Getting barked at
Published: Tue, 05/27/14
One of the issues that came out of my request for feedback on how
to promote the Stav Centre was the question, what did I mean by
energy? One response was that I should leave out any references to
the energetic aspects of Stav training (or any other martial art
for that matter) because it isn't scientific and therefore
undermines credibility. It is a good point and, as I wrote a few
weeks ago, back in the day, when I was involved in Chinese martial
arts I did witness some stunts which straddled the line between
party tricks and convincing demonstrations. So I will concentrate
on describing my direct experience.
Many years ago I went through a particularly bad time emotionally.
It was triggered by relationship issues but the real basis was a
major existential crisis which brought up issues from childhood and
maybe even previous lifetimes, who knows.
I really knew there was something funny going on because perfectly
nice dogs would react very badly to me and bark aggressively. I
normally get on very well with animals but during this period the
owners would get seriously embarrassed at their pets behavior since
it would be completely out of character. I also managed to get
into a fight with someone on one occasion, something that had not
happened to me for at least ten years previously. Yes there are
lots of ways of annoying both animals and people but I found myself
in a situation where I could drive dogs mad just by walking past
them and some people could react very badly to me. Now you can put
that down to something in body language or expression but dogs
don't really look at strangers when they are more interested in
exploring the country side and using their noses. So I don't
think it was a visual stimulus and I certainly wasn't saying
anything.
That particular period in my life passed and I became very
interested in regulation of energy through training. Doing the
stances is a key way of keeping your energy clear as well as
maintaining good posture and promoting deep and natural breathing.
So I see the first level of self-defence as being energetically
clear and safe. If people or animals feel edgy and scared around
you then you are more likely to get a negative or even violent
reaction than if you are calm and clear. This doesn't mean you
will never encounter violence, sometimes we are just in the wrong
place at the wrong time, but at least you won't attract
hostility inadvertently.
At the next Stav course on the 7th of June in Crewkerne I will be
looking at how to train in Stav, this will include how to practice
for clarity of emotions and thus energetically.
http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/train.html
regards
Graham