Reference doc　＞　The secret of traditional martial arts

Intention

Intention have power far beyond the physical dimension. It is an easy-to-understand example such as mental training of Olympic athletes and image training at a learning cram school which became a hot topic before, the former imagined that they won and on the winners podium, the latter imagines that you entered your desired school. Murphy's law also act immediately according to intuition for to realize your dream, and you imagining as possible as clearly that your dreams became true. In this way your image will be reality.
Yoga divides consciousness into three stages, these are superficial consciousness, subconsciousness, super subconsciousness. Calm the superficial consciousness by respiration method, and approaches to ubconsciousness and super subconsciousness, in the stage of subconsciousness, your image will become phenomena.
When I was continuing yoga practice before, saw the Shinkansen train passing by in the distance. At that moment I wished that a train stop there. Then the next train stopped at just "there".
I thought it was more than coincidence. This experience made me the opportunity to think about the influence of subconscious.
The first step of yoga practice is you do what all of you imagined. You have to do it even if it is disadvantageous. As you continue this way, the phenomenon will gradually changes according to your image.
I recommend you mental training from the early stage in martial arts. I watched an interesting TV program. It was the content that proves by experiment that my own mind makes fear. It is possible to exceed the limit by image force, to the contrary my mind makes the limit.
In this TV program, they were doing the same experiment as the description in The Book of Five Rings, let the subject who was blindfolded walk on two bars placed on the ground, but he can’t walk nervously because he believes he is walking 5 to 6 meters above the ground. Various information from the outside world and past experiences have a great influence on the mental action that creates limits to myself. There is meditation in yoga practice that "what is myself", my name is myself..? ... I exist even if I don’t have a name, my past experience is myself..?... Even if I forget all my experiences I will not be gone, you repeat the meditation thoroughly until you finally reach true yourself.
Everything that I usually think myself is not true myself, it is very fragile and change depending on conditions, nonetheless, we are illusioned that they are essence, and obsessed them, in that way we have limitations and we suffer. I think even in the training of Budo, there is a limit unless overcoming this proposition.


Both Budo, yoga and religion, everything that seeks road ultimately leads to the self-realization (enlightenment). It is just like the founder of Aikido reached the stage of " I am the same as the universe", he throwing away the feelings of conflict and harmonizing with the opponent, and he realized the best strength and the way of ultimate martial arts.
….. At the foot of the mountain there are many roads leading to the mountaintop, but on the summit everyone sees the same moon …. (Yagyu Shinganryu)
Superficial consciousness is constantly fluctuating by external stimulus, it is difficult to control your own mind by yourself, our mind always has a desire by the stimulation of the outside world, as I want to do that or I want to become like this etc., I think if we remove vario.us kinds of information that we believe it is ourselves in usual life, and we reach the true ourselves, we can reach the ultimate martial arts stage.

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Paradox of martial arts

There are two big paradoxes in martial arts, one is if you want to put forth your strength, then you must not put strength into your muscles. The other is that you can’t win if you think that you want to win the opponent.
The former is various related books recently, so it is relatively easy to understand, but the latter may be difficult to understand only by this word.
The consciousness want to win (ego) will make a gap in your mind, and that will be make limit to martial arts progress higher than a certain level, however, this is a case of higher than a certain level, if the level is not so high, the one with the strong ego may win.
It is necessary to practice that make it a habit to match your breathing with others.

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Is that common sense of Tai Chi?

[Tai Chi passes off the enemy's attacks] [If the enemy does not move, I will not move, if the enemy moves slightly I move to earlier than the enemy] these words are nothing special for Tai Chi Learner, but there is a problem with the interpretation of this words, in general it is understood that waiting for the enemy's attack, and if the enemy attacked, first you pass off that, and you counterattack, but this is difficult unless the big difference of ability between them.
If you think of pass off an enemy's attack, your mind and body are become the condition of waiting, it is so-called “Gote” that means to fall behind, it is difficult that to recover the mind and posture from the condition of waiting. [I move to earlier than the enemy] means detect the attack chance and you attack earlier than enemy at the moment when there is a chance, it’s called “Sen”. You have to attack by “Sen” and flexible response, then you will be able to pass off an enemy’s attacks.
There is a story that an old man passed off a strong martial artist's attack, then that martial artist was thrown out of the window, such a story is nothing special in an anecdote of martial arts.
The Book of Five Rings explains the way of initiative as follows. “The first way of taking the initiative is to attack first. The second is for your opponent to attack first. The third is for both you and your opponent to attack the same time”. These are all initiative. If you are always conscious of taking the initiative, you can see the gap you should attack at the moment the opponent attack.
At this time you can pass off the opponent’s attack, but it is not received, as a result of your attack, on the other hand you passed off an enemy's attack same time.
If you think you receive the opponent's attack first, you occurs hesitation in your mind, then you are controlled by the opponent. The Book of Five Rings explains like this. “Holding down the Pillow…..
If you think you want to receive the opponent attack, you are forestalled by the opponent”.
Then you try to taking the initiative by recognizing the gap of consciousness of the opponent.

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Chinese martial arts can’t use in actual fighting?

Whether Chinese Kung-fu (especially Tai Chi) can use in real fighting? it is still being debated. I think they have no way to approach the opponent, so that they can’t be fighting in real fight.
Most techniques of Kung-fu are supposed to a situation in after approaching an opponent, but there is no explanation for the method to approaching, because this is not something logical, so it's hard to explain with words.
In general practice method of Chinese Kung-fu, first they practice of traditional kata (Kata is solo practice of martial arts), after that they practice push and pull hand and prearranged kumite etc. Because they only practice by limit the attack of the opponent, so they can’t learn a feeling of dealing with random attacks flexibly.
A man who is said that a great master of Kung-fu by thrust away his standing disciples high, but I have seen that the great master demonstrating poor prearranged kumite. I think there are many famous master who not trained in there sense, because they only training of solo techniques.

　　　　　　　
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Training of will

For improving martial arts, it is necessary to train both body and consciousness. If you only practice Kata, and don’t practice consciousness, it is no wonder that you are not confident of actual fighting. This is like the relationship between the hardware and software of a personal computer. Even if you have good hardware, you can’t use a computer without software, like this martial arts that not training consciousness, can’t be used in actual fighting. For to use martial arts in actual fighting, it is necessary to train consciousness (software) at the same level (or more) as the training of the body (hardware).
From the some stage of martial arts, I feel that the proportion of consciousness level is very high for methods for progress. Bruce Lee said, "A martial artist who does not sparring is like a swimmer who does not enter the water," I think Martial art that is biased only to practice Kata is like an inexperienced driver who is practicing only at the course of the driving school. Unless drive on the street, we can’t acquire ability for make an accurate snap judgment on various dangers.

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The spiritual basis for martial arts

If you want to training of consciousness, you should be done free style sparring as many times, but not everybody can do free style sparring enough to apply the style of Kung-fu. There are disadvantages to the free style sparring as follows.

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Problems of Free Sparring

* Many people learning martial arts can’t move like traditional Kung-fu, (It takes time can do it), they can’t use the techniques of traditional Kung-fu in free sparring. * The difference in physique have a great influence on free sparring.
Physique is one of the very important elements of martial arts as with speed, sensation, technique, etc. so the difference in physique have a great influence when the stage of other elements are not acquired.
* If their level is not high, they care much about winning or losing, more than awareness to improve the level of technology
* It takes long time to get the sense of martial arts, so even if they practice free sparring before that level, it’s just get a fight.
* It’s easy to get injured.
A person who is very sensitive to fear and pain can’t practice. (fear and pain needs to be overcome gradually. Practice free sparring from the beginning is the same as to push off a person who can’t swim into water, He will become more fearful and will not be able to continue practice martial arts).
Consciousness of seniority becomes an obstacle. When you practice free sparring with your teacher or seniors, if you with diffidence, or if you don’t want practicing partners to hurt so you don’t to use force on them, but as a result you become inferior and you feel like you lost. In this case, teacher or seniors have the illusion that they became strong with practice with a partner who don’t to use force on them.
What should we do for to solve these problems and for anyone can to practice consciousness? To do that, it is necessary to practice for efficiently learning elements such as sparring and mental training one by one.
It is a problem to start free sparring from the beginning, In particular, there are many people who imagine the mysterious strength of Kung-fu, so there are few people who practice for a long time if they feel fear and pain during practice.
I remember the chief editor of Chinese martial arts magazine was sorry about that if there is no mysterious content readers' response is very bad.

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Free sparring and protector

There are sparring with protectors and sparring with no protectors. It is better to practice with hard protectors at the beginning, and when you get used to free sparring, change it to a light protector. Free sparring with no protectors is necessary to learn a feeling of real fighting, but it is dangerous to do it only.
Sparring with no protectors is violent person become dominant the other person, so this type of sparring give violent person an illusion that he become strong. Most people will not be able to attack with a strong force because they don’t want to hurt their sparring partner, and they will be halfway attacks. If you only practice sparring with no protectors, you only practice with sparring partner who attacks with a light force, and you thinking that you can use your technique in real fighting. This is very dangerous.
I saw UFC match on TV before, there is a Kung-fu master who has not experienced real fighting participated in UFC, this match was a terrible result, it is typical of this pattern.
Even if we practice sparring with no protectors, not everyone can acquire a fighting sense, and as I mentioned in the preceding paragraph, there is a disadvantage that the person who is not violent has the bad aftertaste as lost.
Sparring needs to do with various circumstances, such as bare hands versus bare hands, bare hands versus weapons, weapons versus weapons, one to one and one to many, and it is never wasteful to have experiences by changing situations such as place, clothing, belongings, brightness, mental condition, etc.

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Setting the position in sparring

Beginners should avoid as much as possible in setting the same position with sparring partner, especially when beginner of the same level practice free sparring, that sparring must not anything like that they stick to winning or losing.
It is important not to stick to winning or losing, but to make a situations that you can practice with conscious improvement of technology. (for example, we should give conditions such as one person striking positively etc.)
In free sparring, if you attitude and feeling of being able to counterattack instantly against any attack of the sparring partner, the partner feels it, and he becomes unable to make a decision how to attack. If the sparring partner can’t make a decision how to attack, you will become unable to know what kind of attack your sparring partner will do. Then you will nervous, and your consciousness become not free.
It is important that your consciousness is always relaxed and kept focused. Traditional Jiu jutsu master teaching us, that when you confront the enemy, you have to like see the hazy mountain.

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About stances

It is not a good idea to let enemies know that you have an experience of martial arts. If an enemy thinks you are weak, you can easily attack him.
Especially it is the worst that you take a fighting stance against the enemy who has weapons. If you don’t take a fighting stance, the enemy's attack will limited to a certain extent.
When actually encounter a dangerous scene, if you have no confidence, you might pretend not to be afraid, but a wise man never courts danger. If you can avoid you should avoid.
Please remember it is superiority of the martial arts that to finish without fighting. I want to cultivate feelings to harmonize with opponents through practice.

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Practice of respond to weapons attacks

You have been practicing using a imitation knife for a long time, even if you change the imitation knife to a real knife or kitchen knife, you will become only see them as imitation knives.

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Purpose of practice

When you practice sparring, it is important to recognize what is the purpose of practice. Even with the same exercise, the effect will vary greatly depending on what you are targeting.
Also, in sparring sometimes they use cheap tricks are hit well, if it goes a couple of times, they will come to think that next time do this again. It is not bad to make such a special techniques of yourselves at the first stage, but if they keeping these styles for long time it will hinder there progress. If you think that "if sparring partner attacks like this, I respond like this", then your consciousness will be fixed to sparring partner’s movements, You can’t respond flexibly to the sparring partner's attack.

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The problem of sparring which is likely with the beginners

They close their eyes against the opponent's attack.
They can’t step on. They take the most dangerous position (distance) because they are not stepped on. It is difficult to close the distance if they don’t overcome fear. “Below the sword is hell, once you step forward, there is paradise” (Yagyushrinkageryu).
They hold out their hand halfway against the opponent's attack.
They go forward only in the upper body and it easy to waist drawn. Israel's Krav Maga changed this state into a valid attack, this style is similar to Sunbinquan too.

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Throwing techniques

In the case of throwing techniques, beginners often hesitate to get in with the opponent, so they can't use throwing techniques.
You should move immediately to a position where you can lose balance of the opponent, but beginners use force try to break opponents who have kept their center of gravity yet, because the opponent resists his force.
It is said that you should step on to the middle with the word of Kung-fu. In the case of throwing techniques it is important to step down to the middle of the opponent and lose their balance. This is point of throwing techniques.
It is important you don't to put effort into the part that contact with the opponent, you should relax as much as possible, and use the force from the ground try to lose opponent's center, or you can drop your center of gravity into the ground. Both of them you should with consciousness to lose the opponent's center.
It is also likely with the beginners, that they often push the opponent linearly. In this case, because the opponent to resist their power subconsciously, they collides with each other.
If you want to throw opponent, you have to use force in two or three directions at the same time, then the opponent don't resists unconsciously.
One direction is a straight line. Two directions are circle, it is use vertical power and horizontal power at the same time. Next this becomes three directions, it changes into a three-dimensional circle, it is a spiral movement. It is important, that you don’t try to move in a spiral. If you move spirally, a force like a straight line is applied to the part in contact with the opponent, as a result the opponent to resist your power.
It is necessary to ensure that the result of simultaneous movements in different directions power such as pushing, sinking, pulling left and right has helical directionality.

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Upper body and lower body move simultaneously

The first thing you have to mind when you start learning martial arts is to synchronize movement of hands and legs with rotation of waist.
Basically, when the right waist comes forward, the right knee, right shoulder, right hand go forward at the same time, if it is the left waist the reverse. You should both hands slightly curved and sink both shoulders and push the both scapulae forward. If you can move like this, for example, you can passes off the opponent's attack to the right hand, and attack the opponent with left hand at the same time.
And also the thing you have to mind is that you have to conscious of your center. If you always practice with consciousness of your center, you are able to have the foundation of martial arts power.

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