&&&&
Cult Smashers of the 21st Century
The sun came up at about 6:00 am. Time to go to martial arts class. Then work in the kitchen.
Bleah.
Nate Kunstler (or Nat---as his friends called him) had never been a “morning person”. But it didn’t matter where he was or what he was doing, each day has a morning and he still had to soldier through it. So he put on his sweats, did his bathroom thing, and, headed out to the gym.
Kelly Hughson was, as usual, already there. He was doing standing meditation in the “tree-hugging posture”, so Nat just joined in and they both waited for the others. After about 20 minutes everyone who was coming was there. Then Kelly started the deep knee bends, everyone followed. Then the “sawing the log” exercises. Then “the snake creeps down”. Then the “warm up” long form.
At that point the lesson began. “There are lots of ways to deal with force directed against you. You can block it by putting up a hard wall. You can turn into jello and just let if flow through you without harm. You can dodge it. You can deflect it. And you can change it’s direction so it just glances off you. Today I’m going to show you how to change the direction of gravity instead of letting it hurt you.”
“I will demonstrate.” He stood in front of them, fell backwards, and, with one sinuous move rolled on his spine, onto his knees, then back onto his feet. Then he was on his feet---facing the same way six feet further back than he had been an instant before.
“There’s no big secret. The key points are you need to keep your legs straight and stay relaxed. If you bend your knees, you will fall straight down onto your buttocks and the force will travel up your spine and into your head. This will hurt you. But if you keep your legs straight, the force will propagate parallel to the floor and if you relax the natural tendency will be for you curl up into a ball and you will roll along your spine, over your head. At that point you pull your knees up to your abdomen. Momentum will carry you over so you can roll on you kneecaps and then onto your feet. They all you have to do is stand up.”
He demonstrated a couple times more. Then added “Be careful! This is an easy thing to learn, but you can hurt yourself if you don’t keep your legs straight! Trust what I’m telling you and focus on keeping your legs straight! Everything else will just flow naturally.”
A tall thin, woman with the sort of face that comes from a hard life asked a question. “If you can hurt yourself, why are you teaching us how to do this on a hard floor instead of mats like any other school would do?” Kelly’s response was “Thanks for the question, Sally. Oddly enough. It is harder to do on a padded floor because it’s more difficult to be ‘rooted’ in your initial stance. That means that the odds are greater that you will hurt yourself---even if you are doing it right. I suppose you simply have to take that on trust from me.”
“Let me see you try. Olive, come up front and give it a whirl.” A tall, red-headed woman came up front. “Just keep your legs straight and you’ll do fine.” She did as instructed, and as predicted rolled neatly down her spine, onto her kneecaps, and, back up onto her feet.
“Wow! That was easy. A lot more than I expected.”
Hughson then had everyone come up to the front and try it one after another. The class found they could do it at least after a fashion with their first try. “OK. I want you to work on this on your own over the next week. Here are the ‘important tips’. First, don’t ever do this on a surface that isn’t clear of things like rocks. That’s because if you try to roll like this and find a sharp rock hidden by grass---for example---you might find it jamming into a vulnerable spot, like your kidneys. You would not want that to happen!”
Sally interrupted “But why are you showing this to us then? It doesn’t seem to be a terribly useful self defence move if that can happen.”
“Good question. A lot of what I’m teaching you isn’t about learning the right ‘moves’ so you can become the next Bruce Lee. Instead, these lessons illustrate principles that you are going to have to learn how to apply in your life according to the specific circumstances you find yourself in. In this case, the important point is to know that you don’t have to accept force being directed at you but can instead choose to change its direction so it is less harmful. I could tell you all of this, but it wouldn’t ‘stick’ with you nearly as well as when I illustrate it physically. You need to learn this lesson ‘in your bones’, and this is how I can help you do that.”
&&&&
No comments:
Post a Comment