Model Mugging?

I'm currently looking into "career" options that speak to doing work that I think is important and necessary. In previous posts I've already mentioned the desire to investigate groups like "IMPACT Bay Area" and similar organizations. One such group is Model Mugging. MM has a history of teaching "full-force" self-defense training to women since the 1970's. I just recently emailed them asking about how I might get involved with becoming instructor-certified in their system. There's a chapter in the San Francisco Bay Area which was encouraging to find. However, now I'm having some doubts about this organization. As I was doing some reading about MM online, I came across this paper, written back in 1993 which basically details some critiques of the organization and revealed some history of the group that was quite shocking. For one, the founder of MM, Matt Thomas was accused of sexually harassing and even groping certain female students. For a group that emphasizes self-empowerment for women and works to prevent rape and other such assaults, this is just downright inappropriate and wrong. I'm doubting now whether or not these types of groups are actually effective at what they do or if it's all hyperbole. I'm interested in their methods because it seems similar to what Iain Abernethy advocates for with karate training, something he terms "kata based sparring" with "non-compliant" partners. This very much resembles the training methods of a group like MM (and IMPACT) where the male instructor dons safety gear so that the female students can actually kick and hit him "full force" while he simulates an attack on them. I'm still in the investigative stages of all of this. Groups like IMPACT were formed as break-away organizations from MM. There are other groups that are of interest as well (Kid Power being one). It is my belief now that the field of Personal Safety needs to be incorporated fully with karate training. I think it is an evolutionary step into what the Okinawan masters of this art before us were hoping to get across to future generations. While karate needs to evolve with the times if it is to stay relevant for future generations, I don't think that means it needs to be "popularized" in tournaments and other such venues (karate doesn't need to become an Olympic sport). Who knows, I could be wrong about what I believe now. I thought I knew some of the history of Okinawan karate in my first 4-5 years of training. It wasn't until I spent some time in Detroit that I realized I knew very little facts (I knew the lies masquerading as facts). And because the karate of Okinawa has such a complex history, I am sure that my thinking will continue to change as I read more about this art. In the meantime, I'm just hoping to find my soul work. Maybe it isn't with the groups that I thought. Or maybe that group doesn't exist yet? We'll see.

Elbow SMASH.
- Hiji Até

Training Partners

Since I've been doing Wing Chun now I've realized a very important but perhaps overlooked factor in my training, i.e. the necessity for a good training partner. A good training partner, in my opinion, is someone who is just as sincere as you in wanting to train; someone who knows the benefit of pushing themselves; someone who shares a nerd-like excitement in the martial ways; someone who can push you to be better without worrying about you being better than they; someone who likes to feel the push and pull and tug and pain of training; someone who is quietly encouraging; someone with whom you can go hard and hang out later. I say that because, whereas in my karate training my Sensei did not incorporate 2-person functionality drilling, in Wing Chun there are lots of them. And it's hard to practice with someone who smirks every time they push you back a little because they think they are strong or who thinks they need to correct every little mistake without checking their own. And this is all just theoretical, but I think that maybe a good training partner (besides seeking one out for your self) is correlated to the kinds of people that the teacher/facilitators allows to walk through that dojo door? I'm not trying to imply nor do I believe that martial arts training needs to be about privilege or elitism. But I do believe strongly that a person's innate character is a good determining factor in who should be training. I mean, I'm not saying every person who walks into a dojo out of curiosity is an asshole (I was a walk-in myself; and actually some people might consider me an asshole). I'm just noticing that, in order to really excel at martial arts that are for developing functional fighting skill, you need people around you who are on the same page as far as conduct and intent. That doesn't necessarily guarantee a good training partner, but it increases the chance to work with others who are nerds like yourself and who could care less about trying to be like Bruce Lee. 

I'm re-reading what I wrote above and I'm not gonna change it. This blahg is about making mistakes and getting my opinion out there despite my fears. The fact is, I'm jut a beginner with all this martial arts business. Sometimes I think way too idealistically. It's good to just allow for change to change you. I recognize that every martial artist, whether student or teacher, is simply on a different leg of the martial journey. It's not necessary to judge others, nor is it necessary to judge yourself by them. Keepin' it real can be difficult when your ego wants to get in the way, but that's why you gotta keep on keepin' it real.

Elbow SMASH.
- Hiji Até

Amateur

Maybe I should put that word into the title of this blog somewhere so people don't get the wrong idea. I'm not that "good" of a martial artist. Meaning, I lack the experience that lets me know I can function successfully in a fight (that means being able to prevent an aggressive person from further attacking me so that I can escape to safety). I've never been in a fight. I've had someone punch me in the head before and I've punched and kicked others out of anger (yes I've been a bully), but I've never had a fight with another person. That's not to say I necessarily want or need this experience (nor am I saying I don't want to experience that). I mean most certainly I'm not the type to go out looking for fights to test my skill. That may be one way of learning. I don't know how I can go about learning this for myself except in a dojo environment that trains for functional fighting skill for the purposes of dealing with Habitual Acts of Physical Violence. I mean, functionality is one part of the totality of martial arts, but it is an important part I believe. And what I mean by "fight" is the chaotic, unpredictable nature of human on human violence; not a UFC/MMA/Boxing match with rules and regulations. Functionality with what you do, in any field of skill/craft, breeds confidence (for the most part). Yeah, it could breed arrogance too, but that's why it's only one part of the TOTALITY. That's why Nagamine Sensei stressed "ken zen ichinyo" (karate and zen are one). Point is, I'm not a professional. I'm an amateur. I say that too because I mean if you look at how many hours I actually train in one week (and not how many days) then you can see that 4x/week only adds up to like 4~5 hours of actual skill development with the guidance of a teacher. That's nothing. What's that study of how many hours it takes for a person to gain mastery of something? I mean, the real training takes place outside the dojo; like doing your homework. That's something I learned with my Sensei. The dojo is like going to the classroom. If you don't do your homework though, you don't really get a good grasp on what the lesson is about. This is the importance of having good training partners as well. Training alone can only give you so much. Guess I'm still trying to figure out how to make my training schedule work in order to develop "functional spontaneity".

Elbow SMASH!
- Hiji Até

Two things I'm doing

Oakland's great. I love it. Its got the opportunities I need and want and its got the necessity for the ideas I want to manifest. And having this blog is great cause it allows me to sort out my thoughts and take the risk of having others read my thoughts (which they may disagree with). Which is important because, for an artist like myself, taking that risk to put yourself out there for whatever potential audience and allowing your thinking and work to be challenged needs to become the habit. That to me is Dialectics. Anyways, save that for another post.

With that being said, there are two things I recently started doing here that I think are on their way towards achieving the goals I've set for myself with regards to karate.

#1:
About a couple weeks ago I enrolled myself in a Wing Chun class being taught at a dojo that is only a 10 minute or less drive from where I live. I had become particularly interested in Wing Chun primarily from my time spent in Detroit. I mean, Wing Chun is probably most famously known as the art in which Bruce Lee was a student of. While I of course knew of this, my ambitions had nothing to do with being like Bruce (I mean, who doesn't want to be a badass with what they do right? Like Bruce was. But each of us has got to cultivate our own Inner Badass if you know what I mean). My ambition, as of recently, is to better understand how karate functions as a martial art. As I've blogged about before, modern karate is not functional for "fighting". However, its origins were very much about practical fighting skills. I don't think it was any one YouTube video I was watching nor was it any person that turned me onto Wing Chun (nor was it the Ip Man movie series!); I guess I was just noticing how some of the hand movements, kicking, body movement, and other basic principles of the art were relatable to what I had been reading (particularly articles by Iain Abernethy) and what I knew from the kata I had practiced for the last 4-5 years. I did take a Wing Chun trial class in Detroit at Eastern Market, but lacking money, I never enrolled. Which makes my move to Oakland interesting because I just read somewhere that Oakland is one of the major Wing Chun "centers" in the US. Cool. I'm in the right place. So, I just started doing that. Sifu Greg LeBlanc is an interesting guy. Out of the other two places I visited that offer Wing Chun training, Sifu Greg seems to have the most serious approach, plus he's got an amiable demeanor which makes learning a new art not so "hard". And the per-monthly class fee was reasonable ($85 for 3x week) and like I mentioned the dojo is really close, so all of that was a factor in why I started there. Already the first few classes have shown me how karate was once a functional and brutally effective martial art for close-quarter "fighting" (I'm using that word in quotations now because something Sifu Greg said last night made sense: "There's no such thing as self-defense". I think he must have been rephrasing one of his teachers, but something about that made sense to me. I just want to emphasize that I'm not using that word to imply that I can go into a UFC ring and "fight". I'm talking about fighting to prevent someone from further harming you or to save your life. That's totally not the same thing). While of course Wing Chun has its differences with the karate of Okinawa, I saw it as being the best approach to begin understanding how I could make my karate functional. I mean, schools that teach "functional" or "practical" karate are, to my knowledge, few and far between. I don't have the money, nor the ambition to fly to the UK to train under Sensei Abernethy or go to Australia to be a student of Patrick McCarthy (well-known karate researcher, historian, teacher). I mean it's really like Grace says, you gotta make a "way out of no way". If something isn't there, if the opportunity doesn't exist, you have to recognize your power to make it exist. This is one of the greatest lessons I learned from my time in Detroit. So that's number one....

#2:
The second thing I've been less getting myself involved with but more in the research stage of right now is in the area of "Personal Safety". I'm looking into various groups and organizations that offer this type of training/service in order to see where I fit in. I think actually that I can make a living within this field. There are instructor training courses that are being offered in order to teach Personal Safety. I recognize that's a broad term, but where I'm focusing in on right now is groups like IMPACT Bay Area who focus on teaching things like "self-defense" tactics to women (that's really a semantics thing isn't it? What sounds more civilized, self-defense or fighting?). I'm also looking into another organization that focuses on teaching martial arts to young people. I can't be for certain at the moment, but I am recognizing that this field is the most attractive in terms of where I'd want to make a living. The author Matthew Fox in his book, The Reinvention of Work advocates for us to locate our soul work; work that is healing and transformative. From what I've read and listened to, the kind of work that IMPACT and other organizations are doing is definitely along those lines. I'm very eager to see where my investigation into this field leads me and what can come out of that.

---
That's all for now. This coming month and the rest of the summer should prove to be interesting and provide for some good blogging material. (Funny, I almost sound like I have some kind of reading audience that I'm speaking to. Yeah, that's right. The imaginary one in my head! Peace y'all!).

Elbow SMASH!
- Hiji Até

Detroit Summer 2012

This blog is supposed to be a "karate" blog where I blog down my thoughts about karate. Well, it's also my blog so that means I can blog about whatever the heck I wanna blog about even if it ain't about karate. Which brings me to the subject of this post, "Detroit Summer". Yes, today is the 27th of May. And it was on this day last year that I first arrived in Detroit, Michigan. I was just on the phone with a friend (whom I had gotten to know in Detroit) and we were marveling at how long it has been already since that time, but also how it seems as though it were yesterday. I technically first drove into the city on the 26th of May, but it was like ten at night. So my first official "day" in Detroit was today, the 27th. I remember when I initially left Torrance, CA I told my parents that I thought I would be gone for the summer. I ended up staying in Detroit for 10 months. I mean, I knew I wasn't just gonna be gone for a summer, but I also didn't know what was gonna happen. I had never taken a trip like that before. An adventure really. It still amazes me that I actually did that. I mean, the whole reason I am living in Oakland now is because of my time in Detroit. If I hadn't met someone there, if we hadn't nurtured a long-distance relationship on the phone, then I wouldn't be in Oakland. My life has literally not been the same since I left LA. The magic of that Detroit Summer is still with me when I reflect back on it. But it saddens me because I feel as though I still want to bask in the glow of that time. Being in Oakland now for almost two months, working this crappy make-money-so-I-can-pay-the-rent job is downright depressing compared to the summer I arrived in the Motor City. Sometimes I wonder if that actually happened. It's almost dreamlike. I'm a bit disappointed in myself that I am still not doing my "bliss". I most certainly do not want to work as a slave for $9/hour washing cars at a dealership. I mean, it's great that my schedule is part-time which allows me some flexibility in doing my real work, like training and volunteering. But I want my "real work" to be my full-time job. I mean, ideally we want to make a living doing what we love. Problem is for me, I still haven't quite figured out what it is that I "love". What's significant about this blog though is that its genesis was the result of my experience with "teaching" karate to people in Detroit. I say "teaching" like that because I'm not trying to make it sound like I'm actually a martial arts instructor. Maybe one day. But right now I consider myself a student. I mean, 5 years of training? That's not much to go on. Give it another decade or so and I might have something to actually "teach".  Point is, what I "love" has something to do with a combination of things, mainly artistic/creative pursuits of which karate is one. My time in Detroit led me to discover things about this art of my ancestors that I had absolutely no idea of before. Things that, had I not learned about in my research, would have probably driven me to quit this art before I even really started. It is my limited but growing understanding of these things that drives me to want to continue my training. In Detroit there was not a sister school of our LA dojo, nor did I find peers or instructors that did the karate I did. Yeah, maybe I didn't look hard enough, but I mean there really was not a lot of quality martial arts opportunities there, at least not on the surface. In Oakland, it's almost the opposite in terms of opportunities for training and quality, but there is still no sister-school nor have I found a set of peers that do the karate. So, like Grace Lee Boggs rephrases, I have to make "a way out of no way". I mean, it's not so much that I need to find a sister school, but rather a group that is about the serious pursuit of a karate that is beyond styles.

Funny, I thought this post was not going to be about karate....

My friend and I doing some sparring at Belle Isle. Cool photo courtesy of Julie.

Oh well...I miss you Detroit.

Elbow SMASH!
- Hiji Até

What does it mean, "the Principles"?

I'm no teacher of the martial arts but this is my blog for blogging things, so if I'm wrong, let it be wrong (or better yet, let someone correct me). What I mean by "Principles" are those basic rules of efficient, economical use of the body when in violent confrontation with another body. For example, when you do the Japanese martial art of Judo you come across the term "kuzushi". Kuzushi refers to breaking the opponents balance in order to more effectively apply your technique and/or to nullify your opponents force. You never fight force with force. That would tire you out and waste your time. Not economical. Definitely not efficient. If you do the Chinese martial art of Wing Chun you come across what is called the "center line" theory. This basically states that there is an imaginary line running from the top of your head straight down to the floor. When you strike or move your body, you are always aiming towards that line or moving your opponent off your own line. Striking to either side of that line enables the opponent to either parry more effectively or incur less damage. If you strike through that line, the opponent has no way to deflect the force, so they take the entire brunt of your strike, i.e. more damage. A principle you might come across in the Okinawan art of karate is the notion that you never strike with just your limbs, you strike with your whole body. So when you punch your arm out for example, you position your feet in such a way so that the back foot can push off the floor resulting in a kinetic movement of force that (along with the twisting of your hips) is expended out through your fist. The best way to visually imagine/explain this is how my Sensei explains it: when a batter hits a baseball, they never just swing their arms to hit, they swing the bat in conjunction with their entire body.  

*WARNING: If I've explained any of these concepts incorrectly, please forgive me and/or correct me. Thank you.

But let's stop for a second (because I've run out of examples from my limited repertoire of examples); if you notice, I was picking out characteristics from those "styles" of martial arts and explaining them as something seemingly unique to that system. The truth of the matter is, you can find any of those principles working within any one of those arts; with the exception of striking in judo perhaps, but judo does have striking techniques (atemi-waza), they're just not the focus. I mean if someone is attacking me and I guided his limbs off of my center line (making him "wrong") resulting in a weakened body position, at which time I applied a foot sweep to make him fall - would I be doing judo because I did ashi-waza? Or would it be Wing Chun because I turned him off my center line? What was it that Miyagi Sensei apparently said (as quoted by Patrick McCarthy):

"Styles...are little more than teaching variations of common principles."  

Yeah, not "Mr. Miyagi" from the movie but the real guy who propagated the Goju-ryu system of karate in Okinawa. My point is, you're not doing any "style" at that point; you are doing "martial arts" (if you define martial arts as being about economical, efficient use of the body during violent conflict). What's needed I think, is a pedagogical model that teaches these principles without the "mess" of style (or the distortion of culture). And because no one system can be all encompassing (otherwise it wouldn't be "a system" right?), you need a way of teaching/learning that can allow for "filling in the blanks" so to speak. I mean perhaps the closest thing to this is Mixed Martial Arts. But MMA is for the purposes of competition; your understanding of these principles is geared towards ultimately winning a match with rules. Which is fine and great. But if your focus is on successfully defending yourself in a situation of unprovoked physical violence (civilian self-protection) then you have to make sure your training fills in the blanks on things not found in a ring (like dudes with knives/guns, surprise attacks, psychological freezes, ethical lines, knowledge of the law, etc). So it's great to start within the foundations of one particular school, and ideally, that school would hold regular cross training sessions with other "styles" in order to better understand their own principles or learn new ones. But I think in today's fragmented world, that may have to be on the student to do themselves; they have to be their own "holistic" school of martial arts.

Elbow SMASH!
- Hiji Até

Fragmentation

Each martial arts student glimpses at pieces of the martial Truth from his/her own limited perspective. The problem becomes when that student confuses that piece as being the whole or believes that piece to be inherent to their "style".

Elbow SMASH!
- Hiji Até