The Way of Least Resistance

I had a university student interview me today for the purposes of a paper he was writing.  These were my responses: 1. How long have you been practicing martial arts? I have been training for 33 years (just coming up to 34!). 2. What has your experience in practicing martial arts been like? Mostly my experience of martial arts has been a very positive one.  Occasionally it has involved some rather unsavoury characters, some bruises, bleeding and broken bones, some disappointment, some lack of enthusiasm and sense of resentment and some feelings of inadequacy.  But for the majority of the time I’ve been training, martial arts practice has given me a great deal of satisfaction, sense of achievement and focus. 3. Describe what happens during each of the classes you teach (What is the basic structure)? Each class begins with what the Okinawans call “junbi undo” – warm up and conditioning exercises.  I go through my set almost religiously.  In fact, if I ...

Image and caption courtesy of Ryan Parker From time to time I engage in debates with modern combat sports fighters/fans.  After the inevitable: " If it worked, we'd see it in the cage/ring ," arguments are played out, we often come back to the same issue: ancient vs. modern technology. "Why should anyone esteem ancient technology?  After all, we don't do it in any other field of endeavour.  We don't look to the past to decide how clothes should be made, how crops should be farmed, how teeth should extracted/filled, how diseases should treated, how food should be preserved , etc.  We question everything - and so we should.  We take what has been done before and improve on it.  Why should it be any different in regards to martial arts?  Today's fighters have better technology than the "ancients" ever had.  Adhering to their traditions isn't just blinkered - it is dogmatic; unscientific.  There is no reason to assume that knowledge is bet...

I get the impression that Daoist thought and xingyiquan-like internal arts developed largely in tandem about 600 years ago without any Shaolin/Ch’an Buddhist influence at all (ie. they are truly “indigenous” arts, much like the original Okinawa te). The Shaolin school of external arts was a later development via India, bringing with it a “second wave” of thought and a second wave of martial tradition influenced by yogic exercise and health concepts. These spread/developed in tandem, but were not strictly related. The fact that monasteries became training grounds for various warlords may have strengthened the link between Ch’an Buddhism and the external arts. I get the feeling that initially the monasteries would have taught an “indigenous” xingyi-like arts, but that over time the Ch’an Buddhist/yogic influence conspired to evolve these arts into what we now call the “external” or Shaolin tradition. Their emphasis on pragmatic, effective exercise (cf. the somewhat theoretical and philo...