Woof Myke
We're out on the fringes?
Here's what I wrote for our Practitioner-Instructor Candidate Mini-Camp on Sept 18-19 (see Announcement at or near the top of this forum)
BEGIN
Dog Brothers Martial Arts has as its mission to help its people "Walk as a Warrior for all their days". In this system, a warrior is one for the length of his Life and each day is not only a celebration of the present, it is also a building block for the future.
In the Art of this, there are three basic stages: the Young Man, the Family Man, and...well let's call it the Free Man. Be clear that the system is very specifically for ALL: The Practitioner who stands ready without fail to step forward to Protect without notice is the greatest Warrior of all, whereas the Fighter may be but a young man on the path towards this further level. To be able to step forward without notice without fail for the length of one's life in the real world requires thought as to the substance, order and organization of one's training over time. DBMA is this.
In no order and leaving out for now their specific elaboration, the basic fighting areas of the system are:
1) Unarmed: "Kali Tudo"(tm) for 'The Cage' as well as 'The Street.'
2) Knife: Offense and defense
3) Stick: For street as well as Real Contact Stick Fighting.
4) Double stick: For street as well as RCSF
5) Staff/ Dos Manos: For street as well as RCSF
Note that there are "non-fighting" areas of the system as well.
The fighting of the system is tested principally in "Real Contact Stickfighting" at a "Dog Brothers' Gathering of the Pack". This fighting, which takes place in the Ritual Space, must then be understood in terms of the requirements of the Real World. For example, one of the reasons the double stick is cultivated in the ritual space is for its development of bilateralism-the ability to move in any direction with either side forward and to fluidly shift between the two-a skill needed for the realities of a multiple player world. Another example is that staff is emphasized so that one may improvise with all items in the environment requiring two hands.
This point is an important one in understanding the system: The skills that we choose to develop and test in the ritual space are chosen with the real world in mind. Furthermore, the extraordinary array of skills that can be brought to, tested and seasoned at a DB Gathering make it an ideal laboratory for cultivating not only these skills but the teaching and training methodology of the system itself as well.
The DBMA path is about more than fighting skill in a larger context. In no particular order, there are:
1) Hurting, Healing, Harmonizing.
2) Fit, Fun, and Functional.
3) Mind, Heart, and Balls
4) Territory, Hierarchy, Reproduction
5) Contact and Consciousness, Dichotomy and Transformation
END
Does this help?
Woof,
Guro Crafty
PS: As for knife, we can work that next time we get together
