Life goes on
Published: Thu, 04/20/17
The sign at 3 to 5 South Street has been changed from ‘Somerset Stav Martial Arts’ to ‘Lift Fitness’. I knew it was coming sometime and it happened last week.
So, how do a feel about it? I don’t really mind. Now that spring is here I am enjoying training out of doors anyway. Saturday, Sunday and Monday I trained Karl, Jarl and Trel stances and axe, spear and cudgel at the playing field in Epsom. This morning I am back in Crewkerne, so I walked up to the Beeches and did the stances on the highest point looking North towards Glastonbury. It was sunny, hazy and all the trees are coming into new leaf. I do feel a bit out of place up on the Beeches because no one else seems to walk up there without a dog. But apart from that it is a fantastic spot. The whole universe is my training place. The point of the stances is to find your sense of being a child of the cosmos in the place where mother Earth and Father sky meet.
Stav was always meant to be a system of knowledge and the development of wisdom through embodied knowledge and expression in the real world. Temples, robes, symbolic artefacts and sacred books tend to become a substitute for a real and living experience of life and living. So, a practice where all you need is the open air and space to move (Father Sky, Mother Earth) ,your body and energy (Mott and Megin) and thought about what you are doing and knowledge of what to do (Hugin and Munin) will set you free of place and stuff. A stick can be useful, and those grow all over the place. Other than that what more do you really need?
So, back to what was for three years our Stav Centre. There are still two small notice boards we can use at the front of the building and I will be getting some new posters up today. The gym equipment goes in this week as far as I know. We will have a corner round the back to keep some Stav training equipment and our mats there. Classes are on Mondays 7.30 to 9pm and Tuesdays 7 to 9pm and I have booked two Saturday afternoon training sessions. So, in many respects the situation is not so different to the way it was when 3 to 5 was the Stav centre. The big difference being that the financial burden is manageable and the space is being much more fully used than it has been. So, life moves on until the thread is cut and the cycle begins all over again.
If you do want to learn more about Stav or develop what you already know then there is a course scheduled for the USA in Minneapolis on the 20 to 22nd of May full details here http://iceandfire.org.uk/usamay17.html I will cover the essentials of Stav training, runes, stances, working with the web physically as well as a philosophical concept, exploring the five principles of Stav and Stav for health and well being. I do have a systematic approach to teaching but I am also very open to questions and covering aspects of Stav that happen to be of interest at the that particular time and place. If you are wondering what questions to ask you might find my new article interesting http://iceandfire.org/index.html
regards
Graham
PS Updated calendar page with training events in the UK in May, June and September http://iceandfire.org/calendar.html