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Old 06-22-2012, 11:31 AM   #103
Chris Parkerson
Dojo: Academy of the Martial Arts
Location: ohio
Join Date: Nov 2007
Posts: 740
United_States
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Re: My Spiritual Aikido.

Quote:
Dan Harden wrote: View Post
As I step on the mat...I take apart everyone who thinks like the above examples .......Dan
Of this, I have little doubt. You have made this your primary focus. I honor that and that is why I want to train with you.

As for me, I have made survival my primary forcus. I will be 59 years old in one week. I believe myself to be successful at my goal as well.

Since I began in Kenpo in 1974, I started protecting people and surviving. I survived being a drug and undocumented alien hunter while in the Border Patrol where I ecountered at least 40 "resistings" that were rather dangerous We often worked the King Ranch and Kennedy Ranches alone in the day and only with one partner at night. Back up could be a hour away. I survived every one of these fights without having to cause blood, bruises or broken bones on the perpetrators. That was my standard and I succeeded mainly due to Colonel Mark Mile's style of jujitsu and Russell Waddel's Tomiki Aikido. My kenpo would have just taken me to the opposite extreme and likely before the internal affairs board.

Before the Border patrol, in1983, I surived the the streets of Managua, Estelli and a dozen other Nicaraguan towns as I wrote my Thesis for the Master of Divinity at Princeton Seminary.

As a professional body guard for the last 21 years, I have gone unarmed in places most sane police would not go to in Mexico City, Tijuana, Mexicali, Juarez, Nuevo Laredo and Matamorros. In those places, you simply do not bring your "Boxer Rebellion" to the terrain in order to face down gangs with machine guns. Strategy became the greater tool. And with it, I survived.

When I was 50 years old, a government subcontractor hired me and let me carry a Tabook (pistol grip AK 47) in Baghdad, Iraq in 2004. Still, in that environment, teamwork with fields of fire and team-centered driving skills became the best strategy to protect my team, my client and myself (a new military-style paradigm for me rather than a State Department/Secret Service model), My empty hand and sword skills were much less of a priority, though I trained with the guys there both in Aikido and Jujitsu. If I or anyone there overly touted their fighting skills, the team would have become rather nervous as if that person were a loose cannon. Everyone had fighting skills on that team, the Brits, the Americans, the South Africans the Poles, the Lebanese, Spaniards and the Iraqi's.

Now, I am old. Like Sitting Bull, I would say, "Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strengh".

That is my path. I do not judge anyone for having a different path. Neither does it mean I no longer want to perfect my martial skills.

Best Wishes,

Chris
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Last edited by Chris Parkerson : 06-22-2012 at 11:35 AM.