Month: November 2014
Ten books to read
Learning to pay attention to the music of fear. How to make it work for you and avoid becoming a servant of the thoughts of others.
Learning to listen and to grow aware of what is before you but not seen.
Noticing what is hidden inside your layers will help release what is not needed or understand why we are as we are.
Learning to pay attention to more than your way of communicating can enrich and maybe save your life.
Learning to track and note nature with wise eyes
Living and finding solutions without the need of great construction plants. Another way to free your mind and release fear.
Korindo Aikido book by my teacher of the art. A great teacher and person. There are many hidden gems in this volume.
http://shirokan.com/english/book.htm
A very good primer on breath work and awareness
http://www.russianmartialart.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=115#.VGjVBGcquSo
Learning to soldier without the benefit of logistics
http://www.posteritypress.org/books/last_hundred_yards.html
Learning something about how things are put together inside us
MOVING LIKE A HUMAN THE UPRIGHT SWAY
The sweet spot
The sweet spot.
Why do we work? To get a job done. That is the easy part.
What is the job is a more elusive thing I hope to help you define for yourself.
I was asked how to work for more vigilance and tranquility or awareness and inner calm.
My answer is very simple. Avoid looking for something and simply notice. Anything else will set you on an imbalanced track toward some goal outside what is in the words of an old movie “What is best in life”.
An example of walking wayward of your path is making the path the goal. This means that you want to become a good Judoka or a good shooter in the range and forget the true goal of any martial art, which is getting you home in one piece after you prevail what life brings your way so you can be a good father or mother to the next generation.
If I was a good Systema teacher who could show and teach technique in movement, I would be less than useless.
My goal in teaching is giving the students and myself as the student who happens to lead the class themselves. It is not the way which matters but the keeping true to your values and continuing to both let go of what is not needed and getting to know yourself better so you can add more to your life and to the lives of your loved ones.
Why hit each other in the face? To become tough so you can withstand pain and go on? We hit each other in the face to learn about ourselves and to learn to accept reality so we resist it less and less.
What is the job? An ongoing mission to grace, honesty, ingenuity and our true nature, released from any hold.
Drills to illustrate the point
Move from standing to laying down on your chest. Change what part of your body cannot touch the ground each time until you find something that creates an obstruction. Move around that obstruction and create new pathways.
Join a conversation each day and impose a rule that you must include the word <insert a word here> in every second sentence of the conversation.
Find something that makes you uncomfortable and seek to understand what exactly makes you uncomfortable in it. Do not seek to change. Change happens all the time anyway. Forcing it only hampers in your grace and enjoying your life to the fullest.
The Martial Art of Walking 