Less is more
Published: Tue, 11/12/13
Good training session last night once again. The Methodist church
hall is working well until we are ready to move into our full time
centre. But that won't be until the new year and assuming we
get planning permission. As I have mentioned before I am teaching
at the Noble Science training next week and it is a chance to
demonstrate Stav to a potentially interested but possibly very
sceptical audience. So I need to be ready and my material needs to
be tested. So last night my regular students were my guinea pigs.
Very helpful laboratory rodents they are too and we had a very
helpful session, for me at any rate. (I think they enjoyed it too.)
We focused on working with what is effectively Thor stance, the
elbow and forearm forward and across the body. This sends a
message to an opponent that you can protect yourself, you can get
feedback from the opponent as to their intentions by feeling with
the arm and you are set up for all kinds of counters, should you
need them.
So is this approach to self-defence easy to learn? Well, yes in
that presenting the forearm doesn't take much getting the hang
of. But no, in the sense that I am not teaching a simple technique
that your opponent does A so you do B and always get result C, oh
and the harder and faster and more aggressively you do B the better
result C will be. That is not how real life works. If you are
trained to do something that really can hurt someone else as a
matter of reflex then you will probably make a potential conflict
situation much worse than it needed to be should that reflex get
triggered. There is a world of difference between responding into
a place of controlled awareness, saying to an opponent. "I am
aware of what you are up to and I can deal with whatever
happens." And launching into a violent response and having to
say afterwards. "I was being attacked so I just reacted."
If you have any real knowledge of how to take control of an
opponent's body then you had better have full control of
yourself first.
The difficult bit is learning that 'less is more' in a
conflict situation you can always built up your response according
to the situation, but you cannot take away what you have already
done. So using unnecessary force escalates a conflict situation
and even if, perhaps especially if, you damage or even (God forbid)
kill your opponent, there are going to be repercussions later.
Learning to manipulate the web may start on a physical level but if
you are going to acquire that power then you must also learn to be
responsible on mental, energetic and moral levels too. Remember
that it is much easier to start something than it is to stop it. As
it says in the Havamal, 'Do you know how to send? But do you
know how to destroy (meaning stop or neutralise).'
I will be looking at these ideas on the 16th in Evesham, you will
be surprised at how easy it is to disrupt someone else's
balance. This will also make you realise that brute force has its
limitations and is generally unnecessary.
http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/forthcoming.html to book.
I will let you know what response I get from the Noble Science. I
think there are still places on the Noble Science weekend if you
think you are up to it. http://www.thenoblescience.com/
regards
Graham