The Power of Randori

RANDORI is a term used in the Japan­ese Mar­tial Arts (JMA) to describe free fight­ing train­ing. The term lit­er­ally means “Choas Taking” or “Grasp­ing Free­dom,” imply­ing a free­dom from the struc­tured prac­tice of KIHON WAZA “Essen­tial Tech­niques” or KATA “Two per­son self defense pat­terns.” Ran­dori may be con­trasted with Kihon Waza and Kata, as three poten­tially com­ple­men­tary types of training.

Enter the Year of the Dragon

Today, Jan­u­ary 23rd 2012 is the first day of the Chi­nese New Year. It is the Year of the Yang Water DRAGON.

Accord­ing to mythol­ogy, the begin­ning of Chi­nese New Year started with the fight against a myth­i­cal beast called the NIAN. Nian would come on the first day of New Year to eat live­stock, crops, and even vil­lagers, espe­cially chil­dren. To pro­tect them­selves, the vil­lagers would put food in front of their doors at the begin­ning of every year. It was believed that after the Nian ate the food they pre­pared, it wouldn’t attack any more peo­ple. One time, peo­ple saw that the Nian was scared away by a lit­tle child wear­ing red. The vil­lagers then under­stood that the Nian was afraid of the color red. Hence, every time when the New Year was about to come, the vil­lagers would hang red lanterns and red spring scrolls on win­dows and doors. Peo­ple also used fire­crack­ers to frighten away the Nian. From then on, Nian never came to the vil­lage again.

Arm Yourself With the Ultimate Weapon

I’m often asked “What pro­tec­tion tool should I arm myself with?” After a few qual­i­fy­ing ques­tions I might answer: a Kub­otan key chain, a Comtech Stinger II, a Tanto fold­ing knife, OC Spray, a Glock 21, Saiga 12 or Ak-47. What I really want to say, even though many peo­ple are not open to it is; You should always arm your­self with the ulti­mate weapon: AWARENESS.

Invisibility=Survivability

The Ninja fam­i­lies of feu­dal Japan devel­oped what is per­haps the ulti­mate sur­vival strat­egy, INVISIBILITY. Invis­i­bil­ity is the most proac­tive of all the sur­vival strate­gies avail­able to us. If your enemy does not per­ceive you as being either a threat or a tar­get, he will never attack you. What more effec­tive way to pro­tect your­self than to sim­ply be invis­i­ble to those that would harm you. Yes, it’s impor­tant to have viable per­sonal pro­tec­tion skills and to have pre-emptive strike abil­ity, but  truly the most skill­ful way to pro­tect our­selves is sim­ple not being where the dan­ger is or not appear­ing to be a threat or tar­get to our enemies.

What Is Comprehensive Personal Protection?

I’ve recently had a Gestalt like epiphany. Most mar­tial artists have no idea what I’m talk­ing about when I say “Real­ity Based Self Defense” or “Com­plete Mar­tial Arts.” I base this new found under­stand­ing on numer­ous emails from my read­ers. I decided to make a list of the major com­po­nents of what a truly com­pre­hen­sive big pic­ture real life per­sonal pro­tec­tion pro­gram must include.

Here it is…

Sigung Paul Vunak’s Contemporary JKD

I’ve been a fan of Sigung Paul Vunak ever since I watched his first Pan­ther JKD/FMA Videos that were released  in 1986. I dis­tinctly remem­ber watch­ing his now often imi­tated knife cut­ting demon­stra­tion. Sigung Vunak hung a big chunk of meat from a line and cut it with a knife. It demon­strated quite vis­cer­ally how dan­ger­ous a sin­gle knife cut could be, as well as how impor­tant it is to have viable edged weapon sur­vival skills. A very impor­tant les­son for every­one to learn.

The U.S. Marine Mindfulness Meditation Program

It thrills me to no end to find out things like that the U.S. Army has a full time Acupunc­ture clinic at one of their hos­pi­tals, or the the U.S. Marine Corps is study­ing the effects of mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion on Marines being deployed into combat.

What’s even more fas­ci­nat­ing is that VIPASSANA BHAVANA “Insight Med­i­ta­tion” also known as Mind­ful­ness Med­i­ta­tion is the sys­tem devised by The Bud­dha him­self to help human­ity tran­scend suf­fer­ing. There’s def­i­nitely no ques­tion of reli­gious con­ver­sion though, The Bud­dha didn’t found a reli­gion, but instead taught a way out of suf­fer­ing by the skill­ful use of our minds through med­i­ta­tive awareness.

Full Contact?

I received sev­eral emails about my recent blog post enti­tled “FULL CONTACT!” I would like to clar­ify my thoughts on mak­ing con­tact with your train­ing part­ner so as to con­di­tion your­self to actu­ally hit your attacker in a real life fight.

Sev­eral read­ers were con­cerned that if they trained “Full Con­tact,” their stu­dents would be injured and they would lose busi­ness because of this. I’m most def­i­nitely NOT say­ing that you should turn your train­ing ses­sions, classes or sem­i­nars into an all out MMA steel cage match. What I am say­ing is that if you want to develop func­tional per­sonal pro­tec­tion skills you have to train your­self and your stu­dents to ‘stick to and blast through’ your tar­get by using slam­ming like dynamics.

Dr. John M. Landry Joins Full Contact

One of my long time avid read­ers, Dr.John M. Landry, just joined the staff of authors at FULL CONTACT, military.com’s Self Defense blog. His first post enti­tled “How To Be A Samu­rai Cop: The Bushido Code On America’s Streets” is great. I highly rec­om­mend that you read it.

Dr.Landry has been train­ing in the mar­tial arts since 1974, is a Law Enforce­ment Offi­cer and Trainer, a senior mem­ber of the U.S. Air Force Aux­il­iary Civil Air Patrol and has also has earned a Doc­tor­ate degree in Edu­ca­tion and a Mas­ter of Sci­ence degree in Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Administration.

Be a No Preference Warrior

Adapt­abil­ity and Flow are two of the most impor­tant psy­cho­log­i­cal attrib­utes of a war­rior. To be truly adapt­able we need to have no preferences. And how do we have no pref­er­ences? Accept every­thing that comes your way.

If some­one is ver­bally assail­ing you, stay in the moment and don’t pre­fer to be any where else. Don’t take any­thing he says personally. If he kicks you, he kicks you, don’t be for or against it. Go with it, flow with it and do what you need to do to be safe. If he punches you relax, go with it. Move in an appro­pri­ate way where you can counter strike from a posi­tion of power. If he shoots in for a take down stay calm, accept it and counter it with equa­nim­ity. If the fight goes to the ground embrace it, go with it not just with your body but in your mind as well. Allow your mind to be like a mir­ror reflect­ing every­thing, yet untouched by anything.