[I:http://lbf.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/AlCase22.jpg]A lot of the martial arts, like karate, are fiction. Hit a guy up the nose with a palm and bone shards will spear into his brain and kill him, except there isn’t any bone in the nose, its all cartilage. And all those old legends, a lot of them are good for hogwash, if you have a willing hog.

But, there is a certain science in the martial arts that is true. This is the science of geometrical energy potentials. I discovered this field in a series of books called the Lensmen Series.

I suppose the first time it hit me was when the author, E. E. Smith, described people fighting on the hull of a space ship. They were hooking their feet under hand grips so they would not fly into space from the reverse force of their strikes. They were anchoring themselves so they could apply force, and not be the effect of their own force.

Soon I was wrapped in a universe where weapons created geometries of force. If a death ray was a rod like beam, it could be deflected by a shield. And if a shield could deflect, then a shield sheared sideways could slice into the first shield.

Soon I was enraptured by concepts of fleets of space ships creating their own particular brand of strategic logics. Fleets of space ships would form globes around other fleets, and cones of fleets of spaceships would engulf and swallow globes of fleets. Each time a geometry was described, my mind struggled to keep up with the concepts.

Then, shock of shocks, fleets of spaceships gave way to the powers of the mind. Those same rods and shields and globes and cones, made real in the ultimate space combat, became the stuff of mind to mind encounters. How do you slide your awareness through the grid of another minds awareness?

And, ultimately, having finished the series of books, I began extending those outer space alien mind warfare strategies to my chosen field of the martial arts. I sank my weight into deep horse stances so I would not fly away from the projection of my own force. I described cones with the movements of my limbs, and went after globes of fists as they flew out of space at me.

When I tell people about what has inspired me they generally think I am a bit crazy, or they realize I am a genius. Reading sci fi for inspiration in the martial arts, who would have thought? Yet, it is all art, and should not art be filled with creativity and expression and beams of force and mind to mind conflicts?

Al Case has examined martial arts for 40 years. A writer for the magazines, he is the originator of Matrixing Technology. You can find out about Matrixing by getting his free ebook at Monster Martial Arts.

[I:http://lbf.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/AlCase10.jpg] You shouldn’t try to eat anything that’s got bigger teeth than you. When it comes to words of wisdom I know that isn’t much, but there is a certain undeniable truth here. Especially when a student offers the complaint that he is tired.

“Al, I’m too tired to continue.” Observing the youngster I knew that he wasn’t really tired, he was just being a bit childish. The that he had chosen to do so right in the middle of my karate class was, however, a problem.

When my class is interrupted by one of these leaders of future society for such foolishness I always feel peculiarly irked. I am suddenly taken by the desire to pick up that large stick with a nail in it that I keep in the office of my school and…but I don’t. Instead, I relay the story of the tiger, which is quite well known in other societies, but not too well known in our own.

One day two monks were walking through the jungle. One was old and one was young. The younger one said, “I’m tired–can’t we stop?”

“Not yet,” said the older monk. The old monk moved a little faster. He wasn’t in the mood to hear complaints from the younger generation.

“No. I’m tired. I’m stopping,” and the younger monk sat down and began to fan himself.

“We’ll never make it to the next temple if you insist on stopping. Get up and let’s continue!” The older monk commanded the younger man, but his words had no effect.

“No way. I’m just too tired to go on!” The younger monk fanned himself tiredly.

The older monk, seeing a tiger sleeping in the bamboo, picked up a rock and threw it at the tiger. The tiger jumped up and chased the two monks. The monks ran like…well…like a tiger was after them.

The monks managed to get away from the tiger. When they were safe the younger one turned to the older monk. “Why’d you do that?”

The older monk chuckled, then began to laugh outright. “I thought you said you were too tired to walk?” The younger monk had no rejoinder in the face of such superior wisdom, and he began to laugh, too.

A story as this has a good a moral. The monks had only been running for their lives. The tiger, on the other hand, was only running for his dinner.

And here come my words of wisdom. Is every day like a run for your life? Or are you one of these fellows that believes everything has bigger teeth that you?

Oh, yes, and that child in my class who complains about being tired? If he still acts tired after I tell him the story about the tiger and the monks…I get out the stick. And the nail in the end is really quite sharp and wicked!

[I:http://lbf.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/AlCase12.jpg]Chi is a mysterious energy which constructs us, surrounds us, is us, and…what is it? To understand what Chi is we must define exactly who and what we are. To define who and what we are it is necessary to analyze our True Body.

Your immediate body is the body you are currently in, the one which is playing the guitar, typing the keyboard, talking to friends and using of the six senses. We are the eyeball and the eardrum and the hair and throat and toenails and everything that is in between and has organic sensation. We journey about the planet and have fleshy existence, and we pursue fleshy pleasures.

The body we really care about is the body that is constructed of Chi. This is the body as far as we can perceive, and note that I don’t say experience through the senses. Indeed, to experience the larger body of yourself you often have to put aside concepts of the six senses, you have to experience life beyond the immediate body.

This brings us to the concept that if everything in the universe is our True Body, then what is this thing called Chi? Chi is that thing you have you call a body, it is the organic the organic thing you have presence in, and it is everything else, too. Call it a wavelength, or an concept, it doesn’t really matter what you call it as long as we understand that it is.

How do we take control this thing we call Chi? I mean, if you can move an move your limbs and walk about, why can’t you move that cloud or make the seas surge…if they really are part of our True Body? Why can’t you stop that volcano, or make it rain when the crops need it, or pull the plug on the those filthy politicos that keep wasting all our resources?

The first reason we can’t make our true Body work is that we are not used to making it work. We are used to sitting around and being made stupid by pills and TV and the things that lull our senses, and our sense of our True Body, into unconsciousness. We can undo that by turning off the TV, or any type of programming that does not allow honest exchange, and by practicing a discipline.

What you must do is look at your immediate body, unbind your senses, excite your imagination, and open you up to the idea of your True Body through a True Discipline. You must use this discipline to examine your immediate body until you understand everything about it, and so that you are not merely engaging in scientific examination. You must make full use of your senses through a True Discipline until you step outside of your body, and beyond your senses, and thus experience your True Body.

If you are still unable to cork volcanos and cause Tsunamis at will, then you must understand that everybody else is also occupying the True Body that you are occupying. Thus, to make your True Body move, you must make everybody else stop taking pills and turn off their TVs stop freezing their unconscious hold on the True Body. You do this by helping them find a True Discipline that will awaken them and take them to a realization of the True Body.