{"id":7645,"date":"2019-02-08T19:52:33","date_gmt":"2019-02-09T03:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/?p=7645"},"modified":"2019-02-09T08:38:55","modified_gmt":"2019-02-09T16:38:55","slug":"why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/?p=7645","title":{"rendered":"Why?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The 2019 Warrior Tipon-Tipon<\/a> is coming up in just over one month in Bellvue, WA<\/a>. It is a day of weapon sparring inspired by events like the Dog Brothers<\/a> Gatherings held in North America and Europe. If any students are considering attending the Tipon Tipon, the following reflections on attending a Gathering may shed enough light to help you finalize you decision, pro or con.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

On July 21st<\/sup>\nof 2018 I attended my first Dog Brothers Canada Gathering in\nMontreal. More than 40 men and women attended from Vancouver, France,\nand many points between. For anyone unfamiliar with how a Gathering\nworks, the protocol is as follows: two people agree to a fight with a\nspecific weapon (single stick, espada y daga, etc.) and a rule set (a\n\u201ctechnical\u201d fight where the purpose is testing the pure\napplication of technique and eschewing advantages had by differences\nin size, strength, or speed; a \u201cno grapple\u201d event, usually due to\nongoing injury recovery; etc.); they enter the mat area, they cross\nweapons and fight, either until time is called (usually two minutes)\nor someone quits, whichever happens first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first question,\nalmost every time I tried to explain this event to people who have\nnever experienced anything like it. \u201cWhy?\u201d usually with\nbewilderment, some vicarious distress, often followed with \u201cdoesn’t\nthat hurt?\u201d I understand the thrust of their questions: to quote\nthe boxer Zachary Wohlman, \u201cIn the ring, it’s pretty simple: the\nother person is there to hurt you, and you’re asking for it.\u201d\nReflection lead me to conclude that these reflexive questions from\nthe uninvolved are often a stand-in for what the questioner may truly\nwant to know: \u201cwhy are you making yourself so vulnerable?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is an excellent\nquestion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are alive, you\nare vulnerable. It is inescapable, and we fear anything we cannot\nout-think, out-run, out-fight, or out-last. While everyone is<\/em>\nvulnerable, no one likes feeling<\/em> vulnerable. Yet this is\nexactly what participants subject themselves to when walking onto the\nmat. I knew I could get hurt, and possibly seriously injured. I\nwent anyway. I have been physically brave for much of my life, but\nthe sense of impending body pain was, for me, the lesser part of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What if I’m terrible at this? What if I came all this way, spent all this time and money, just to find out I can’t perform there (under pressure around strangers) like I do in Fight Lab<\/a> on Sundays (learning while surrounded by friends)? What if I’m so bad, one of the teachers I respect reassesses their opinion of me downwards? Never mind my body<\/em>, can my ego<\/em> take that kind of bruising? Speaking of ego, why am I even worrying about all of this? If I’m worrying about \u201csucceeding\u201d, am I here for the right reasons? What does success<\/em> even look like for me, here, now? Does the word even apply?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this swirled in my head while I waited in the queue for my first fight (single knife) against someone I’d just met that day. My partner summed it up as \u201cI feel like we’re waiting for them to open the gate at the coliseum.\u201d A fair assessment, and a good approximation of \u201cvulnerable\u201d. Moments from the head of the line I experienced the strongest anticipatory adrenaline response I can remember: a sense of tightness started in my chest, a compressed spring spreading towards my shoulders; time seemed to slow for a few heartbeats. Vulnerable!<\/em> Then everything snapped back into place, I pulled my mask down, and stepped forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I fought seven times\nthat day spread out over knife, single stick, double stick, and\ntechnical aluminum espada y daga. None of them were easy; all of\nthem made me confront my feelings of vulnerability. But despite the\nfrisson and hurt, they all taught me something about the arts I\npractice, the community of which I am a part, and myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The weapon arts of\nsoutheast Asia are myriad in name, style, focus and feel. One of the\nmajor lessons about those arts demonstrated that day is that two\npeople can practice the same art (perhaps even taught by the same\ninstructor) but have very different individual understandings and\nexpressions of that art. There were several members from Tuhon Phil\nGelinas’ school in Montreal fighting that day; their expressions of\nstyle were extremely different, and all were \u201cright\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If asked to describe\nthat day in a word, I would choose \u201ccommunity.\u201d We fostered a\nfeeling of kinship arising from sharing interests and goals. \nEveryone was there to learn. Everyone was there to improve. No one\nwas there to dominate, diminish, or lessen the efforts of others. \nAccomplishments were universally celebrated; injuries were worried\nover, commiserated about. The stand-out moments for me were the\nconversations I had off the mat, where whomever I fought told me what\nI’d done that worked; the free-flowing compliments on particular\ntechniques; analysis of good exchanges, smart tactical decisions made\nin the heat of the moment. That feeling of togetherness was\never-present, and lasted well past the celebratory meal at a local\npub at the end of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lessons learned about\nmyself run the gamut of physical, mental, and emotional. When I get\ntired, I stop moving; even in the presence of someone who wants to\nhit me with a stick. My grappling needs quite a bit of work; size\ncan count for a lot, but is far from everything. There is deep beauty\nin what we do: I actually enjoyed being adroitly taken apart during\nmy technical espada y daga fight by someone with much more skill and\nexperience. Repeated exposure to fights and fighters also quelled my\nswirling doubts. After several fights, some sore spots in evidence\nbut nothing truly worrying, I found myself feeling like I was holding\nmy own against someone who moved like an experienced fighter. Okay,<\/em>\nI thought amidst footwork, blocks and counter-cuts, okay, I\ncan do this.<\/em> Accepting that I\nwas performing how I wanted to, that I was not just at the Gathering,\nbut here, right now<\/em>\nsettled over me. I stopped worrying about what might go wrong, and\nfocused on what was: I am fighting, and I know what I want to do to\nget better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So back to the\nabbreviated question: why? Why do I choose to make myself so\nvulnerable? Because that is how I learn. Confronting vulnerability\nteaches me not just about my weaknesses, but my strengths. I am a\npoor grappler, but a good puncher. I am weak with a weapon in both\nhands, but hard to knock down. If you want to build something,\nknowing how a material will fail means you also know under what\nconditions you can rely on it. The Gathering showed me what parts\nneed shoring up, and what parts can be further developed to be even\nstronger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back through both text and time what I wrote feels both sufficient and woefully incomplete. It was a rich experience, with just as many aspects that lend themselves to explanation as ones that are best served reflected upon personally. While the Gathering was an excellent way to test myself, it serves me much better as a lens to focus on my own path of improvement. For those considering attending a Gathering at some time in the future, all I can say is: it will try you; you will learn; and if you let yourself, you will grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Dan Evans<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2019 Warrior Tipon-Tipon is coming up in just over one month in Bellvue, WA. It is a day of weapon sparring inspired by events like the Dog Brothers Gatherings held in North America and Europe. If any students are considering attending the Tipon Tipon, the following reflections on attending a Gathering may shed enough light to help you finalize you decision, pro or con. On July 21st of 2018 I attended my first Dog Brothers Canada Gathering in Montreal. More than 40 men and women attended from Vancouver, France, Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5936,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[74,42,72,5,39,41],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7645"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7645"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7649,"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7645\/revisions\/7649"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}