Quote:
Tom Verhoeven wrote:
Dan,
I had hoped that you would have given us a bit more after this promise then what you gave us so far.
By the way, is there any change that you would willing to write a book on this subject?
Tom
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Struggling with some VERY sick family members and writing in hospital rooms and Doctors offices while waiting.
This topic is dear to me and I don't want to give it short shrift, as I do not have the head space to write at length right now.
In short, the reason Martial artists were and are always supposed to be different was in the way their heart/mind organized and controlled their bodies. In the process this inward looking model heals and strengthens the body AND the mind. What becomes vague and difficult to discuss is that this process renews and invigorates your spirit and gives you a feeling that I nicknamed
"Living free in the world" as that is how it makes you feel. It very much resonates with what the Asians discuss with their
forging the body, forging the spirit sayings. I find this all but totally divorced from the physical culture; lifting, stretching, running, message, eating well, Yoga model I grew up with. There a few similarities.
Oddly, the inward looking IP/aiki model creates balance in you in heart/mind/body that when expressed in paired training has both a different physical feel and a different result on the person connecting with you. I used to nail people and defeat them and they had a competitive, fight back, push/pull/ reactive mind. When I was continuing to deepen this training I would still win and defeat but it created different reactions IN THEM. I thought this was weird and unusual until I started reading more of the ICMA teachers tracking and describing similar phenomena when throwing people with IS. Truly connecting with someone is not so much about connecting
with them as using...hence needing.. them as part of a pair, it is more that you are balanced in yourself and...they ...become part of you.
This has a weird and unnerving effect on them as they feel they lost control. It is not like what I have felt from Shihan in Aikido or Daito ryu. It is similar, yet it is different in that it is deeper and enters their physical space and their own mental -intention- to do something. It is somewhat interesting to hear it from traditional martial artists, but far more compelling to hear it from MMA'ers from full speed encounters. Too see someone smiling at you from behind a pair of 4 oz gloves and asking [i]"WTF was that?...Why am I always late?"[/] Starts to cement certain ideas that the Chinese had as concrete and true.
The flip side is that I find myself completely dissinterested anymore in causing harm. I am more interested in control and imbalance and diffusing and not allowing them to hurt me or control themselves to hurt me. It sounds very Aikido like doesn't it? The only difference being I am making it actually work in non cooperative environments.
Got to go
Dan