The other day Mark Hatmaker wrote an excellent piece about natural movement. He explores the benefits of moving with fluidity and the negative consequences of moving herky-jerky. Read it here.
It strikes me that his take is the western perspective on the eastern form of walking contemplation I have been doing for years as follows:
Empty your mind of language. Speak nor think any words.
If words come to mind, let them fade naturally like receding echoes. Fight them and they’ll only multiply.
Just walk as efficiently, smoothly, and naturally as possible — that’s it.
Be relaxed, alive and present. Smell flowers, turn your head and eyes to follow things of interest. Walk with natural, adaptive efficiency, not the efficiency of a robot.
This exercise, like the one Mark describes, is very simple — but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
As it happens, just walking like a human being is a very difficult thing to do.
This is a shot of me training shirtless — running sprints before doing some sledgehammer work. If my shriveled up carcass can take off his shirt then you shouldn’t be afraid to.
A few days ago I promised that this week’s T.I. would be a brobdingnagian farrago of deracination. Why ‘d I do that? To get your attention of course!
“Brobdingnagian” means “huge.” Brobingnag is the place where giants live in Gulliver’s Travels.
A “farrago” is an assortment, like a hodgepodge.
And “deracination” is a delightful mouthful that means “pulling up at the roots.”
Catch my drift?
A Farrago of Deracination: Training Involution #143
Write your own obituary. Not some stupid joke thing, but a real obituary. If it takes you less than fifteen minutes you didn’t sweat it enough. Read mine below. You are going to die. What do you want people to say about you when the day comes?
Take your shirt off and train. Gents, go outside and take off your shirt. Ladies, go as skimpy as you can — staying within safety and legal limits of course. If you have not done this month’s constitutional twice, do it once now. If you have, complete Escape Plan Drill (instructions to both below). I’ve done this twice in the last few weeks, once as low as 40F, and I can tell you that it has a profound effect on your mind, body and spirit.
What’s the point? Life is not about what you look like, or your toys, or your khakis, or any of that. Get beyond your skin, go past your comfort zone, embrace your impermanence — and go live the life you should be living.
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Escape Plan Drill
Set timer for 1:00 intervals. Sprint for 1:00, then Shadowbox for 1:00 then pick a calisthenic and do as many reps as you can for 1:00. Repeat 4 more times for a total of 15 mins, picking a new calisthenic each cycle. Record total distance covered and total calisthenics reps in your training journal and beat it next time.
Feb 2019 Constitutional
Squats (100)
Push-ups (50)
Crunch’n’Punch (25/person or if solo, 50 Sit-ups with a Jab/Cross at the top)
Steam Engines (25/side)
Lunges (100)
Sprints (25 out/back)
Wall Touches (100)
Obituaries — Richmond Times Dispatch, 30 Sept. 2049
MITCHELL JR., ROBERT E. (“MITCH”) aged 88, of HENRICO, passed away on Tuesday Sept. 28, 2049 at his residence. He is survived by his wife of 50 years Karen; son Robert; three daughters, Tiffany, Amber and Morgan; five grandchildren, Kota, Shunta, Audrey, Ryder and Jack Jr.; and four great-grandchildren, Zeke, Ken, Aiko, and Mary. After thirty years in Credit and Accounting Management, Mitch retired, entered seminary, and was ordained as a priest in the Old Catholic line. Re-inventing himself as Father Mitch, he operated St. Barachiel’s, a local community chapel and civic center, for over 25 years. A world-renowned martial arts master and author, he was the founder of Bobcat Martial Arts, a frontier-styled martial arts club, as well as Cabal Fang Martial Arts, a non-profit martial arts organization with branches on three continents. He wrote over 50 books on a wide variety of topics, both fiction and non-fiction. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to St. Barachiel Chapel where services will be held on Saturday, Oct. 2nd at 2:00 PM, Bishop Alan Smithee presiding.
DID YOU KNOW...that this book is going to be used a textbook in my new Bobcat Martial Arts program? Bobcat Martial Arts incorporates Mark Hatmaker’s Frontier Rough & Tumble martial arts coursework as well as primitive skills and nature observation. And I’ll be offering Vigny-Lang method walking stick self-defense classes too.
The Demon Plankton possesses Spongebob Squarepants — a common cartoon trope
Betrayed by a loved one? Had a friend turn out to be a stranger? Regretted something you did and wondered why you did it? Faced down an addiction? Clawed your way out of a bad relationship?
Then you know that demons are “real.” No, they can’t pass the Amazing Randy sniff test. But if you conceive of them as harmful patterns of behavior that repeat across time, they are 100% real.
Belphegor a.k.a. Ba’al Peor from Numbers 25:1–15
Demons don’t take over the way Plankton takes the controls from Spongebob. You have to “invite them in.” In the movies, you must buy the cursed book, say the forbidden words, or move into the evil house. In real life you have to try that cocaine, visit that strip club, or gamble with your rent money. That’s how the “demon” gets a foothold and you introduce the possibility of ending up addicted, sexually obsessed, or homeless.
Maybe believing that “demons” can “possess you” if you “let them in” is a useful fiction that prevents negative behavior patterns — you know, kind of like other useful fictions, such as “porcupines can shoot their quills” and “all guns are loaded.” Behaving as if porcupines can shoot their quills and treating all guns as if loaded effectively help prevent pain and suffering.
But surely demons don’t have agency. Or do they? Does the rabies virus have agency? Viruses aren’t conscious. And yet rabies makes the infected want to bite, which is the primary means of transmission. Sure seems like rabies has agency. Mammon, demon of riches, seems to manifest whenever people obsess about wealth. Is the demon Mammon a conscious entity repeatedly leading people astray?
I don’t know what demons are, nor do I understand their agency. All I know is that they are “real” enough to be harmful and scary. And real enough to be exorcised.
Because, sure as I’m sitting here, there are demons in all of us.
Demon Slayer: Training Involution #141
What does it take to kill a demon? Cold? Fire? Enchanted weapons? Exorcism?
Freeze. For a 200 count (about 3 minutes), hold a pose taking as few 12-count breaks as you must. Beginners, hold a Horse Stance. Intermediate, Plank. Advanced, dead-arm hangs from a Pull-up bar or Crow-stands.
Burn. Complete 200 reps of an exercise. Beginners, Bicycles or Crunches. Intermediate, Push-ups on knees or Steam Engines. Advanced, Down-ups or Kettlebell Swings.
Slice. Complete 200 strikes per hand with your practice weapon of choice. Tactical pen or kubotan keychain, walking stick or cane, rattan stick, wooden knife, tomahawk, nunchaku or what-have-you.
Exorcise. Set timer for 15 minutes. Assume meditative posture of choice. Whisper a 10-to-14-word prayer — aloud as you inhale, silently as you hesitate with lungs full, again aloud as you exhale, and once more silently as you hesitate with lungs empty. Repeat until timer beeps — roughly 200 recitations. This will force you into box breathing and facilitate a deeply meditative state. Your prayer can be religious or secular, general or specific. Even atheists can pray — pray to Light or Truth. “O Light, drive away all darkness and show me the way I pray thee.” I used the Prayer of the Heart: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”
Two train-at-home programs available!
Cabal Fang is a federally-recognized 501(c)(3) non-profit martial arts program — 100% free! — focused on personal development, fitness and self-defense. Click to enroll.
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I was meeting with the other members of the Cabal Fang Temple’s board of directors the other night, and the past suddenly rushed in on me. I remembered what it was like, way back in 1986, when I first stepped into a martial arts studio: I was 80 lbs overweight, had never done much of anything athletic, and I had the work ethic of a wet square of toilet paper. Training two hours per week was almost too much for me back then. But I didn’t quit.
So what I’m saying is, don’t think you have to be perfect. Just do your best, maintain incremental improvement, and don’t quit. If you mess up, don’t beat yourself up so much that you give up — just keep going and do better next time.
Full disclosure: In last week’s T.I. I said, “If you’re not doing two constitutionals per week you’re not doing Cabal Fang — the world’s only martial art with a minimum fitness requirement.” And yet last weekend I got sick and ended up only doing one constitutional this week — and I’m the chucklehead who founded this crazy martial art.
Lapses and Slips: Training Involution #140
This month’s focus is Self-Defense vs. Weapons. What if you get cut? Can you move with one limb incapacitated? If you have to use a weapon to defend yourself, can you move around and fight without dropping it?
10 minutes on a slip ball. If you’re bored, try the drill outlined in the video below.
Armed self-defense gauntlet. Set a timer for 2:00 rounds and pick up a wooden practice weapon — stick, knife, doesn’t matter. Complete a round each of of strikes vs. Heavy bag, Get-ups, Sit-ups w/ Strike, Sprints w/ strike, and then do it again (16 mins total). Drop your weapon penalty = 50 Push-ups.
Get it? “Lapses and slips”? The training session has slips and “lapses “– an obsolete word for intervals and the origin of the word “laps.”
Have you done two constitutionals this week? If not, here you go.
I made this short video back in December and forgot to release it! So here you go.
I didn’t talk about it in the video, but those of you are into Hermetic philosophy and/or alchemy will probably notice something very esoteric in this, which is the union of opposites.
As is attributed to the legendary alchemist Mary the Jewess, “Join the male and the female, and you will find what is sought.” I will explain no more, so as not to rob you of this realization. Meditate on this and you will see.
This month’s Cabal Fang focuses are Self-Defense vs. Weapons — with a touch of offense as well — and “The Quill” (journaling). Try to make some kind of journal entry every single day this month, even if it’s only one sentence.
Journals and Logs: Training Involution #139
Complete this month’s log constitutional. No partner? No log? No problem! Use a dumbbell instead of a log (I chose a #30). Do not put the dumbbell down unless you’re doing an exercise that requires you to do so. Rack the dumbbell two-handed and perform Log Press (25 full), Log Squats (25), Log Hops (25 full ), Log Sit-Ups (25), Log Lunges (50), Log A-Lifts (25) and Log Curb Touches (100). See video below.
Choose your weapon and start attacking. Choose the blunt weapon of your choice — wooden knife, walking stick, tactical pen, whatever you prefer — and set a timer for 10 mins. See how many attacks you can launch before the timer beeps. Switch hands every hundred strikes or so. I chose walking stick and completed 920 strikes.
Star of Ishtar form 25 times. If you don’t know the form get the Cabal Fang Study Course and read up.
From Christmas Eve through New Years Day I don’t do much training. Just my forms (Star of Ishtar, Fool’s Journey and my old Korean Karate forms) and my health maintenance stuff (grip health, therapy rollers and bands, etc.).
You don’t have to take the holidays off like me. Push through if you want. But I highly recommend you take at least two weeks off training per year — preferably in two, one-week chunks. I usually take off 12/24 – 1/1 and then a second week in the late summer for my annual beach trip to OBX.
But, whether you’re on a break this week or not, you should take some time to complete a Year-End Review.
If you don’t review your year, how are you going to do better in the next?
I just finished my new Action Plan for 2019 — you can look at it here. What I do is print this thing out once per month and paste it into my training journal. Any unrealized goals from the prior month get moved the new sheet, and all month long I put the hash marks in the “( )” slots to keep track of how I’m doing on the daily/weekly/monthly tasks. Here’s a pretty thorough rundown of my organizational method over on my Patreon page.
Year-End Review: Training Involution #137
Most people set New Year’s resolutions that are largely arbitrary and then fail to establish any performance metrics. Don’t do that. Set meaningful goals with valuable payoffs and then monitor your performance to insure progress.
Get out your training log and spend some time reviewing your entries. You do keep a training journal, right? Training journals are not optional in Cabal Fang martial arts. Look, we don’t have very many rules, but keeping a training journal is one of them. So if you aren’t journaling, go get a spiral note book or something and start writing stuff down so you can do a year-end review next December.
Take as much time with your review as you feel is sufficient, necessary and/or available. Might be fifteen minutes or three hours — whatever is necessary and sufficient to make sensible conclusions and set meaningful goals.
What did you well in 2018? What did you do poorly?
What are you going to do better in 2019?
How are you going to do better in 2019?
What are your performance metrics going to be?
If you’re going to make 2019 your best year ever, the future is now.
I’ve written about the Hermetic Mysteries of Christmas before — here and here. What’s a “mystery?” In the religious sense, “mysteries” are the wondrous things we feel when we put ourselves inside a myth and allow ourselves to fully experience it as if we are there. The word mystery comes to us from Greek musterion and Latin mysterium where it means “a secret rite or ritual.”
Within Catholic and Orthodox Christianity we see embedded the esoteric methods and essential nature of the Greco-Roman mysteries — updated to serve the goal of Christian salvation.
Four Ways to Seek the Christmas Mysteries This Year
Gospel Reading Meditation. Get out your Bible and turn to the gospel of Luke. Read Luke 2:1-20. Then close your Bible, shut your eyes, and regulate your breathing to a steady rhythm. Imagine that you are one of the shepherds, sitting by the fire with your friends and brothers, watching over the flocks, when an angel appears. Allow the story to unfold in your mind’s eye.
Go to a live Nativity Scene. Try, despite the presence of the other viewers, to imagine you are one of the shepherds as outlined above.
Experience the Joyous Mysteries of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Click here for instructions. If you have never prayed the Rosary before you are in for a treat. The basic idea is that you repeat certain prayers while you meditate on the Joyous Mysteries — the Annunciation of Gabriel to Mary, the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, the Nativity of Jesus, the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, and the Finding of Jesus in the Temple.
Watch this amazing lecture by Jonathan Pageau. See below. Jonathan is an Orthodox Christian icon carver, a skilled artisan who understands Christian symbolism as deeply as any churchman — perhaps even more deeply — having spent so many intimate hours carving these sacred images.
Experiencing the Christmas Mysteries as if we are fully present within them is the greatest Christmas “present” we could ever hope for.
Cabal Fang Temple here in Richmond VA volunteered to assist Food Not Bombs feed the homeless last Sunday. Afterwards we washed dishes. We were too INVOLVED to take pictures of ourselves, and besides, we didn’t want to brag. Here’s a shot of the spread.
The other day I posted a video about how restriction breeds creativity while freedom breeds laziness. Don’t believe me? Read the post and watch the video because this week’s involution is based on that premise.
Restricted: Training Involution #136
Warm-up completely for at least 8:00.
Tuck your dominant arm in your belt and do some martial fitness. Set timer for 8:00. Do as many sets of 4 of each exercise as you can before the timer beeps: Jump Squats, Sit-outs, Shrimps, Push-ups (on knees if you can’t do one-arms).
Liberate your arm to go to the Heavy bag. 3 x 3:00/1:00 max power shots only. When I say max power, I mean Serena-Williams-from-back-court-for-match-point-with-a-grunt-level power. First round, hands only. Second round, legs only. Final round, all in. Count your strikes in the final round. Write it in your training journal. Beat it next time.
Do your Constitutional. Cabal Fang is the only martial art that has a base level fitness requirement. Twice weekly constitutionals are required. Details below. Don’t have a tire? Get one or sub a #20 sandbag and modify — modify, adapt, overcome!
What have you done for Spirit Month? Last week I suggested that you volunteer, help out a sick or elderly neighbor or relative, help a friend, etc. Did you do that? If so, you’re off this week on the spiritual portion. If not, restrict yourself somehow until you decide on something and put it on your calendar. Sleep without a pillow, give up soft drinks, beer, TV, your favorite food, etc. Out of ideas? The restriction should help, but ask your deity, higher power or better self for insight. Be still and ask how you can be of service. Listen carefully — something will pop into your head that’s decent and true. Do that.
I teach free of charge through Heritage Arts , a 501(c)(3) educational charity offering free or donation-only classes related to martial arts, fitness, outdoor skills, and spiritual development. Distance learning programs available. Visit the Heritage Arts website to find out more, or click here to join the Heritage Self-Defense group on Facebook.
What is Heritage Rough ‘n’ Tumble? It’s mind-body-spirit form of American Rough ‘n’ Tumble, which began as a manner of no-holds-barred fighting in the Southern Virginia backcountry during the Colonial Era and has since grown, evolved, and adapted to the realities of modern self-defense. An amalgam of the varying techniques brought to America by colonists from all over the world, blended with the fighting methods of the over 900 distinct indigenous tribes, American Rough ‘n’ Tumble is perhaps the world’s most fearsome martial art.
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Robert Mitchell Jr. 