Bujinkan Björn Dojo Karlstad IF

General information

This blogg is to begin with my personal reflections, knowledge and opinion for you to take part of. I am not trying to convince you, it is just for you to have something more to reflect over when you create your own knowledge.

2012-02-20 “Food and what to eat”

Why is he writing about food, is this blogg not about fighting and a martial art? Yhea it is! BUT! Eating is the most basic thing and a must to be able to live in the first place and to be able to train to fight and fight to win. So what should one eat? I mean ther are a lot of different messages out there, what is right and what is wrong! Some people tell you that you should live only on fruits and vegetebles (vegans) and some say only meat and fat (Atkins).

So what is right? As ususall probebly somewhere in between would you not aggree? But then it kind of depends also as usuall! My conclusion after doing LCHF-diet for almost half a year and reading a lot of websites and a few books in the subject is: Treat sugar as alchohol and stopp eating flourbased products to start with. Check out all facts in the subject and you will findout that as white flour and sugar makes it´s entry in too our diet the population start rocketing  upwards in a obesepedimia and sicknesses of all kinds starts to develop. Some examples are allergies, cancer and diabetes 2. Above that we also have all other substances the foodindustriess put in to our food as E-substancess and glutamat. Some things we might even not give to our animals becuase of there way to react up on it.

I have become more and more aware of this through out the years and first I was trying to get low fat products, eating lots of protein and carbohydrates (good carbs as I thougt: Pasta, potatoes and rice, bulgur, quinoa). I have never bin so found in candy, chocklat was ok. But my reall weakness was all kinds of bakeries, cakes and different breads. Then we decided back home to go all in and do LCHF (Low carb High fat) as an experiment. All of a sudden after a few weeks I lost weight and got thinner, feeling a lot stronger and in a better mood, no bloodsugar dips or crashhungerattacks, no nead do get something down my throut of any kind just to have something to eat! After half a year I can have a cake and get the feeling of that I do not mind being without it becuase it is not so tastefull and even get a feeling of headache from it. But then what is LCHF, as mentioned earlier, it is LOW Carb and High fat. It is NOT non carb Mcdonalds fat and I will make it a point: NOT non carb it is low carb. Check it out the webpage: www.kostdoktorn.se or www.dietdoctor.se . To take it just a bit further is to go Paleo or “stoneagediet”, checkout webpage: www.whole9life.com . This is simply told LCHF without milkproducts and geting your food as clean as possible and close to where it is grown or lives.

My advice to you who is reading this is to think about what mankind has eaten for millions of years except for the last 50-150 years and then descide if you and your loved ones are eating good food!

Good food is something you most often find in perimeter of the grocery store, avoid the ayles.

Good food is “everything” without an ingredience list and it will get bad after a few days or weeks. With other words unprocessed food.

Good food is eating fish, meat, chicken, nuts, seeds, eggs vegetables, limited amount of fruit, some specific oiles as oliveoil, cocconut fat, sweet potatoes.

My suggestion to you is to start reading the ingredinclists when shopping and try to be aware of the amount of sugar you get in to your system when you believe you are eating healthy! We do not nead sugar or flour.

/Yamabushi

111128 “Does it work?”

It is a point where many Bujinkan practitioners come to wonder whether  the art is actually working. I did and I now that a few other high ranking people has as well. I kind of felt that there was something wrong. I have never doubted it fully because I had a wery good teacher before who had a lot of real life excperience as a doorman. I am nowdays also in the line of work wich gives me real life excperince of conflict so I know what I want and I also have corrected it and I am now teaching things I feel and know is working and training my self in that way.

In Björn dojo we always has worked with “Shizen no kamae” as a basic stance, it means the naturall stance. It is the stance which you walk and stand in, in everydaylife. What we have changed is “ichi moni no kamae” which was a very wide stance before and is the stance which many start to question if it is actualy correct, I know I did and I have slowely corrected it because I have had my doubts aswell. This is also a thing I found had changed in Japan between the times I was there 2002 and 2010. So why is it like this that many end up in this thinking, the ones who actually question it all to often get an awoiding answer from there instructors telling them that it all depends on etc! Actually it is just to try, put on some protection and go high speed and higher force. And still at the same time it is not the only anwer because in a game or match you are fighting for points. If someone steps in to a fight on the street most people when they make an attack and strike they expect to hit which makes them vulnerable and that does the attacker know. Thats why most fights and beatings on the street is from either a friend to the aggressor who comes from the side or behind or the aggressor himself attacking a little later from the side or from behind. There are few people attacking head on because that is a risk and takes guts or anger!

A few principles we are following in Björn dojo is:

1. Keaping a strong frontal position where you can use bouth your fists just as long in front of you, so you are able to strike just as far and fast with bouth hands. Imagine your car neads to be pushed, place yourself in fron of a wall, bend your knees a little, feet a bit apart and toes pointing forward and with your hands towards the wall, then you will get a rather good picture about this stance.

2. Distance: What you can not do with one step in towards your opponent you shall not do, then it is better to keap distance.

We are also working with positions connected with our primal neuroloicalresponsemechanism, the way to react when surpriseattacked or getting something thrown against you, Hoko no kamae and Doko no kamae. Which means that you start the movement by covering your head and chest with your armes and then connecting other techniques of throwing, striking and kicking.

Ther major difference between sport and a fight is that you never know when the fight will seek you up! Read my reflections about “threat assesment”.

/Yamabushi

Saturday 29/10-11 “Threat  assesment”

I have earlier made reflections about reaction and action and on todays seminar with Dean Rostohar sensei we touched the subject but in another way. The theme for the seminar is knife and pistol in all different  wariations. Dean sensei shows many good techniques and are wery professional but what one must remember is that he is talking about combat. The all day we have bin acting  against an obvious enemy. If you have an other role for an example in the securitybuisness or the police or just being an ordinary “Joe” out on the streets trying to have fun, there is something that you must do before you actually kill some one or harm him and that is to be sure that you have the right to do it.

Well! What will make you sure? You know that is just the problem. When in combat you just have to descide if it is a friend or foe, a foe you can  emedietely kill. When in another roll or situation you must detect two things. First is if the person really is a threat towards me? Second is, is the person armed? The problem is to get the time to see if the attacker is armed or not, it might be so bad that you will discover it first when the fight is over and your adrenalin is emptying and the pain will start coming. Probebly when you discover your own blood!  That is where distance comes as an factor, you see distance is time. A potential aggressor is also depending on distance because it is harder to hit correct and with effect the further away he is and aspecially if you as a target are moving also.

A person who pulls a gun or starts to run towards you with a stick or a knife or with just his fists creates a threat towards you (a problem). There is a breaking point for descionmaking in your distance in the way you should act, defencive or aggressive. I would say that this breaking point is just around 7m.  Something to remember is that to move sideways against or away from the shooter and get out of the line of  fire or attack, that will make it harder for him to hit you. This is where your awarness of your surronding kicks in and awarness for change and odd behaviour, because that can make you do the important dicoveries which makes you preaperd in the right way and also to take the right action as to use a correct, or more rightly said a defendable level of violence. If under 7m I am of the oppinion that it is more right to advance towards the attacker and let him have it and do what you have to do with what you have in your hands, not grabbing for a tool and take action according to the message from todays seminar which not actually included to kill the attacker. But just take his breathing or seeing away or break his knees. Because as Dean sensei said to day which will conclude this reflection: “You have to see or bread to fight and if you can not walk or run then you can not fight either”  Be sure to  finish it with the first two when he is armed with a gun…………….

Yamabushi

Tuesday 20/9-11 “The way to strike”

Just back home from a wery good TAIKAI in Stockholm with a lot of impressions. Reflecting about two of them is the way to strike and also “kamae” or stance”. We in Bujinkan Björn dojo are working mostly with Shitzen no kamae which means naturall stance, the way you stand in ordinary lif and thats where we start our defense or attack. In “Shitzen no kamae” you will not show anything and thats what the opponent or the enemy should feel until it is to late. When the fight is unavoidable and you are under attack, then to protect yourself and be able to counter you need to get in to a “kamae”.

Before that if the need to strike gets there, you should do it as your hand are pulling your body. Why? Your mind will discover large movements first, then siluetts and third coulor. Follw up the first strike with a quick second or several others. In Bujinkan Björn dojo we work with a more “boxing” like stance in generall thoe not armed with sword, Bostaff or spear. When armed with a long and heavy weapon you must be able to move your body with the help of your legs with a much deeper stance as a result, you will need the power in your legs to be able to thrust a spear for an example.

As they said at this TAIKAI: “Bujinkan is a weaponbased system”. That is why we sometimes move as we do, in deep wide stances. But it is wery importent to remember that it will not work in an unarmed fight because you will be much to slow! When without a weapon or bodyarmour you will have to move light and fast and adapt to the tempo in the fight, if not you will be dead! One of the main instructors at the TAIKAI quoted Nagato sensei: “Bujinkan must adapt to the present tempo in a fight to be able to survive as an art”. You must place your body in a stance so that you are able to bouth strike and kick just as far and as hard with bouth sides of your body towards the main threat. The time to strike is when your opponent is in a weak situation and is in need of you for balance. Befor that we should avoid fighting .

The art of Bujinkan is to survive, not fight!

Yamabushi.

Wednesday 7/9-11  ”Controlling the KUKAN”

Kukan is a word which is often mentioned within Bujinkan and aspecially “controll of the kukan”. What is “Kukan” and how do you controll it? When in a fight between two persons or in a battle between units or armies there will thrue time be more or less space between the two, that is the “kukan”. It is a distance where my opponent should have a hard time to step in to because that will be the distance where I  will  reach him and inflict harm on him. When armies meet it will be the terrain where one has to dominate in some way or otherwise the other part will use it and inflict harm on the other. A struggle or a battle is most about controlling the space. The one who is in controll of the space is the one controlling the fight or battle and most often the winner. And now to the point!

Controlling the Kukan is  to disturb or to be in controll of the  opponents or the enemies descisioncycle. That is true from individualls to armies! If you take your opponents structure by touching him on his cheast he will have to react, by creating tension to get it back otherwise he can not develope any force to counter. His descionmaking is disturbed by reaction, reaction to keap his balance. So he is forced to set his mind to be concentrated towards gaining his structure back (organisation when in units or armies) and find a way to be able to take  action in an otherway. At this time, just before he gets his structure back I will manipulate him in an otherway and disturb him again, hitting him, changing direction or giving him something to lean on or perhaps an oppening. In that way I will take my opponent down and also controlling the “kukan”. Kukan is translated to space. Space is distance and distance is time. Time for action or reaction. The goal when fighting or going in to battle is to either make your enemy react or act in the way you want! This you can do by being deliberately defenscive, illusive or aggressive.

Remember attack is the last defence!

Yamabushi

Sunday 21/8-11 “Ki”

During our training session this sunday the subject of “KI” came up. KI is defined as the power within which you already posess. KI is about energy and everything around us is energy, we are energy! Our energy can be high or low and which it is depends on a lot of things. Some examples: Your motivation, what food you ate, recent excperiences, things to come, surrounding/enviroment and there we get to other human beings.

You, yourself can influence how you will feel and you can build up a good KI by surrounding youreself with positiv people, eating real food and  positiv thinking by using words which you connect with your overself. When discussing more around it we got into a lot of what Ninjutsu is about, detecting and concealing. Because if you you have an intention to do something or a strong feeling then most probebly you will in some way reviel it!  And if being a spy or an agent with a mission as the old day ninjas where, then you can not show your intention because trained people will detect you and others will become suspicious and eventually kill you.

So when you train, try to talk as usuall about for an example what you did yeasterday and simultanusly do an attack with intention to hit your opponent. Most probebly your opponent will detect a change in you and act uppon it. Most for certain the attacker will become silent just before he hits you and that is an obvious change. It is very much there when someone is in an angry state of mind when he is changing his verbal attack to a physichal one. What makes him silence is the process of decission and that will also create a change of KI. That is also what happens when doing the 5th dan test.

Bouth the examiner and the student becomes “zero” just before the cut, which is to say they balance their own inner KI. And when the examiner attacks he will give as much killintentions as possible and that will  inflict on your KI/balance and you feel the change of energy around you and you will move.

See ya! “Yamabushi”