Beatings that I liked?

[EdwardA]

I started at 14 (1968), but skipped a couple years. A bit later, I was watching Bruce Lee and Tv’s Kung Fu (David Caridine was a trained dancer, but the show had a lot of technical advisors to make it more authentic). I was buying books on Wing Chun, Hung Gar, Tai Kuan Do and a few other things. I spent a lot of effort to get info about JKD. I also met a guy practicing Tai Chi and started following along with him when he did his 108 move set, which was late, every night in a gazebo downtown. Nobody was around. I was just piecing things together anyway I could. When I went back to my instructor, I must’ve been about 19. I had developed enough, so when I showed up at his school, his students couldn’t get inside on me to use what they were best at. I was fast, but was only good at outside fighting and knew nothing about inside fighting. I was able to keep people from getting inside on me because of my speed and mostly straight-line offense.

After a while as I started getting better at defense and starting getting some skill, he started telling me, “it’s 3/4s mental and 1/4 physical.” Admittedly I was a bit perplexed about this, but he told me over and over. Shortly after that, and after teaching us some breathing exercises, he would put a couple of us into our stance with our arms out while we practiced a specific breathing exercise. Then he started beating us with double-sticks and open-hand, only hard enough to leave a little bruising and some welts, but not a lot. He knew how to do this. He spent a lot of time with me on this, and it didn’t take very long before it became more like a massage that did no damage to me at all. I enjoyed it and the process I’d gone through.

Here’s how I define the mental process I went through during the beatings.

When somebody hits you, you’re offended. This causes you to resist and dwell on the idea, and the energy inflicted on you. As a result, you hold on to it and it actually does more damage to you. The whole thing is bouncing around in your mind because you didn’t let go of the offence. At some point in this exercise, you start to relax and except the blows as not offensive, and it goes right through you, doing nothing. You don’t dwell on it. It doesn’t stick in your mind, and does little or nothing to you.

It also worked. I’ve been hit a few times in fights and even sucker-punched twice. It does nothing to me, but I move faster, more seriously.

I have to put a disclaimer here. There are not absolutes. There are people out there that can break what they hit. Whether you felt it or not, you’d know it. I haven’t been hit much in fights, more glancing blows if at all. And the good news is, for the most part my instructor hit me harder a couple of times, than anybody has in a real fight.

 

[geezer]

I started at 14 (1968)...

So we can assume that you are around 66 now. That struck me because when you were 14 in 1968, I was 13, and at that time I only practiced wrestling. I have tried to keep in shape aver the years, but the years do take a toll. At 66 I doubt you could whether a solid punch the way you could have when you were ten or twenty years younger. I know I can't.

As you said, there are no absolutes ...except one ...that eventually we succumb to the effects of time.

 

[EdwardA]

So we can assume that you are around 66 now. That struck me because when you were 14 in 1968, I was 13, and at that time I only practiced wrestling. I have tried to keep in shape aver the years, but the years do take a toll. At 66 I doubt you could whether a solid punch the way you could have when you were ten or twenty years younger. I know I can't.

As you said, there are no absolutes ...except one ...that eventually we succumb to the effects of time.

You're right about that, of course. I turn 65 in September. The last time I took a solid punch I was 40. One of the sucker-punches I referred to. The guy that did it was a 300Lb, stocky, big guy. Knocked me down and I was right back up. He had a lot of friends, so I was thrown out of the bar. I stopped drinking and bar fighting in 1997.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to take a punch like that now.

I am in very good condition tho. I just built my own house by myself, with my own hands, even the foundation...dug it myself.

I still train, just differently, but still like the heavy bag. I've learned a lot. I had a confrontation with a banger two years ago. I know the tattoes. When I get real calm and my posture changes. There's something people see in me, when that happens that people want no part of. He was by himself...started to throw a punch but pulled it back and walked away. ....I've done this several times.

I had a guy tell me once, "you know why nobody messes with you, because you're the ugliest MFer around.". He wasn't talking about my looks.

 

[EdwardA]

So I have tried to keep in shape aver the years, but the years do take a toll. At 66 I doubt you could whether a solid punch the way you could have when you were ten or twenty years younger.

Here's an example of how it works in every day Life, even now. A couple weeks ago I filled up my car and put it back in my garage. I crouched down to put ethenol stabilizer in the gas tank. When I stood up I caught the sharp corner of a shelf right in the temple. I hit it pretty hard. In the first half second, I was pissed I'd done it...offended. It really hurt and was beginning to swell. In the second, half second I realized how I was reacting and cleared it out of my head (attitude, emotion, vision changed). As soon as I did, the swelling stopped and the pain ended.... immediately. Just a cut left. I'd say it's a bit like pretending it never happened, but that's a shallow discription.

 

[dvcochran]

Here's an example of how it works in every day Life, even now. A couple weeks ago I filled up my car and put it back in my garage. I crouched down to put ethenol stabilizer in the gas tank. When I stood up I caught the sharp corner of a shelf right in the temple. I hit it pretty hard. In the first half second, I was pissed I'd done it...offended. It really hurt and was beginning to swell. In the second, half second I realized how I was reacting and cleared it out of my head (attitude, emotion, vision changed). As soon as I did, the swelling stopped and the pain ended.... immediately. Just a cut left. I'd say it's a bit like pretending it never happened, but that's a shallow discription.

It is much better to put the stabilizer in before you fill up. That way it mixes throughout the tank and entire fuel system. Pouring it in the full tank of a parked car is going to do anything at all.

As far as the rest of the story; hmmm.

 

[EdwardA]

It is much better to put the stabilizer in before you fill up. That way it mixes throughout the tank and entire fuel system. Pouring it in the full tank of a parked car is going to do anything at all.

As far as the rest of the story; hmmm.

Sure, I just don't like keeping the bottle of stabilizer in my car.

My point of the story is that you can effect the physical by controlling your mind. Bruce Lee talked about "content of emotion.". There's been a coulpe 1000 years of various pholosiphys, like the Tao, Zen, in Hindu pholosiphys and elsewhere, that discuss this. Various forms of meditations. I was introduced to it by my instuctor via the format I mentioned in the first post. I've seen real world results, which I'm attempting to tell people about.

Maybe I'm putting in too much detail for people to read, or explaining it poorly?

 

[dvcochran]

Sure, I just don't like keeping the bottle of stabilizer in my car.

My point of the story is that you can effect the physical by controlling your mind. Bruce Lee talked about "content of emotion.". There's been a coulpe 1000 years of various pholosiphys, like the Tao, Zen, in Hindu pholosiphys and elsewhere, that discuss this. Various forms of meditations. I was introduced to it by my instuctor via the format I mentioned in the first post. I've seen real world results, which I'm attempting to tell people about.

Maybe I'm putting in too much detail for people to read, or explaining it poorly?

It is a very difficult subject to casually broach, even on a martial arts specific website. There has been so much of this philosophy explained and so many false claims debunked that most people understand that much of it is/was temporal and the rest is just old fashioned common sense and good living.
All that said do I believe in the power of positive Or negative thinking? You bet I do. Do I think it can move 'mountains'? Figuratively, certainly. Physically, no.
So please do not try to introduce a bunch of mysticism crap into the conversation(s).

 

[EdwardA]

It is a very difficult subject to casually broach, even on a martial arts specific website. There has been so much of this philosophy explained and so many false claims debunked that most people understand that much of it is/was temporal and the rest is just old fashioned common sense and good living.
All that said do I believe in the power of positive Or negative thinking? You bet I do. Do I think it can move 'mountains'? Figuratively, certainly. Physically, no.
So please do not try to introduce a bunch of mysticism crap into the conversation(s).

Mountains, mysticism? How was I talking about that. It doesn't seem like you read what posted. I was only talking about a very simple way of disciplining your thoughts to control your own reaction to things. How is that mountains or mysticism?

It's ok, you don't have to discuss it if you don't want to.

 

[EdwardA]

So we can assume that you are around 66 now. That struck me because when you were 14 ...

I turned 65 a couple days ago....talked to my 'sis and we may have moved to SoCal in 1969, not 1968.