an athletic form, since the spadone is no small thing. As I watched the students progressing up and down the gym in a preliminary exercise, I daresay some of them were smaller in stature than the sword itself.

I watched them move and noted—by virtue of their footwork and posture—who might be new to swords and who was more established. Sure enough, I could see the differences that you always see in mastery and energy levels. “It takes level to see level,” the sages say. To new ears this may sound like an ostentatious comment, but there is truth in it.

Some of the students were fighting with the sword, trying to move it with their arms alone—elbows bending and unfolding, shoulders rising. But there were others with shoulders secure and arms extended who moved the weapon with their hips and footwork. These were the more senior people. And I remembered some of them from earlier times when they were the ones who struggled.

Then there was Matheus himself. In his movements he showed a depth and maturity in his strokes. There was calmness there, even as he attended to his goal of helping each and every student learn the form.

I thought of the beginners. There is always something—some small imperfection that is a symptom of their struggle to learn. These are simple things: a foot disconnecting from the ground at a critical moment, weight transferring forward too quickly. Such things are indicators of uncertainty that a teacher can address, if they are able to see.

Sometimes students approach the problems of learning in a mechanistic, analytical way and ask for an intellectual explanation that they can put into practice. This never really gets them very far, though it does temporarily assuage the confusion. Working things over in the mind is the stuff of collegial discourse after the lesson—and for dreams.

What matters most in such a practice is some amount of direction, to be sure, but it is the swinging of the sword—here a mighty sword—that elicits the transformation we are looking for. The spadone is a magnificent weapon, and the cumbersome threat created by its size is the very thing that teaches us.

If we allow ourselves to worry less and simply swing the sword, we would feel the errors viscerally—in the tension of our sinews. At this point, perhaps, the teacher is able to give a hint. The real work, though, is to become friends with the sword through the familiarity of practice. And this was partially what Matheus was offering his students.

I turned to watch the senior instructors of that day, then, and each presented a world of material and an approach to fighting that resonated with the history of the times. I appreciate the personal histories of the teachers, thinking about how they learned and what their journeys may have been.

To see multiple traditions presented alongside one another is always intriguing. It reminds me that we cannot take our understandings for granted nor can we presume superiority. Often what reveals itself is context. Therein lies an opportunity to assimilate things from various disciplines to incorporate these foundations into our own practice, each particular way presenting an opportunity for greater depth and understanding.

My workshop, the first one, was about grappling with weapons. Over time and as the pursuit of sword fighting has flourished, I have noticed that grappling as an active aspect of sword fighting is not often seriously considered. Often sporting rulesets interrupt the fight just as grappling has begun. And yet it is mentioned as foundational in many of the old sources.

Perhaps, I think, we lose sight of our reasons for things. Perhaps it is to make a deadly art more accessible to the masses that this happens. It seems that many things soften over time until we once again truly need the skill, and then we refocus on something more connected to the need.

At any rate I wanted to give my students an understanding of how to enter into grappling fluidly and I wanted to address the question of “Why would we do such a thing?” in the context of sword strikes and thrusts, punches and kicks. I gave them two ideas: first that this was a way to protect yourself from the chaos of the fight. The second was about changing the domain of the fight to a realm more suited to your success at times.

I continued to watch the other instructors over the course of the next day, often punctuated by a nap here and there. To take a nap without shame becomes easier as you get older, and to this I lay claim. It reminds me of the dualistic nature of things…hard and soft, light and heavy, expansion and contraction, and yes, awareness versus oblivion. This dualism seems to me to be embedded in our reality and is a part of the martial tradition that I aspire toward and which I spoke about briefly during my second workshop.

Devon had asked me to speak about resilience. Many thoughts tumbled through my mind as I considered what to say in the weeks prior. What is resilience? How do you elicit resilience in a person, a people? This ability to face defeat and then recover, even moving forward, seems also to be declared by our reality as important. Always, to experience a thing is better than simply sitting, and so I asked the students to join in an austere practice called horse stance.

Horse stance practice comes from my own background of karate and Gashuko, Special Trainings, of Japan. These are practices intended to provoke a calcination of the human spirit. They are simultaneously physical as well as mental and even spiritual in nature. And this realization of a threefold nature is a part of the martial traditions of the east and also the west. This is evidenced by the austere practices themselves in the east and in the west by the presence of gymnasiums of old dedicated to physical, intellectual, and spiritual pursuits and in the practice of confession prior to any great endeavour.

When you choose to perform an austere practice it requires something from you. You must commit, there is a cost of failure, it will be hard. Pain will be there and you will endure a faltering of will.

In this crucible, you begin to understand the unity of mind, body, and spirit and the role of the will to both choose and to enforce personal discipline. In this way, often without realizing, your capacity for resilience will grow.

There are other ways to build such strength of will. There are other physical endeavours, feats, that can inure you. You can also live according to a Code of Honor. When you decide to live by a code each moment becomes an exercise in discipline.

These things are not easy. They require that you face two existential quests. The first is to face yourself, to see yourself clearly. The second is to face fears both real and illusory.

Real fear quickens in the face of genuine danger. Illusory fear is born internally and is a kind of delusion. Real fear prepares you for action. Illusory or unnatural fear debilitates you and leaves you unable to act.

To see yourself clearly, you must face fears. You do so by identifying mental blocks and polishing them away. Instead of denying these forces you acknowledge them and step into them.

Witnessing people in a practice like horse stance is awe-inspiring. It is possible to see people transform before your very eyes, if not immediately then after some amount of repetition of the experience over time. I was able to share the potential of such work with my students at ViSS this year. It is always satisfying.

The young people I met during this symposium impressed me. They impressed me with their open willingness to learn and with their support and kindness for one another. They are interested in examining themselves in the face of challenges. Their willingness to grow is indeed reassuring in this cynical time. This allows me to see past the cynicism of the day with renewed hope and trust in the next generations.

My stay at VISS this year ended with play. My friend and colleague Michael and I began to play with spears using ideas of Fabris and the movements gleaned from my karate heritage. After a bit, one of the students joined us. It was a great personal finale for VISS. This sense of playful discovery is also a part of a genuine martial practice. Not everything is so intense and serious.

The trip home was peaceful and uneventful. Thanks again to my colleagues and students.

In keeping with my recognition of dualism, I took two naps along the way and was nicely awake as a result!