Martial Arts Lifestyle - Path of Warrior

Martial Arts Lifestyle? What is a difference between practicing Martial Arts and living Martial Arts Lifestyle?

In my previous episodes we went through some first steps I took in my holistic lifestyle. I told you that I started with some energy healing in 70’s, learned Autogenic Training in early 80’s, and that brought me to Yoga, also in early 80’s.

Today we will just keep following the progression in my study, and the topic for discussion is my interest in Martial Arts.

As I mentioned in my Life Story episode, How I got into martial arts is still a mystery for me. I was a young city boy who had no interest in sports what so ever, hated any physical activity, had no information about martial arts other than it was some kind of an extreme workout which takes decades to master.

I had no access to any Martial Arts books or videos. Internet did not even exist at that time. Besides all that, martial arts were prohibited in our country. And one day I woke up ready to make a commitment to dedicate the rest of my life to the study of martial arts.

Why Martial Arts Lifestyle?

What I cannot completely understand, is whether my holistic lifestyle was a result of my training, or was I brought into this World already destined to take the path of martial arts? Almost sounds like chicken and the egg dilemma. It can make a good topic for nice philosophical discussion. But we are not getting into it right now. I just have no other explanation for my spontaneous, absolutely no common sense decision as a young teenager, other than believing in destiny.

Anyway, One day I woke up with a huge burning desire to study martial arts…

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Eugene

Martial Art Lifestyle Podcast Transcript

Hi everybody,

This is Eugene Sukhorukov from beautiful sunny San Diego, CA. Hope you are having a great time of the day or night in your corner of the World. Welcome back and thanks for listening to my Healthy Positive Lifestyle podcast.

Today we will just keep following the progression in my study, and the topic for discussion is my interest in Martial Arts.

I had no access to any Martial Arts books or videos. Internet did not even exist at that time. Besides all that, martial arts were prohibited in our country.

And one day I woke up ready to make a commitment to dedicate the rest of my life to the study of martial arts.

Anyway, One day I woke up with a huge burning desire to study martial arts. I did not quite understand what Martial Art really was. I got some lessons here and there, studied some moves from Jiu-Jitsu and Combat Sambo. Definitely not enough to call it real training, but sufficient to get me interested to learn more. I began looking around and asking people.

As I mentioned earlier, any Martial Art training was prohibited by law.

I found somebody who new somebody who was teaching in a closed group organized by KGB, I think. They were the only people who could legally do it, other than some underground studios, of course.

Even today I tell people that I am not doing any sports. Of course, training with the whole bunch of agents was anything but sport! No belts, no degrees, no competitions or any team work. It was not easy! Getting into full speed martial art training with no previous workout experience, that was a real life test. A survival. That was an environment where the words “I can’t” did not exist. It was time for me to demonstrate what I was made of.

I was going home after my very first training completely exhausted, beat up and bruised, but I was not gonna quit. I was stubborn enough that nobody could tell me what I could or couldn’t do it. I would do it just to prove that I could.

I spent good 6 years practicing Karate. I was totally fanatic about it. I was training every day, in the morning and at night. I did Yoga in the morning plus some karate moves, and I mostly did karate for couple of hours every night. I got pretty decent in my moves, and old timers and even our sensei started noticing me. He was inviting me periodically to spar with him. That usually cost me several new bruises on my body, but the learning experience was priceless!

While I was doing karate, I met quite a few people practicing various schools of Kung-Fu. Of course, the term Kung Fu itself has nothing to do with Martial Arts specifically, but we will stick to it since it is widely used in the West.

I saw Tiger, Monkey, Drunken fist, and many others, I don’t even remember now. At some point I was learning Tai Chi long form, but obviously I was not ready for it.

One day my karate teacher came up to me and pointed at the man who was a guest in our dojo. That man was doing some weird slow moves I’ve never seen before, some walking and circular moves. My teacher suggested that I go and spar with the guest. Sure enough, I came up to the man and respectfully asked him to spar. He agreed on one condition: he promised not to hit me, but I had to fight with full force. Otherwise – no deal. That was fine with me.

We began sparring, and for the first time in my martial art career I was seriously confused. He was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I could not hit him or do anything to him. One second he was in front of me, and next second he was tapping on my shoulder standing behind me with a big smile.

After sparring HE THANKED ME for my time, and left. Nobody knew who he was, where he came from or what he was doing, even though we had some people with decades of experience.

He came in a couple of times more, and every time I had a chance to spar with him. Equally unsuccessful as you can imagine. I asked him to teach me, and he promised to think about it.

The stranger disappeared for a while, and it took a while before he came to our class again. But that time, he did not practice, he just came in and sat down on the bench. I knew he was observing the class. I took a break to talk to him. We talked about his art, about where I was in life etc.

Sure enough, I asked him to teach me, and he promised to think about it, again. We exchanged phone numbers, and several days later I got accepted to be his student.

As I found out later, he had very few students, and one of them was his own son. I was bigger than his son, and a couple of years older. A perfect punching bag, or a training partner. Our class was rather small, no more than 5 to 6 people, and often it was just 3 of us.

The concepts in this new Martial Art were quite different from what I was used to. So it took me a while to grasp it. In fact, it was totally opposite of what I was doing before. I saw the effectiveness of the system, and I experienced it myself firsthand. However I dropped karate in 89, which was 3 years after I met my new teacher.

Though I still think karate is a great system, Martial Art is like music: you gotta find your own stile that fits your personality.

I was training 3 to 5 hours a day, depending on my study load.

I’ve learned about Taoism, various meditation techniques, vibrations, body conditioning, self programming, nutrition and even non-physical communication with the opponent. That was when I learned that Martial Arts is not just about fighting. In fact, it is about maintaining the balance and resolving the conflict in the least aggressive way.

People often are surprised when I tell that Martial Arts are about peace. However, it is not just an Eastern point of view. Good example is a famous Latin saying “Si vis pacem, para bellum”, which means “If you want peace, prepare for war”. So Martial Arts are about peace, not a fight. I am not talking about sports competitions of course. Don’t confuse sports with Martial Arts. Sport is about fighting and winning, but in Martial Arts there are no winners, only survivors..

As far as I know from my teacher, the Martial Art I am studying originated in Europe several thousand years ago. Perhaps, it was connected to druids, since the followers were worshiping trees, and the name of the clan was “branches of the tree”. The school had a concept of 5 elements, just like Chinese Wu Xing. However, the tree was in the center of the diagram, Earth underneath the Tree, Fire, or Sun, above the Tree. Two other elements we one on each side.

As a result of numerous tribal wars, “Branches of the Tree” moved South and East. The clan split and formed two chapters. One went into Egypt and disappeared. Another went to India.

If we look at some dates, the migration of Aryans into India is commonly dated some 1500-ish BC, and the earliest reference about Druids in Europe I found was dated around 200 BC. I believe that there may be connection here between these two clans and the Martial Art I am studying. However I don’t have any solid evidence that all this is true, and I don’t want any speculations. So let’s just leave it at that.

Finally, the “Branches of the Tree” moved into China. Like I mentioned before, 5 elements of our school were very similar to 5 elements in Chinese philosophy. Same about many other principles. So the clan gladly adopted early Taoist teaching, and eventually the school change the name to “Shou Dao”, meaning the way of long life. I apologize for my Chinese pronunciation.

The school is not teaching just fighting. This is the way of life, the art of maintaining the balance and enjoying every second of your time. It has everything from fighting art and survival to medicine and unity with Nature.

I was told that much later during Japanese presence in China, the School changed the name to Shou Dao, which means “The Way of hand”. This resembled regular martial art school, since characters Shou Dao pronounced in Japanese will sound Te Do, yes they are second and third characters of Japanese Kara Te Do. Even though there is nothing similar between Kara Te Do and Shou Dao, this eliminated unnecessary questions.

We have a lot to discuss about Shou Dao. There is definite similarity with Chinese Ba Gua. For example, famous circle walking. However, whip like strikes, wave body moves, total improvisation in techniques are very similar to Russian Systema. The circular energy flow and meditation techniques resemble Universal Tao and Microcosmic Orbit taught by Mantak Chia.

I will be talking a lot about different aspects of Shou Dao. And about some other interesting schools I learned along the way. For example, Do In, which I first heard of in 80’s, at the same time when I started my Autogenic Training. Let’s do it in our future podcasts.

Until then,

Smile, stay happy, keep the balance and make a wonderful day happen!

This was Eugene from San Diego, CA. Talk to you next time!