Archive for August, 2011

Why Deanimate Your Attacker?

I received thirty five com­ments about my “No Warn­ing or Wound­ing Shots” post. It seems that sev­eral of my read­ers did not under­stand the con­cept of DEANIMATING your attacker(s). This is not some “Orwellian Dou­ble Speak,” it’s actu­ally very impor­tant from  neuro lin­guis­tic, eth­i­cal, legal, strate­gic and tac­ti­cal perspectives.

The word and con­cept of “dean­i­ma­tion” is not my own, I learned it twenty three years ago from my first firearms instruc­tor, the leg­endary John Far­nam, while going through the body­guard train­ing course at Exec­u­tive Secu­rity Inter­na­tional (ESI).

Psychological Hurricane Preparedness

With Hur­ri­cane Irene scream­ing its way toward the East Coast of the United States, I thought it would be good to review some of the things that we could do to psy­cho­log­i­cally pre­pare for the impend­ing hur­ri­cane. To phys­i­cally pre­pare for a hur­ri­cane you want to evac­u­ate to high ground away from the shore, make sure that your car is in good work­ing order and totally fueled up, have enough water for at least three days, stock up on food that needs no prepa­ra­tion like sports bars and trail mix etc. Unfor­tu­nately, no one ever talks about the men­tal prepa­ra­tion needed to sur­vive a nat­ural disaster.

Ninjutsu’s Secret Writings

The essence of all mar­tial arts and mil­i­tary strate­gies is self-protection and the pre­ven­tion of dan­ger. Nin­jutsu epit­o­mizes the fullest con­cept of self-protection through mar­tial train­ing in that the ninja art deals with the pro­tec­tion of not only the phys­i­cal body, but the mind and spirit as well. The way of the ninja is the way of endur­ing, sur­viv­ing, and pre­vail­ing over all that would destroy one. More than merely deliv­er­ing strikes and slashes, and deeper in sig­nif­i­cance than the sim­ple out-witting of an enemy; nin­jutsu is the way of attain­ing that which we need while mak­ing the world a bet­ter place. The skill of the ninja is the art of winning.

What Is The Oldest Japanese Martial Art?

Many teach­ers of NIHON KORYU BUJUTSU “Japan­ese Old School Mar­tial Arts” claim that their art alone is the old­est of all Japan­ese Mar­tial Arts (JMA). Some of them, at first seem to have a good case for this claim. The legit­i­macy of their lin­eage charts have been cor­rob­o­rated by the top schol­ars in the field and their arts are men­tioned in his­tor­i­cal records made by inde­pen­dent his­to­ri­ans not directly asso­ci­ated with their school. Some Ryuha legit­i­mately do stretch back over a thou­sand years into Japan­ese history.

No Warning or Wounding Shots

One of my read­ers recently told me about a case where a women fired a “warn­ing shot” at a would be attacker who may have had a knife and is now being threat­ened with arrest by the police. Appar­ently, the would be attacker was scared away by the warn­ing shot. Although the warn­ing shot tac­tic seems to have worked in this instance, warn­ing shots in gen­eral are a very bad idea. Let’s exam­ine why.

Ninja Combat Survival Psychology

There’s a con­cept in authen­tic Ninja Mar­tial Arts train­ing known as SHINSHIN SHINGAN, which lit­er­ally means “god eyes, god mind,” a good translit­er­a­tion into Eng­lish is “Obtain­ing the mind and eyes of God.” this con­cept can be found in the scrolls of both Gyokko Ryu Koshi­jutsu and Togakure Ryu Ninpo.

At first this may seem like a reli­gious idea, even a blas­phe­mous one by West­ern stan­dards. How­ever, it most def­i­nitely is not. The ancient Japan­ese under­stand­ing of “God” or “Gods” is much more in line with con­cepts of ele­men­tal shamanic cul­tures through­out the world. It pre­dates the West­ern monothe­is­tic idea, or more accu­rately the Mid­dle East­ern con­cept of the One True God, by thou­sands of years. The Japan­ese notion of Shin (as in Shinto) or  KAMI “Spirit” has more to do with an intu­itive shamanic under­stand­ing, appre­ci­a­tion and rev­er­ence for the nat­ural world then the Mid­dle East­ern con­cept of a sin­gle cre­ator of the universe.

The Cold Steel Ti-Lite Tactical Folding Knives

The Cold Steel TI-LITE line of tac­ti­cal fold­ing knives evoke the sleek speed and rebel­lious lines of the clas­sic 1950’s-styled switch­blade, like the one used by Clint East­wood in the orig­i­nal “Dirty Harry” film. Unlike most switch­blades how­ever, the 4″ ver­sions are legal to carry nearly every­where within the United States. They fea­ture Japan­ese made AUS 8A stain­less steel blades with a bead blast fin­ish, razor sharp edges and sturdy, nee­dle sharp points. The CNC milled han­dles are forged from super tough 7075 Alu­minum bil­lets and are given an attrac­tive bead blast sur­face and fin­ished with a pro­tec­tive EDP (Elec­tric Dis­charge Plat­ing) coat­ing. There’s also two less expen­sive ver­sions made with super tough Zytel han­dles. For max­i­mum strength and safety, the Ti-Lites are equipped with a patent pend­ing, stain­less steel leaf spring lock, proven, in tests, to hold 130 lbs.

Flash Mob Attacks: The New Terrorism

There’s a new wave of crime hap­pen­ing around the world and you need to pre­pare for it now.

You may have heard of pre-arranged “flash mobs” where invi­ta­tions to silly events are spread virally through Face­book, Twit­ter, and text messaging.

Nor­mally, this would mean a harm­less sur­prise pil­low fight in a down­town square.

Except No Substitutes!

I very rarely go on any of the dozens and dozens of dif­fer­ent online mar­tial arts forums, I’d much rather use the time to actual train, instead of read­ing about peo­ple argu­ing about train­ing. Every once and a while though I’ll be research­ing a cer­tain topic and the search will turn up a link to a con­ver­sa­tion on one of the boards. One of the most com­monly asked ques­tions is “where can some­one find a train­ing group or school for a spe­cific art in their area?” I came across this very ques­tion in regards to authen­tic Ninja Mar­tial Arts train­ing the other day. The per­son wanted to know if there was any­one teach­ing Bujinkan Budo Tai­jutsu in his area. Appar­ently there wasn’t. Some­one sug­gested that until he could get to Japan, he should train in Judo and if he wanted strik­ing train­ing, he should train in (West­ern) Box­ing. I couldn’t agree LESS!

The Majapahit Martial Arts

Photo from Kali Majapahit

I’ve done quite exten­sive research into the Asian Mar­tial Arts. When I first began to research the Fil­ipino and Indone­sian Mar­tial Arts I was per­plexed at how many sim­i­lar­i­ties there were between the var­i­ous sys­tems of the two coun­tries. One of my good friends and stu­dents was also a senior instruc­tor in the Fil­ipino Mar­tial Arts. He had a huge col­lec­tion of Fil­ipino and Indone­sian Mar­tial Arts videos, which he hap­pily lent to me. It was fas­ci­nat­ing to me how many of the empty hand tech­niques of Fil­ipino Kali, Escrima and Arnis de Mano looked like the empty hand tech­niques of Indone­sian Pen­t­jak Silat and Kun­tao. Along those same lines, the stick and knife fight­ing meth­ods of Indone­sia bear a strik­ing resem­blance to many of the weaponry meth­ods of the Philip­pine Islands. When I began to deepen my research I dis­cov­ered that that cen­turies ago the islands that make up the present day coun­tries of the Philip­pines and Indone­sia were part of a vast empire known as the Majapahit.