Wax on, wax off
Published: Tue, 02/25/14
There was a little bit of Karate Kid type training last night.
There is a lot to do a the Stav Centre and yesterday I decided to
try and repair the roof in the porch. There has been a gaping hole
there for months if not longer, water leaking in from the roof has
destroyed the wooden ceiling and some of the rafters. I thought it
would be relatively straightforward to replace a couple of beams
and put a piece of plywood in. However it turned out to be quite a
struggle to get the wood to fit and I realised afterwards that the
cladding which has been fitted at some time and then rotted away
all needs to come off and something like the original ceiling
reinstated. Not a waste of time since even my temporary repair
looks better than a gaping hole and I was concerned about the
potential security issue. Not that climbing in would be easy and
getting back out again very difficult unless you were a monkey but
that doesn't mean some idiot would not try at some point. So I
carried on working on getting a new panel in place and didn't
actually manage to fit it until about 7pm. So we had half an hour
to tidy up which we didn't manage to do. So when everyone
arrived at about 7.30pm there was a few minutes of helping to move
pieces of wood, vacuum the floor and other tasks, thanks for the
help and your patience.
The class seemed to go well and we focused on the first axe two
person drill, using the Trel principle. The movements with the axe
are relatively straightforward but the key to making the drills
work is in the weight transfer and the position of your centerline.
The footwork is important but only in so far as moving the feet
enables you to place your centre of gravity directly over your heel
at the crucial moment. It has taken me twenty years to realise how
important it is to be able to centre myself on the correct line.
Having said that it takes a long time before you are even really
aware of your web anyway. The Trel axe exercise is superficially
about moving away from an attacker so that they cannot actually hit
you. On a more fundamental level it is about preparing to move to
a very specific point in your web so that when the attack comes in
the opponent is effectively walking into a trap. So you not only
have to know your web and read theirs but be able to see exactly
where you need to be one move ahead.
Renovations are a bit like that too, you can only know what to do
when you can see clearly what you are up against. What I did on
the porch ceiling yesterday can only be a temporary repair because
I can now see what I do need to do, but I could not see that until
I had made such a big hole that there was no turning back.
Martial arts training is a great way to learn to see the web of
reality, but it isn't the only one, renovating the Stav centre
is a training in itself. I will have some video of how we are
getting on tomorrow.
In the meantime if you want learn how to work effectively with your
own centre line then the next Stav course is in Salisbury on the
8th of March, http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/train.html
regards
Graham