The Abstract Art of Teaching

We currently have a handful of students training to become teachers.  One question I get is "how do you teach a student?"

Three things: patience, awareness and the color blue.

The color blue?  WTF?

I know you are wondering how I ever teach martial arts when talking about Blue.  Let me ask you what color blue you are now picturing; royal blue, sea blue, baby blue, or green?

Green?  Well it is yellow/blue right?   There you go.

As an instructor, it is not my duty to enforce the royal blue filter on students.  I need to see the information based on the student's blue filter.  At this point, I can upload information they can more readily digest.

Next step is awareness.  Being aware as instructor is be ready for the student's attention span.  Now attention spans run the gambit, anywhere from 2 hours to 2 seconds.  No need to discuss the 2 hour attention span...best students EVAR!  The 2 second attention span theater...well they present more of a challenge.  You are lucky to teach them something easy like punching with their right hand.  Then for the next 60 minutes you two run around punching things with your right hands.

My teachers-in-training have commented on my mantra when i do this, (Switch your hands, switch your hands, switch your hands.)

Well, that is part of teaching.  Teach technique and then reinforce it until it becomes muscle memory.  Then it is up to the student to drill it.

And now the first aspect of teaching...patience.  We all wish to teach the perfect technique the first time perfectly.  Never happens.  We have to be patience and be happy when the student flails the proper limb in the proper direction.  This is a good start and we can refine from there.

That is teaching in a nutshell, patience, awareness and blue.  Or if you prefer, a buddha wearing blue tinted sunglasses.

May the attention span be with you,

DarkArashi

Dag-Gum Dharma

I recently responded to a potential client's email.  Gist of it is, he is suffer from some sort of neurological imbalance.  Doctors can not figure it out, natural healers have not had any luck.  Can I help?

Sooner or later, these folk hear about the school or me and our "amazing talent for curing".  (I am pretty sure I know who is spreading these vicious rumors and they are getting such a pinch.)  They contact us and I find it painful to read through their complaints.  Makes me want to curl up on the couch with kitties and sleep...for a year.

I believe before you can be cured of anything, you first have to understand one factor of our society.  The human life is distilled down to a unique set of numbers that reside in a cell on a spreadsheet.  That spreadsheet controls our lives, makes us work hard and then overtime.  We waste our health on making sure we are not deleted from our special cell on the spreadsheet

Most of my students have joined at this state, something is not quite right, and the experts are dumbfounded. And many students have found relief from their ailments, (not just postponing the inevitable, but actually reversing the downward spiral.)  And in typical human fashion, they blame me.

And when I call them on this behavior, they respond with "you're the exception".

...

That  may work in your world, but in the real world (my world thank you very much) I am not the exception.  I am the norm.  So what I am about to say is going to go over every one's head, but someday when you reach my level, you'll see that I am right.

Here goes (I'll use small words), there is nothing special about me.  I am simply a brute.  A brute with enough tools to help you.  You simply have to desire it.  You will do all the learning, working, recovering, and crying.  You have all the secrets to your "cure".

When you find yourself lost in the darkness, you'll find me.

DarkArashi.

Tough times don't last...

At some points in our life, it is like waking up to the aftermath of a battle.

I try to inspire by living the Way of the Warrior.  My example is not enough for most people and they wish to understand it better.

I understand and could recommend a whole library of books.  But just take this simple viewpoint.

When the universe conspires against you and drives you to one knee, just remember this.

I do not look down to see how close the ground is, I look up...and smile.

All obstacles before me, no matter how great or how many, become blades of grass in my mind's eye.
When you can master this simple technique, you are a warrior.

Now draw your sword and rise.  Be the gardener you were meant to be.

DarkArashi

Big? Fat? Other?

You can not swing a skinny person around with clobbering a topic based on big, fat or other.

We have so many experts on being fat, I believe this is why we are the fattest country in the world. I can not begin to list the reaons people are fat, or can I?

The reason someone is fat, is they chose to be that way.

Wait, before you burn my effigy, continue on.

I realize we do not wake up in the morning and decide, "I'm gonna be fat" or "I'm gonna be sick". That is just plain stupid, right?

But how we decide to live, this is what causes are body to change. Using the Olympics as an example, gymnasts, contortionist, swimmers. They all look the same. Swimmers, every one is 6'4" and 190 pounds and cute. Look at Michael Phelps (bastard). And the sprinters, tall and leggy. And don't get me started on Caster Semenya. You go girl, er boy...You just go and getum Killa!!!

My roundabout point is, each event has a specific body type that has advantages. And this specific event, will cause the body to modifiy itself for greatest efficiency.

As an experiment, we can take an epitome of human evolution, body builder, yogi, gymnast, crossfitter, whatever; and place them in a stressful desk job. I mean a job with tight deadlines, erratic schedules, varying hours, something us every day people have. These folk being the top of the healthy food chain would naturally perform better in the beginning, A year from now, they have lost any edge they had in the respective endeavors. Two years, they will have developed a nice layer of protective fat.

Why? The body adapts. The body stores fat for many reasons. The most important is for protection. When there is food, we eat to build up stores of fat for when there is going to be a shortage of food. Fat insulates and keeps us warm. It also protects us from minor illnesses.

Being stressed at a job, we need to protect ourselves. Awkward hours make it difficult to eat right and train. So the body adapts. Has this experiment ever been done? Yes, me. Ten years ago, I was in prime fighting shape at 150 pounds. I decided to get a real job instead of teaching martial arts. I became a CAD designer and sat at a desk. Odd, long hours and the challenge of eating right, but the weight on.

Five years later, I weighed 207 pounds. My iron bones, now tin foil. Reflexes, that of a zombie. Running? maybe for the donut box, before that young dumb whippersnapper got the last apple fritter. I was everything I railed against...and it was my decision.

I then made the decision to go back to my old ways. My first year of training I dropped 42 pounds. And then proceed to gain back 10. Most people watch the scale and stress seeing the weight bounce around. Scales are not as important as the way your clothes fit. This will give you for more feedback. And the best, is how you feel moving through the day.

True that muscle mass weighs more than fat due to the fiber density. (well, fat does not have fiber, more like globules). As a person trains, the body will shed what is not necessary and build up what is.

As you train, you will shed fat and gain muscle. Each level has different demands so the weight may go down for speed and stamina, or may rise for strength and durability. This makes scales unreliable as measuring devices. And the martial artist will develop denser muscles than other athletes. Another example, when you go in for physicals, the techs tell you to stand on the scale. They are masters at guessing a person's weight. I am often told to take off my shoes and empty my pockets. I point at the pile I have already created. Then I have to weight 3 or 4 times to make sure the scale is correct. I weigh 175 pounds but only look 160.

The martial artist is an athlete in a class by themselves. Every other sport is specific and attacts that "perfect" physique. The demands the martial artists places on their body is comprehensive; strength, flexibilty, coordination, stamina, agility, power, toughness, hand/eye coordination and lung capacity.

I have watched great athletes try martial arts to boost their own skills...and fail at it. I have watched martial artists go into other sports and do well. They may not play in the big leagues, but people will notice them.

So do not worry about if those Gi pants make you look fat (They make everyone look fat). Concern yourself with the training. The body will adapt and keep up. It is more about feeling good, than looking good. If your goal is to look good, you'll stress about what you see in the mirror. If you feel good, you can not help to look good.

I use Sammo Hung as model. He is a big boy, and he does kung fu. He is happy, so he looks good. Let us work together to be happier and healthier.

Good training.

Lessons to be learned

So here I am driving through downtown to go work on drywalling. I am sitting at red light and notice a older dude off to my right. He is sitting on his tricked out bike, with gorilla handle bars, sissy bar in the back, looking pretty cool. He is even wearing a bicycle helmet with sweet flames on the sides.

And he is just sitting there waiting at the red light. On a whim, he crosses in front of me in his unhurried way on his bike. I notice he has a smoke in his right hand. Then I spot a open container of beer sitting in a cup holder, duct taped to his right handle bar.

When he was half way across, the light turns green.

At this point, my thought is the bicycle helmet seems way out of place. This dude has the survival instincts of a slug in a salt mine.

So I sit at my green light pondering the lesson this meandering individual is teaching me. I try to live a safe, healthy life. Or do I? My calm demeanor hides my aggression. I use caffeine as a sedative. I practice iron bone to strengthen fist, arms and shins, and then see what kind of stuff I can break.

What do we use as a "safe" shield to feel safe? And what do we still do that we know is harmful to ourself? I think these are valid questions to always be asking ourselves. Do we really need that Quad Venti Mocha so we can spend an extra five minutes on the treadmill? Part of inner exploration is to see what is necessary for our growth and what is harmful. My T'ai Chi training is more like unearthing a lost civilization. ME! Bit by bit, the layers of defense and bad habits fall away to reveal me.

I strongly recommend a reasessment of one's self and finding the tools necessary release yourself from yourself.

Philosophy dilemma

A Moral:

While taking a trip on a boat, a philosopher asked the boatman if he knew philosophy. When the boatmen replied in the negative, the philosopher sighed: "Ah, then you have lost half a life." A storm broke and the boat began to sink. The boatman asked the sage, "Do you know how to swim?" When the philosopher shook his head, the boatman said, "Ah, then you have lost all of a life!"

I think this little tale explains "doing" very clearly. Ten minutes of doing is more beneficial than an hour of dissertations, debating, and excusing.

Next time you are catching your breath, ask yourself if you are the philosopher or the boatman.

Not that philosophy is bad, but I save it for the eight seconds it takes me to fall asleep from a day of doing.

Stir that into your Latte's,

DarkArashi

Teach me

Teach me. Teach me? Teach me!

Teaching is easy, teaching is difficult...

I feel most people believe teaching is easy, like teaching addition. 1+1=2. Yep, pretty damn simple. Try teaching integrity or self control, yep not so easy.

When I first began my training in the martial arts, it was a simple matter of punching and kicking. Years and years of just punching and kicking. It wasn't til i met my Sensei, that I learned more. He had the knack of nurturing people's talents.

What he saw in me, was the ability to "not teach". It took him a long time to explain teaching and not teaching. The gist of it is pretty basic. Any moron can teach a person to punch. Any idiot can link punches and kicks together to make Kata.

Teaching is easy anyone can do it. Not teaching is more about guiding, leading by example. A person has to train hard to be good. A teacher has to master their movements to be able to demonstrate and explain what they are doing. A step up from this is to help guide a student through their obstacles.

Now multiply this by ten students, twenty students. They all have different hurdles to overcome. You can teach them all the same punch, but you have to guide each one individually past their stumbling blocks.

This is the major stumbling block for most teachers, they see the students as a whole and not individuals.

So, now let the debates rage over whether I am a moron, or just an idiot.

~

Ascent

Ascending the Mountain is not a difficult concept to understand. The difficulty comes from putting it into practice every moment. Let us start at the beginning, when you first begin your ascent. You look up the mountain and see tons of people already ahead of you on the path.

Their advice and insights are flawless to your pathway up the mountain. They point out handholds and where to place your feet. As you gain in mastery, the advice flows less. The pathway and handholds become unclear. Your ascent slows as you painstakingly struggle upward without support.

This is the true test of the Ronin. When you look up the mountain and the next handhold is nine feet above you. An impossible leap when you cling to a sheer face. Most will backtrack and lose their way. Some try a different course. One or two will make the insane leap, catching the handhold. As you dangle, you noticed new handholds you missed from your previous vantage point.

Ascending the mountain is not easy. That is why the higher you go, less people there are. It takes a great deal of faith to climb when your guidepost is the impossible. This is the path of the Ronin. Not to sit idly and gaze up the mountain, but to forsake comfort and seek out the secrets of the ascent.

Time to climb....

Ronin for Hire

Ronin 4 Hire is officially launched.



Ronin translates to "wave men". These masterless samurai were like the powerful currents in the ocean. They came, changed status quo and they went. I know the term ronin has had outlaws, thugs, yakuza and people of questionable character lumped in together.



Now Ronin means "masterless student". We study, we train and we outgrow the current teaching curriculum.



While I have been a teacher, I do consider myself more of a guide. Teachers tend to strut around saying "Do as I say, not as I do!" I simply point as a guide and say "There is the mountain, start climbing." Oh, and I always have a handy ice pack ready for when people fall.

I do wish to spread this wave among Ronin. Pass this blog out to any who considered themselves masterless students. Through information, insights and rants, I can guide one to the ultimate master. (Careful, they have a tendency to be the meanest ever!!!)

Ta