From Barny's Desk

"Knowledge is memorized information; wisdom is knowing the right way to use it."

Learning self-defense is great knowledge. Learning how and when to use it is great wisdom. Once you attain a certain level in training, it is easy to become overconfident, a little arrogant, and unafraid of anything that might come at you. It isthen that you should reflect back on your original training. Remember, the best way to defend yourself is to avoid the situation or calmly talk your way out of it. Always be ready to defend and stay aware of everyone else around you, but leave the area as soon as you feel you can, no matter what is being said to you. As long as the person you are in conflict with does not make the first move, just get somewhere safe.

Barny

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Announcements and Events

Seminar Series Coming: We are developing a series of health related classes that will be delivered by students and local professionals. Subjects will include diet and nutrition, chiropractic care, and Chinese medicine and acupuncture. Participants will get educated in these areas, and receive examples, discounts and incentives to try these services.

The school will be closed for April 8th Easter.

April 21 & 22 Green Belt Test
Saturday: 1:30-6:30
Sunday: 2:30-6:30

April 28
Tai Chi for Krav Maga

Combat in the Mid-Range
Instructor: Christian Nix

The focus of this introductory seminar will be the relevance of close improvisational contact as it applies to fighting. Students will see demonstrations of solo and two-person Tai Chi, and will have the opportunity to practice applications of Tai Chi fighting. Emphasis will be on examining elements relevant to Krav Maga training.

Philosophy of Tai Chi as paradigm for conflict resolution Solo form fundamentals Two person training with applications of solo form movements Relevance to Krav Maga self-defense About the Instructor: Christian has been studying and teaching Taiji (Tai Chi) and Qigong (Chi Kung) for over a decade. In addition to a license in acupuncture, he currently holds a teaching position at University of East-West Medicine and is also a Master's candidate for a degree in Integrative Healthcare Administration at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Please read his interview in this month's newsletter! May 19 & 20 Elite Summer Training Camp It's time for this year's Annual Elite Summer Training Camp! Taking place over two days, training will include: Intro to Knife Defenses Intro to Gun Defenses Defense against Stick Attacks Headlock, Bearhug and Hair Grab Defenses Kicks, Punches, Knees, Elbow Attacks All Choke Defenses and Combative Combinations Intensive Drills to Enhance Realistic Training Open to all levels, with the option of doing only one day or the whole weekend. Both Days: $129 1 day only Sat or Sun: $75 Interview: Christian Nix KMSF: Why don't you go ahead and tell me a little bit about what you've done in your life, martial arts-wise? Christian: My first exposure to anything martial in nature had to do with playing soccer. At age 16, a hard-as-nails coach came from Czechoslovakia. I've had the very good fortune to find great mentors, coaches, and teachers, and this guy is definitely near the top of the list. He was a really influential, excellent personage to have run into early in my life. Over the winter, he enrolled us in a boxing training program to get the team ready to play a series of summer tournaments. They sped us through a lot of material; normally you'd be training quite a bit more outside the ring than we did. Anyone who has boxed knows the level of fitness required to go three rounds, and it really sharpened the competitiveness of the team along with the fitness and the toughness. We had an outstanding summer - I remember we played with no substitutes for two or three tournaments, since we only had 11 players. Everyone was in such top condition, and so focused and tough mentally. When you discover those types of resources in you, the lessons never really leave you. I've never had a penchant for martial arts per se. For example, if you say "martial arts", people think tae kwon do, jiu-jitsu, kung fu, or perhaps aikido. They think of these long, very ancient, traditional "warrior's art". I got into the study of tai chi as part of the fabric of studying Chinese medical healing arts. What I've discovered - and this is contrary to the common perception of tai chi - is that it is far more steeped in martial tradition than is ever likely to be discovered by the general public. They see tai chi as this meditative, calming, relaxing, moving meditation or health practice, and it is all of those things. There's been a number of studies showing that tai chi is very good for strengthening - not only soft tissues, but bones as well. The martial aspect of tai chi is a fascinating study. It's outstanding. Especially now having found krav maga, in looking at tai chi's long martial tradition, it occurred to me that they are very complementary. Krav maga has to with aspects of the hardness of fighting, the toughness and fitness, getting in and out and how to avoid blows or at least absorb them. Whereas the real essence of tai chi is moving in that mid-range where contact is just taking place, positioning yourself to either give blows or not to receive them. It's about how to position yourself relative to your opponent so that when first contact takes place, you're already starting to be at an advantage. It's a very small sliver of the whole spectrum of where actually combat takes place, but obviously it's very important. KMSF: That particular aspect of the fight can be very difficult for people to negotiate. So when did you start getting interested in Chinese studies in general? CN: The first thing I studied in Chinese arts was Tai chi. I started about 10 years ago, when I was leaving university. I found it to be very relaxing. After university, I traveled quite a bit; I traveled around a little in South America, and I lived in Europe for a year teaching. I backpacked and worked. Tai chi was this cool skill I picked up that I always had with me, no matter where I went. If I was in a train station at 3 a.m. outside somewhere in the south of France, I could practice some form of tai chi or chi kung that helped me to stay sharp, fit, and centered. It felt like a workout, a self-screening, like, "Who am I today? What's the development that's taking place? Who am I inside? Who am I outside?" I was constantly reflecting in this way, and it became my own mantra about my life, especially when I started to study the Chinese healing arts about six years ago. The clear correlation with what I had been doing for exercise with tai chi and chi kung had such relevance and such great crossover. The Chinese medical system is this comprehensive look at the various ways people can help themselves. While Chinese physicians obviously study for a long time to understand their system of diagnosis, formulas, points on the body and their effects, a huge part of that tapestry is self-help. If you look at self-help, it always breaks into diet and exercise. I studied for three and a half years, every opportunity I could afford and every break I could get with the best people I could find in North America. As Emily and I made our home in Guatemala, I would study and take trips, then come home and just amalgamate this material and turn it into my own. I started to put together classes about seven years ago, pushing to a higher level of instruction about four and a half years ago. As my development progressed, I started to put this material in my own words, and created a booklet of my own. I had a good opportunity to teach people who would just come through town and hear about me, or who heard about me through various colleagues and associates of mine. It's almost as if the tai chi community is this unspoken, uncoerced group of people who are into studying the lesson that is imparted by tai chi, which is essentially the study of conflict. Not how to create conflict, but rather how to behave when you're in conflict. It's this very cool metaphor: the physical training of how to respond to incoming aggression. And what a relevant thing for our world today! "Here we have an incoming force, here we have a lot of pressure that's being applied to this place. How do we, without breaking contact from that or just running from it and giving up, respond to this force in a way that is steadfast without escalation?" That's really what tai chi is to me. I think the more the art itself unfolds, the more you realize how excellent it is. I will not live long enough to uncover all the secrets that this type of training could bring. It's a very human thing to be studying at this time, especially in our country and the world being the way it is right now. KMSF: What you stated about the Chinese medical system, how they approach their diagnosis, and their focus of their attention on prevention, it sounds completely antithetical to the American health care system - it is completely, desperately needed. CN: That's a good point. I'm in school right now, at a place called the California Institute of Integral Studies. It's a unique institute with a lot of East-West focus. The roots have to do with Buddhism; the man who founded it was from India. There is a lot of crossover for Asian philosophy. My program, the integrative health administration program, has been a really outstanding thing to discover. For the last two years, I've studied nothing but the crossover between Western and Chinese medicine, particularly the epistemology, meaning "the theory of knowledge" according to the Chinese, or the Chinese worldview. If you look, it is an intrinsic characteristic of the role patients play in their own health or illness. A large portion of that starts to become obscured when you cannot operate in conflict with other forces, other people, other institutions, whatever it is. It comes very easy in the West to project outward. The ability to focus inward is to always start, "What am I bringing to this situation? What am I bringing that is creating harmony or conflict?" Obviously, this is a very curious thing for me to have come to this program with at least some awareness. This is what I'll teach once I've graduated and moved on, but in a way, it's what I teach while I'm there as a student. I try to share with people, "Wait a second. If we look at the inherent weaknesses, the intrinsic difficulties..." You can talk to a homeless person on the street - someone without any higher education - and they'll say what you just said, which is that the problem with our medical system is that it's very easy for people to be focused on passivity. As a patient, the doctor is supposed to fix you, they're supposed to tell you what to do, and if you follow that you're a good patient and you'll get better. If you don't, then you're a bad patient and you get what you deserve. Obviously, it is far more nuanced than this. KMSF: Not only does the current system here set people up to have that attitude, but it also immediately lets these people down in most cases. "We're going to fix you, and it's going to cost you." It's a set-up for failure, really. CN: At this stage, stories do abound, and I defy anybody who doesn't know some story, either of a loved one or someone close to them, who was somewhat duped by the medical system. And I have good friends who are doctors, MDs. Doctors are not bad people, this is not a bash on them. Yet, the whole study has to come back to that fancy word, epistemology. Our way of looking at the world in the West does not promote empowerment among patients. You could argue there are exceptions, and I'm not disputing that, but in general, Western epistemology promotes passivity in patients. And it's pretty clear that's the part that has to change. Studying arts that promote empowerment versus passivity obviously has a certain relevance to our situation in health care. Teaching chi kung, teaching tai chi, studying and sharing what Chinese medicine is with people is hugely relevant right now. I'm delighted to have discovered this in my path and to get a chance to share it with other people. KMSF: So what was your path to krav? How did you hear about it? Was it something you went looking for? CN: We first heard about krav maga from my teacher in Guatemala, the man who taught me Chinese medicine. He mentioned it years before I moved to San Francisco. He has two daughters, and he said, "This is what I want my daughters to study because it's such a user-friendly system." He described a few things about it, which - now having studied krav - are actually pretty accurate even though he had no idea about it; he had only heard about it from somebody. Then, when we moved to San Francisco, Emily did the research and found the school here and said, "Absolutely, I'm doing this." She was so enamored from the very beginning that I knew I'd eventually end up joining. I waited a few months to settle into school, and then realized I had to have this. I needed this outlet so I could train this other part of myself that loves competition. Now having been at the school for nearly a year, I really feel it is an outstanding system. It is an excellent thing they promote there, to have such a user-friendly, uncomplicated way for people to defend themselves. It's no wonder the place is growing and continuing to expand; it's so relevant to what people today have to deal with. KMSF: Do you remember what your first class experience was like? Was it unusual to you in any way? Was it what you expected? CN: It was basically what I expected. I remember coming in to Joanna's class and thinking, "Great! This is a place that really gets it. They're not going to coddle the students. They show you the reality you're dealing with." The instructors do the best they can within class to simulate the reality of actual danger and conflict. They work to create those conditions and allow students to have the space to try to solve the problems with their individual levels and experiences. I was delighted; it's such a cool approach. I actually don't spend a lot of time during krav making comparisons; I'm not in a tai chi mind set when I'm in class. I treat it as studying the "hard" style, something purely useful and pragmatic. By no means am I an advanced enough practitioner of tai chi to be incorporating it into my krav maga. Maybe that's why I'm interested in putting together a cool tai chi class and make it very relevant to students of krav maga; maybe that's where I'm headed. KMSF: I suspect that it's already part of your neural pathways and muscle memory. You have a very open mind. Some people who come in with previous martial arts experience tend to default to their prior learning. CN: I really wanted to treat krav on its own merits. I approached it as, "This is what they've set up; this is what they say works. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and really apply myself the way they are saying to do it." Whatever crossover comes, will come. People are really interested in the tai chi seminar. I stand to learn as much from the students that show up for that class as hopefully they can from me. There are definitely some very good athletes and krav practitioners, and my goal is to show them, "Here's the krav maga intention in this situation, and here's the tai chi intention. Here's that 'win without fighting' intention versus 'gloves are off, let's go'." The crossover is there; you always have the option to hit the switch and go hard, but the intention with tai chi is continually for the soft to overcome the hard. It's the other side of the coin of violence: is there a way to de-escalate this type of situation? Even when there appears that there's no possibility to defuse it, there might be some physical application that allows you to emerge without violence. Tai chi is not the study of avoiding violence - it's just geared towards softness. It's geared towards hardness running into something so soft that it peters out and is overcome. That's the image I hold in mind for what tai chi offers to martial arts. KMSF: It's like an incubator for all types of movement. There are different types of people, different types of artists that go through the school. It's always a testament to the efficacy of your particular art when you realize you need to change very little of your actual mechanical approach. Hopefully, it just becomes about intention after a while. We come from the perspective of building a basis of being able to be destructive, and eventually, the need to resolve things in that manner dwindles. CN: I agree; it's a necessary part of the learning curve. Certainly, the confidence to know that you can kick ass when it is time does help one to decide when you need to do it. If you look at the instructors at the school, each of them in their own way embodies that ideal. "We've passed through this training, we know what we're talking about, which is why we're going to tell you if you can avoid it, don't get in fights!" It's a clear vibe about them, there's nobody there to hurt or embarrass students. It's very cool how that tone is set from the highest level. It's a credit to the school as a whole. You don't always get that in other martial arts schools; many people are in those schools espousing some sort of bravado about what a bad ass they are. I've been involved in various organizations where it is clear the leadership is not exemplifying what everyone else need to embody. You look at successful organizations, and whoever is in authority is living the examples they want their fellow associates to espouse, and that's exactly what you get at KMSF. I think that's also why people are drawn to it, for the actual integrity of those involved. It's not just that krav is a good system, it's also the people who are doing it are doing it a certain way. KMSF: Has your perspective changed over the year? What's the progression been like for you? CN: I think the reason I'm so drawn to sparring and krav, aside from being the best workout you can get in an hour, is that I study healing. I study how to help people be better than they otherwise would be - that's my definition of a good healer. As a practitioner, I try to provide an interaction that allows a person to see something about his self, which then helps him to help himself. In other words, if you model a type of excellence for people, they may also sense something within themselves that causes them to emulate that excellence by getting their lives together. My style of healing, the type of healing arts I study, has to do with getting patients to realize how they affect their own lives. Not everything can be broken down to "This is what you, the patient, are creating," but nevertheless, there's a good deal that people can do for themselves that is untapped, and I approach healing from that perspective. Studying healing in contrast to studying physical violence is a very interesting dichotomy for me. The purest, most chivalrous form of combat - two champions battling for the type of supremacy that can only be won through hard training and deep understanding of the warrior's way - is very akin to healing. The key difference is intention. It's this fascinating polarity for me: on the one hand to study healing, you're not that far from learning how to take life as well. I was grappling with a guy 30 lbs. heavier than me the other day, and I had no other option but to use a pressure point right under his arm. KMSF: Is there anything else you want to add? CN: Well, Emily and I make our home part of the time in Guatemala, and we have a non-profit organization there. Our non-profit works with the indigenous population in Guatemala, and sponsors cultural exchange with various schools. For instance, we're talking with UC Berkeley about getting students to come to Guatemala, and we've done student trips that allow people to have a really cool cross-cultural exchange. Our website is Calacirya.org, and it shows some of the work we do there. Guatemala is my home in a lot of ways; it's such a lovely place, and it really set me on the path for everything I'm doing now with school and martial arts. The self-improvement, and now the sharing of my knowledge with other people began for me in Guatemala. The San Francisco Bay Area is where I'm supposed to be now, with all the things I'm doing. So somewhere in between is home. Bushido: examining codes of conduct This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it "Consider yourself as a dead body, thus becoming one with the way..." This is one of the tenets of the Bushido code, a code of conduct that guided the warrior class of Japan for centuries. This Japanese concept of the "ideal warrior" can be found as far back as 797 AD. Like the Greeks, they held that the fully realized man was a warrior-poet type, combining physical prowess with artistry and sound moral behavior. Honor codes are still used today in gangs. They are used in many organizations as manifestos, company vision statements or in human resources documents on work place behavior. A good samurai was admonished to choose death over life and consider himself a walking dead man. "If you keep your spirit correct, from morning to night... accustomed to the idea of death, and consider yourself as a dead body, thus becoming one with the way..." There are some merits in this line of thinking: it bespeaks mindfulness towards the fragility of life, and the benefits of maintaining one's awareness. However, this was also the era of lords and retainers; the antiquated idea of "abandoning body and soul for the sake of their lord" meant life was cheap sometimes. There are numerous stories from the era relating how samurai willingly threw their lives down for their masters, or committed suicide for mistakes or social slights we now deem far less dramatic. Sometimes, it came from a greatly exaggerated sense of loyalty - in itself a wonderful thing - but of course the object of loyalty must be deserving. The idea that we must accept our mortality is a profound one. We become more acutely aware that we have a limited amount of time here in this form, within the current framework that we identify as our selves and our lives. The consequences of our decisions become more meaningful, particularly in one basic overarching area: how do we wish to expend our time? This makes time - and life - more precious, and it means we must do what we can to act as if it is so. There is also much we don't have control over; when it is our time to go, we will go, and acceptance will make it easier. Being confronted with our mortality can sharpen our senses and appreciation of every day experience. Nature, relationships, and activities that we enjoy take on a new meaning. With any archaic wisdom, context is critical. Images of outdated social norms that gave women fewer rights than men, or put a much higher price on the life of a lord over the serfs can be discarded. The kernels that remain can be carried forward. For example, the Hagakure discusses how anyone, of any talent level or natural ability, can develop themselves through some basic moral constructs. "When your thinking rises above concern for your own welfare, wisdom that is independent of thought appears. Get beyond love and grief, exist for the good of man."