How to Put Out a Candle Using the Martial Arts!
[I:http://www.weightlossdietinformation.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/AlCase23.jpg]I can put out a candle with a martial arts technique at about two feet now. This article is about the techniques I use. I\’m hoping other people out there will want to share their methods, and we can all experience improvement at this little trick.
Now, just to be clear, it is a trick, but there are benefits behind the trick. Mental concentration skyrockets, and you learn different things about how to use the body. The body and the mind are things that we have barely begun to understand.
First, I learned the cheap shot of putting out a candle. If you flick the finger in front of the flame, the flick is enough to rob the flame of oxygen. Try it, just hold the hand a few inches back, then flick the finger as if you are flicking off water, as if you are merely snapping the fingers, and focus it on the flame.
Next, I worked on the method of stopping the fist right in front of the flame. While there is mental focus involved in doing it this way, it is still a simple rob the flame of oxygen trick. You are robbing oxygen, not projecting any kind of serious chi power, but it takes mental control of the body to make it work.
You have to be able to stop the movement of the body precisely, exactly, and with no shake or shiver. This leads one to the conclusion that it is not just the muscles involved in this thing, but control of muscle, that is important. All those hours of standing in a horse stance in front of a candle do have a very real physical blessing, but it is the mental benefit that is of most value.
When I put out a candle at two feet I use a tai chi posture which is labeled Brush Knee, and I work on shifting weight, turning hips, and using all parts of the body to do so. The most important thing, the thing that showed me gradual and increasing success, was to take all the energy out of what I was doing. I do it karate style, and I learned to use less physical effort and more mental focus, I do it tai chi style, and my success comes when I can take almost all energy out of the body and move the body from outside.
Yeah, it takes me a while, but as I remove energy from my body, concentrate on not snapping muscle, but emptying frame, I tend to get a little back of my body. I\’m not out, a floating, disembodied intelligence wafting through the universe, just a little removed, comfortably removed, seeing my body from a viewpoint a little behind my eyes. The patience and mental resources are quite pitched at this point, because I am trying to move a body without using muscle, except at the lightest points.
I still encounter problems with the method I am using. In spite of the mental sharpness I am building, it doesn\’t feel efficient. Also, there seems to be a limit to the effective distance I am able to put out a candle at, and I can\’t get beyond about three feet. But at least I am experiencing limited success, and time and patience and resolved efforts will give me more.
Al Case has taught martial arts for over forty+ years. He has written dozens of articles and had his own column in Inside Karate. If you want to learn learn more about hitting harder in the martial arts, pick up his free ebook at Monster Martial Arts.
How to Use Yoga to Master the True Martial Art
[I:http://www.weightlossdietinformation.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/AlCase26.jpg]There are two paths to take when one studies the martial arts. These directions are art and sport. One of these methods leads straight to decay, the other leads, ultimately, to enlightenment.
If one studies the martial arts simply as a sport, he engages in the fact of contest, and that actually defines the difference between sport and art. If one studies the martial arts as an artistic form, he is attempting to conquer the part of him which resists and fights. Subdue the self, or subdue another, these are the differences between sport and art.
If one is attempting to subdue another, he is holding the world responsible for his problems, fighting the world, not taking responsibility for what he does. Wether the accumulation of wealth, or just trying to beat somebody through a violent contest, the student is not using the art the way it was designed, as a mirror for the soul. It is the soul, the individual, the spirit, the I AM that is what the martial arts are all about, not the smacking down of somebody else.
When one is doing the art as sport, he is making a strong body, and then risking that body to destruction. When one is doing the art as art, he is obsessed with finding out the truth about himself. He is engaged in defining what impulse is behind the muscle and quiver of fighting.
This all said, the True Martial Way can be defined by analyzing the degree of motion within the art. A young man practices Karate and Shaolin and that excessive type of motion. As the student ages, he may move into taiji, slowing his motion down, looking at it, trying to understand his every action.
Eventually, man becomes tired, still, and begins to think about what it all means. At this point he has become motionless, a person who watches the movement of the universe, and this is where he finds the truth. In motionlessness, he sees the truth of who is behind all motion.
When one does Yoga one is exercising, making the body strong, but not through mock fighting. This does create a weakness, as the universe is motion, and we should study motion to understand life. That one weakness aside, yoga does encourage progression to the heart of the matter.
Putting the body in postures, breathing, watching, we slowly become aware of who is doing the watching, who is creating the posture. We find the I AM that is behind all the motion of the universe, and thus we become spiritual, souls, individuals unique and creative and filled with passion. We could wait, and grow old, or we could pursue violence until we run out of violence, or, we could just accelerate the process with yoga, through posture and slow breathing, and find out who we really are.
Al Case has studied the martial arts for 4O plus+ years. He has written for the magazines,, including his own column, Case Histories. He is the developer of Matrixing Technology and Neutronics. You can get a free ebook at his website, Monster Martial Arts.
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The Effect of the Lensmen on Martial Arts
[I:http://www.weightlossdietinformation.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/AlCase22.jpg]Many of the martial arts, like karate are fiction. Slam somebody on the nose with a palm and bone shards will spear into his brain and kill him, except there isn\’t any bone in the nose, its all cartilage. And all those old legends, a lot of them are good for washing the hog, if you have a willing hog.
But, there is a certain science that has proven true in the martial arts. This is the science of how to use geometrical energy potentials. I discovered this field while reading a series of books called the Lensmen Series.
I suppose the first time it hit me was when E. E. Smith, the author, described spacemen fighting on the hull of a space ship. They were hooking their feet under hand grips so they would not fly into space when they hit somebody. They were anchoring themselves so they could apply force, and not have the force dislodge them.
Soon I was wrapped in a universe where weapons created geometries of force. If a death ray was a rod like beam, it could be deflected by a shield. And if a shield could deflect, then a shield sheared sideways could slice into the first shield.
Soon I was enraptured by concepts of fleets of space ships creating their own particular brand of strategic logics. Fleets of space ships would form globes around other fleets, and cones of fleets of spaceships would engulf and swallow globes of fleets. Each time a geometry was described, my mind struggled to keep up with the concepts.
Then, shock of shocks, fleets of spaceships gave way to the powers of the mind. Those same rods and shields and globes and cones, made real in the ultimate space combat, became the stuff of mind to mind encounters. How do you slide your awareness through the grid of another minds awareness?
And, ultimately, having exhausted the books, I began extending those outer space alien mind combat strategies to the field of the martial arts. I sank my weight into deep horse stances, planted my stance so I would not fly away from my own force. I described cones with the movements of my arms, and engulfed the globes of fists as they flew out of space at me.
When I tell people about this they generally think I am a bit crazy, or they know me a genius. Reading sci fi for inspiration, who would have thought. Yet, isn\’t the martial arts an art, and shouldn\’t it be filled with creativity and expression and beams of force and mind to mind conflicts?
Al Case has examined martial arts for 40 years. A writer for the magazines, he is the creator of Matrixing Technology. You can find out about Matrixing by getting his free ebook at Monster Martial Arts.
categories: martial arts,karate,kung fu,shaolin,ninjitsu,aikido,gung fu,wudan,shorin ryu,uechi ryu,wado ryu,shito ryu,self defense
