At some point, someone uploaded the systema programme to YouTube in three parts, which is where I first saw it. I had only recently heard about systema and was trying to find out more about it. I had read in William Gibson’s novel Pattern Recognition that systema had roots in Cossack dance, and these clips online showed me what that was all about. It was from the same segment that I learned that those cool Cossack swords were called shashkas.

There was a lot of really interesting material in those three clips; I would like to have embedded them here, but they appear to have vanished recently. They showed Roland training with Mikhail Ryabko and Vladimir Vasiliev in Moscow – a very interesting session because Tabby Cat is there in the background, and because I hear that Alexei Kadochnikov came to visit; a meeting that I see described on some sites as being the only time that Ryabko and Kadochnikov have met, though with all the factionalism that afflicts systema, I have no idea how true that is. It shows cossack dance-fights, a relaxation exercise with a dropped knife, a fight involving a knout… Lots of really good stuff.

It is in fact still available from someone else as one long clip:

Anyway, I do like to see people rewarded for their efforts so, having enjoyed what I saw on YouTube and learned a lot from it, I decided to buy the original DVD from budovideos.com (especially given that it was on sale!). It took three weeks to arrive, but when I eventually got time I put it into my Macbook, got ready to watch… and was very disappointed indeed. It’s almost entirely a different program – plainly from the same filming sessions, but incredibly lightweight, with almost none of the interesting material.

I simply don’t understand – how could the DVD be so different from what showed up on YouTube?

Anyway, that was a couple of years ago, and some good stuff has appeared since then. Here’s some of the clips that I’ve been watching recently:

Dance with a shashka:

Some work with a shashka from the ground:

Keeping the shashka close to the body:

Some basic sparring moves with a shashka:

As some readers will remember, I had some shashkas while I was in China: two stainless steel reproductions, and one ‘real’ shashka that could hold an edge, although I never did actually sharpen it. The first two were a make I’ve never seen anywhere else; very similar to the Denix model, but with big differences in the decoration of the hilt and scabbard. The other one was supposed to be an original Soviet sword, according to the seller, and came with a Moisin-Nagant bayonet attached to the scabbard, which was missing its leather cover. It turned out to be a fake, of a sort that was being sold in large numbers on eBay, but it handled very nicely all the same.

I used to take them to Zhongshan park – slung over by back in sword bags as I cycled through the Beijing traffic – and try out sword dancing of the kind shown in the videos above. I got reasonably proficient, although not to the standard of the women in the clips! Nobody ever gave me any problems, although I was a source of fascination to the Chinese squaddies marching out the barracks in the centre of the park, and on their way to train in the Forbidden City.

Anyway, when I came back to Wales, I decided I couldn’t bring my shashkas; it seemed that they would fall foul of very strict UK laws on the import or sale of curved swords (under the same laws, straight swords are fine, which makes no sense). So, with great regret, I left them with my friend S., along with my Chinese sabres.

Since I returned, I’ve discovered that I probably needn’t have worried; there are plenty of shops selling Chinese and other sabres. Nobody was selling shashkas, though. I found some sites overseas selling them, but they were either the Windlass version (which I wouldn’t buy, as the handle looks completely wrong to me), or Russian makers I knew nothing about. I also didn’t want to run the risk of buying one and then having it confiscated by customs.

However… last week, I found a UK-based retailer selling shashkas from WeaponEdge, an Indian-based manufacturer whose swords seem to get pretty decent reviews – and the shashka, in particular, got a very good write-up on the Sword Buyers’ Guide user forums.

I’m tempted. Very, very tempted…

Likewise with the hits… Boy, am I not used to taking punches, especially the deep, organ-level ones – the ones that you see Mikhail Ryabko demonstrating on YouTube… Ouch… Definitely, as I trained with the others – a bigger group this week – I found myself anticipating the shock, and tensing up. Something to work on…. The title comes from something Mark said during one of the exercises – to focus on the energy of exchanging punches with your partner, and to not worry about getting hit – indeed to love the hit, because when you get hit, you know you’re alive, you’ve learned something… Wise words, but not always easy to live up to!

One of the others in the group tonight is an instructor in his own right; he’ll be running Thursday night sessions, which I might try to get to from time to time.

Oh, and the chap who runs the gym knows Chris Crudelli, and thinks he might be able to get him to Cardiff for a seminar…

And boy, do I also feel that I’ve been working… It’s physical work, this tui na, and I soon find the perspiration running freely. I’m too stiff as I work; I do need to get into the practice of taiji and qigong again, as I’m using the muscles of my arm too much. Sometimes I get it right, though, and I transfer pressure to the patient without effort, using body weight and core energy.

This comes on top of reading Matthew Crawford’s book, The Case for Working With Your Hands, which I bought a couple of weeks ago. I find it hard to disagree with his thesis that there’s a satisfaction to be gained from using craft skills that is increasingly hard to obtain from the white-collar conceptual mind-work that I was always encouraged to pursue. Certainly, a lot of my work in the higher education sector no longer has the status it once had. Increasingly, the basic teaching of core concepts can frankly be done just as well, or even better, online; the offshoring and/or virtualisation of education provision over the internet can achieve results just as well as a lecture to 350 students. There is another side to education; the widening of horizons, the cultivation of human potential, the development of self-confidence. That’s the aspect that attracted me into the field, not being or wishing to be, a research academic. It’s getting harder and harder to do that though; the changing nature of the industry is bringing bigger and bigger classes, where it’s hard to make individual connections, while fewer and fewer students seem to want anything more than an easy path to a qualification that will help their career. I’m seeing complaints now that it’s unfair to expect the whole curriculum to be revised before exams, or to give them case studies without accompanying answers. Certainly, there isn’t the satisfaction to be had equivalent to taking someone’s pain away because you gave them treatment based on skills you’ve learned the hard way.

I was given a copy of 9000 Needles for Christmas, and I’ve watched it a couple of times now. In brief, it’s a documentary about an American body builder who is paralysed after a stroke. When his insurance runs out, he’s packed off home; his family decide to take him to China, after learning about an acupuncture treatment specifically designed for stroke victims. The documentary was made by the patient’s brother, who naturally enough doesn’t know anything about acupuncture; as a result, it’s a little frustrating that we never learn anything about the principles of the treatment itself. It’s fascinating, though, to see the huge improvements in his condition over a short period of time; it’s also very interesting to see the inner workings of a Chinese TCM hospital (the same one, as I’ve mentioned before, that runs a one-year, English-medium, acupuncture diploma course).

I have a few aches and pains of my own at the moment: a big black bruise on my thigh, and a sore hip. Yes, I went to my first systema class for almost a year last week, and had a great time. This was at Celtic Systema, the school run by Mark Winkler, who’s not long back from six months of training with Vladimir Vasiliev. We worked on breathing, ‘old man walking’, some falling and ground work (hence the sore hip: no mats), and breaking tension chains (hence the bruise on my thigh). All good fun: I’m looking forward to the next class. It was a small group, only four students plus Mark. What was interesting was that Mark and one of the other students speak Welsh, so the three of us spent a lot of the class yn siarad Cymraeg – truly, Celtic Systema!

On the old New Year’s Eve (ie, following the Julian calendar), I went out with the local Mari Lwyd, and not for the first time by any means. It was filmed, so here’s what I mean:

I arrived shortly after this, so I don’t appear in the clip. It’s important to keep traditions alive – and truly alive. It’s a danger that they lose their vitality, become relics that are paraded around reverently, no longer inhabiting their true role in our psyche. The thing is, the Mari Lwyd, traditionally, is a force of chaos, an element of Saturnalia when all roles are turned upside down. Read the folklore, and the Mari runs around, chasing women and making children scream in delighted terror, respecting nobody. Know this, and that mare’s skull is full of a potent personality, waiting for the right bearer through whom it can come alive. Keith Johnstone, in his book Impro, has a lot to say about masks and trance, and the ability of a mask to ‘possess’ its wearer (I’ve put my copy somewhere I can’t find it, else I would quote). Anyway, what I’ve getting to is that I wore the Mari to the next pub we visited and, as someone said to me with a raised eyebrow the next day, I was “in character”. Someone else told me that they laughed until they cried, and the manager gave me a free pint, that’s all I can say…

Right now, I’m working through Bella Merlin’s Stanislavsky Toolkit; there’s an awful lot in there about breathing and movement that can very easily be related to systema, a link I’ve made before…

As they say: never a dull moment…

More interesting to readers here will be the first couple of minutes, in which we are earnestly told that “traditional sports still hold some interest“. All I’m going to say is… what on earth is that guy using??? Watch, and you’ll see what I mean.

Also back into the zhan zhuang these last few days. There’s always something new. One of my fellow-students on the tui na course had commented on part of my right foot being really stiff – and it was too, I just hadn’t noticed, and was unconsciously compensating with my posture. So, I’m working on that and, slowly, painfully, it’s stretching and opening up. The standing is generally going well, though the creaking of ligaments and popping of tendons (or is the other way round?) remind me of the ground I’ve lost. Not to worry, I’ll soon be back to where I was, and then onwards…

Might be an opportunity coming up to get back into acting; that’ll be good, I was really missing the creative flow of those improv workshops in Beijing. Couple of other things in the pipeline, too, but I won’t mention them in case I jinx them. Systema classes starting soon; that’ll be cool.

Wow, it’s like a logjam, isn’t it, sometimes? You need dynamite to clear the blockages but then discover there’s a lot of cool stuff waiting to flow down to you….

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My hometown developed around a river bridge. Originally, the bridge was part of the main Roman military highway stretching westwards to the Irish Sea. It lay between some important forts, and we know from the archaeological evidence that some elements of Legio II Augusta were present in the first and second centuries AD. The town’s location would have led it to prosper, and we know that there were several major villa estates in the area. The archaeological remains also suggest that the town became a centre for industrial-scale metalworking. Over the centuries of the Roman presence, life became settled, and the legionaries were withdrawn, back to the major camps. Changes in Imperial technology and military requirements eventually led to the classic legions becoming redundant; the focus shifted to mobile, cavalry-based forces.

The river runs through the town, and makes its way in a large curve to the sea a couple of miles away. The river valley is deep and steep, so from the town the sea seems a long way away. It’s not, though, and it actually doesn’t take all that long to reach the estuary by foot. There’s always been a reasonable little harbor at that estuary – at least, until the whole area was reconfigured for major industrial developments in the 20th century.

I very often walk up the remnants of that old Roman highway. It’s been bypassed now by a modern road, and is an overgrown country lane, with an uneven rock surface that’s the remains of the old road core. It rises up to the top of one of the highest local hills, and then continues, arrow-straight. The odd thing is that another little lane leaves it at the hilltop, going at a right angle in the direction of the sea. It arrives at a small village, leading directly to the old manor house, and then straight onwards to the old vicarage – a house sited on the edge of the escarpment, and from where there is a view down along the length of the river valley. From there, you can’t see either the sea or the town, but you can see most of what’s in-between. It’s interesting to note that on old maps this area is named ‘The Cross’. The local church, right next to the manor, is dedicated to Hilarion – rather an uncommon saint.

That side road is very definitely ancient, and has the same kind of surface as the main Roman road. Its straightness is unusual in a country lane. Taken together, that makes me think that it must also be Roman. Why would it be there? Well, we know that by the third century, the Western coast of Britain was suffering from increasingly aggressive raiding from Ireland. Indeed, the Irish began to colonize south-west and north-west Wales. A tower built where the manor house later was would have an excellent view of the sea and that little harbor. It’s the perfect place to have a lookout; if anything was sited, riders could have been sent to warn the town long before raiders made their way up the valley. Would the town have been a target? Of course! It was wealthy and, to the Irish, a source of worked iron and steel would surely have been irresistible. The site of the old vicarage would have been the perfect place to have observe the progress of any raiders, and to launch a mounted attack at the moment of choice. But why the uncommon saint’s name? Why was the site named ‘The Cross’ before it became a vicarage?

A story takes shape in my mind, of my town in the dying days of Roman Britain. We know that there’s no evidence of occupation after the fourth century; the site wasn’t settled again until the Normans arrived. We know that the Irish took the whole area by storm during ‘The Great Conspiracy’: in the latter part of the fourth century, Roman Britain was assaulted from three directions simultaneously as the Irish, the Picts, and the Saxons united to attack this island prize. The Romans were driven back to what is now the south-east of England. With reinforcements from the continent, they eventually reasserted their control over the whole of the province – but what would they have found as they fought their way back into the occupied areas?

I can imagine a dawn when the citizens of my town woke to an ordinary morning. Their town was still prosperous. Life had been undisturbed under Roman rule for centuries. Grandfathers complained that things weren’t as good as during the days of their youth – the currency was increasingly debased, there were more and more new taxes, free men were being forced into serfdom, the Irish raiders seem bolder each year further down the coast while the soldiers were fewer and fewer (especially as more and more generals declared themselves to be the Emperor and marched their armies away to inglorious defeat). But old men always grumble.

Perhaps the first warning they had were the war cries of the raiders who had slipped up the valley from the estuary during the night. Perhaps a rider came galloping down from the lookout tower, who knows? There may have been a small cavalry unit there, who fought until they were overwhelmed or, more likely, most of them had already been called away to deal with trouble elsewhere. Whatever happened, the town couldn’t be saved.

By the end of the day, the town was in flames. Many of the men were dead. Women and children had been carted away to the boats to become slaves, along with valuables, stocks of metal, and livestock.

Some of the survivors banded together in an old Iron Age hillfort, which remained occupied and fortified through the Dark Ages. Others would have fled to the lookout tower and cavalry post in search of safety, and settled within and around its walls. Devastated, ruined, they may have chosen to build a church dedicated to Hilarion, the ascetic saint who was attacked by thieves – thieves who left him alone and even repented of their evil ways for attacking a man so much poorer than themselves, a man who had nothing left for them to take. Surely a fitting patron for the remnants of a prosperous community, who have lost everything, while raiders from the sea remain a constant threat. Such a traumatized group may have raised a stone cross in the old observation post above the valley, praying that this holy symbol might deter the Irish where horses, swords and spears had failed….

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Those who have been reading for a while will see where I’m going with this. All around us, the signs increase to show that our society and economy are under increasing stress – stress that is becoming unsustainable. Peak resources, environmental degradation, climate change, sovereign debt, corruption, and the elevation of special interests… Like the ancient burghers of my hometown, so many of their modern equivalents become gradually inured to the changes, forgetting that, once, it really was better. One day, though, it might all fall apart. That day could be soon. Based on the information available I would put 2014-15 as the key period, as that is when oil production will really start to drop off – which means that the price of EVERYTHING will rocket. That’s when things will get really ugly.

Plan. Be prepared. Be ready.

However, as Alf – who studied Welsh with me so long ago – said this morning on Facebook:

Just a reminder, before anyone gets overly excited about that arrival of 2012, that we’re in the middle of year 5772 on the Jewish calendar, and year 7520 on the Byzantine calendar, and won’t get to the end of year 4709, 4708, or 4648 on the Chinese calendar (depending on which school of calculation you follow) until later in January. And on the good ol’ Julian calendar we’re not even up to Christmas (Dec. 25) yet. So for those celebrating, have a happy new year, but remember that in a sense the year is new every morning .

Hopefully I’ll be a little more active in the new year.

Technical note: one reason for the long drought in posts was that a lot of comments mysteriously got deleted. I had hoped to find a way to restore them from a backup, and didn’t want to add more before that got done. I don’t think it’s going to happen, though, so I may as well start posting again!

JEB CORLISS: Well, you wanna know what I think is crazy? I think waking up at 6:00am, eating breakfast and getting in a car and sitting in traffic for 1.5 hours on your way to a job where you then sit in a box for eight hours, get a 30 minute break to eat some lunch get back in that car and sit in traffic for another 1.5 hours on your way home where you eat dinner and watch the TV then go to sleep. Repeat that until you’re about 60, you retire, and then you die! I think that is absolutely insane!

[Source]

Phew. Well. That was a tough summer. After the fun of North Wales…. dunno. I fell into a ‘slough of despond’ led there by a combination of things but in particular, I guess, by the… smallness? of life in the UK? The lack of interest and vision? The acceptance of the lifestyle Corliss talks about above, and the assumption that it’s both right and normal? While all the time, events loom large and the storm gathers on the horizon that might sweep it all away… Meh. Took me a while to remember that I’m bigger than this. Getting back on top of things now.

That said, there have been a lot of positives as well. Still with the girl I met on the CELTA course; her and her little boy. It teaches you a lot about yourself, accepting the trust of a child. Dealing with an indefatigable 5-year-old when he’s playing up? That teaches you a lot about yourself as well. I got the qualification, by the way; can’t remember if I mentioned it, but I’m a qualified teacher of English now.

After a last-minute effort, I also submitted the paperwork and assignments for the meditation course. This was the follow-up for the training weekend I took back in June, so I’m now also qualified to run meditation sessions (which I could do anyway, but now I’m able to join an industry organisation and get insurance, which is so important these days).

For the last few weekends, I’ve been travelling up to London for the training course in tui na at the Asanté Academy. I’m really enjoying it, and my course-mates are a really sound bunch of people; some are working acupuncturists, some are martial artists, some are just interested. A good mix of people, all of them interesting. The gf has been accompanying me, so no time yet to catch up with other London-based friends (readers of this blog included) but that’ll come.

A lot of the theory we’ve been covering has been discussed in terms of acupuncture rather than tui na, and I’m finding that really interesting; it’s definitely getting me more curious about that course in Tianjin. Not sure how I would pay for it (the year’s living as a student, rather than the fees as such), but I’m looking into it now as a serious option.

My martial arts training has been largely on hold, what with everything, apart from zhan zhuang and some xingyi, but as I’m getting back into a more focused state of mind I’ll be trying to ramp that up again…

Interesting times, and all that…

Oh, and a software update broke the blog theme, thus taking the site offline for a while, and leading to yet another new look and feel!