Martial Arts 4 Life
What follows is some “spirit training” from an experienced martial artist to someone either just coming into “the game” or else thinking about it intensely. I hope you get something out of what I have written here because I would have been a much better martial artist and person if someone had explained what this pathway of words would mean to me. I knew the words well enough and what they meant, but it was stringing them together in this particular order that has made the difference. This document is a prime example of the “next generation” of martial artists improving on what they were taught. And the truth is that this ‘improving” of the martial arts has been going on in each generation for centuries. I am part of the next generation and I have improved on what I was given, while still retaining all that I learned. You are about to start reading something that I hope will change the direction of your life to where you want it to go.
“May your curse become a blessing”.
Cotton Batte
A w a r e n e s s
On this footpath you are about to step onto with me, let’s set out some objectives for you to think about. Being a competent martial artist means many things to many people, and to me it certainly means every bit of the meanings of all these words you will be reading about. So, my first goal is to acquaint you with the real power of words in your life and how they need to be fully understood and used properly in your life in conjunction with other ideas just as important. These extended definitions that you will read here are not just an explanation of what the words mean from a dictionary’s point of view, but also how these words more importantly inter-relate to each other in the curious way that I am going to “line them up” for your education about a particular point that I am going a “long way” to guide you to really “ see” what I want you to understand. My second goal here is to mentally position you to exhibit, and then use patience in a way that you have never thought of it before now. You must come to understand my third goal, which is that the strong power of words can educate you to a new way of thinking about yourself. And if I can get you to see yourself for the powerful woman or girl that you are with just these words, I will have reached my fourth goal and that is for you to make a serious “flip flop” to another way of “seeing” yourself as a beginner martial artist. I want you to know that you are on the path.
Now, let’s get down to the business of Awareness. Do you know what a “sentient being” is? This is important to remember, so you should write this down: sentient beings are composed of five parts: matter, sensation, perception, mental formations and consciousness. What this means is that although you may be looking at a person, face to face, there are five big parts to them that are not seen by the naked eye or any immediate sensing system that you have at your disposal. The significance of this statement and realization for you is that if all you have to determine who you are is a mirror, a camera or a tape recorder and you think that those three items are somehow able to help define even some of you, you need to finish reading all of Martial Arts 4 Life, right away!
But let’s take this just a step further. If you also think that looking at your attacker, with all his muscles and height, that in this moment of first meeting up with him that you can somehow define or understand him in any way, you got another think coming. Why do I say this? All of us to one degree or another are sentient beings and as such don’t easily, if ever at all, reveal who we really are. I say that for good or for ill, you just don’t know yourself, by looking in the mirror, or a photograph or listening to a tape recording of your voice either. Can you be tricked into thinking you know who is looking back at you in the mirror, or staring back at you in a video or photograph? Can you trick yourself into thinking and believing that you know who you are? Of course you can, people want things like that, to be true all the time. But that self-delusion does not make it true does it?
Awareness though, can be reached after a long and studious training system that takes years to really master. Now how does all of the above connect with the following words I am highlighting? For a start, awareness is where the pursuit of what you want starts to roll down hill. Without awareness of something that you want, you really are a being who is in this world wanting nothing and doing nothing to get anything. Awareness is more that just saying: “I see that item or thing”, it is also remembering what you were thinking about last week and what you thought about all that went through your mind about that topic. Awareness is like a buzzing feeling that there is something out there that interests you a great deal. Because you are a human being, you are aware of “what’s what”.
D e s i r e
My Dad use to say: “I want is what got you into trouble”. Of course at the age of six, I could not possibly understand what he was talking about, but I sure understand now. Desire, though sometimes weak and some times strong, is not something that fades away with time, is it? Dad also used to say: “if you want to sell something to somebody, you first have to build a desire in their heart for it to motivate them to buy from you”. No truer words have been spoken. And second, it’s your desire that gets the ball rolling downhill at a good clip for you.
For all the words that I have written to you, my goal was always to illuminate martial arts so clearly that you could feel it and “see it” and have no doubt about what it is you are “seeing”. I want my words to be a revelation to you; I want martial arts to be revealed to you so clearly that you could identify it in a crowded room full of words.
A truly great pioneer in ending all disease was Dr. Royal Rife, PhD who once said about cancer that if he could create a telescope powerful enough that he could see the cancer virus alive and moving he could understand that particular virus and figure out a way to kill it. And he did create that mechanical (no electronic magnification) microscope and he did in fact create a machine that did kill all forms of cancer. He ended the lethal power of cancer decades ago. You will have to investigate his life to on your own to find out what the U.S. government and the medical establishment did to him and his offices, but suffice it to say, my job in creating a desire in your heart for this wonderful thing called martial arts is to get you, like Dr. Royal Rife, PhD, to clearly “see” and understand what I am offering you. I am trying to create a desire in your heart to become, through my teachings very interested in pursuing this training, as a martial artist for the rest of your life. I want you to really want what I am offering you like nothing you have ever wanted in your life. Although, we will never meet, that is my strongest desire for you to be a martial artist and pass on to your daughter or female family members what you learned form me. And believe me, it is going to be a great deal of information and there is more coming when I start writing about Chung Do Kwon Tae Kwon Do.
D e c i s i o n
Following your desire to have something that you cannot live without comes the fateful decision that you must make in order to move forward on your path. Are you going to do it or not? When you reach a decision to possess something, life gets real simple because everything else, and all the problems you think you face in your life concerning wanting this “object” will melt away and will all become unimportant compared to the powerful magnetism of your one decision. Believe me, if you have not identified a decision in your life you ought to take a minute and do it right now! Your decision alone is the rainwater of your garden; your “wanting” is going to start growing twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week because of that one decision. When you make any serious decision, and you “look out” and see those “rowboats out in the lake”, when you make that final decision you just want to sit down in that one specific rowboat, that is in your line of sight. The rest of the rowboats will magically disappear from your view. That fact makes a decision “exclusionary”, does it not?
The reason that your decision has so much power, is that it has the influence to make you “clearly see” that boat in the lake, even though all the other boats are still out there floating around. A decision makes you know for sure that although the bay water may be “choppy”, that boat you decided on, has your name written all over it. No matter what your friends advise you, you have made a decision that take you out of the earlier conversations with them or anyone else. The desire you have, just became real for the first time. And remember that the word decision is just an eight-letter word, but it is actually a very powerful “instrument” for getting you what you want.
Find yourself a small toy boat and paint on the side of it the word “decision” at the front of your little boat on both sides, and put it where you can see it. And if you cannot find a real toy boat, get a magazine and look through it and see if you can find a picture of a boat, cut that picture out and paint the word decision on the bow (front) of the boat. When you are done, send me a picture or two and I will put that picture on my web site www.Protecttherosees.com to guide other women and girls to do the same thing.
I n t e n t i o n
As long as you know and recognize that what is happening in this life of yours, is all a mental construct of your awareness and that everything you are pursuing now, originated from your earlier desire, and you are beginning, even just slightly to “know for a fact” that you are a powerful female indeed, because, of course, you are. Intention is the one-person sled that bangs against the icy walls to get you to where you have got to go. Intention will cut a new roadway for you when you cannot understand how you were able to make the cut that became just what you needed, to get you through onto the other side. Your intention puts blinders on you during the beginning stages and allows any necessary decision that is needed for you to get started and see the task through to its completion be accomplished, as needed.
When you don’t want to train on a certain date, it’s your intention that pushes you to show up for your class. When you are tired of doing the same old front kick and punch for the five hundredth time on a hot day in the Dojo/Kwan, you stick with it and make the practice session a great one, because it is your strongest every single day intention for this training session to be great! Why it is vital to write about intention like I am is because you may know nothing about intention and may not realize that you have such a powerful force inside you, but it’s right there awaiting your command! Intention is not just for Olympic athletes by any means, it is for you to use all you want and need for any purpose you choose. Intention is a power that you can use every day of your life for getting what you want, especially when times are hard.
Speaking of intention, have you ever known of a “willful girl”? Who do you think she is? I’ll tell you! She is a normal girl who just uses the power of her intention; very well, to get what she wants. But are “willful girls” the only ones who use intention? Of course not, what about those “hard headed women” where do you think they came from? That’s right, they started out as “willful girls”. The thing to remember about all these words is not just what they will do, nor is it to just put them in the order I am telling you to either. Even that is not enough to make the difference to you. You know the secret to success with these words is that you are being made “aware (there is awareness again) of what they can do for you” when and where you need them for your use. It is your awareness of these words and the significance to you that makes all the difference in your life. Therefor it is not just ten random words. Like a poet, they have special meaning that once explained; they take on a whole new collective meaning for you.
Later on in life, these “willful girls”, who are now adult women become known as “hard headed women”. But behind all that labeling, there was one thing they excelled at: using their intention all the time and everyday of the week. They were simply making use of their own power of intention. I believe and know that these women are actually very precious to our world at large. Why? Because whether you “see” it or not, they act as role models for all girls and women. We need more “hard headed” women, and more “willful girls” not less, if you ask me. Why? Because, the world needs to make-better-use of their guidance and direction when leadership is needed even if what they say or do does not make sense at first, or at all. Think about that statement for a minute. It’s not that the power of femininity is non-existent, it’s that it is disrespected and not used for the leadership qualities that are present in every woman. Women’s intention is by no means encouraged to grow up and outward and get strong. It’s as if the world at large does not fully realize the power and greatness of the feminine. If you stop and think for a moment: what is wrong with “way more” women being in positions of “leader” whether as a President or a Prime Minister?
Look at Ms. Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister of New Zealand and her achievements. A tiny island country for sure, but look what she commanded in order to stop Covid 19 in its tracks. That’s nothing but great leadership, right there! The overwhelming majority of decision makers are without a doubt: men. Can anybody imagine what the world would be like if there were 51% more women in positions of power, leadership, and authority? Instead of having men represent women what would happen if based on the world population we had leadership representation equal to the amount of women that are alive on planet earth? I visualize that everyday of the week and it is why I am writing this message to you in the first place!
When women are not represented at the very top of the pyramid as leaders of countries what does it do for girls who see only males in positions of leadership and authority? It makes girls think and believe what they see, which is only men are “supposed” to be at the top. They believe they are seeing the natural order of things. What does that do to girl’s self-esteem? Does it make their self-esteem grow stronger or weaker? Now if girls are growing up with a lower self-esteem does that make them easier or harder to rape and murder? Does it make them willing or unwilling to take classes on learning how to protect themselves? Does lower self-esteem lead girls away from long term martial arts training or does it guide girls directly to martial arts classes? Does it teach girls to negotiate for their safety? What does that say about female’s strength by having to negotiate for their very life? Your telling your attacker very clearly you have no other choice or option but to plead for your life. Do we really want girls to grow up generation after generation being “negotiators for their safety”?
Intention is not used nearly enough by women and one way they can learn more about intention is to study and then make use of their intention in martial arts training. Their use of intention in their martial arts classes though, is only the beginning of how intention can be manifested for all of their life. By magnifying and sharpening their use of intention, they will also be easily able to protect themselves as a result of their studies. Once girls exercise their intention in a knowing and prolonged way, they will love the power they feel coursing through their veins and they will expand the use of intention and not reduce it. Once thoroughly trained, all my students will have a much greater appreciation, understanding and respect for their “hard headed” sisters, because they will be one of those “hard headed” women themselves, that I write about in the preceding text. Think about what I am saying: imagine coupling martial arts training with just intention alone. What a powerful, empowering outcome that would create!
S e l e c t i o n
How selection can work for women and girls in deciding on this particular idea I am offering, is for all of us to take a moment to ask their own inner guide what it is that my students are feeling when they read my words. Does it answer questions they have had for a long time; does their inner guide identify agreeable thoughts that they themselves have often thought themselves? If so, that inner resonance they are feeling is their inner voice giving them a green light, to go for it. Selection is whole lot of: I don’t want this, I’ll take that. Selection is a deeply researched evaluation of many choices, which do reveal some choices that are pretty good, but only one of the selections stands tall above the rest. Selection comes first from the unconscious mind and supply’s what is needed when the conscious mind requests advice and guidance. So that means that you probably have been searching for a better way to walk around on planet earth and not have to worry about being mugged or raped and that is why you are here reading my words. When you are walking around looking at nothing and everything, you are quietly evaluating and then selecting what you want. Actual selection for something that you really want can come lighting fast and take you by surprise, but you have been evaluating and selecting every day of your life whether you realized it or not. When something comes along that you want, you grab it!
Your selection of a martial arts class or school is not always the most easy to access or continue to attend on a regular basis because of the traveling restrictions or the distance from your home or dorm room or office. So you don’t select that choice and keep on looking. And then out of the blue, and taking you by complete surprise, you have an opportunity to study with a martial arts expert that can deliver your martial arts training to you directly to your computer screen. What you want and need is right there, and its any time of the night or day that you want it. This makes your selection so much easier. However, there is something that keeps you from doing this training with me. It could be that it seems like all too much for you to absorb. My suggestion is to take it one day at a time and get started now! Remember, its not how long it takes you to get to be an old woman, its in what shape you are in when you get there and what damage has been done to your body by attackers that can make all the difference to you at the end of your life. Selection is saying yes to what you know is right for you.
F o c u s
Focus is knowingly excluding everything but what’s the exact fit for your needs. In martial arts, there is a target that you have got to hit, but you have to mask that from your attacker for just a moment. You don’t want him to protect the area you are about to hit, do you? Focus is the ability to just not think about your problems and instead direct all your attention on the task at hand.
Back in the day, when I was competing in Karate tournaments, fighters would be getting hurt all day long, but they would continue to fight their new opponents. It was their focus that got them through their fights. All they could think about was winning that fight. During board breaking demonstrations, practioners had better think long and hard about getting their fist on the other side of those boards. Because, if they did not focus long and hard, about putting their fist through the board, their fist would just bounce off the boards and their fist would be sore. When you are focusing, everything goes away in your mind and you only see the boards, stones, tiles or blocks of ice. Focusing helps you feel your Chi/Qi moving up and down in your body until the moment when you put your fist at the exact right moment, your Chi/Qi pass through your hand and into whatever you are breaking.
Focus though, is a force that everyone has in abundance, and not just martial artists. Everyone can close their eyes and focus on what they have to get done that day. Everyone can focus and some are better at it than others. Those that are better at it, practice to make it sharper and better defined. Did you know that you could improve your focus? Here is an exercise that will help you start to get better at focusing on what you want to have happen. Imagine that you have someone who is harassing you and giving you a hard time, all the time. No problem at all. The next time you see someone who looks like him, do a “soft focus” on him to start with, where you squint with your eyelids half open and just see his whole body in soft focus. Now keep that “soft focus” going for a minute if you can hold it that long. Be sure nobody sees you looking at him. If he is standing so that the side of his face and body is all that you can clearly see, that is perfect. Now keep that soft focus going for about a minute. If you have to break the soft focus because your eyes are tired, look away, and then look back until you are sure you see him in a whole body view in your minds eye. Next I want you to look at him with only his nose as your target. While you are looking only at his nose, I want you to think about striking him in the nose as hard as you can. Just think about hitting that nose of his and nothing else. With your pinpoint focus on striking that nose for one minute and the fact that you are really putting the tool of focusing to work. And just so we are clear, the reason that I told you to find a look-a-like male is because even attackers have the same built in system that tells them when harmful intent is being directed at them. So I don’t want you to give up the element of surprise on a potential encounter with the guy who is making your life miserable.
Here is one last, simple exercise, just for you. Focus mentally on getting a glass and pouring some water into it. Put everything out of your mind except pouring that water, and of course, pour the water slowly. When the glass is full focus on drinking that water. Then focus on putting that glass safely down on the table. When you place it on the table, put one edge of the glass down first and then slowly rock the entire glass bottom down firmly. That way, you have more control of the sound it will make. To increase your understanding, of all this, write down ten exercises on improving focus in your martial arts journal. Make them simple and short in duration. You are going to be improving your attention span and thus improving your focus. The longer you can hold onto your focus the better for you and your own life. Good Luck! Your focus is what brings all of your efforts into a tight and hard line of counter attack.
P a t i e n c e
One night, back in 1973, when I was enjoying a great dinner, at the Swan Restaurant and Bar, in Ipswich, England, United Kingdom, when a thought just popped out of my mouth, while I was having dinner with my future wife. These words were about patience, and they were: “Patience is the confidence of knowing you will succeed”. Patience comes from a place inside of your brain that is certain that you are going to achieve what it is that you have set out to do or possess what you want to have as yours alone. But for the moment, let’s discuss the awesome power of patience. Patience in martial arts terms is learning when to stop and wait for what you want. This does not mean that you are disinterested in having what you have set out to have as yours, it just means that a part of being a great martial artists is knowing “when to stop and when to go”. Its knowing your “place” in the universe and not being upset when things don’t go your way during the waiting time of using patience. Patience is confidence. When to stop means that if you are about to protect yourself against an attacker, its definitely not in your best interest to fly off the handle and start doing things that are not going to allow you to defend your self. It is always better to hit than to swing and miss the target. It means that you are watching and waiting for the right moment to go “full on” at your attacker. It means that you are a thinker, a planner, and an evaluator, and are well trained in seeking out the right moment to respond to an attack. Remember: knowing when to go and when to stop is vital to fully understand and make use of what I am teaching you today.
More than that though is to understand why you want to have patience and how it is a powerful force that can save your life and make you the street fighter you desire and need to be. Patience is a powerful force that is really more Ninja than Samurai, meaning, patience is about planning and stealth, Samurai is charging hard at the enemy while running straight at him. Be patience now, and forever, my friend.
Patience means having an inner knowing that everything for you is going to turn out just the way you want it. And that inner knowing may be at odds with what the world at large is telling you, but all that is secondary to what your body, mind and spirit are telling you in this moment. So, how do we get to that place of patience, where you are calm, cool and collected? Just like anything else, it has to start with a certainty about something that you want. It is knowing that you are willing to “wait” on for an extended period of time, or as I like to tell anyone: “I can wait”. Saying that you can wait is just the words that come out of your mouth, but deep down inside you, waiting is something that must be fluid and smooth as syrup pouring out of a bottle.
Now, this is a game for you to see what it is like to live “in the open question”. What that means is that you now have a question for yourself “can I teach myself to be more patient”? Of course you can, the answer is a resounding yes! Let’s get to it. Pick something that you want and make it something that won’t come quickly. The trick in this game is “to live in the open question” of not knowing one way or the other what is going to happen. Understand that I want you to add a little spice in your waiting period. Close your eyelids and start to visualize that thing you want to come true for you to actually come true for you. Do that visualization several times a day, until it either comes true or it does not. If it does or does not come true, immediately, start to visualize something else coming into your mind, with the same game and visualization technique. In time, you will become better at developing patience for those things to come true that you want to come true. If you don’t do this exercise until patience slowly shows up in your life, expect to be nervous for the rest of your life, just the way you are now. Patience must be learned so play the game!
Now I want you to close your eyelids and imagine yourself in a bowl that is so big that you, either standing or sitting in the center of the bowl makes it impossible to see over the edge of the bowl’s rim. Now, I want you to give this bowl that you are in a name: the name is patience. Write the words patience on the inside and the outside of the sides of the bowl. I want you to surround yourself inside this bowl with you sitting or standing in nothing but patience. Now, I want you to relax in the bowl and imagine that several of the things that you want to come to you suddenly materialize in that bowl right where you are waiting for them to come to you. I want you to think of the bowl as your “go get em” bowl. And that you use it everyday to attract whatever your heart desires. Why did I set this game up to be centered in a big bowl? Because when you visualize this bowl, it will be a light color and porcelain. It does not offer you any distractions. The word patience will be lettered in a dark color of your choice.
I want you to think of playing a game where you breathe deeply and softly, the air directly into your diaphragm. This bowl is your “catch all” that can bring any size thing that you want. If the bowl proves to be too small, what do you do? Double of triple the size of your imaginary bowl. The point here is to learn about your self and your awesome power to be patient. Patience is waiting for something that you desire to happen just the way you want it to happen. Repeat after me: I can wait. Write it in your martial arts journal, one hundred times a day until such time as you know that you can wait.
P e r s i s t e n c e
Imagine a Chinese woman named Mo Ye who was a sword maker; (Mo Ye actually was a sword maker) and she is making a final pass on sharpening her custom made sword. Imagine that in this story, the heavy, circular stone is on an apparatus that she controls by pressing her foot down, on a wooden pedal, over and over to make the stone turn at just the right speed that she wants it to turn. The sunshine is at her back and she has more than enough time left in the day to complete her work on sharpening that majestic sword to a razor sharp edge. The sword is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece and the steel is very hard indeed. For certain, Mo Ye is well acquainted with awareness, desire, decision, intention, selection, and focus but the mental skill she needs to call on now is persistence. She has to touch the steel to the stone many times in order to make her masterpiece, a razor blade. In fact, it must be sharp enough to shave with. There is just no better way of showcasing persistence than to focus on a master sword maker at her work. It is her constant re-application of awareness, desire, decision, intention, selection, focus and patience to get that steel blade from a slab of steel into what she has her hands on now. Persistence then, is the re-application of all of the above “word tools” that I have written about so far. As she puts the steel blade to the stone, it is not just the word persistence itself that pushes her to excellence but all of those seven previous words combined that are taking her to where she ultimately want to go to. Remember that each of the words have a power in your thinking and in your life. When you place one behind the other, it is like a loaded freight train that cannot be stopped. However, there are two more tools that I want to talk to you about. The ninth word is testing.
T e s t i n g
Testing your work, your thoughts, your “everything” is the key to seeing to it that your awareness is not only what you wanted, but it turns out better than what you thought it would be. Testing is something that we can all do if we just stop and understand what testing really does for you. Testing is certifying that what you wanted is what you were after. Testing is not taking someone’s word for something you wanted done, but “seeing it for your self”. Testing is a search for the truth. Testing is something I do with my students all the time when I am with them, teaching. After so many years of being a teacher, I have learned something about students: when you ask them what you just told them, they would honestly tell you what they thought or believed you said, and what you wanted to hear. What’s good about asking with a testing structure built in is that you hear the strangest answers and yet students believe 100% that what they told you is what you just said. You are learning from me right now, that testing to certify for certain that the message was received as you sent it out. Why this is so important to you is that if you do not test, you can only guess if they understood everything you taught them. And when you guess, everything that you have been working towards goes out the window, because you walk away thinking that your message was received correctly. And your testing does not have to be a sledgehammer’s heavy blow, either. Learn how to be subtle in your approach so that you can really establish the truth about what you are testing for and towards. And finally, it does not hurt to have more than one way to ask the question you want answered. Be creative in your testing and you will be surprised in how you really learn about your own teaching abilities and how much knowledge got through to the person you are testing.
The sword maker has all of her personal tests for the sword to make certain that what she has spent all her time in making is tested and re-tested countless times until at last she is dead certain that what she is going to give to some Ninja or Samurai will at least not break and render the warrior defenseless. That’s testing for real time results.
G r a t i t u d e
Perhaps more than any of the preceding nine words, this last word means the essence for you of all things that you want and is the consummate word to put you in touch with that part of you that is ageless, boundless and wise beyond your belief or awareness. With gratitude, you will get in touch with the “ground of being” that is what I refer to as “the all”.
Allow me to teach you about gratitude, as I understand it. When someone says: “thank you” you for something that you have done for her, how does it make you feel? How does the person saying thank you feel about saying thank you? Here is the thing about saying and receiving a “thank you” comment; both parties feel good about it. Here is an example: when someone says thank you, to you, those two words makes you feel complete, and the circle of energy is closed. You believe that someone acknowledged your efforts on their behalf. It is a simple transaction. The person who is saying those two words also gets to hear themselves saying thank you. At a deeper level, this tells them that someone loves them enough to do something supportive for them.
When you develop an attitude of gratitude, you will actually start to look hard for reasons to say “thank you” to everyone you know or meet up with. The more you say thank you, the more that you feel “filled up with love” from the world. Why do you want to feel filled up with love? Because if you feel that you are unloved, why should you study martial arts, why should you defend yourself? Why should you do anything except let bullies, stalkers and muggers assault you and your body? Can you see, how creating and learning a strategy for loving your self is nothing but just doing something smart for everyone? Gratitude is, in a very direct way, a creation of a spiritual shield that protects you. You are not going to allow anyone to hurt you when you are full of love for yourself. So gratitude is a very direct way of saying to yourself, that you are loved. Love is your shield in a very direct sense. I want all of you to say thank you, both to your self and to others. Thank you is the two most important words in any language. Let me repeat a story, about a person who is full of love and has been trained and will be ready in a heartbeat to protect themselves. I am constantly saying thank you to whomever I can find to listen to me. I say these words over and over to myself: I am so lucky, thank you! I don’t have a day go by that I am not saying thank you at least fifty times a day. You cannot be full of love for yourself, really bursting at the seams with that love and be depressed, there is just no way that the two can exist in the same space. And love conquers all, believe it! There is just not enough room in your mind, body, and spirit to have both of them in their at the same time. Love pushes depression out of a person’s mind body, and spirit. I have seen this occur many times in my student’s lives.
One day, a sailor who was undergoing Navy Seal team training was involved in night swim training exercise and had crawled up onto the beach for a few seconds after an exhausting ocean swim. In just a moment, they would be ordered on to the next part of their “endurance and torture training”. The officer’s who were in charge of the night swim were doing their dead-level best to get the weaker men to “drop out” of Seal training by “ringing the bell” to signify that they could not stand the training any longer and were going to quit on the spot, if they would only ring that bell. One instructor walked up to the sailor in question and screamed in his face: quit, you worthless piece of crap, just stand up and go ring the bell”. With his face down in the beach’s mud, he turned his face up to the instructor and said these words. “I can’t sir, I’m too full of joy”!
This is important that you understand this crystal clearly: this particular sailor’s feeling of being full of joy is the same exact feeling you will have when you get on the path of gratitude, because when you are on that path, you cannot be beat, when you are full of the joy of being on an adventure, and joy is all you know, nothing can stop you. However, when you have that boxcar of the big ten words plus being full of joy the world will know your name as a powerful woman or girl. So saying thank you, every chance you get to fill your self up, with self-love every minute of the day is your new pathway to making your life the one that dreams are made of. Try it for a week, with fifty, “thank-you’s” per day for seven days and then tell me how you feel. Focus on what you do have and don’t ever shift your focus to what you don’t. Don’t even think about what you wish you had or what should have been yours. Be thankful for what you do have.
And finally, what is your gratitude really? It’s you talking about what you do have, what you have been given, what you own, and what a beautiful life you possess. How so many people on planet earth don’t have anything like you do. There has to be something that you have that you are grateful about. If you say that there is nothing to be grateful for, there is nothing to be grateful about, then you are the definition of an ingrate that is both miserable and depressed and that is not the life you want is it? So if you are an ingrate and you have read thus far, get out your martial arts journal, if you don’t have a book that has blank pages in it, then go get one. Get that book out, put the date and the time you are writing, always, what you are writing, and start a list of things that you are grateful for. Do you have two feet with toes on those feet? You know what to do. Start with the toes on your feet and go all the way up to the top of your skull picking out things that you are grateful for. I do this every morning with out fail, and it takes me about two minutes. Now, I want you to write down all the parts of your body that you are grateful for and read each one aloud until you are feeling really grateful. That should take you ten to fifteen minutes. When you are ready to try something different, think about how grateful you are that there is a Sun in the sky, and a breeze in the air. Ready to be grateful for the friends that you have? No friends on the face of the planet? Just think about the fact that means you still can find that one true friend, even if they have not shown up yet. You are one day closer to meeting them! Be grateful for that! Gratitude is something that is designed to fill you up with love. You can keep it a secret, and I wish that you could imagine things that you don’t even have and say thank you for just being a thing that you are going to see to it that it comes into your life. You can be grateful for things that you don’t even have yet but know they are coming. You can certainly be grateful for a person who brings you high quality martial arts training right to your lap top or hand held device. Do you know I had a guy recently that I did a ton of favors for, loaned him money picked up things for him in my truck and delivered them to where he was working and he never ever said thank you to me, even once. Then one day I taught him all that you have read thus far and you know what he said when I asked him “what do you say when someone loans you money and does all the things that I have done for you”? His answer was: “what”? That’s when I “went to town” on him and gave him about 45 minutes of hard core teaching about the power of “thank you”. But hang on for second, when he does something for me, I look at him and say: “my turn to say thank you to you, so thank you”. Once he was on board the “thank you train” he was a changed person, no doubt about it. When you are sniffing out opportunity’s like I do to say you, thank you, you also will be “too full of joy”, to quit!
T h e D o m i n o e s
Of course, those ten words are important enough on their own, sure enough, but when linked together in the order that I have lined them up, they become for more instructive and revealing about how martial arts training is a “practice run” for living a successful life, and that makes a big difference! These ten words, just like a locomotive pulling ten boxcars, teach any woman or girl how they can get what they want from their life, one key word at a time. But as good as these words are on their own, if someone did not bring them to your attention, you may not put them altogether in your lifetime and then start using them immediately as a fully functioning happiness machine. You may wander around in your life and not really come to a realization that by knowing these ten words, in the order I have put them in, they can truly make the single biggest difference in your life concerning anything you will hear from me. These words, in the order they are in before you now are that important. You now have your pathway defined in a way that it has never been before! You can never say, “but I don’t know what to do”.
I hope you print this out and keep it by your desk, chair or bed or wherever you can get a moment to re-read it over and over again. Whether you realize it or not, this document and these words are absolutely a part of your study of martial arts and self-defense. This is a part of your spirit training and of course, there will be more teachings, to follow these ten words. Ask the next ten women you meet what these ten words mean to them and see what they think. I bet none of them will say what I have written here, or anything close to it. Oh, and just for fun, jumble up the order of these words just to make them really have to create and think. Ask the question of your girlfriends in this way: What do these words mean, do they have a hidden meaning, and do they necessarily have a power all by themselves? What’s the big deal about these ten words anyway? Can they make a difference in my life?
What I really want to do is to gently guide you to an understanding that once you know all this that I have written, your life will take off in the direction you want it to go, but remember, it won’t take off by accident it will take off because you know and understand the inner workings of these ten words and how they have an order to them that will work for you. My only hope is that you realize that with jet travel, you can be anywhere in the world you want to go, but you are still not safe, until you can protect your body with your body and your long term martial arts training. That’s the only way possible for you to do all the things that you want to do with your life and be safe. You have got to learn how to treat the protection of your mind, body, and spirit as the biggest priority in your life. And if you want your life’s obstacles to fall down in front of you like so many dominos, all in a row learn everything I have offered you. In your mind, link these ten words together one after the other. Here is an even better idea: get yourself ten dominoes, old or new, and label each of them with the appropriate words painted on each edge and then stand them up and push one down and watch them fall down, one after the other. That means that each individual domino will have a different word on it, and the word you pick first is awareness, which will be painted twice, once on each edge of the domino and you are off to a new life! Nine more dominoes to go, with two edges per domino to paint! Use a tiny artist brush to do your work. Once they are dry, play with them over and over and enjoy teaching yourself that one domino (one word) will help you learn that a second domino will knock over the third domino and so on and so forth. Play with your dominoes everyday. Daydream and visualize your dreams of being a great street fighter, a great martial artist and an even stronger, more influential woman.
When you think to yourself: “I don’t know what to do next”, pay close attention to the following words: I have taught you what your next step has to be in getting to what you want to happen. This is a time in your life where you need to stop and think about what I am saying so that there will be no outside distractions. This information for you is life changing whether you fully realize it now or not.
Of course, I have more information for you to digest.
T h e S t o n e s
Go find yourself ten flat stones of about the same size, and big enough that you can stand on top of each stone with both feet and with your shoes on. Paint theses ten different words onto the face of the stones and let them all dry for about a week. Make sure the stones are big enough for you to put both of your feet on them; each stone will have one of our ten words painted on the face of each stone. That means for an example, the word awareness would be painted with white paint (or a neon paint color that will show well at night) and then paint the other nine words directly onto the face of each remaining stone. Then, find a good place in your garden to lay them out, but don’t put them in place just yet. These ten stones that you can step on now, are your everyday and long-term guides about what to do next in your quest. If you close your eyes and visualize these ten stones that make your new pathway, you will have a clear understanding about what it is that needs to be done next. And this power behind you that is pushing you forward will be a dominant force indeed! Remember awareness, desire, decision, intention, selection, focus, patience, persistence, testing and gratitude. When you are at the decision stage what is it that has your back? Awareness and desire! Each successive step you make gains another word and “back-you-up” influence in your mind that is still there and all of them are still enthusiastically still backing you 100%!
When the paint on the stones are dry, cover them with some type of sealant with two “coats” so as to protect the paint forever. One coat is the same thing as one application. I want you cover the face of your stones where the words are already painted on and dry, with two applications (or two coats) of sealant. You can pass them onto your daughter if you want to or you can teach her to make stones of her own.
When you are at the intention stage, you have all of your awareness and desire for what you want still present in your mind and you have the added strength of a single decision. And of course you have the awesome power of intention at your beck and call. Next, comes selection where you fine-tune your awareness, desire, your decision, and your intention. What a powerful “back-you-up four pack”!
When you are at the selection stage, you have the power of desire and one decision where nothing else will do except what you truly want. Selection is of course, a sorting process of this over that. And now, once that sorting process is double checked, you are now using your laser beam power of focus. Focus is where every thing backing you is beating the drums for you to keep you tuned into getting what you want to come to you and be made yours. Focus, along with all the preceding powers are rolling along nicely towards you achieving your strongest desire! Next comes sharpening the sword on the stone wheel you your self are making turn at the rate you want it to turn at. All of your mental forces and powers are coming close to delivering what you want. And then we come to testing. Is this thing, this point in life, really what you thought it was going to be? Does it need to be changed in some way to meet your final approval? Only you know the answer to that question. And that is why you test!
Get that new set of dominoes out to play and day dream and make your long range planning with them. First, if you have some paint and an artist brush, and you know what needs to be done next. Once painted, let them dry for a couple of days and then set them up and start to play with them. Let your creative essences flow from you as you play and plan with your hand painted dominoes. This is the first step in getting what you want. You can use these ten dominoes for the rest of your life. When I say play with them, I mean with each word you read starting with awareness, write down in your martial arts journal what it is and why you believe in it and want to use it. Can you think up a dozen reasons why you want that thing that you are aware of? Tony Robbins, the great American success coach calls this concept “stacking”. Imagine how your desire would be going through the roof if you write down a dozen reasons why you are aware of something. Write out in your own hand all the things that are a part of this stack, word-for-word. Don’t leave anything out and remember write it down in your own handwriting in your preferred language.
That way, when you go back to your text, it will be fresh and alive and so will you become invigorated by just reading your own handwriting. It will stimulate your thinking. Review and study with all your might, (that’s intention) the other remaining words in the same way, you write down all the ins and outs of what makes this desire so much a part of why you must and will have what it is you want.
Keep in mind that you personally hand writing about all these ten words makes large sections of the brain work in ways that improve your thinking, your ability to speak your language, healing of your body and your ability to remember things. So write by hand whatever and whenever you can. It is good for you to write every day, because you do give exercise to twenty muscles when you do! Remember what you think about has a certain amount of power in your life. What you speak about has an even greater amount of power than just thinking about it. But what you write about with your own hand has the greatest power of all these three ways of communicating in your life. So write things by hand whenever you can. Most of what I write here for you was written by hand by me, first.
Please send me your pictures of your dominoes with each of the ten words painted on each domino’s edges. I will show you my own personal set of Dominoes on this page so that you can see better what I mean. I will also do the same thing with the stones that I have painted and use all the time. Daydreaming, wakeful dreaming is a powerful tool that you should use everyday and as often as you can during any day of the week. Go to the next step and take a video of those Dominoes falling, and send it to me, I want to see what you are doing! I want the “dominoes” in your life to fall, well, like dominoes! I want you to get what you want out of life. This is one way to bring it to you sooner than later. When you are getting what you want out of life you are happier and when you are happier, you are more willing and quicker to protect that happiness than you are to protect your sadness and despair.
And finally, I want you to find ten flat stones, and wash them until they are very clean, then get the paint out again and your artist brush and paint a different word on each of them, then wait three days and get some sealant and put a couple of coats on the surface of each stone, to slow down the wear and tear on the letters. When they are good and dry, take them to a secret place that only you know about and bury them in the ground, so that only the face of the stone shows with one word on the face of each the ten stones. In big letters, one stone will have the word Awareness on it and another will have Desire on it, followed by another stone that says Decision. Follow through with all the remaining seven words on the stones. This is your secret place that no one else can see what you have done. The location of your stones is your secret to tell or not to tell. If you have a girl friend, that you really trust, you can take her and show her and explain what you are doing and why. When you have it just the way you want it, feel free to decorate the stones with anything and anyway you want to. If you have to move from where you live, of course, prepare your stones for travel by cleaning them and take your stones with you.
Put them in their new space, when you know the time is right. Do your best to step on your stones every day of the week. When you step on it, say the word painted on the stone and feel the magic of the word traveling up your body to your mind, feel the connection with the earth every moment you are stepping or standing on your stones. By the way, keep your dominoes in a black bag, when you travel, so that it is kept clean and protected from negative energy touching your dominoes. This is yet another one of your secret powers that you are learning about and using to keep a big secret.
Now, why all the secrecy? Can any of you think of why? In the mean time, I want you to climb a board the “keep-it-a-secret train”. Why keep your new powers a secret? Did you know that a woman is killed every six hours (around the clock) by her intimate partner? Even if your are a girl who has not been indoctrinated by the patriarchy (and I cannot imagine that) you can ask any woman you know about this statement. Women all over the world are “used up” being of service to some man. Some women have done so thinking that it is there own idea and are willing, including some women who are not so willing. Keeping something for just you can slowly but surely “change the drain on women”, being the servants, punch bags, and nurses of some men. If you keep your dominoes and your stones, a secret you may like the idea of keeping your martial arts training a secret too. But, hold on, not just like the idea about your martial arts /self defense training, but love the idea about your martial arts training being a secret!
Why keep all these secrets? Because information, it seems to me, is potential power for you to use as you see fit. If you give your power away to some man whom you trust with all your heart, then you are right back to where you were before you ever heard of me, vulnerable and defenseless. My job is to teach you martial arts and self-defense and to train you how to be a great street fighter, someone who does not think for a moment to seek out a man to protect her body, mind or spirit. Instead, she will, protect herself with just what’s in her body, mind and spirit, to get the job done! Through my training system, I want you to grow and develop into that someone who protects herself with her own body, mind, and spirit and her long-term martial arts training. Isn’t it about time that you had something that was exclusively yours and no one else’s? Write this down: M. A. 4. L. Do you know what this means? It means what I am talking to you about right now, the training, the dominoes, the stones and all the self-defense and martial arts training you can get from me; it stands for Martial Arts for Life. And this is how serious it can be for you, it is the one thing in your life that no one can ever take from you or alter in anyway, unless you say so.
I want you to take and send me pictures or video of your ten dominoes and ten stones and if you give me permission, I will post the pictures or videos on our web site www.Protecttheroses.com for other girls and women to look at and enjoy. The only thing I ask is that you send me nothing about your body that could identify you. Gloves on your hands is a good way to mask those hands. Nothing about your hands, feet, or face. All I want to show on www.Protecttheroses.com is your artwork. I will of course, protect your privacy.
N o t i c i n g t h e R e s u l t s
In all that I have read or listened to in 50 years of training women and girls, I have never heard or read even once a mention of the real and only lasting remedy to stopping violence against women from the press, world leaders, civic leaders, the Police, Governors, Senators, really anyone in authority which is: long term self-defense and martial arts training should be mandatory for all girls for her at least during her first 12 years of schooling. The longest life long training you can do is the best. In time after you reach to start fighting with male martial artists you can absorb all that you learn from them, but you don’t have to share what you know and what you have learned from me. Just make up a believable story about an instructor you knew from another time in your life. You don’t have to be any male martial artists equal, you are not in this for personal aggrandizement either. You are at this time in your life learning how to be a street fighter.
If we take a good look at and notice the results of countless take back the night marches, candle light vigils, protest songs about stopping violence against women, wearing buttons that say: “Another man against violence against women”, placing teddy bears and candles at places where murdered women or girls bodies were found, at symposiums where violence against women is discussed over the last 50 years that I know of, nothing ever changes because those methods don’t instill real palpable, stomach twisted into knots, fear in the minds of men who want to rape and murder any women and girls they see. As well meaning and heartfelt as these activities are, they don’t make the average woman or girl any safer from a man who wants to do what he wants to do.
One close friend of mine told me that what I propose, teaching women how to stop their attacker is a “male answer” to stopping violence against women. But, if you read Ms. Jessica Amanda Salmonson’s book The Encyclopedia of Amazons, you learn that women have been warriors for thousands of years. Women such as Ethiopia’s Black Candace who faced off with her warriors across the banks of the Euphrates River against Alexander the Great, the greatest undefeated General of that time, who turned away from a fight with the great field commander Black Candace. So, when people say Alexander the Great was an undefeated field General, just include for them this fact: the reason he was never defeated was because he did not have the guts to fight a woman who was equal to him in strategy, troops, and supplies. She was named a Nubian warrior Queen, who were named by the country of Ethiopia as a Black Candace After reading Ms. Salmonson’s book, I knew I was only repeating what had already been done by trainers now long dead and gone. Women are excellent tacticians, empty hand fighters, weapon using warriors and every other description you care to name about their ability to protect themselves when their “show down” occurs. So as a woman, don’t think for a moment you cannot master the techniques and the fighting spirit necessary to protect yourself because it has already been done and done quite well by women. The greatest fight you will ever win, is the fight you did not have to fight. So, what do you think about Black Candace now? She won a fight, by not even shooting one arrow into the air. There was no target for her to hit, because Alexander the Great tucked tail and marched towards Egypt and that is how it went down. So what does it say about Alexander’s fear of fighting a female’s directed Army out in the desert sands of Ethiopia?
So, say what you want about teaching women self-defense being a male answer to stopping violence against women, because in that final showdown, in interviews with as many rapists and murderers of women and girls as you want, most of them will say the same thing, “I rape because I can, because she could not stop me. All the candle light vigils, the take back the night marches, the op-ed pieces you care to name, they have made no difference to the average woman. Ms. Magazine that had the same cover on both sides of one issue of their magazine. The entire issue from cover to cover discussed stopping violence against women, but never said a word about women being trained in self-defense. Not one single word. I know, because I read that magazine from cover to cover to be sure. Can you imagine if they had interviewed one female martial arts instructor how many Black Belt women would be alive to this very day? By now, female Black Belts would be in their sixth or seventh generation at least. I am here to get you out onto the martial arts highway to take you on a journey that can last you all your life.
Have you heard yet about Yim Wing Chun? As a 16 year old bean curd vendor who defeated a man who was trying to force her to marry him, but instead he got a whipping from Yim Wing Chun instead! She later created Wing Chun Kung Fu all by her self. My point is many men have been responsible for great and wonderful inventions and creations and I say who ever created martial arts, if it works for keeping a woman safe, if it ends violence against women, learn it and use it. Saying it is a male solution to stopping violence against women could be partially true, but if it keeps you alive I say let go of your dislike for men long enough to learn what they know about what they have been doing quite well for thousands of years and become safer, then you teach other women what you know and have learned. If that idea does not ring true for you find a martial art that is taught by a woman and created by a woman (Wing Chun) and off you go! Put the time in learning how to protect yourself and become safer.
So, when you read all the words that I have written and you say, why does he care, why does he spend so much energy when he is not a woman? I do it is because I am sick and tired of violence against women being portrayed as being unstoppable and unchangeable. I know that violence against women and girls can be stopped once and for all because if this generation of women and girls pass what they have learned down to their daughters and those daughters pass what they have learned into the following generation of girls, what will we have?
It will be a time and place in our world where young girls grow up and look forward to their martial arts training. Where young girls never know any difference when, at the age of 6 they start being taught how to protect their bodies with their bodies, minds, and spirits. By the time they are 18 years of age, no man can raise a hand safely against them. Why? Because that man cannot be sure whom he is attacking and as such will hesitate for just a second. They always will. And everyone knows what happens when you hesitate.
I can see and do believe the day will come when a great grandmother from this day and age is teaching a young 6 year old great grand daughter how to protect herself, and she will think back to a time when a man tried to force himself on her and she stopped him dead in his tracks and left him where he tried to attack her and did not look back!