Everything in Life Seen Through Karate!

I think it was Gichin Funakoshi
who said that
‘all life is karate.’
So what does that really mean?

It means that you put a filter over your eyes
and view everything through karate.

As a professional writer I came to learn that
you can compare language to forms.

The motion of the body is a verb
that ends with a punctuation punch.

Basics are letters.
Techniques are words.
Forms are sentences.
I believe Kenpo has also stated this.

Music is particularly well suited to the karate analogy.
Timing is an exquisite sense of how to fool the listener/opponent.
The shape of your hand as you play notes and chords…

Dance…the comparison is obvious.
They are both body motion.

If you ride a bike,
the bike is the form,
the ride is the freestyle.

Running a business
is strict adherence to form,
implementing techniques
with the occasional freestyle
as individuals have their own bright ideas
that aren’t so bright
or somehow go against the master form.

Driving a car,
sailing a drone,
marching, running, climbing trees,
dealing with people so that all win,

Everything in life can be reduced to form,
to technical deviations,
to freestyle applications.

Now,
the cruel trick is this:
all Karate is done wrong.
All karate is based on blocks, kicks and strikes.
Which are good foundations,
but the real secret of karate
is in the ‘slap/grab technique.
That is a technique which precedes all motion.
Yet nobody teaches it.
A few arts come close,
but nobody has ever actually broken down body motion
and understood the subtle implications
in the motions leading up to blocks.

Try it.
Try making slap/grabs in every technique.
You’ll find that the techniques suddenly work.
and they actually work in freestyle.
It wasn’t that the founders hid things,
though they did
in a secret meeting back about 1900.
It was that they didn’t understand this subtle implication
of the motion of the body
before and leading into virtually every technique
in karate,
and virtually all other martial arts.

Go ahead,
try it.
Find the slap/grab.
Find the slap,
or the grab,
or the slap/grab.
Once you see it,
you’ll be amazed.

And for those who wish to see how
I extrapolated this little motion,
check out the

How to Fix Karate Books

(two volumes, you have to order them separately)
on Amazon.
They’ve got about five hours of video links,
and they show how I use the slap and the grab
and the slap/grab,
all the way through.

Okay,
that said, it’s time to say…

Have a great work out,
and HanaKwanMass to all!

Al

Don’t forget to check out the interview
https://anchor.fm/dale-gillilan/episodes/S1E10—Al-Case-e12e3np

‘The Last Martial Arts Book’ has 12 ratings for 5 stars.
(There is a video version of this book with no stars yet)
My two yoga books have 9 ratings between them for 5 stars.
‘The Book of Five Arts’ has 8 ratings for 5 stars.
‘The Science of Government’ has 7 ratings for 5 stars.
‘Chiang Nan’ has 6 ratings for 5 stars.
My novel, ‘Monkeyland,’ has 5 ratings for 5 stars

That’s a lot of good ratings
so hopefully you’ll find the book that works for you.

How to Fix Karate:
A Karate Training and Workout Book
(Two Volumes)