Stillness and Pain

 

 

One of the most painful blocks I ever felt was also among the simplest I have seen.

 

Long ago I was at a summer camp when Ernest Rothrock, who was also my T’ai Chi and Kung Fu instructor, was to give a seminar there. I was selected to be his attacker. Now I experienced before he never held anything back, because that is exactly what how his first instructor taught him for seminars.

 

He asked me to step in and strike him forcefully with a hook punch to his head. I immediately knew I would  regret doing that, but being a good solider did what he requested,

 

So I stepped in and threw a strong hook punch toward his head.

 

His response was he stepped in turning to face my incoming arm, then he just raised both hands into a vertical position. No strike involved.

 

I experienced a new level of pain as my arm struck his raised hands. For those raised hands became walls my arm struck into on the forearm and biceps of my strike.

 

Immediately I dropped my arm in pain.

 

Then he played it for fun. He said, “Karate boy. I thought you could strike harder than that. Try again.”

 

So once again I stepped in and struck at him again with my hook punch.

 

And once again he stepped in, turned and raised both knife hands, to do nothing else.

 

What I found it hurt even more, again dropping my arm.

 

Of course he again began,  “Karate boy. I thought you could strike harder than that. Try again.”

With an even bigger grin on his face.

 

And once again I experienced an even greater level of pain.

 

Then the seminar went forward, with everyone getting their own chance to experience the fun of doing almost nothing and letting their attacker hurt themselves by striking.

 

Afterwards and over a long time afterwards I worked out what I experienced and began to realize the value of that lesson.

 

I realized what happened, my arm just struck into his immobile raised knife hands. The power causing all the pain came from my own strike, Those raised hands just became immobile sharp objects I was striking into. That was the cause of my pain.

 

And that gave me a different way to look at technique. I recognized its power in a tjimande partner striking drill, that when we tried to work on it really tore up our arms so we began faking the attacks to avoid the pain. I recognized that was happening and backed off the drill at that time for greater study how to deal with that.

 

I then began to realize that the kata pause points that I had been taught as Kamae were really similar attacking technique to form the movement inside an attack, to let the attacker strike what was formed and pain to the attacker the result.

 

From stillness comes movement, movement from the attacker receiving pain.

 

All from a painful lesson on a distant summer day.

 

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