What do you mean “Know Yourself?”
Serious practitioners use ideas – our own and from our traditions – to deepen our understanding and improve our practice. Some ideas work. Some get in the way. You want to know an idea that has confused people for generations? “Know yourself.” It is an important idea. Everyone talks about it. But by drawing on […]
Three Things Every Fighter Needs
When the moment comes, and you face an opponent, things get real simple. You do what you need to do. That is something all fighters know. But what you bring to bear on that moment is not so simple – things change suddenly and dramatically. All your experience, your training, the sharpness of your skill […]
Matsumora’s Grasp
空手に先手なし ‘There is no first attack in karate’ means that we respond when the cause is just and the need is present. People think that Gichin Funakoshi used the “no first attack” idea to communicate to non-Okinawans that his karate was a cultivated art, for cultivated people. The presumption was that karate and other arts […]