I encourage my students to train mentally with little imagination exercises they can do when they’re out and about. When you go to a place that isn’t your home look for the exits, look for improvised weapons. When in the presence of other people, gauge their distance and imagine how you might react if they [...]
Thumb through any martial arts magazine from any time in the past up to today and you’ll find a lot of advertising. You’ll see systems advertised as “The World’s Most Lethal Fighting System,” or teachers as, “The Deadliest Man Alive.” If you don’t look at martial arts magazines – I’m not kidding here, these are [...]
Here’s my recipe for developing mental toughness. And no I haven’t been able to complete this myself … yet. 1. Walk into a quiet, unoccupied room and turn the lights off. 2. Sit down and close your eyes. 3. Do not move any part of your body – except for allowing the normal breathing mechanism [...]
In the Western world, the practice of alchemy has a long history as predecessor to modern chemistry (it’s where we get the name), school shrouded in mystery, and practice persecuted as pseudoscience or blasphemy by the powers that be. Outwardly, alchemists main goal was to produce the philosopher’s stone, a substance rumored to be able [...]
Making a decision is a powerful mental process. In fact the word “decision” is a nominalization, the turning of a process verb into a noun. A decision is static – set in stone, unlike the process of deciding. This is an important distinction. When you decide something, you draw the proverbial line in the sand. [...]
As a child, I was subjected to numerous surgeries, the most severe was the amputation of one of my feet. Growing up with a lower limb prosthesis was challenging and often painful experience. As a boy, my parents and several of my teachers noticed that I seemed to have a fairly high pain tolerance. My [...]
Martial Arts photos from Flickr
