Knowing when to keep and when to let go
Published: Tue, 05/28/13
Yesterday afternoon I was breaking up our old Citroen C15 van.
When I acquired it in 2008 it had already been scrapped once
several years before and it had been standing around in a
friend's yard looking sorry for itself and rusting away. But
with a combination of mechanical ingenuity and some tender loving
care we got it back on the road and thoroughly enjoyed three more
years use out of it. Mechanically it was pretty good, it was the
bodywork that was falling apart and at the last mot it was declared
unfit for further use. In fact the cross-member in front of the
engine had completely disintegrated and the radiator was held in by
the hoses and not much else!
By that time we had acquired another Citroen C15, a few years
younger and in much better condition and so we relegated the old
van for spare parts. It has got to the point now where the wreck
really has to go to the scrapyard and be decently recycled. But
first we are taking off the bits that might come in handy for our
current van, there is no point in spending a lot of money on a
replacement wiper motor for example when you let a perfectly good
one go to the breakers. I have already saved quite a lot by
salvaging a rear light cluster and the alternator. So, in a manner
of speaking, the old van continues to live on in our newer one.
Stav is very much about recycling and reusing what we already have.
There isn't really all that much to learn in Stav, the runes
and stances, the lines of the web and the five principles and that
is pretty much it. So we need to learn 16 runes and on top of that
foundation we can build five ways of doing the stances, the staff
exercises and tree, plant and mythological associations and much
else, really the limit is your imagination. Once you can see the
lines of the web you can apply them with any weapon and into the
body itself. The principles can be applied with any weapon or
unarmed, in fact most situations can be managed using the five
principles with out actually using force at all once roles are
properly understood. So in Stav training, rather than constantly
making up new ways of doing things we go very deeply into a small
range of well proven stances, lines and principles. By constantly
recycling them we become very familiar with what works for us and
it becomes a deeply ingrained reflex that doesn't actually need
to be thought about when under pressure.
It is also important to know when to let go of techniques and
training methods which no longer work for us. Rather like letting
an old vehicle go to the scrap yard when it is no longer
serviceable, real learning and development is a constant process of
knowing what to recycle and reuse and what to let go of.
The new edition of Web of Wyrd is being edited now and will be
ready to go to Ice and Fire members this weekend. In the meantime
I have updated the archive of previous editions. As a recipient of
these postings please visit http://iceandfire.org/mbqjr/index.html
to catch up.