Meditation is diagnostic. You feel the symptoms of suffering, emotional turmoil and unhappiness and in a mindful, insightful state look for the cause. When you find it you look for the protocols to heal it. Often it’s maintaining the mindful state and the connection to the unconditioned, then you don’t suffer about your suffering. Continue reading Meditation is a Diagnostic Tool
Why are we suffering? What did we do to deserve this? If you think like this you are trying to apply human justice to a much broader perspective and it clearly doesn’t work. Suffering exists in all forms and our body will experience it affecting our emotions and thoughts, but we are not our body, we are not our emotions and we are not our thoughts, we are more than them. We don’t need to ‘believe’ this, we need to directly experience it. This is the point of our Shi Kon neigong or ‘inner work’ deep breathing calms the body, … Continue reading Why Am I Suffering?
Anyone that studies with me knows that I use the word ‘engage’ a lot to do with the spine and core. This is because it takes a lot of study to learn how to use them for internal power, we have to forge really strong intimate connections to the ‘feel’ of every part of the core and spine and how to utilise them in technique. From the way we press and pulse the feet to the floor up through the legs to open and close the hips to manipulate the pelvic floor and bow and pulse the lower back, kidneys … Continue reading Engage The Core & Spine
When I learned my martial arts in the 70’s and 80’s I went to lessons, took a notebook and took notes in my own way. When I went home the notebook went up on the mantelpiece and I worked from there, it was very personal and taught me how to learn. When I went back for my next lesson my instructor expected me to have practised and learned what we did last time. IMO it’s still the best way to progress. Nowadays we produce the notes for the students and videos that can be used on any device, the problem … Continue reading How To Learn
Shedding skins As you train, meditate and grow, it’s inevitable that you will leave some family and friends behind. When you don’t fulfil their expectations and they don’t get what they want from you, they can become bitter, disappointed and accuse you of changing, if they aren’t big enough to accommodate the ‘new you’ a parting of the ways is inevitable. You will reach a point that the relationship becomes toxic for both of you and no reasonable compromise can be reached, don’t be afraid to let go because it’s best for all concerned, sometimes we have to shed our … Continue reading Shedding Skins
All your life you have believed that you were born into this world and have to conquer everything around you. You have to work hard to become successful and highly regarded by all those around you. The more qualifications and visible skills you acquire, the career you forge, the more money you make, the better house and car you have all form a part of who you are no how you are judged. As this structure breaks down and many people are suffering from anxiety and depression, others are turning to an alternative way both through choice and necessity. You … Continue reading Lose Anxiety
Looking at the conversations on FB this morning it struck me that many people are perfectly happy learning and teaching a martial art at a superficial level and I guess that’s the same as any other art or sport and creates a gateway and introduction for many people, but what happens when you want to go deeper? Firstly you have to decide your goals as deeper can be anything from Buddhist priest to street fighter, so the search for deeper instruction becomes the major difficulty. I could never find THE instructor I needed so had to got to various sources … Continue reading Setting The Right Goals
I’m not normal, I acknowledge that. I’m out of synch with what is accepted as ’normality’. I don’t have to try to think outside of the box, I have a problem understanding the logic of inside of it. I have never related to our culture, was a very troubled person until I discovered the intelligent analysis of Buddhism and Asian philosophy. It didn’t bring me to normality but helped me to understand that my cursed mind in our culture was also a gift that has helped me to share my ‘outside the box’ thinking with others who feel out of … Continue reading
Sometimes I wonder how much energy and time have I wasted on pointless exercise. All that mindless running, weight training, push-ups, sit ups, ‘warmup’ exercises and sparring that burned valuable energy, wasted time and did nothing to direct me where I needed to go. You can’t put an old head on young shoulders but with hindsight I could have done things in a far more intelligent fashion. A lot of ‘traditional training’ had so many repetions of useless movement and the blind ignorance of teaching ‘in the way my instructors taught’. Training should have a far more intelligent, structured approach … Continue reading Don’t Waste Your Time Training
This is an original handmade piece of glass made by Ruth Dathorne for our Dojo and is important to me as it is the only 2 logos I’ve ever used in my 50 years in the Martial Arts. ‘Logo’ means ‘word of god’ and represents the soul and ethos of my path in the Martial Arts. The person in the foreground was hand drawn by me in the 1970’s and is a yin/yang representation of a technique used in both Tai Chi and Karate and was our logo, badge and used on the front of the book we did in … Continue reading The Power Of A Logo
