"It is better to be blind than to see things from only one point of view."
- Sabrina Jeffries
Over this past weekend, The Immersion Labs held the ‘Shock & Awe’ training program. It’s the latest in their series of unique martial arts ‘Ambassador’ gatherings. The Ambassadors are elite martial artists coming at you from every conceivable and inconceivable angle and orientation, offering an all you can eat One-Stop-Shopping exposure to the full spectrum of global martial arts. Since I bill myself as “a writer not a fighter” it behooves me to cash out that billing by writing a comprehensive (though totally personal) review.
In the spirit of lively fun that characterized this profound yet hugely enjoyable event, I’m going to hand out my own personal “Best-X” or “Most-X” awards. As fate would have it, seems that every Ambassador won a top honor in some “Best” or “Most” category! I stress that these are personal opinions, merely my own shallow, prejudiced and largely uneducated opinions, what I personally saw, heard, learned, felt and loved. On the scene, in the arena!
The Awards are listed in no particular order, except that I’ve put my own Session last so that you can bail out early if you want. Believe me, you’ll find all the other, preceding Award writeups more interesting. But just because in most cases I single out a single outstanding feature of each Ambassador’s session for special attention does NOT, repeat NOT, represent the whole of that Ambassador’s contribution. Very far from it! We’re talking dozens of hours of densely organized and meticulously explained material here. I’m just writing a blog note here, not a book. All I can do is shine a quick flashlight beam on some small points that caught my eye or ear.
Caveat Lector: In most sessions there was so much content I could only isolate just That One Cool Thing which I, as a total noobie to most of these masters and methods, could actually pack home with me and add to my own training the very next day, greatest personal bang for personal buck. These ‘That One Thing’ points do NOT, in any way, represent a full and fair consideration of the vast or infinite arts that the Ambassadors put on view.
I’ve given the Awards slightly tongue in cheek names that, while mildly amusing, also capture the real essence of my own harvest from each given session. Any other attendee or presenter will have entirely different views of everything, to the point that you might even wonder if we were both present at the self-same Shock & Awe event. Rashomon! That’s life. And these observations below are me.
But one final generic point before we get into the weeds: far beyond technical content, this Event had a truly unique spirit. Imagine a bunch of seriously Apex Predators, all lapping harmoniously together at the one watering pool on the savannah. Of course, I don’t mean ‘predators’ in the sense of criminal aggression! I use that phrase to convey the seriously profound skill embodied by each Ambassador, which is basically… cut to the chase… violence. As the mobster Hyman Roth put it memorably in The Godfather: “This is the business we’ve chosen.”
But it’s the other side of violence. It’s an acknowledgement of that regretably necessary bedrock of human existence, but revisioning it. Melting, smelting, beating and tempering it to produce something beautiful. I was the only Ambassador who’s not a true fighter like the rest. So before all of them, I bow profoundly. In the presence of each one of these apex masters, I felt the force of Goethe’s line: “Against the great superiority of another there is no remedy but love.”
Now let’s do the Awards ceremony:
Most Amazing New Skill Award: Ron Lew
Sifu Ron Lew is a legend at the heart of the launchpad of American martial arts in the Bay Area. His knowledge is so vast and deep I wouldn’t even know how to begin to introduce him. Best thing for you to do is grab one of his books and dive in. His presentation was packed full of ideas and combative ideas and technologies. I only have space here to cover That One Cool Thing. Which was… the BULLWHIP. OMG! Who would’ve thought!! Actually years ago I stumbled on to a YouTube vid about bullwhip as a martial arts training thing. I got excited and tried it a few times. Couldn’t make head nor tail of it, couldn’t get it to work (supersonic crack!) even once. I concluded I just lack the knack. Put it aside, forgot about it. Come this weekend. Sifu Lew handed everybody a loaner whip and we went for it! Emotionally scarred by my past failure, I assumed this might turn out the same. And so it seemed at first. But I hadn’t reckoned with Sifu Lew’s sheer pedagogical genius. He noticed me fumbling with the first technique, made a beeline for me, showed me, had me copycat him, and I kid you not - in under 3 minutes of instruction, he got a supersonic crack out of me. My first! Then he did his same amazing ‘flash tutorial’ thing on me with the next two (much more difficult) whip techniques. So much FUN once you get it! They don’t call it ‘crack’ for nothing. Then in the off hours throughout the weekend, Sifu Lew kindly spent time with me and others gathered around him, to tell us about the giants of Bay Area martial arts in the day, from Bruce Lee right on down the line. Deepest bow to the feet of this true Master.
Most Steely Eyed Dealer of Death Award: Mark Mikita
What Master Mikita gave me is something unique and precious, especially for a self-admitted ‘energy bunny’ like myself. I’m one who approaches martial arts more like Yoga than like Fight Club. But Master Mikita has an elite true combat vibe that’s leagues past the goofy gaminess of Fight Club. This man has the most comprehensive knowledge of ‘martial anatomy’ (as opposed to medical anatomy) that I’ve ever been exposed to. Martial anatomy is knowing every muscle, organ, tendon, joint and nerve as well or better than a 4th year medical student, but going beyond that to understand how to remove, damage, or destroy each such element or nullify its function. It’s a supreme talent for target identification and elimination. He could have been an elite surgeon, but has done something more rare with his gift. He deeply educated me, as much by his example and bearing as with explicit commentary, on the seriousness of the commitment to real world violence and, when justified, its consequences. Well, it all sounds kinda heavy doesn’t it? But withal he’s actually very warm and witty. He also helped sharpen my own presentation in real time with some excellent observations. Some of the best teaching I got was when he came over while I was working with my partner during another teacher's stick session. I've never done FMA sticks, and that really showed, amongst all those expert "students" in the session. And he showed and told some very important foundational concepts about self-protection and targeting that I'll never forget. It was basically an essential micro private lesson.
Most Comprehensive Skillset Award: Mahipal Lunia
Mahipal is The Godfather of it all. I could go on and on with just the gratitude stuff here. But these Awards are based an Ambassador’s actual session(s). First let me ask: how did this guy master such a vast pallette of skills to such an elite degree?? Eh? From Bowie to staff, stick, knife, machete and empty hand, he was working to support every other Ambassador with just the perfect timing of movement, speed, and force to make them all shine. Without claiming any spotlight for himself. But as my Awards here are meant to focus on That One Cool Thing, in the case of Mahipal’s (many!) demos what most amazed and intrigued me was his use of deliberate imbalance and apparent falling in close knife work. This is something you have to see to understand. I’m not even going to try. The closest thing I’d ever seen to that work is Chinese 醉拳 (Drunken Boxing) - but in fact Mahipal’s demo of this skill was much more impressive than a Drunken Boxing show, because he was using and explaining the moves purposively - doing only what’s necessary and always for a specific tactical reason. Anyway, Mahipal wasn’t just at the event, wasn’t just organizing the even, his spirit actually WAS the event.
The-Bodyguard-I’d-Hire-Above-All-Others-If-I-Were-RFK-Jr-Award: Eric Knauss
We all know RFK Jr. is targeted. It’s obvious, he’s bad news to both sides. The powers that be want him out of way, so they’ve denied him Secret Service protection. Well, if I were RFK Jr. I would hire Eric Knauss as my personal bodyguard and never be out of his sight. I’ve always been super interested in, and respectful of, the Dog Brother stick fighting club. Never joined it, never did it, but something about the scene grabbed me as so impressively authentic. I hadn’t reviewed the Ambassador roster closely enough. Comes the day, I suddenly find myself being introduced to an ACTUAL OG DOG! Top Dog! I was star struck. And such a warm and affable guy. I don’t know whether he’s actually done professional bodyguard or exec protection work? But we Tai Chi people have the sensitivity to peg others at a glance. And I’m dead serious here: if knew I was a target, and could pick only one bodyguard, I would absolutely choose Eric above any other and put my life in his hands. I sensed that profound protective talent in him immediately.
Single-Most-Useful-Thing-I-Got-From-This-Entire-Event Award: Miguel Lopez
Ah! Now here it is. See, the one actually combative (well, semi at least) thing I’ve ever done at depth is boxing. I’ve sparred with the local inmates at boxing clubs all over the world for decades. Including the Wild Card club in LA, but many others. I’ve sparred with former Nigerian heavyweight champions, I’ve sparred with USA Olympic boxing team members, I’ve sparred with Japanese fighters who had (at the time) perfect win records (mostly KO by body shot Ouch!) It’s been fun. And I can survive pretty good in the ring - 3 rounds hard MOQ no quarter asked or given. However, one thing has always bothered me about boxing: the gloves. The more you get into boxing the more you rely on the gloves for aspects of both defense and offense. You get more and more sensitive to how to use them, how to game with them. In short you get over reliant on them. So now and then I’ve poked around YouTube and elsewhere trying to figure out how I’d work boxing without gloves. Sometimes called bare knuckle boxing. But it shouldn’t even have a name, because it’s nothing but street reality. You won’t have them. If you do a round of MOQ, but gloveless, with an elite striker such as Systema great Martin Wheeler (a former TMI Ambassador actually), you will very quickly and very painfully understand how much you’ve been relying on the gloves in your boxing game. But when you poke around YouTube sure there’s plenty of videos about supposed “bare knuckle boxing” but it’s mostly irrelevant fluff about where or how to ‘condition’ your knuckles. That isn’t the point! Anyway, one of the first S&A sessions was the ultimate cure for this problem that I’ve been seeking! Miguel Lopez showed us, taught us, checked us out, we were good to go. He taught exactly what I’ve been searching for in a simple, straightforward, no-nonsense way. Like a custom prescription for me alone. This was THE most valuable single harvest for me of the entire Event. I was also lucky to have The Perfect hard training partner to work with me the whole session, Master Stephen Plinck, of whom more below. He fed me at exactly the right hard but safe intensity for the whole session, carefully steering and ensuring that I was steadily working toward what Master Lopez had demonstrated.
Most Pythonic Man I’ve Ever Met Award: Tim Cartmell
Whoa! High voltage Ambassador here, but I’ve covered my amazing interactions with Tim at length in another post. Here I’ll limit myself to say that the thing we Tai Chi mavens have is the ability to ‘know’ a person at a touch. I tell you now: anybody, I don’t care what your art or level, who gets within grappling range of Tim when he’s got his game on, is going to be wrapped and squeezed into oblivion within seconds. Just the nature of this beast, this amazing Ambassador. Check out my other post about Tim here.
Most-Soulfully-Enjoyable-Individual-Session Award: T. J. Desch-Obi
Capoeira is another exotic art I’ve always hankered after but never got a good chance at. I never found the right entry point. This session was the perfect toe in water experience. What a gifted instructor! He both explained and exemplified, embodied I should say, the essence of his art. I loved every minute of it. And the super subtle trip tricks (hint those were That One Cool Thing for me for this session!) which he and his demo partner demoed hinted at the depth this art will go in the right hands (and feet). He also showed how to practice some of those trip tricks at home, solo.
Best Exposition & Demonstration Award: jointly presented to Dexter Miksch & Mahipal Lunia
This was a master class along every possible dimension. Feast for eyes, hands, mind, heart and a survival skill to boot. The cool thing here wasn’t just introduction (to me, a total noob on the subject of Bowie) of this deadly historical it. What made it a master class was how they structured so much deep variation around an extremely narrow functional theme - the deployment of the back edge of the blade. It’s incredibly versatile and seeing and trying everything you can do with that starts to rewire your brain. I found myself spontaneously using this idea/technique in other later sessions involving blades. That was one of the best That Cool Thing(s) of the whole event. Master Miksch performed an extremely impressive deadly flash-of-blade demo that gave a feel for how rough survival was in the day.
Most Inspiring Presenter Award: Riichi Kitano
This session was of special interest to me because I once had a deep background in Japanese sword (Iaido). Master Kitano’s demonstrations were at the perfect peak of the art, none better. But most valuable to me were his teachings on life philosophy. He also explicated to the group the concept of mushin (無心) “no mind” or “equanimous mind” which isn’t exactly the source of my own Tai Chi power (more on that below) but it’s a handy way to quickly summarize the right attitude. He should write a book on martial philosophy, and have it translated for the international market.
Most Keeping-It-Real Award: Carlito Bonjoc
This astonishing master is mobility-limited and basically confined to wheelchair. He has apex level skills with knife and stick and makes it work. I confer the Keeping-It-Real Award here because he showed how to make an art work against hard limits. Eventually even the strongest, most perfectly conditioned martial body will be somehow damaged or degraded. This is the iron law of life. What good is an art that is based on assumption of a perfectly functioning body? The most profound teaching here was his presence alone, no need for words (but Master Bonjoc also gets The Most Amazing Anecdote Award!)
Most-Relatable-To-My-Grandkids-Session Award: Michael Donohue
This was a surprise horse on the track! I’d never even heard of Quick Stix before, but he had us all flipping them happily within minutes. This session should also get The Biggest Crowd Pleaser Award. Very addictive to one and all attendees. But he also very shrewdly brought us around to functional reality by showing videos of serious pro athletes fervently testifying that Quick Stix made a huge different in their batting, striking, ball shooting etc. games. Anyway he gave everybody a comp set of Stix, and I’m going to pick up two more for my grandkids who love wild fun stuff like this.
Author-I’ve-Most-Wanted-To-Meet-Award: Maija Soderholm
Master Soderholm is internet famous! She wrote this incredible book in 2014 ‘The Liar The Cheat and The Thief: Deception and the Art of Sword Play’ It’s become a martial arts classic, and it’s one of my Top Five martial arts books of all time. I read it when it first came out but I never thought I’d actually meet the author. But there she was for real, and she presented the smoothest Master Class ever on a very exotic weapon. At first I didn’t understand it at all, but watching her extremely subtle handling and tactics, I got the basic idea. It’s actually supremely compatible with my own art of Tai Chi and I’m hoping to somehow incorporate the basics of it into my personal training right away. Also a very warm and extremely intelligent person (as befits an author :)
Most-Power-I’ve-Ever-Felt-In-A-Single-Weapons-Strike-Award: Paul Porter
I guess back in the day, like 700 years ago, you had to be as awesome as this supreme master just to make it from dawn to dusk. I wouldn’t have lasted 5 minutes. What this master has done seems super human. Using those huge weapons in realistic combat against others of his ilk, but beating them all down, even on fricking horseback. The mind boggles. But most awesomely, Master Porter is a SUPER nice guy, gentle, cheerful, just a totally lovable person. And an extremely caring and careful (thank god!) instructor. He gave me a small taste of his weapon strike power from which I am still reverberating like a cartoon character who suddenly slams into a large tree.
Overall-Most-Awesome-Human-Being Award: Steaphen Fick
No words. I realized I was in the presence of martial arts living history. Supremely skilled martial arts mastery wrapped with a charming, professorial “walking encyclopedia” type of persona. This is the kind of instructor (but is there any other like him?) that you could learn from for your whole lifetime and never run dry.
Human Honey Badger Award: Steven Plinck
Do you know what is said of the honey badger? Let me quote some classic internet wisdom from one of the most-watched famous YouTube videos of all time. I cite this with the utmost respect. See above what I said about the transmutation of violence into something higher by these masters! But meanwhile just let me have a little fun using the video text below to explain the vibe that Master Plinck radiates:
Honey badgers are the Italian mafia of the animal kingdom. No one, and I mean no one, wants to mess with these savages. They are regarded as the most fearless animal in the wild and they back that up every day. Honey badgers will combat anything from lions, leopards, and hyenas to even cobras and pythons. But how did they become so fearless? How do these compact sized danger-weasels take on the deadliest predators like it was a regular Sunday’s brunch with the girls? These are moments of Honey Badgers being straight up savages. Let's get into it.
I can’t help it - though so extremely unassuming and deferential in appearance, to those with eyes to see you can absolutely detect that Master Plinck is fearless and ready to rumble instantaneously as a given situation may call for it. Yet despite that, he was one of the most carefully analytical of all the Ambassadors in his outstanding exposition of his Silat art.
You wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of this street-vibing master, it would be like the Johnny Cash song ‘A Boy Named Sue’ where he gets into it with his Dad:
‘I reckon I’ve fought tougher men, but I really can’t remember when.’
But of all my outstanding training partners of the entire event, I’m most grateful to Master Plinck, as I wrote above, for working with me in the Master Lopez boxing session. He masterfully knew exactly how much pressure and speed to put on me, allowing me to absorb the lesson perfectly. I would probably not have ‘got it’ if random chance had paired me up with anybody else for that session.
Carlos Castaneda Special Achievement Award: Jerry Walker
What do I mean by this Award? Spiritual author Carlos Castaneda wrote about the Four Enemies of the Man of Knowledge.
A man of knowledge is one who has followed truthfully the hardships of learning, a man who has, without rushing or without faltering, gone as far as he can in unraveling the secrets of power and knowledge. To become a man of knowledge one must challenge and defeat his four natural enemies.
The first three are Fear, Clarity, and Power. These can all be conquered by extreme effort and will power. The fourth enemy however is Old Age, of which Castaneda wrote:
The man will be, by then, at the end of his journey of learning, and almost without warning he will come upon the last of his enemies: Old age! This enemy is the cruelest of all, the one he won’t be able to defeat completely, but only fight away.
This is the time when a man has no more fears, no more impatient clarity of mind–a time when all his power is in check, but also the time when he has an unyielding desire to rest. If he gives in totally to his desire to lie down and forget, if he soothes himself in tiredness, he will have lost his last round, and his enemy will cut him down into a feeble old creature. His desire to retreat will overrule all his clarity, his power, and his knowledge.
But if the man sloughs off his tiredness, and lives his fate though, he can then be called a man of knowledge, if only for the brief moment when he succeeds in fighting off his last, invincible enemy. That moment of clarity, power, and knowledge is enough.
I felt that Jerry Walker, at age 80, has come farther than anybody in “fighting away” this cruelest enemy. And judging by the power and fight skills he displayed, I don’t think Old Age is going to stage a strong comeback any time soon.
Deepest Analytical Exposition Award: James Bishop
Something always nagged me about Bruce Lee’s book ‘The Tao of Jeet Kune Do’ being taken as a source of all martial wisdom by everybody for so long. It’s something the best selling martial arts book of the 20th century or something. Not to take ANYTHING away from my own initial martial arts inspiration! All Hail, Bruce Lee was source of it all for me. But just as an analytical thing, I just could not figure how he got credit for all the stuff in that book. I didn’t know the source of the info, but I somehow felt it was more like a training notebook, where a guy will jot down interesting stuff that he comes across. Master Bishop has done the legwork to prove that thesis, and has source almost everything in the book back to the original authors. He’s credited them and he also gave a lot of fascinating back story fleshing out the brief Bruce Lee DOJKG snips and fragments. But throughout his presentation his deep respect for Lee alway shone through. There was no disrespect or insult, it was just a master class in literary detective work. Most grateful for it!
Most-WTF-Award: Scott Meredith
Ok, you may want to bail now. Who want to read a guy just writing about himself? Still, I was, on paper, one of these Ambassadors at Shock & Awe, so maybe I should try to explain what’s up with that.
So… WTF can be interpreted as ‘Why The Fuck’ (was this guy even invited) ? For that you’ll have to ask Mahipal. But ‘WTF’ can also mean ‘What The Fuck’ and that’s what I’d like to explain now.
The Session I presented consisted of just one drill. Imagine! Compared to the dozens of techniques, sequences, tricks and tips provided by every real Master on the scene. But there was method to my madness. I called my one drill a ‘nothing burger’ which sounds jokey but it had a secret meaning.
The drill was based on Tai Chi’s most basic training: fixed step push hands. In standard fixed step push hands, each partner can use a variety of techniques, both offense and defense, to get the other partner to lose balance, move his foot, or step out to save his balance.
But in my drill version, the only technique is just a push, like Sumo’s oshidashi (‘Frontal Pushout’). Hardly worth of the name technique at all. I do this because with all the differing backgrounds of attendee’s, I want to have everybody on a level field focusing on the core points. The only non-compliant, nano-particle of realism here is that you try not to lose your balance, not to have to take one or more steps to recover it. In that sense, it is very slightly more live action than a fixed 2-man kata would be.
The sequencing is also controlled. The offender tries 3 times to unbalance the defender. Each try is one push attempt and no more. No followups or combos. A single vector that either works or doesn’t. Then the roles switch and another 3 tries, etc.
What could such a ‘nothing burger’ of a drill teach. Actually a lot if you’re open to it:
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Self Control: you have to be sensitive to your own mental, emotional and physical condition. You must “begin from zero”. The defender must not pre-empt (make an sudden motion before the push to try to pre-game it, nor must he pre-load (put weight and pressure on the other in order to establish pre-control). This aspect alone is a big but subtle feature of this drill. Can you be aware of yourself? Can you control yourself?
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Tension Awareness: If you are more relaxed than your partner, then he cannot move you in this drill, no matter how much bigger or stronger he may be. It will be impossible. Now, how you make use of your superior relaxtion may vary in practice. Sometimes you will use it to ‘ground’ or ‘root’ (make yourself feel like a rock or wall to your partner as he pushes). Other times you may use your superior relaxation to just slough off, neutralize, or minimally redirect his shove in a harmless direction. This is ‘water’ mode. But they all depend on your state of relaxation. Everybody talks about relaxation. But almost everybody is too tense. It’s easy to observe somebody and just critique them “hey relax!”. But with this exercise, your partner is wordlessly pinpointing for you (with a sucessful unbalancing push) exactly where you are too tense. Do you now begin to see the deeper values of this ‘nothing burger’?
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Transparent Power: Here’s the weirdest thing of all. In defense, you can become immovable by simple relaxation in this drill. But offense (unbalancing him) is where the real fun begins. If you are bigger or stronger, you can move him with normal physical strength. But what if he’s bigger or stronger than you? Then you need to apply the real Tai Chi internal mechanism. I call it Tai Chi power or sometimes I borrow Sagawa Yukiyoshi’s phrase “transparent power” (透明な力) for this. Yep I know real hard head martial artists have no patience for such talk. And I don’t blame them at this stage of the art and practice. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s real. You must use NO PHYSICAL STRENGTH AT ALL but yes, unbalance him, make him objectively and obviously take a rebalancing step. Actually you can do much more than that with it, you can completely uproot them, but my teacher forbid me to show more than simple foot movement to people who have no Tai Chi experience.
In my session, no attendee was able to unbalance me at all, and I demonstrated unbalancing on everybody who wanted me to try them. My art never fails me, in this very limited sense.
BUT… what does that mean? Given that every single attendee could have beat the shit out of me in a free fight. Any one of them could have trivially head butt me, sweep, trip, throw, punch, kick, choke or disabled and destroyed me in the thousands of ways that they had all just taught all weekend.
What it means is that this framework for playing with transparent power is just a hothouse toy. An education toy to be sure. But nothing more than that. However, I remain commited to the idea and the practice of continuing to pursue transparent power no matter what. Even if nobody in the world ever takes an interest. It’s too amazing a concept to give up no matter what.
My degree of “mastery” (lol) of this is like a kid’s .22 squirrel plinker compared to Master Sagawa’s .50 cal Barrett M82 rifle version. But I don’t care. I work tirelessly in that direction. To me that alone is the deepest interest of anything in martial arts.
I don’t feel my session was any huge success in demonstrating or conveying these ideas. My bad and my fault alone. However, I was slightly gratified that a surprising number of people talked to me later 1-1 and seemed kind of mystified, baffled, bemused… they were asking me: “Um, what exactly where you doing there? I’ve never quite felt that kind of dynamic before…”. I couldn’t really explain all this to them (like I have above) so I just gave a simple answer that everybody could relate to, taken from Master Kitano’s presention, when he talked about mushin (無心). No mind. That kind of satisfied those who asked.
But it isn’t quite accurate. That’s not specific enough. The real answer is ‘no power’. Drop yourself down to zero. Don’t use any strength at all to try to move him. When you give up physical strength, another totally different kind of power steps in and does the job for you. Nobody but me really believes this. Even when I demo it, while they acknowledge I can do something rather weird, still they are (quite rightfully) comforted in the knowledge that they could all beat me in a “fight”. Which is absolutely correct. Or they assume it’s just some trivial physical trick that applies to this one dumbed down drill. Let’s face it, my demo’s are seriously impovershed in the only thing that counts as the coin of the realm in real martial arts: “Immediate Combative Utility” (ICU!)
Sagawa sensei said: If you know [transparent power] you can use it against anyone without using physical force. If you find it more difficult to use on strong people, then it is not [transparent power]. What's important is learning to relax your shoulders and to build a body that doesn't tense up. My method is to lift my opponent with [transparent power], then lightly push him into an angle where a fall is inevitable. And that's how he neatly collapses. It's no good if you use physical force. Even if you manage to get him into that position by using force, he can push back. But because I don't use the least bit of force there is nothing for the opponent to resist. If you manage to throw him by using force, that isn't good enough.
And Sagawa was not talking about structure or leverage from frame either. I should have done one more of me demo's where I show that frame, or stance, or structure, or posture - none of those matter. Those are physical things, mechanical. They have no relevance to transparent power.
Despite that lack of ICU, I feel people in a way hurt themselves by closing off a super fascinating area of potential development. I feel this phenomenon could be evolved way further than we’ve taken it so far. What if people had reacted to Madam Curie’s getting a bit of needle wobble, or a faint gleam in the dark, from her radium by saying: “Oh. Huh. That’s kinda different. But I doubt you’ll ever be able destroy an entire city with a few pounds of that stuff”. LOL! Maybe it would have been better if they had reacted that way, come to think. But all this is my own fault for not being able to demo it more dramtically than I do.
Anyway I could say a lot more about my own stuff. Boring! I don’t want to leave you with that.
I want to re-emphasize what an amazing spiritual experience this Shock and Awe event was! Yes, spiritual. It was spontaneous love combustion, nothing better in the world. Therefore my profoundest gratitude to Master Lunia, Hana Shin, and Kuntal Shah - the Core Triumvirate that Made It Happen!