Ghost Techniques for the Season

This time of year with my seasonal Ghost Technique seminar for the children I teach always brings focus to one of the more subtle aspects of the arts. The art of not being there. 

The concept of Ghost Techniques was shared from Ernest Rothrock's teachings. It's based on a combination of movement and the opponent's perceptual lack of awareness. 

While sounding exotic, it actually is something experienced many different ways. 

Some examples:

The boxer using slips, bobs and weaves, to dodge around the opponents strikes. This works because the opponent is striking where they KNOW the boxer is, and not being there is used to their advantage. 

Before one says boxing isn't karate, Mutsu's 1933 work Karate Kempo extensive section on karate applications begins with just those techniques, methods to slip, and dodge strikes. 

 One of my original Isshinryu instructors, Charles Murray, had worked this into a fine art. He would keep a 3 foot circle around him and whenever anyone touched it would either slide back so their attacks would not be on target, or conversely explode when they touched the circle to flow over and through them. 

 Charles taught me another Ghost technique, how to use a drop side kick against an attack, yet another Ghostly variation. 

 Those two examples are where aware opponents knowing they're fighting each other, use this special spatial awareness to their advantage. 

 In my Tai Chi studies sometimes you simply step back to create a void to draw the opponent inside. This can be shades of a great Japanese Samuari flic "Sleepy Eyes of Death", where the sword technique made an opening the opponents would strike into because they knew he was open, only to die. Of course this is always easier in the movies. 

 A far different example is from the teachings I experienced with Tristan Sutrisno. 

 One time he disappeared from my strike to end up standing on my shoulders. When you're on the receiving end you really do belive in ghosts. 

 His aikido drills would as frequently shift to remove himself from an attack, and in his Siliat Tjimande he would ground himself, dropping beneath the opponents attack to strike from below. 

 More specifically the Ghost techniques of Ernest Rothrock (a very small subset of his instruction) consist of specific movement drills to disappear from an attack, to shift so you end up behind your opponent.

The opening study is against rigid attacks to learn the shifting patterns, but then extension against more random attack follows. 

A more modern terminology would be the use of body shifting and movement to evade an attack and to in turn use that movement to place yourself in a more advantageous position. 

But if you're opponent knows where you are, and really believes they'll strike you there, it is possible to disappear before their eyes, and………… 

So as the moon darkens, thoughts of the ghost drift by as Halloween approaches. May you always not be there when necessary.