She Said She Could Outlast Me!
Newsletter 1141
One night I went to a party. Music playing, people dancing, everybody having a good time.
A fellow, who I thought was a friend, came up to me. He pointed at a good looking girl across the room and said, “That’s Sue. She takes Karate at your old Kenpo school. She said she could take you in a fight; she could outlast you.”
I stared at the guy who I thought was my friend, but was really just trying to get me in a fight.
I had trained for a couple of years at her Kenpo school. I had been an instructor, written the training manual, and I knew the system well.
I was studying at a different school now, and for the simple reason that it was better. It was hard core, and I was working out with Hell’s Angels and other one per centers. I was learning about REAL fighting. I wasn’t worried about some girl half my size with half my experience ‘outlasting’ me in a fight. What I was really worried about was the a$$h0le who I thought was a friend.
Normally, I would have met this girl, asked after people I had known, maybe discussed techniques, and we both would have come away happy.
Instead…I was being set up for a fight.
People. Hunh!
And I found this type of idiocy a lot in the old days. People wanting to pound their chest, prove their system was better, prove they were better.
A real martial art teaches one how to fight. It is not a fantasy.
But a real martial art also cultivates politeness in the individual, and self-reliance and competence and all manner of other virtues.
Only fools fight. Only fools risk their bodies and souls for a little self-gratification.
And this is why, when I teach people my arts, I focus on relaxing and controlling the body so that they can…CONTROL THEIR EMOTIONS!
Not to change arts in the middle of the stream, but one of the most significant arts I studied, in learning to control my emotions, was Pa Kua Chang. Imagine spending a couple of hours a day doing things like walking in a circle, your attention focused on your upright index finger, which is the center of the circle. The world slides past you, you become apart from the world. You become your own world. Emotions and distractive thoughts turn into mist and evaporate. There is only you…and only you are responsible for you. That’s a Pa Kua lesson.
Speaking of Pa Kua Chang (how did you know I was going to say this), I just republished a video/book on Pa Kua. It is an original, derived from the video course I offer at MonsterMartialArts.com. To find it on Amazon you have to search for ‘Butterfly Pa Kua Chang Al Case.’ The book has links to over an hour of the original videos from the video course. A mountain of real knowledge for a pittance of pennies.
Have a great work out!
Al
PS ~ Here’s the link I used to find my Pa Kua book:
Learn about my martial arts at MonsterMartialArts.com
