Kick-Ass is a fun Movie

I don't know if this is really the kind of movie I'm supposed to review, but I do recommend Kick-Ass to anyone who likes teen comedy with lots of fighting.  For what it is, it is actually a great movie.  Lots of surprises and twists.  If you are one of those people who has trouble seeing film violence as fantasy, you won't like it.  But if you think Kill Bill was high art, you will!

Teaching, Guilt, But the Shows Must Go On

My regular readers deserve some sort of explanation about why I haven't been blogging much. I do hope to get back to regular posts soon.

First of all I'm busy teaching.  Lots of kids classes.  My advanced students are doing a mini-tour of schools and centers with a DeYoung Museum sponsored show for the public on Thursday May 13th at the Band Shell in Golden Gate Park around 1 PM.  It looks like we are head-lining because my kids put on such a good show last year.  Or maybe it was just an accident.  Anyway it should be fun.  Part of our show is a group fight scene and... we have 10 year olds with swords.

I'm also presenting a paper and teaching a workshop at the Daoism Conference in LA, June 4th... at the moment my paper is titled: Theater, Exorcism, Ritual and the Martial Arts.

Also I've been doing nothing but reading and sleeping on Saturdays for the last two months.  At 40 I realized that guilt was a primary motivator for me.  As a self-employed enthusiast, I always have something I feel guilty about not having started or finished yet.  So I decided to invert that.  I committed to doing absolutely no work on Saturdays.  Now I feel guilty if I try to do even a little work on my day of rest.  It's like, my job to lay on the couch.

I'm still looking for a space to teach evening classes and I'm looking to create my own after-school program for next school year.

I started taking a Physical Theater class.  I haven't been in a class like this for maybe 20 years, but I thought I should test my ideas about the relationship between martial arts and theater training in a more immediate way.  The class is called The Flying Actor. At the first lesson we learned two stances which were used together.  The names for those two stances in martial arts are Bow stance and Horse stance.  The way they do Bow stance is with the front heal up and the arms are in what I would consider a basic shuai jiao or "throwing" position.  The horse stance has a high and a low version.  One of the things we did a lot was to put a hood over our heads.  The hood makes it hard to see but not impossible.  I'm used to moving with my eyes open (of course) and also with my eyes closed, but moving with disrupted vision messed me up a bit.  Good exercise.  We also worked on some basic mime and I realized that I've trained myself not to look at anything close up.  My fighter mind doesn't want to narrow my focus to "show" the imaginary object.  But I also realized that one of the beginning shaolin instructions is to slowly look into the distance and then draw your vision back to yourself before beginning.  It never occurred to me to do it as a mime exercise before, but it fits.

Rory Miller is doing a workshop called Responses to Ambushes and Breaking the Freeze, on May 9th, I'm attending with a few of my students.  I will not be wearing my pajamas.  Check it out.

Oh, and I actually wrote a really long blog post which I might still put up, but I don't know how to finish it.  Maybe just a summary is enough:  Traditional exercise routines were not for weight loss because in the old days people didn't have Trader Joe's or even McDonald's.  Anything claiming to be traditional would have been designed to work without consuming very much food, duh.  If anything, a traditional form of exercise would have helped you put on a little extra fat for leaner times. (Wrestling, by the way, is an extreme example.)

And lastly, I've had some stimulating time with George Xu lately and my practice has been really empty, in a good way.

Taoism in the New York Times

The New York Times had an article about a Daoist art show in Paris today:  A Dazziling look at the World of Taoism.

It has got to rank up there as one of the weirdest articles on Daoism I've ever read.  Admittedly it is about an art show that I haven't seen, so perhaps the article is just reflecting a very weird show.  Still I can't tell if the writer is confused, or sarcastic, or perhaps has a Dadaist editor.  Maybe you can?

Disco Tai Chi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvKPIvDjpsg
hat tip: dojorat

The Lawyers' Body

How do laws effect the way we train our bodies? Drugs, hormones, and steroids can dramatically change the way we train.  We've all seen the pictures.  Pain is one of the big factors that stops people from training yet some painkillers are totally legal and some are not.  The whole steroid issue is confusing because one of the main reasons people take them is to train past the point at which pain would normally stop a person form training, so why are painkillers OK and steroids aren't?  Oh yeah side effects, like painkillers don't have those.  Many people are now aware that Ma Huang, an important herb in the Chinese Medical Pharmacopeia, is now illegal in the US because it was being used as a steroid, and one person gave themselves a heart attack. Please give us our Ma Huang back!

There are tons of exercise inventions, toys and apparatus that are illegal because someone hurt themselves and sued.  I suspect we are missing out on some brilliant training equipment and other fun stuff because no manufacturer was will to take the risk.

Allow students to wear socks in a dance class and you are at risk of negligence. Neck rolls were out for a while.  I remember when they were a staple of African Dance classes.  Neck rolls seem to be back but with lots of warnings to 'go very slowly.'

OK, that was just my preamble. The thing that drives me crazy is the knees must not go past the toes injunction.  I hear this all the time.  This must have come from a lawyer.

There are two parts to it.  The first is basic physical education.  If a weighted knee rolls inward and the foot turns outward simultaneously, the Anterior Cruciate Ligament is in danger of breaking.  Everyone needs to know this.  Just telling people to keep their knee over their toe is not enough information.  Students need to understand what they are training to avoid.  But a knee really can move in a complete circle around the foot as long as forces are not putting that ligament at risk.  In fact it is a good idea to train this way because it teaches the student to keep their whole foot on the ground, there-by avoiding rolling over on the ankle and many other possible strains.

If the knee goes forward past the toes as the heel is coming upward a great deal of strain can be put on the patella and it's various attachments both directly above the knee and inside it.  This is why squats were quasi illegal for a time and some ballet teachers just abandoned the grand-plie.  But there are important exceptions.  If the whole foot remains on the ground with some weight maintained in the heel and the Achilles tendon has time to reach it's full length-- then it's perfectly safe to let the knee go forward of the toe. In fact, I consider it a necessity for students who want to learn to utilize the power of the legs, or want to learn effortless kicking techniques, or for basic shaolin stances like bow and arrow stance.

With the knee forward of the toe and the Achilles tendon fully extended the heel can even come off the ground.  This is used in Bagua Zhang's so called "lower basin" training, and in Daoyin dragon walk.  These two are advanced techniques and need to be introduced over time, but they are safe.

Some of the old masters were brutal.  And it is probably true that people got badly hurt every once in a while.  I'm happy to leave that in the past.  But there is also a kind of rough confidence about the body which comes from tens of thousands of hours of practice.  To the untrained eye that confidence may look dangerous or risky when in fact it is a gift and a treasure.

(Facebook readers: there are more images if you click "original sourse" below)

Hormones

I read an article about Autism and Hormones two days ago and it got me thinking...but as these things go, I can't find the exact article. Here is one that is similar from Reuters.

A hormone thought to encourage bonding between mothers and their babies may foster social behavior in some adults with autism, French researchers said on Monday.

They found patients who inhaled the hormone oxytocin paid more attention to expressions when looking at pictures of faces and were more likely to understand social cues in a game simulation, the researchers said in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This is science fiction creeping into our lives.  A nasal spray hormone?  The other article said that this spray makes men less shy and women more maternal.  I suddenly flashed on a future I-Pod App that you can program to adjust your complex hormone balance.

Imagine you're in an argument.  "Hold on a second," you pull out your I-Pod, "I'm starting to get angry here,"  make the adjustment, inhale the spray, presto, "OK, now what were you saying?"

Or imaging you are sick of a kid who won't get out of your hair.  Pull out the spray, inhale.  "Ah, now what is it I can do for you darling?"

There are a lot of creepy dating possibilities.  If hormones can be used to tip a seduction over the edge...yikes.

Marriages rejuvenated by hormone mists?

We already have people using hormones and steroids for crazy body changes.  I wonder if they could be used for getting rid of muscle too?  How about for meditation?  The martial arts training possibilities are legion.

I believe the original article said something about the inhalant making people more trusting.  Man, imagine what a good con-artist could do with that!

At the moment, our knowledge of how hormones work is limited but it's only a matter of time before college students can just skip the cup of coffee and go to straight to class where the room will be filled with "study optimizing hormones."

No more boring meetings, just put your I-pod air freshner on the table and watch you're employees perk up and smile!

The retail options are endless.  Car dealerships will first stimulate you with feelings of manly independence, and then when they are ready to close the deal they will just spray the "trust-me mist" out of the Flower I-pod app on their lapel.

24 hour appetite regulation apps will get you a discount on your health insurance.  "Easy Driver" air fresheners apps in your car will lower you car insurance.

People found guilty of crimes of passion could be given parole with a hormone balancing app that reports mood swings to their parole officer.

It's a brave new world, again.

Tai Chi - Health Insurance You Can Afford

Catchy title huh?  I listened to California's Insurance Commissioner on the radio for about 3 minutes this morning.  He said California doesn't sell health insurance anymore.  The only products available are pre-paid-medical-treatment packages.  There are 55 state mandated components of anything sold as health insurance, which sort of makes the insurance part of the package fade into the mist.

I'm not big on selling Tai Chi as a cure-all, but if you practice everyday you've done something positive for your health, something which the health insurance companies have yet to calculate the value of.  By practicing everyday you create a standard by which you can measure changes in your experience.  Most people don't pay much attention to their health until it is a problem, and they are convinced that paying attention to health is a waste of time and effort.  But practicing Tai Chi automatically makes you sensitive to small changes in your health.  Of course you can try to ignore them, awareness itself is not a cure, but you are way ahead of the game if you notice small changes in health because the best time to deal with big problems is when they are small.

Something on the order of 2/3rds of all health problems are self-induced by inappropriate conduct.  Those problems disappear when you decide not to "go the extra mile," whatever that mile might be.  For the other 1/3 of problems, most can be wiped off the list by catching them when they are small.  The list of potential health problems got a lot shorter.

The list of things that Tai Chi is supposed to be "good for" will probably grow from time to time, and shrink too.  It's probably like the stock market in that way.  This week "balance" is up, last week "vision" was up, and next week "mental health" may be down.  I can't predict it.  As a "stock" Tai Chi will always be a good long term investment but in the short term it's vulnerable to market fluctuations.

Right now my local weekly paper has an ad selling medical marijuana as a cure for anxiety. Somehow I don't believe that.  Can you say paranoia? I thought you could!

And Newsweek did an article on the uselessness of anti-depressants.  We knew that didn't we?

When I injured my knee a few years back.  I never stopped practicing Tai Chi.  My knee was bad, so swollen I had to keep it elevated as much as possible for months.  I was hopping around on crutches or a cane for weeks.  But the whole time I was still able to do Tai Chi.  It is easier than walking!

Of course that's only true if you have been studying it for years when you have your injury, or accident, or illness.  If you have to learn Tai Chi after you have a problem, that's a whole different can of worms.  It still might be a good idea, but it isn't like having insurance.  Tai Chi Insurance, that is.

I think we are a long way out from having catastrophic insurance specifically for people who practice Tai Chi everyday, but while I'm waiting for it--I think I'll just keep practicing.

Making a Living

This article about how to make a living playing music is a fun read.  Most of what he has to say is applicable to artists in general--including of course, Martial Artists.

Insurance

Last year I went through a big drama trying to get Martial Arts Insurance that would travel with me from site to site.  I wasn't able to find anything reasonably priced that would cover what I needed.

But Idea Fitness looks like it has what I needed, and will soon need again.

If any of my readers have experience with this company or know about anything better, let me know.

Comic Kungfu

I've come to believe that before the 20th Century there was a lot more comic gongfu. Comedy suffered against the onslaught of Modernity. But it didn't die.