Dog Brothers Public Forum

It keeps getting backed up. I thought it was April in malasyia.. No knees. No elbows

Sorry for your loss

I know  Marc from WT and Pappy, Kalani and some of the No ho tribe. I watch them train sometimes. Great group of psycho's in the nicest sense of the word.   

In spring of 2009, I was diagnosed with colon cancer, had surgery and went thru chemo. I'm great. The reason I'm posting is to thank you guys for taking the time and the initiative to do something positive in the fight against cancer. There is not too many people who don't know someone affected by this dis-ease.


The fact that you thought about doing something to help someone else speaks volumes of the quality of the spirit of the tribe that guro Marc talks about in the videos I've seen

mike

Mike,

Earth and water are obvious in your experiment, but what of wind/air and fire? My brother breifly mentioned "radiating" out from center when he was in for the holidays, but it was hard to follow up due to the crowd of family & friends in my house (hahaha!). So, how do you visualize and physically participate with fire or with air?

As Marc pointed out its about looking for the common ground. For me and what I do there is a lot of overlapping, but subtle differences. I look at acting as if I have a Batman belt on, then play with the tools.

Radiation works on a few different levels. The first is that it makes us Charismatic, but we also take what we feel and radiate it out to the audience or into an attack. you've been the Reciever when you picked up the vibes of the asshole accross the bar staring at you. He Radiated his bad intent to you. You feel it on a physical level many times before you see it, but you always feel it.

I think Tai Chi does it similar to me. i start with seeing a Sun Center in my Chest, then expand it , then radiate it to all parts of my body, then radiate out. Then explore different Qualities such as anger or warmth, etc. The Excercises are in the book To The Actor. They are user friendly. Then use you imagination  and incorporate to what your doing.


Air Is the Flying excercise and they can be  slow or quick, scattered or lucid

Fire for me is one of the 2 main energies an actor must always bring to the stage. The other is Lightness and Ease or A Feeling of Ease. All great Athletes do the hardest things with Ease and only as much tension as necessary

Fire is easier to incorporate to fighting because we naturally assume Rage as a component. But Fire can be the passion for what your doing. Their is a  big emotional range to Fire from a spark to Psychotic Rage. visualizing a Fire is easy. You can visualize it outside your body or in and becoming a part of you


This is my feeling or myopinion but we seem to do things better with strong images. Many have strong Images of their god, but no one has seen god. So man personified it in different ways over the ages. If you were raised Christian here, you were taught the words god and devil. God meaning Good. Devil meaning Evil. One letter changes the meaning but also creates a symbol that makes it easier for our minds to wrap around the concepts. Then paintings were drawn to complete the Telesmatic Image for us. The use of the elements seem to serve the same purpose. The stronger the symbol, the stronger the image, the stronger the result. So we're basically calling up an image to create feelings for the purpose of some intended result. as Maiji points out its a way of seperating intent and method

I also think as humans we like dogma or better yet we tend to complicate things. If you went to work out one day and said to yourself I'm going to focus on strength and power for a bit, then later decided to focus on Flowing and then later worked on moving with a Feeling Of Ease. You would be developing the qualities that The Mystical Occult Elements were meant to develope And eventually they would become a natural part of your game

I hope this helps and doesn't lead you astray. In the end strive to keep it simple. Much dogma surrounds what were originally simple concepts. I think thats kinda the idea Marc has of DBMA. Cut thru to whats useful, its easy to get blinded by the bells and whistles

I apologize for jumping in on this thread as I don't post here much. My expirience with the elements comes believe it or not from an acting technique I sometimes get to teach. It took me years to get a solid understanding as  the so called mystical elements were frowned upon and rarely discussed. Michael Chekhov was marked for liquidation in Russia because of this so called mystical bent.

One of the reasons I started looking into m/a's was to understand these concepts better. No real luck. My understanding comes from having to use them and teach them. I don't know if this will answer the OP question, but it should point you in a direction to form your own corelations between arts/systems

Remember the purpose of all systems,arts , and religions is to unifiy Mind, Body and Spirit. When I look at those 3 words, a trilogy if you will, I can easily corelate them to other trilogies. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit come to mind as well as Thought, Word And Deed. Much esoteric thought leaks over to other systems and terminology changes and confusion ensues. Either way, we're looking for unification in any performance situation

Michael defined the "Scale of Movement" for actors. Molding being the first one. This equates to Earth. Simply put, your movement molds or sculpts thru the space around you. This is a will center. By working with this visualization you start to awaken strength and power. If you play with differnt images of Earth like sand or granite, the spirit of the doing is different. It is usually rooted in the legs and below the waist. I figure the Kali equivalent would be Powerr shots

The next would be flowing and would equate to H2O. Utilizing this =Element, your movements become  graceful. Finese. You develope this by imagining the space around filled with water, see yourself flowing to the target. Playing with this you'll develope that feeling of ease all great performers and athletes seem to display doing the most difficult things. In truth its more of a feeling center

Fire and Lightness and Ease to us are 2 Energies all performers must bring to the table. Though L&E is not a particular element it can be related to H2o. It is an energy that needs to be developed and is needed in even the most powerful moments. Fighters throw the most devesrtating strikes with such Ease. Tiger Woods hits the longest shots with ease not struggle.

Fire equates to many things anger, passsion. It can warm or destroy. it can be hard or soft

This is a pretty extensive subject. I gave you ideas on how you can work with the Elements in your W/O, by using visualization and moving as if were moving thru Earth or Water Etc. If you play with it you will find yourself awakening the spirit of them in you. you will make your own corelations between your art and my craft, but trust that it there and is universal

Hope that Helps and I didn't intrude

Mike

Marc,

Its interesting this subject seems to be popping up. Good forsight by you. There is a thread running now on rosstraining.com in the mma section on Kali. It kinda turned into a mma vs kali type thread. limb destruction effectiveness, etc. I brought your stuff up as a plug. Maybe some will checkout what your doing. Personaly, I'm looking forward to it

Mike from WT