Ninja patrols streets of Yeovil

A warrior for just causes, or a vigilante? … or a nutjob?

I appreciate his sentiment that if he sees someone getting beaten up he won't just walk by but is it right for him to use his 'powers' to go and look for trouble?

What do you think?

Our New Book

I've been getting questions about our new book Pressure Point Fighting Secrets of Ryukyu Kempo (being printed now, we expect delivery by the 1st of October).

Here's the story – it actually begins with our second book, Advanced Pressure Point Fighting of RYUKYU KEMPO. This book was produced using technology that has become outdated, and we are no longer able to reprint it. Not wanting that material to be lost to the martial arts community, we considered rebuilding the book from scratch. However, in the intervening years we have compiled more examples of pressure point applications and a greater understanding of the art we cherish. So, we have decided to produce a new book – one which retains content from Advanced Pressure Point Fighting of RYUKYU KEMPO, but also greatly expands on that content in both breadth and depth.

I want to be very clear on this. Our new book could be thought of as our second book on steroids, except, that wouldn't really do it justice.

For starters, I pulled the original negatives from our second book, and scanned them myself, correcting image problems and producing much better pictures. But, I didn't use everything. We edited out some material from our old book, and then added so much new. So, this new book contains many additional pressure points and their use; many new techniques; new photos of sensei Dillman performing Naihanchi Shodan; we added an appendix that details the energetics of stance, including the primary and secondary stances, the use of stance to modify energy flow, male and female characteristics, transitional stances and more.

When we originally published Advanced Pressure Point Fighting of RYUKYU KEMPO, we had hired a graphic designer to do the layout work. His aesthetics involved lots of white space, which looks nice, but is also kind of a waste of paper. So, in our new book, aesthetic white space gone. We've squeezed as much as we can into the pages in our desire to give you a real treasure for your study and learning.

You know how there are easter eggs and such in movies? Well, the equivalent in this book will be watching us grow old. The photos cover some 20 years, so, you can watch our hair grey and our waistlines grow. And let that be an encouragement to you. Ours is a lifetime study, with so much more to learn.

I'm excited.

Thanks for reading.

Now, go train!

CT

Dances, War and kata

Again my interest is piqued by something I read linking the ideas of dance to martial movement. This time the sources is not from the far East but Europe: the ancient Greek war dance.

I'm reading a fascinating and comprehensive account of sword fencing throughout history (By The Sword (Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai Warriors and Olympians) by Richard Cohen, Macmillan, London 2002) which in it's preamble of early sword fighting history touches on the ancient Greeks. The Greek infantry or Hoplites were trained in fighting arts in weapons manipulation and pure fighting skills but also in the war dance which Plato sees as valuable for combat preparation. Cohen states that the Greek army did place emphasis on larger, heavier recruits but also found that the agility and the gymnastic ability that dances encouraged were of value. Not as overtly martial in the following example as Asian kata but interesting all the same.