Category: Uncategorized
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What Karate Folks Can Learn from the Spear
I begin my Sunday practice as usual, with the spinning ebb and flow of the spear drills. It’s early, and the air is crisp again; spring has not yet fully established itself. Sunlight is reaching in from beyond the mountains, though, and soon it will be serviceable at least, and maybe even warm. So I…
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Where Boys Learn to Become Dangerous—and Trustworthy
I am watching my first grandson play with his uncle. The play is raucous and chaotic—his uncle wrestling with him, throwing him around, the boy jumping onto his uncle’s back. Both are laughing, fully engaged. Periodically, the uncle admonishes, “Hey—too rough!” or “Let’s go over here now,” before picking up Nerf guns and diving back…
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Avoiding Delusion
I have spoken before about the generational shift that occurs in systems over time. Generational shift happens when an original idea gradually transitions into a form that is accessible to more people. In the effort to spread it, the idea slowly becomes something that it was not. This effect can be subtle, but one place…
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The Yoda Effect: The “Impossible” Vitality of Practice in Old Age
At seventy-two years of age, I sometimes begin a practice session feeling tired and my energy is low. Yet something curious happens when I step into the dojo and begin moving. As the minutes pass, the fatigue dissolves and a kind of brightness begins to rise in me—an alertness and vitality that feels strangely youthful.…
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The Iron Ball
Some things cannot be explained with words. I have tried for years to explain the subtle use of internal connections to produce power. Words may create appreciation or intellectual recognition that such a thing exists, but neither of these helps a person generate power or truly feel it. I remember how I first came to…
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Reflections about VISS
(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…
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Safety
When I first started this essay, my intent was to refurbish a set of safety rules that I had previously established for my Swordfighters group. The earlier article existed as a webpage listing equipment requirements and safety admonitions for sparring. As I reviewed it, I remembered a controversy surrounding a Code of Conduct that had…
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Practicing Tekki
I met with my karate friends again today. They had asked me to talk a bit about Tekki. Tekki, for those of you who do not know, is a karate form with origins in China. It is one of the hallmark forms in Shotokan and many other karate styles. My introduction to this form was…
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Ecology and Martial Practice
Ecology is about interrelationships In the past year I have heard much about a form of coaching called Ecological. As a retired biologist, this term initially puzzled me when used in this context. The term ecology was first coined in 1866 by a fellow named Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel introduced it in his book Generelle Morphologie…
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A Silver Half Dollar
Over the last few years, I have been spending my time building a timber-frame workshop. That ambition grew out of a decision I made long ago to pursue a career in biology rather than architecture. Call it a bucket-list item if you will. Before I could begin, I needed to learn how to do this…