stav martial art

Ice and Fire Stav Martial Arts Training

Twenty Years of Stav Training in the UK

by Graham Butcher

Contents

Introduction 1Twenty years of Stav in the UK 3The Stances 8Working with the Web 12Understanding the Five Principles 17Mott and Megin 22The Staff and Spear 27The Axe 32The Cudgel and Sax 39Close Quarter Combat Training 42What are Martial Arts For? 48Stav Training for Self-defence 56Conclusion 65References and Resources 66

Copyright belongs to Graham Butcher July 2012Published by:Ice and Fire Ltd.31B Manor RoadBarnetHertsEN5 2LAUKwww.iceandfire.org.ukemail: [email protected]

http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/

Ice and Fire Stav Martial Training

IntroductionIt is very nearly twenty years now since I met Ivar Hafskjold

and began training in Stav. During that time quite a lot has been written about Stav in various places including a book I wrote and published in 1995. At that point I had been doing Stav about three years and I think I imagined that I was writing a definitive account of Stav as a Martial Art. Actually it wasn't a bad effort at the time but a great deal has happened in the sixteen or seventeen years since.

After about four years Ivar recognised me as an teacher of Stav. Shortly after that I moved to Oxford to begin teaching independently there. As I gathered new students and experimented with different teaching methods new ways of training developed. I travelled regularly to the USA and have taught in Germany and France. I have always continued to be open to new ideas and influences which may be helpful to improving my practice and teaching of all aspects of Stav. This book particularly concentrates on how this has applied to the martial aspect.

As you will read in this book I began learning Stav while I was teaching self-defence. I developed a deep interest in weapon training with Ivar and we teach a variety of traditional weapons to a very high standard. I have documented the development and use of most of the weapons we train with. I have attempted to show the progression from Stav as a family tradition, through Ivar's training in Japan and then how we have fused the European and the Oriental expertise into a

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modern training system accessible and appropriate for the twenty first century.

You will then see how I personally have circled back to making self-defence training important in my practice and teaching. I have come back to this point with many years of Stav experience and drawing on the teaching of other contemporary teachers who are committed to teaching practical self-defence in the modern world.

Stav is constantly evolving and growing in possibilities. This is by no means a definitive work on Stav as a Martial Art, more of a report on work in progress, I hope you enjoy reading it as an account of where I am at the present moment in my experience of Stav. Over the next few weeks we have the Summer Camp with Ivar Hafskjold, I will be attending the last of the Master Class seminars with Geoff Thompson and I will be teaching and picking up new ideas at Fight Camp in August. The learning never stops and I look forward to sharing more of what I have discovered with you soon. In the meantime I hope you enjoy this volume.

Graham Butcher July 2012

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Twenty Years of Stav Training in the UKIn the Autumn of 1992 I was in the Newsagent in the

Bransholme centre in Hull, near where I lived at the time. I felt myself compelled to purchase the current edition of Fighting Arts International, a high quality magazine edited and published by the Martial Artist and Photographer Terry O'neil. There were several interesting articles inside but the one I was primarily drawn to was an interview over several pages conducted by a writer named Harry Cook. The subject of the interview was Ivar Hafskjold who had quite recently returned to Europe from Japan and had settled in East Yorkshire, only a few miles from the village where I lived. The article described both Ivar's experiences training in Japan and the family system he had learned as a young man growing up in Norway. The piece concluded by saying that Ivar was willing to teach anyone who was interested in training with him.

At the time I was teaching a self-defence system of my own devising in the village but was not under instruction myself. Something about the article inspired me to contact Ivar. After meeting him one evening and having been shown some of what he had learned in Japan I began training with him on a regular basis. The subsequent chapters describe in some detail the content of that training so here I will concentrate on giving the reader some idea of the history of how we are able to train in Stav today.

Ivar was born at the end of the Second World War in Dremensfjiord in South West Norway. His family were old

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Norwegian nobility with a long history of military service, involvement in government and whaling amongst other activities. The family had a tradition of training and practice which they called Stav. Stav means 'knowledge of the Rune staves' and Ivar learned the teachings of this system from childhood. A comprehensive account of Stav belongs elsewhere since this book is concerned with the martial aspect of Stav training. There are of course many other aspects of Stav which either have been or will be written about another time. Ivar learned some of the martial tradition of Stav from his elder relatives but there was no actual system for teaching it. It wasn't until much later in Japan that he he could feel that he had made sense of Stav as a martial system, again we will return to this in later chapters. Ivar served in the Norwegian military as an officer in the special forces. He competed in combat pistol shooting and could be said to have become expert in this modern form of martial training.

Then, through a rather strange series of events involving a car dealership and foreign nationals Ivar found himself teaching a Norwegian as a second language evening class. Attending the class was a Japanese lady whom Ivar got to know and subsequently married. When their first child was due Ivar's wife followed Japanese custom and went back to her parents in Japan in preparation for the birth. Ivar followed near to the expected time of the birth. He stayed for fourteen years. During this time he trained in Japanese martial arts and taught English to Japanese students. As a result there must

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be many Japanese who speak excellent English, albeit with a slight Norwegian accent.

Having read a book on Jo-jutsu while still in Norway Ivar had always felt that this was the training system which would be most appropriate to restoring the martial tradition within Stav. However teachers of traditional Jo-jutsu proved elusive and initial enquiries resulted in Ivar being directed to Judo classes, a respectable art certainly, but not what he was looking for. What followed was a fourteen year journey through the Budo arts and one day that should be told in detail too. Suffice to say that Ivar's training covered Aikido, Aiki-jutusu, Aiaido, Jodo and eventually he found a traditional Ryu for Ken-jutsu (swordsmanship) and Jo-jutsu (the fighting form of Jo training). By the time Ivar came back to Europe he had a fourth dan in both these arts, an impressive achievement for anyone let alone a foreigner so far from home. I asked Ivar once why he came back from Japan when he was obviously achieving so much there. There were various family reasons but the primary one he told me was that he simply realised that he was never going to be Japanese. It was simply time to return to Europe and rediscover his own roots.

When I began training with Ivar we were meeting in a sports centre in Driffield. David Watkinson had begun with Ivar a short time before I met Ivar and together we formed the core of the class there. David later proved to be one of Ivar's original four students and from an early stage showed a particular aptitude for hand to hand combat. For some reason two

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handed weapons have always had a strong appeal for me and I particularly enjoyed the Jo and Boken training and began looking at traditional European weapons as we will see in later chapters. As I learned from Ivar I found myself incorporating the new skills into the teaching in my self-defence class. After a few months it simply became a Stav class, some students stayed with me and learned Stav, Some dropped out since the weapon training I was introducing wasn't to their taste but I was teaching Stav almost from the time I started learning myself.

In the summer of 1993 Ivar organised a camp at Beverley racecourse This provided an opportunity to invite people who had made contact after reading the Harry Cook article but who lived too far away for weekly classes. David Watkinson and I were only able to attend part of the event due to our work commitments, but several people did attend for the duration of the camp. This was when we first got to know Shaun Brassfield-Thorpe. Shaun was already a very good martial artist with considerable experience in Chinese fighting systems. He also proved to have a particular interest in the Esoteric aspects of Stav. He now lives on Orkney and will teach aspects of Stav such as Seid if you have the determination to reach him.

During the following year I set up an organisation to provide a membership structure and organise regular training courses. These events provided opportunities for people to travel to East Yorkshire and train in Stav. This meant that Shaun

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amongst others were able to progress in their Stav training and the number of people involved in Stav began to grow. We also continued holding a summer camp each year, a policy which has continued pretty much ever since. Also during this year after the first camp Ronayne Loderus stayed with Ivar and trained with him. Ronayne was a martial artist and Yoga teacher based in Australia at the time. He became the fourth of Ivar's original students so that there was one for each of the classes. Karl, me, Herse, David Watkinson, Jarl, Ronayne Loderus and Konge, Shaun Brassfield-Thorpe. Over the years we have developed our own versions on Stav training and teaching but each keeping to the fundamental teachings and practice of the tradition.

In the Autumn of 1996 I moved to Oxford and began teaching Stav there. This was a period of developing my own way of teaching and practising. I invited Ivar to come and teach my students in Oxford on a regular basis and thus continued under his supervision. Then in 2007 I moved on to Somerset where I am currently based.

There is more detail on how specific aspects of Stav martial training developed in subsequent chapters. At time of writing I am preparing for the 2012 Summer Stav Camp and Ivar will be teaching and there will always be new stuff to learn.

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The StancesIf you do Stav you do the stances on a daily basis. So said

Ivar from the time I met him. Stav can be many things to many different people but the common factor would be the daily practice of the runic stances. The stances are sixteen postures which express the sixteen runes of the Younger Futhork. They are performed as a sequence with an emphasis on breath, balance and awareness. The stances are a form of meditation and a foundation for training, practice and action in whatever activity you may choose to undertake. This book is primarily focused on martial training and practice but a healer can benefit enormously from the energetic benefits of working with the stances. The effects of heavy manual labour are counter balanced by doing the stances. In martial training the stances provide the foundation practice in balance, breath control, awareness and the basic positions for martial applications. As you will see in other chapters the stances provide a reference point for training such as the staff exercises. The stances also provide a vocabulary of terms for communication while training. This is as simple as hold the staff in o (As) and raise it to f (Fe). Or stand in t (Tyr) and move to b (Bjork). Since each rune is a piece of the web then each stance brings the body into alignment with the web. This is a big help in developing our consciousness of the web in our training and in our everyday lives.

For me it is the practice of the stances which has made it possible for me to make Stav a central part of my life. The

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stances are a fascinating example of Pararoe's law (often known as the 80/20 principle) in action in that a very large proportion of the benefits of Stav practice come from the stances even if that is only a small proportion of the training you could do. In Stav we are always looking for the most effective way of getting the maximum results from the minimum effort. If you have endless time, energy and facilities then you can be very indulgent in your training and practice. But in the real world most of us are pushed for time and there are many demands on our energy. We may not have daily access to ideal training facilities so all we may have are our bodies and our knowledge of the stances. Keep the practice of the stances going and you will improve in Stav and you will draw the benefits that come to you in terms of better health, strength and well being in body, mind and spirit.

Performing the stances is done by facing North to begin with. There is no definitive answer as to why this is so, it is simply traditional. It does however align us to our environment and develops a sense of being part of the natural world. How many people actually know where North or South is in their location? If you begin the stances with the sun rising to your right then you know the day is beginning and the second set should be done with the setting sun to your back so that you know the day is ending and yet you know which way North is for the next morning. The benefits for a traveller should be obvious for this. So doing the stances places us in time and space each day. The universe may be a big place but the

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stances each day centre us in time in the rising and setting of the sun and in our sense of direction, we may be tiny in the scheme of things but we are not lost.

Having found a suitable place to do the stances and aligned ourselves North and South, sunrise is a good time if possible. Then bow to the North and take nine deep breaths with the emphasis on forcing the air out and letting the body draw in what it needs. After nine breaths clap twice, breath out and move into the first stance breathing in and out again breathing out. Proceed through the Futhork making turns between stances as required. At the end bow and get on with your day. Around sunset take your place to do the stances this time facing East. Begin with the bow and go straight into the first stance. The second sequence uses the other side of the body on the stances where it makes a difference. At the end of the sequence clap twice, take the nine breaths and complete the stances with a bow.

There are several different ways of doing the stances. The simplest way which is taught to beginners and generally used in public classes uses a simple breath into the stance and a breath out. The order of the stances follows the one in which the Futhork is normally written. This is often referred to as the Trel sequence. The Karl sequence uses the same order but the breathing involves taking a breath in before actually starting the stance, then chanting the name of the rune as you go into the stance, taking a breath in the stance and chanting the name as you come out again. There are three other

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versions, referred to as the Herse, Jarl and Konge sequences reflecting the five principles. The breathing is different again and the sequence a little different too. Each kind of breathing has a different effect on the body and the mind. The Trel sequence teaches the runic postures and establishes the discipline of performing the stances. In the Karl sequence the emphasis is on diaphram breathing and building core stability. The Herse sequence develops cardio-vascular capacity and the Jarl method cultivates the voice and a meditative mind. The Konge approach comes full circle with no actual chanting but with a developed understanding of breath it is no longer necessary.

It is perfectly possible to do the Trel version of the Stances in five minutes for each sequence. Or if preferred one set of both sides when ever it suits during the day. I personally prefer to split my stances morning and evening as described above but it is fine too to do both sets back to back when ever is convenient.. The important thing is to do the stances and build the foundation for the rest of your Stav practice.

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Working With the Web

Stav is sometimes defined as 'knowledge of the rune staves' and that is an accurate enough description. Stav martial arts could be described as 'working with the web'. When asked what weapons we train with the correct answer should be that we train with a variety of different length weapons, staff, axe and cudgel mainly but we are learning to work with the lines of the web and with that knowledge we can use any weapon or even none.

The web is the inherent structure of the universe, that may sound a little pretentious but in fact nature relies upon a simple relationship between gravity and structure to maintain the form of all things. The most basic form and structure depends upon triangulation and the assembly of triangles into a web-like structure. It would be easy to allow this chapter to turn into a discussion on structural engineering and although that subject has its place in Stav I need to concentrate on a martial understanding of the web here.

The way that a weapon is held, the line on which it strikes or cuts and the line on which it enters its target are all important. If working unarmed then the guard or ready position, the line of a strike or any other movement and the target on the opponent's body would all again be working with particular lines. No one can avoid working with the web since we are in time and space and the web is the structure of time and all that exists. The objective is to develop our awareness

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of the web so that we can use our knowledge and ability to see and read the web to our own advantage. This is a difficult concept to describe in writing, it is hard enough to grasp and understand when being taught martial arts by an expert teacher. So I will just try and give three examples of working with the lines which I find helpful. From this you will either grasp what I am saying and be able to work it out for yourself or you will need to be properly taught. I had better warn you that even under expert training it will take several years to actually gain a genuine concept of the web and the ability to apply the knowledge intuitively.

Cutting lines. I quite frequently get the opportunity to cut a lot of vegetation, usually because my partner and I are clearing overgrown gardens or similar circumstances. When working on such a project I use a sax or sickle and I take the opportunity to practice making cuts in accordance with the lines. When done right the blade should pass through a branch in one clean cut leaving an angled end neatly sliced off. This can only happen if exactly the right line is used. I don't get it every time, but often enough and I know what I am looking for. The Norsemen have always depended very heavily on trees for building, manufacture and fuel. For this reason the axe has always been an essential tool and there is a great deal of familiarity with cutting wood. You can only cut wood efficiently if you cut it on the right line in relation to the grain. These lines are represented by the Hagl rune if the centre stem is in line with the grain then the arms are the lines

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which will cut the wood efficiently. The same Hagl rune is present in the body with the stem running from the top of the head down through the centre of gravity. In fact the rune is represented three times within the body, in the head, in the torso and in the pelvis and legs and in each case the lines show the vulnerability of the human body. So the first exercise in working with the web is learning how to cut along the lines and practising this regularly and intensively. I would recommend doing this with a combination of martial training drills, especially axe practice (see later chapter) and manual work cutting wood and gardening or maybe wood carving.

The second context in which to see the lines is in creating and holding a guard position. Again this is a process of learning to see the lines. You can quite easily imitate a strong guard with a weapon. If you are holding an effective weapon with a strong grip it may well be quite effective. However for a guard to be truly efficient in a combat situation you need an awareness of the lines. A guard held strongly on the lines of the web will make it very difficult for an attacker to reach you directly. This is good to a point but it also means that a determined attacker will either try to bypass the guard or simply destroy it leaving the defender helpless. It is like building a very strong wall to be protected behind. You may feel safe but a determined enemy will either sneak round the back or find the resources to smash the wall down. Either of which shows that strength is not always a guarantee of safety. Much better to be able to see the lines and then create one's

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defensive position slightly out of sync with the line. This means that if the enemy attacks your apparent defences he isn't actually directly attacking you at all and his energy can be redirected. Or should the attacker decide to attack you directly he will be bypassing your defences and they will still be in place with which to counter-attack as he comes into your web. This may sound complicated but it is simple enough when you have developed the ability to see the web.

Thirdly there is the actual effect on the human body. I will go into more detail on this in the chapter on Close Quarter Combat training. The main point is that although it is easy enough to hurt someone if you hit them hard enough with a hard or sharp object it is often better to control their web without doing unnecessary damage to the physical fabric and structure of the body. It is very hard to press charges of excessive force if there are no injuries to show in evidence. By deliberately working with the web-lines we can do maximum damage in terms of cutting or impact if that is justified. But we can also do minimum damage and yet still control the situation if we really understand the web. This understanding does not just mean the physical web at that moment but everything that brought about the situation where the violence is taking place and all the consequences which may follow from it. For this reason the person with an understanding of the web will not only be able to deal with the immediate violence but they will be able to intentionally influence the consequences for good or ill. The wise man will

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always use his consciousness of the web to bring about good.

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Understanding the Five PrinciplesA very basic understanding of Stav could be to say that you

need to know the runes, see the lines of the web and to understand the five principles. Simple, yes, but it still takes many years of training and practice to begin to grasp these concepts. The five principles have simple names, Trel meaning serf or slave. Karl meaning farmer or freeman. Herse meaning warrior or chieftain. Jarl meaning lord or priest and Konge meaning king or cunning man.

These principles are drawn from the traditional class or caste structure of Europe. The principles reflect the structure of a society which has moved beyond the purely tribal and has begun to develop into kingdoms. The nation is quite a recent concept and a discussion of how the five principles relates to the modern nation state is beyond the scope of this book (it may form the basis of another one in the future though).

In martial terms the five principles provide strategies depending upon our situation and our objectives within that situation. Correct action in a conflict situation depends upon our status relative to the other people involved. This is not to say that there are not moral imperatives that sometimes have to be acted upon but even then the consequences of acting may be very different depending upon where we are perceived to fit into the scheme of things. No one can make decisions for us but the five principles do provide a framework for deciding upon a course of action. Let us consider the implications of each principle.

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The Trel principle means that we are in a situation where we have no status and effectively no responsibility except to ourselves. If we are simply walking along the street minding our own business and we attract the attention of someone who may want to rob us or interfere with us in some way then we have no obligation other than to avoid and escape the situation. If it does come to physical confrontation then all we need to do is extract ourselves from the situation and get away. This is not cowardice, just common sense. You may wish to make a report to the police and maybe even go to court as a witness later but you are under no obligation to actually get into a fight.

The Karl principle means that we have something to protect and it is our responsibility to do so. If we fail to do so we may lose whatever it is and not be able to get it back. If we get driven out of our home then the authorities may recover it for us in due course but any property removed or destroyed may be lost for ever. If we fail to protect a loved one then even if they survive the assault or molestation we may well have lost their trust and confidence in us. Of course there is a much higher risk in defending some thing or someone of value rather than just walking away. Only you can decide which to do and you have to live with the consequences.

The Herse principle is the one of the warrior whose job is to protect society from threats internal and external. This means having the authority to act and the means to back up that authority when necessary. Again the risks may be high but if

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one wants to be worthy of the Herse role and the respect that should go with it then the danger has to be faced.

The Jarl principle is for those who must maintain an overview of the situation and not become focused on personal combat. When the situation to be engaged with is more serious than simply someone trying to kill you you have to detach yourself and maintain awareness of the real issue. This may be a matter of commanding others or tracking a threat that is not directly attacking you. A high level of detachment is needed and intuitive responses need to be trusted rather than direct engagement.

The Konge principle is where personal survival is of no importance compared with the imperative to action. In a confrontation the combatant with the Konge mindset has already come to terms with death. So the attitude will be, two seconds from now one of us will be dead, who will that be and can the opponent deal with that too? Once there is a total acceptance of death then life can be lived without fear and thus is freedom.

The five principles can be regarded as a progression and in terms of training they are. A complete beginner will be best advised to break away and back off from confrontation. The next level is learning to stand one's ground physically. The next level how to dominate the situation mentally. Then how to fight intuitively so the mind is clear to keep an overview of the situation. Finally how to know when the right thing to do is to step directly into the jaws of death without fear. Obviously

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this is a long process of training and different people will have a more natural aptitude for one principle over another. This aptitude can be uncovered by discovering a person's Fylgia and it is worth knowing one's most natural role in life, especially conflict situations. It is also necessary to know how to behave in a given situation by knowing what our role is and what will likely bring about the best outcome. If we have no status in a situation then we are likely to be in Trel role which means we have no obligation to take any action apart from that necessary to protect ourselves. If we have something or someone to protect then it becomes a Karl situation and we will need to take the necessary action to give that protection. If it is our job to maintain order and prevent disorderly behaviour then we are in a Herse role and the expectation is that we will impose our authority on the situation. In the Jarl role we have to detach ourselves from the dangers around us and focus on dealing with the wider situation we are in. The Konge situation is one where we act simply because we know it is the right thing to do at that moment. If we take a Trel attitude to a situation we are deciding that it is not our problem and therefore we do not need to take any action. Probably no one will blame us if we do nothing except perhaps making an appropriate report to the authorities. But a person may believe that action should be taken and since the only person present who can make that decision is them then they decide to act regardless. The consequences of action may be unpredictable but the Konge mindset takes the risk.

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A great deal of Stav training is geared around the five principles. For example in training for breaking out of a grapple to the neck the initial response is the same, bringing the arm across the top of the attackers arm. Then we look at how to break out by pulling away, how to push the other person out of your space, how to take the attacker under control and how to disengage with them completely. The Konge mindset is difficult to train with in a practical sense in that applications are usually rather devastating so we mainly concentrate on the other four levels and then just consider the mindset required for Konge responses. It is not so much the technique as the risk that goes with responding at all. Having said that we have weapon training drills which cover Konge responses as well.

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Mott and MeginIn the Norse Mythology Thor is described as having a belt

which when he puts it on doubles his strength. This accessory is referred to as “Megin gjord” or girdle of megin. For someone of my age this is slightly funny since in the 1960s when I first started watching TV there were frequent adverts for girdles which were undergarments for middle aged women to improve their figures, this is before they were expected to keep their shape by dieting and pilates classes. So the idea of Thor wearing such a garment to keep his middle age spread from showing (and they did exist for men too though they tended not to be advertised on TV) is mildly amusing. But girdle simply means a broad belt of some kind which supports the lower back during exercises calling for considerable exertion. Activities such as power lifting or throwing hammers in order to destroy frost giants. In Stav terms the megin girdle would have a two fold purpose, it would support the physical body or the Mott during considerable physical exertion by supporting the lower spine and keeping the abdomen in place. It is also implied that it has a less tangible effect of building the Megin or energy body as it may be described. The idea is that you need to develop both the material body of blood, bone and sinew and cultivate the energetic body which provides the life force for actual action and activity.

The Mott is made of physical material but it is surprisingly impermanent, at least 70 percent of mass is just water which is constantly being changed by drinking, sweating and urinating.

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Without this constant input and output of water we would become debilitated and even die very quickly. So this means that two thirds of our physical being is changed more or less daily. Blood and skin are renewed every few weeks and even the skeleton is completely replaced about every 7 years. So if you went from say the UK to live in Australia for more than a few years then only traces of your physical body would actually return home. Yet we renew in a more or less recognizable form throughout our lives as our cells are replicated according to the DNA which is actually what makes us what we are along with our memories. Body building suggests that we can build a muscular physique as we might build a new house. But in fact what happens as a result of training is that the body remembers the demands that were put on it and as it renews itself it does so with larger muscle fibres so that it can cope with the demands in future. What is not demanded of it it tends to be allowed to waste away. This process happens over generations too which is why whales have only the tiniest of vestigial hind legs and Kiwis almost invisible wings. If you want to be strong and healthy then always remember ‘use it or lose it’. Correct nutrition is essential and I am not going into that here but there is material on health and well being for you to read which covered the Stav approach to diet. Since the body is constantly rebuilding itself it must have food to use as construction material as well as for energy. The higher the quality of the building materials the better the quality of construction. The better the fuel the

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better the engine will run.As for the kind of exercise you need that is really up to you.

If you do Stav you will do the Stances regularly and I have described the benefits of this practice in an earlier chapter. Walking, gardening and other kinds of light, preferably outdoor exercise are very beneficial. Weapon training is also good for exercise as well as for building up martial arts skills. Energetic close quarter combat training such as boxing and grappling arts such as Judo or wrestling can provide a very intense workout. This is good if you like that sort of thing but the risk of injury has to be considered. Personally I like to go that little bit further when developing strength. I do quite a lot of physical work and need to be able to cope with the demands of heavy lifting or digging or similar. I am also prone to back problems and maintaining strength helps to minimize the occurrence of this problem. Over the last couple of years I have used a Kettle Bell on a regular basis and I would recommend it to anyone serious about their fitness. The important thing is to decide what you want to achieve in your training, be regular and consistent in your practice and monitor the results at appropriate intervals so you can make adjustments as required. At the very least walking instead of driving whenever you can will be very beneficial.

Megin is slightly more difficult to describe and define. Sometimes it is simply stated that Megin is the European word for Chi or Qi and that you can regard them as being the same thing. This is possibly true but there is no clear definition of

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what Chi is either. It is more of a cultural concept than a specific thing. So I will offer a few thoughts of my own as to what Megin can be considered to be. It can be described as being energy and that is fair enough as far as it goes. But bear in mind that there is a chemical reaction within the cells where glucose is broken down in the presence of oxygen to release energy and carbon dioxide is created. Also proteins are used by the body to build muscle tissue and this, by contracting against a bone actually does the action. So physical activity is a combination of bio-chemical action and mechanics. But there is another factor as well and that is the intent and desire to make something happen. We all know the feeling of being tired and depressed and feeling unable to get out of bed. If we are actually ill or injured then there may be a good reason for this and it our body asking for much needed rest. But other times we know there is nothing actually wrong with us but somehow we cannot bring ourselves to get out of bed and do anything. This is where the Megin is low or weak or however you want to put it. As I have worked with the Kettle bell I have sometimes reached the point when I really thought I couldn’t go any further with it. I fairly recently acquired a 20kg version as well as the 16kg one I have been using for 18 months now. I found that I could do three presses in one set with my left arm but it seemed impossible to do more than one press with my right. This went on for some time and then one morning I just decided I was going to do three on each side. So I did, I am not sure what was different I just decided it was going to

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happen and it did. Megin is the energy which makes a machine into a

purposeful human being. You can have the the most powerful car in the world sitting on your drive but if you have no desire or reason to drive it it is just a very expensive metal box on wheels. If it is never driven then it will deteriorate and eventually cease to work at all. The Megin energy and consciousness drives the Mott body. The Mott should be cared for as the high quality machine that it is (remember you only get one so look after it). But it is with the Megin that you drive it and in using it you can make it stronger and more effective. To maximize your Megin energy cultivate a love of life and enthusiasm for living and the rest will tend to take care of itself.

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Staff TrainingStav means ‘stave’ or ‘staff’. This is a double meaning in

the sense that Stav is often described as ‘knowledge of the Rune staves’ and the staff has always been the central weapon in the martial aspect of the system. In Scandinavia the staff is essential summer or winter. If travelling in the great outdoors, and Norway has serious amounts of untamed outdoors, then a good walking staff is going to be an essential companion along with stout boots and a waterproof jacket. In the winter the traditional method of cross country skiing used a single long pole to assist propulsion, maintain balance and arresting forward motion, especially down hill. So all year round a staff was usually never far from hand. So for this reason alone it made sense to know how to use a staff as a weapon. A spear is just a staff with a sharp point on it so if you can handle a staff it is a small step to being able to use one of the most deadly battlefield weapons ever developed before gun powder. Odin even had a name for his spear, Gungnir. Although this chapter is headed Staff Training it covers the spear as well as we shall see.

Ivar was shown some basic staff drills by his elder relatives while growing up. We will come back to those later but as you will recall part of Ivar’s interest in training in Japan came from seeing a book on Jo training. The Jo is a short staff which should reach from the practitioners armpit to the floor when standing normally. This compares with the Bo staff which is usually the height of the practitioner. As reported earlier Ivar

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eventually found a traditional Japanese Jo teacher who was able to teach him Jo-jutsu and Ken-jutsu, the genuine combat arts of the jo and sword rather than the more popular do forms. Again as noted before Ivar had achieved a 4th Dan in Ken and Jo Jutsu before returning to Europe. No mean achievement for a ‘Giejin’ or foreigner. When Ivar first started teaching Stav in the UK we used the Boken as the attacking weapon and the Jo to learn how to use a staff. I will describe later how the axe came to replace the boken as the attacking weapon.

I (and other people who trained with me at the same time) got a pretty good grounding in Jo training from Ivar for the first few years we were training in Stav. This mainly revolved around four basic jo exercises, a strike into o (As), a strike into j (Thor), a strike from a to o (Ar to As) and reversing and thrusting in t (Tyr). Using these exercises to create a foundation of skill and coordination we went on to five principles drills using the Jo to defend against Boken attacks. This provided a very solid grounding in weapon skills and I have been building on it and teaching the fundamentals learned from it ever since. As part of my curiosity about the weapons traditionally used by the Hafskjolds I asked about the walking staff and was told that it was conventionally shoulder height, probably about six inches longer than a Jo for the average man. A spear was a little longer, reaching to the eyebrow. I created versions of both of these and began working with them. Ivar provided a set of five principles drills with the Spear which are interesting and challenging to

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perform correctly. I looked at how I could adapt the Jo training to a walking staff. The main difference really being that the Japanese weapons are always intended to be fully double ended, eg you can reverse a Bo or Jo and either end is equally suitable for holding or striking. This is fine for Dojo equipment but I believe that in reality a walking staff or spear has to have one end for holding and one end for business. For this reason most of our staff training techniques flip the weapon between strikes. We also teach how to reverse a weapon in case you need to change ends between techniques, it is always important to be versatile.

After I had moved to Oxford in 1996 and had been teaching there for about a year we had Saturday training session. Most of my teaching had been focused on the axe up until that point but it was becoming clearer that there was a need for a really basic foundation training system. This meant really coming up with a set of staff exercises that would provide this foundation training. It is always good in Stav to use the rune stances as the basis of teaching. This provides another way of learning the Runes, another way of using the Stances and by working through the Futhork a kind of aide-memoire is created. Some of the people who were training with me that day had been practising Stav for a year or so so there was quite a bit of experience present. We went round the circle and tried out ideas for a set of Staff exercises. A variety of ideas came up including using existing applications, the f (Fe) exercise is derived from the Karl defence with the staff which Ivar

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apparently learned from his family. The u (Ur) exercise just uses the stance in a more dynamic way. We came up with something workable that day and I have been developing the system ever since. The Staff exercises provide beginners with system of exercises and drills to learn and practice. There are considerable benefits to strength, flexibility and coordination. All the basic drills with the staff or spear are contained in the exercises as well as the foundation of axe and sword training.

Once the student has learned, and is hopefully regularly practising, the staff exercises we can begin teaching them the most basic two person training drills. These drills work with the staff as both the attacking and defending weapon and each drill reflects one of the five principles. This both gets the student used to two person training and introduces the concept of the five principles. Three attacks are introduced, an angle strike to the temple which triggers the Trel response. A downward cut from above the head which is the attack for the Karl, Herse and Jarl responses and a straight thrust which is responded to with the Konge technique. There are various other two person training exercises which can be done including a control exercise using the f (Fe) drill and a kind of sensitivity exercise using h (Hagl).

The next stage is to work with the axe so that the student can deliver a credible and safe attack. To respond to an axe attack we use the nine guards with staff or spear. There are slight differences reflecting whether or not the real weapon would have sharp metal point or not. However these are

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essentially the same movements and the nine guard positions range from low left and right with the staff tip on the ground. Rat tail guards with the staff behind you on either side. Middle guards where the staff is held in the a (Ar) position (holding it straight out in front is just asking for it to be grabbed or cut through). High right and left where the the staff projects back behind each shoulder and finally centre guard where the staff or spear is held horizontal above the head. Each response uses movements learned from the staff exercises.

The nine guards are essentially prepared defences using ready positions. The highest level of staff practice is the five basics using the staff from the un-prepared position. Again we use the axe as the attacking weapon. In the case of the staff un-prepared means carrying the staff horizontally in the right hand and this position is used for all five drills. The weapon is balanced in the fingers. The trel response is to an attempt to cut the right wrist with a cut from the attacker’s left side. The defender draws back and engages the axe, then the axe is flipped away and the attacker driven back with a thrust to the throat. The Karl response is to a straight down attack and the drill is the f (Fe) exercise which places the tip of the staff in the attacker’s throat. The herse response freezes the attacker and takes control, the Jarl just walks past and the Konge takes out the attacker before he is even in range to attack.

Stav weapon training begins and completes with the Staff, it is probably man’s most ancient weapon and yet it will always be relevant.

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Stav Axe Training

As we got started with Stav training we relied on the weapons which Ivar had been familiar with in Japan, mainly the Jo and Boken. I already owned a Boken and soon obtained a Jo so I quickly became familiar with training with these too. I was also curious to know what the Hafskjold's would have traditionally trained with and I asked Ivar to tell me. He said that apart from the staff the primary weapons were the axe and sax, both everyday tools in the same way that the staff was used for walking and skiing. Ivar made me drawings of the axe designs he was familiar with and the one that particularly caught my attention was based on a whaling fliesh. This is effectively a large knife blade on a long handle for slicing up very large marine mammals. Ivar's family where whalers for many centuries so they were certainly familiar with this tool. Of course they also made use of the conventional wood cutting axe as well but that makes a less effective weapon than a fliesh in my opinion.

Having been inspired with a design I set about creating prototypes for an axe training weapon. Ivar advised on size and other details and the first training axe was a plausible reproduction of a Whale cutting tool in plywood and hard wood. This design was quite extensively used and tested but was found to be rather vulnerable to chipping and even breaking when used for serious training. The mark two version was more like a big club and had weight and balance.

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It was also a very durable design, I think only one broke that I know of and that was because the grain was running the wrong way across the handle. But the shape didn't really represent an axe with an actual head with the blade to the front. So the mark three which is currently used is made from ash in two parts with the “blade” bonded to the front of the handle with dowels and wood glue. This design has proved to be both resilient and reasonably realistic to train with while being safe as well.

The only accessory to use is a steel ring which hangs from the belt on the left hand side which traditionally carried the axe. There are certain exercises which involve drawing from the ring, sometimes referred to as “unprepared” techniques as opposed to prepared techniques where the axe is already in a guard position.

The axe is the primary attacking weapon. As we saw in the chapter on staff training basic staff training can be learned using staff to attack staff but at a higher level a more effective attacking weapon is needed. In Japanese martial arts weapon training is basically defence against a sword and as stated above we began Stav training using the same basic system. Once we had developed the axe as a plausible weapon we simply began using that instead. So most Stav weapon training is now defence against an axe attack and that can include using the axe as the defensive weapon too.

The other major benefit of axe training is for solo practice. Regular axe training is very good for fitness and conditioning

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and the repetitive movements teach the whole body to work with the web. Since opportunities for regular classes or courses are so few and far between most Stav practitioners have to rely largely on solo practice. Regular axe training takes quite a lot of commitment but a high degree of fitness and skill can develop if the effort is made.

The basic practice with an axe is very simple. For solo practice a simple stick will do so long as it is about the right length to reach from your navel to the floor, for most people that is just over a metre or about 40 inches long. I recommend the following exercises and cuts on a regular basis. What I am describing here is my personal preference, other Stav teachers will train in slightly different ways. It doesn't really matter so long as you are learning to work with the lines of the web.

This is my programme of axe training at time of writing and the system I have been developing for nearly 20 years now.

• There is a simple preparation exercise for breathing and centering. This involves bringing the axe from the front over the head and down the centre of the back while raising onto the balls of the feet, then back to the starting position. There should be a continuous breath in while bringing the axe over the back and a continuous breath out as you come back to the starting position. This is basically the same as the Kreft exercise in the staff exercises. I would recommend six of these.

• The straight down cut, from the centre line above the

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head to the same line in front of you. Then raising the axe back to the ready position. This is the basic attacking move and should be done a hundred times in each training session. You might need to build up to that many but it should be your goal.

• The h (Hagl) line cuts. Widening the stance brings the axe into a defensive guard position with the blade level with the right shoulder. From this position it is possible to step with the right foot over to the left and cut around so that the axe comes into a h grip with the left foot forward and the blade now level with the left shoulder. The next cut takes you back to the starting position. This is the basis of defensive moves with an axe, again I would recommend doing a hundred of these cuts.

• The hip cut, haven't really got a better name for it. This one starts in the same guard as the h cut. This time the right foot moves forward as the axe is brought to the left shoulder. Then the left foot moves forward as the axe cuts forward from the left. This is an attack for getting under an opponent's guard or disabling an attacker before they have managed to draw their weapon. Fifty of these cuts is an appropriate number for a training session.

• The final exercise is to combine the hip cut with a centreline cut. So, from the guard with the axe level with the right shoulder launch the hip cut and then move the right foot forward again as you raise the axe above the head and cut straight down. The idea is that the hip cut causes an opponent

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to step back quickly and the second cut catches them before they have recovered their guard. I would recommend doing these 25 times.

There are of course many other cuts, strikes and combinations with an axe that one could also practice. With experience you may find that you want to add your own choice of techniques. That is a matter of personal preference but I do believe that all you really need is the straight down cut and the Hagl cuts. Most benefit will come from working with these in sufficient numbers and on a regular basis.

Some people also like to do the cuts on both sides of the body, eg left and right handed. Again, that is a matter of personal preference. I do the staff exercises ambidextrously but I don't personally think it is necessary to do it with all training.

Partner training drills with the axe are of course about developing our understanding of the five principles and how to use them effectively. We train from both prepared and unprepared positions. The unprepared position is with the axe in the ring and steadied by the left hand. Or just held in the left hand as if there was an ring present. It is not practical to describe the two person drills in detail, the axe dvd and accompanying manual will be needed for that. So I will briefly explain the objective of each training drill.

• The Trel drills both involve simply stepping back from an attack with the hip cut. The axe is either drawn from the ring (unprepared) or taken back from a right hand guard

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position (prepared) to a point where the handle is in line with the attacking axe. Then the defender attempts to cut back in on the line. This may be done against a simple hip cut or, when the student is more confident, against a hip cut followed by a down cut.

• The Karl drills are about driving an attacker back and this may be done unprepared where the axe simply comes out of the ring and straight into the attacker's face. Or prepared where the defender is in either a right or left sided hagl line guard. In either case the defender responds to a straight down cut. The guard position should be slightly off the line and the response depends upon whether the attack comes straight for the body or attempts to take down the defenders axe.

• The Herse drills set the attacker up so that there seems to be no direct defence. So when the attack comes to the body the attacker can be frozen and either controlled or killed as necessary.

• The Jarl defence simply avoids the attack but sets up the attacker in case there is a follow through.

• The Konge defence invites the attack and then simply destroys the attacker as they come into range.

For more advanced Stav training it is very important that the attacker can launch a convincing attack with an axe. A beginner can only learn how to work with the lines of the web if they are given consistent attacks which follow the lines. For these reasons rigorous axe training is essential in the practice

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of Stav but the solo training will also build strength and fitness and the ability to see the lines will develop almost without the student noticing it.

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One Handed Weapons, Cudgel and SaxOne handed weapons are generally considered suitable for

quite advanced training. The body generally responds better to two handed weapons because there is less scope for movement than when working with just one hand. In Stav training we are learning to see the lines and align the body to the web. Once you can do this then it doesn’t matter what kind of weapon it is and the awareness of web lines is just as necessary for unarmed combat too. Learning to work with the lines seems to be easier using a long two handed weapon which is one of the main reasons that beginners start with the Staff exercises described in a previous chapter. The two favourite one handed weapons are the cudgel and sax. The drills we use will also teach you how to use a one handed sword but we generally prefer to train with items which are available as tools and everyday objects rather than specialised weapons. Hence the cudgel is an everyday walking stick and the sax may be a large knife or machete, the British Army Issue Glock is a particularly good example of a modern day version of a Sax. So effectively a cudgel is a stick which would not be longer than from your waist to the floor and the Sax is a big chopping knife.

The basic training with both weapons is essentially the same five or six cuts or strikes. The routine I use and Ivar Hafskjold’s is very similar, begins with a cut or strike from low right with the right leg back. As I step forward the weapon strikes up to a high left and with a left step forward cuts back

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down to low right. This would then be repeated with the left hand from low left to high right. The second cut or strike starts with the weapon held on the left hip and the cut comes to the high right and back down, again repeated with the left hand. The third cut is from above the head and straight down the front. The fourth cutting at chest level in a fairly tight figure of eight and the fifth a simple thrust to the front. I include a sixth strike where I start with the right foot forward, the weapon is held over the left shoulder. I strike down and across as if intercepting a thrust and twisting on the spot and then stepping forward with the left thrusting forward. Very simple movements but if practised consistently will develop into powerful applications.

The five principles drills with the cudgel and sax are defences against axe attacks. The first attack being a low cut to the right wrist which is the hand holding the weapon. The Trel response to this attack drops back, the defender’s left hand traps the axe handle and the right counters with the weapon. The remaining four drills are against a straight down cut. Karl avoids the attack and drives the attacker back, the Herse freezes them, the Jarl detaches while keeping control and the Konge walks straight into the attack and takes the attacker down.

Once these basic skills have been learned the cudgel/walking stick can be used for defending against a knife and for control and restraint. At this point we are moving from classic weapon training to Close Quarter Combat training

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which is the subject of the next chapter.

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Thoughts on Close Quarter Combat Training It used to be that most people who got involved in Stav had

some background in other Martial Arts. Sometimes Ivar would say that unless you already had a black belt in something then he couldn’t really teach you. Also when Ivar arrived in the UK having done his 14 years of training in Japan he had done a lot of Aikido, starting at Steven Segal’s dojo which resulted in Ivar being an extra in the film the Challenge with Scott Glen (although apparently any footage which included Ivar was cut out of the film so he doesn’t actually appear) and Aiki-Jutsu which is a much harder and more ‘realistic’ form of Aikido. Ivar’s primary aim was always to perfect his weapon training so his highest gradings were in the Ryu (school) mentioned in the previous chapters on weapon training. I know as well that Ivar was also suffering some ill effects from the training he had practised in Japan, it is very common for Occidentals to have knee damage from Budo training. I think the Japanese just have stronger knees than we do or they are more used to kneeling from an early age. Whatever the reason although we did some unarmed training, mainly based I think on the Aiki-Jutsu, Ivar was primarily keen to concentrate on weapon training and I was happy to go along with that. One of Ivar’s other original 4 students, David Watkinson took a particular interest in Close Quarter Combat and that became his focus from an early stage. David also spent quite a lot of time in the Philippines where he gained practical experience of indigenous knife fighting, which is taking his study pretty

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seriously.Ivar’s attitude was that if you could develop an awareness

of body mechanics and how to work with the five principles then this was all you really needed. The weapon training would actually develop one's understanding of the web and how to apply the five principles much more effectively than unarmed training. There is a great deal of sense in this (one would expect no less from Ivar) especially if one already has a good basis in Martial arts, I personally failed the only black belt grading I ever took but I did have many years of experience in Karate, Kick Boxing, Kung Fu and a couple of other lesser known arts. I had also worked in mental hospitals and had to deal with violent situations a few times. So for many years my Stav training was mostly weapon orientated and most of my teaching too.

However over the years a lot of people have come into Stav who have no prior experience of martial arts. Or if they do have a foundation in other training systems they want to know how they can use Stav concepts and principles to improve their self-defence skills. I also found myself wanting to revisit my own knowledge of unarmed combat and see how I could improve on it using what I had learned from Stav. I also found that we were beginning to get involved in events where we were demonstrating or teaching Stav alongside other martial arts. While we held our own very well it got me curious about what would happen if I looked again other systems of training to see where my own strengths and weaknesses now lay. It is

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very easy to be convinced yours is the best martial art in the world if you have nothing to do with those who believe their system is too. Every system has its strengths and weaknesses and every teacher does too. No one ever reaches perfection in any endeavour so there is always room for improvement but you may only be aware of this by being alongside others who have made similar efforts. Even if one gets extremely good for one’s own purposes one’s students may have different requirements in their training and practice. If you are aware of a wide range of training methods then you may well be able to guide a student into using a particular exercise or drill which will be extremely beneficial for them even if it has limited value to you.

There are two important factors which have to be considered in any form of martial arts training. One is establishing basic martial arts literacy and the other is desensitizing training. Basic literacy in martial arts means knowing how to punch, kick and grapple to put it very simply. You don’t necessarily have to be brilliant at all of these, or even any of them unless you plan to go into competitions in kick boxing/tae-kwon-do or boxing or Judo/wrestling. But you do need to know how to do them. If you have absolutely no idea how to strike with the hand, kick or sweep with the foot or leg and grab someone either to throw or lock them then it is a bit like turning up at a literature class not actually having learned to read, you might get away with it with enough help and support but you will be at a massive disadvantage. The

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flip side of this I call desensitizing training which basically means being on the receiving end of strikes, kicks and grappling techniques. Initially this should be by training with strike shields to given and receive kicks, focus pads for punching practice and learning how to throw and fall before going on to pins and locks. It may be relevant to go onto some kind of sparring and freestyle practice to develop confidence and versatility. I have reservations about actual competitions since to really compete seriously there have to be strictly enforced rules to prevent serious injuries. So if for example you compete in Judo striking is strictly forbidden. So if you compete in Judo competitions you may get very good at throwing opponents and forcing submissions out of them, but you have to train yourself never to hit. In boxing you will get very good at punching but if you kick or grab there is every chance you will be disqualified. Even Mixed Martial Arts which do allow punching, kicking and grappling forbid really dangerous techniques, which no doubt saves lives. This puts the emphasis on strength, speed and skill and competitors are carefully matched in size and experience. There is also a referee to enforce the rules. All this is as it should in a sporting event. But self-defence situations are not sporting events, if someone is attacked in the street or any other situation off the mat or outside the ring then they will be at some kind of disadvantage. Predators only select victims they are sure they have the edge over. In this case the techniques which are expressly forbidden in competition may be exactly the ones

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that will save your life when fighting off a real life assault. I sometimes hear people say that they know what they are allowed to use in the ring but if they had to fight for real then they would use the ‘forbidden’ techniques. This may be possible but under real pressure our behaviour tends to default to our most entrenched reflexes. So what we have been conditioned to do under the pressure of competition is very likely to be what we will do under the pressure of an assault in the street. Having said that, competing seriously does cultivate very high standards of performance and high achievement is always to be celebrated. I personally have never been a competitive person, I therefore tend not to encourage my students towards competitions, but that is just me and there are other points of view on this.

Training should try and get studentship used to some measure of reality in terms of both dishing out and receiving realistic techniques. This can work to a certain degree but just as a first aider may pass every first aid exam there is there is no comparison with a first encounter with blood, broken bones and a patient in real distress. Likewise nothing quite prepares you for a genuine violent encounter with someone who really wishes you harm or is at least willing to do you harm to get their own way. Although you may know a great deal in terms of technique and actually be able to apply it effectively there is no preparation for the mind and body’s response to a really stressful situation. An adrenalin dump, which is basically what happens, makes you feel terrible and yet you have to continue

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to cope with the situation. At least the second and third time you know what is going on but the first time it is very un-nerving and there is no sure way of preparing for it. Geoff Thompson got over it by working the doors. I managed it working in mental hospitals and teaching for a time in some pretty rough schools. It is probably a good idea to encourage students to see if there is some environment in which they can become accustomed to some level of confrontation while still in relative safety.

In a peculiar way I have gone full circle over the past 20 years. I started off trying to make my training and teaching as elevated and sophisticated as possible. Then quite recently I have been rediscovering the importance of getting back to absolute basics. Without first conditioning and desensitizing through training in the basics nothing more sophisticated is going to be possible when under pressure. In the next chapter we will have a hard look at what martial arts training is really good for. Then we will look at the actual training methods we use in Ice and Fire Stav CQC training.

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What use are martial arts?One of the reasons we have tended not to emphasize

unarmed self defence training in Stav is that developing what works for each person is a very individual thing. Many aspects of martial training have a social and communal application and context. It could be suggested that there is a core of ‘pure’ martial arts knowledge and practice, a way of martial training for self development and personal growth and no other purpose. If one becomes serious about martial arts for a long period of one’s life, as indeed Ivar Hafskjold has done and I have done too then ultimately one is using martial training as a vehicle towards self realization, a spiritual goal I guess you could call it. From this core there are a number of possible ways of expressing martial arts publicly, one or more of these ways will also probably be the door through which one originally came into martial arts. I will identify these doors as the following:

• Professional conflict management skills.• Combat Sports• Theatrical Fighting• Fitness Training• Meditation• Self-defence

Professional conflict management skills are those required by personell who work in some form of conflict and danger management. This obviously covers the military, but also the police, prison officers, body guards and anyone else who may

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have to engage with violence in a professional capacity. Training for these roles will assume an appropriate degree of physical strength and fitness, there will be limits and regulations on what kind of force is permitted and what is not. There will also very likely be an element of teamwork and collaboration in the training and application of the skills learned.

So for example a prison officer trained in Control and Restraint techniques would expect to work as part of a team when restraining a dangerous inmate. This means he or she would expect to play a specific part in a directed operation. Regulations would have to be observed to avoid charges of using excessive force and following procedure would have to take precedence over personal improvisation. For this reason weapon training tends to be quite proscribed and predictable. This is partly to make the training safe and partly because in a battlefield situation each warrior has a part to play and it needs to be done correctly if the commander is going to maintain leadership and control. This is why soldiers and police personnel don’t really do martial arts, they simply learn the skills they need to do their job and that isn’t quite the same thing. When Geoff Thompson first started working the doors he was surprised how many of his colleagues had no formal training in martial arts yet handled themselves very effectively in violent situations. For those who did have some prior training it was apparently boxing that served best. Mr Thompson had somehow assumed that his second Dan in

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Karate was going to be an advantage to him and was initially disappointed when he found that his knowledge of traditional martial arts was almost a liability rather than an asset. Of course it soon became clear that there were specific skills which were needed for this very particular environment and Geoff quickly picked them up. In fact a bouncer is no more a martial artist, or indeed needs to be, than your average soldier or bobby on the beat, he simply develops his skill set in order to do a specific job.

Another face of martial arts is combat sport. This covers a huge range of activities, quite a few of which will be represented in the Olympics in London near the time of writing. The best known examples are boxing, wrestling, Judo, kick boxing, Thai Boxing, MMA, fencing, Ken-do and various styles have their own competition systems such as Karate, Jujitsu, Tae-Kwon-Do etc. When one trains for combat sport there is an emphasis on striving to be good at a particular activity, this also implies knowing and observing the rules of that particular contest. Even MMA has quite strict rules as to what techniques are allowed and which are not, without these restrictions there would be serious injury and even deaths. Obviously there is a great deal of commitment and dedication involved in being a successful competitor in any sport and possibly more so in a combat sport. This is very admirable and may be character building. As I have stated earlier I personally have never been much interested in competition. There are physical and psychological reasons for this in my case and I still have the

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greatest admiration for those who do compete. But again a competitor has to be able to compete according to the criteria of the sport and obey the rules. Again this training will limit individual development and expression. The strength, fitness and sheer determination required for participation in a combat sport may well be an advantage in a self defence situation so long as it is never forgotten that the objectives in sport are completely different to the stakes in a violent encounter with the criminally inclined.

Many people become aware of martial arts, myself included, through the door, or more accurately window of theatrical fighting. In China Wu Shu is basically the art of training for fight scenes in traditional opera. This tradition found its way into the Oriental Kung Fu movies which is why so many of the fight scenes seem so over the top, the Chinese audiences know they are unrealistic but they enjoy the spectacle anyway. There is a parallel tradition through Japanese Kabuki theater. In the West we have a long and honourable tradition of stage fighting which goes back to Shakespear and before. Elizabethan audiences were keenly attuned to the different styles of sword fighting which were known at the time and would have expected to see them demonstrated on the stage. During the 16th and 17th centuries there were fencing masters from all over Europe teaching in London. Many of their students would have trained for self-defence and duelling (although even by then the pistol was making the sword a somewhat secondary weapon of self-

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protection) but a lot of the demand would have been for theatrical purposes. From the 1960s onwards oriental martial arts began appearing in Western films and TV programmes. James Bond is a good example but Elvis Presley was an early devotee of Karate and brought that into his films on occasion. There is even a scene in the 1961 film The Young Ones where Cliff Richard uses some Judo. Then Bruce Lee hits the screens, initially in the TV programme The Green Hornet, a bit part in a Marlow film and then of course Enter the Dragon. Being too young to see an X film at that time (that was what an 18 rated film was called in those days for younger readers) the Kung Fu series with David Carradine was a greater influence on me. Apparently Bruce Lee may have had a hand in creating that series but I have never quite got to the bottom of whether that is true or not. Theatrical fighting has always done a lot to popularize the martial arts and those of us who got into martial training in the early 70s have to acknowledge our debt to Bruce Lee. However I will finish this section by quoting William Shatner who played Captain Kirk in the first Star Trek Series. In his autobiography he tells with self deprecating humour how he on several occasions found himself getting into fights over stupid arguments. Then he would remember that as Captain Kirk he always won fights on set because the script said he would and the stuntmen were getting paid to do as they were told. This did not necessarily apply when an out of shape actor got into a bar brawl. At least he realised what was happening in time and would just buy enough drinks to

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save himself getting a beating.Martial arts may be practised for exercise and improving

health. That is fine so long as the training doesn’t degenerate into a form of aerobics performed to loud music. If that sort of exercise is your cup of tea then have fun, but please don’t pretend it is martial arts in any meaningful sense.

Some arts, particularly Tai Chi have developed a reputation for being a form of meditation and are therefore a route to spiritual development. As I stated at the beginning of this chapter, if you get into martial arts deep enough and for long enough there will be quite profound reasons for continuing the practice. However I do think that there has to be a solid foundation and structure of physical and mental development and ‘spiritual’ is the outcome of a long journey. As I understand it traditional Chinese martial arts start with an athletic and ‘hard’ art such as Hising I when one is young, as you get older it is likely that one will adopt a more subtle practice such as Pa Kwa. Then late in life Tai Chi becomes an expression of a life time of practice. Backing this up throughout life will be regular Qi Gong training for well-being and vitality. Going straight into Tai Chi later in life is unlikely to bring all the possible benefits. However if one comes to martial arts late in life then Tai Chi may well be a good choice, I would recommend giving Stav a go too though.

So where does self-defence fit into martial arts training and practice? I have to be honest and say that you don’t need to be a martial arts expert to be able to defend yourself. Self-

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defence is really like first aid, you don’t really need any knowledge of medicine to save someone’s life. You just need to notice the situation and realise that someone needs help, you need to ascertain if they are breathing, bleeding, have broken bones or are burnt. Knowing how to put someone in a recovery position and clear an airway can save their life. Stopping bleeding with appropriate pressure and in rare cases doing CPR (keeping oxygen circulating around the body and particularly the brain when the casualty is not breathing on their own) and that is about all you need to know. Apart from that call an ambulance as soon as possible and help a conscious casualty deal with shock. If you were to attempt to do any more than that you really need to know what you are doing or you will probably make things worse. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” As your grandmother should have told you. The reality is that if you try using stuff you have learned in a martial arts class in a violent encounter you will probably make things worse. Geoff Thompson reports in his book ‘Dead or Alive’ a conversation with a young woman who had attended a self-defence course. Geoff asked her what benefit she had got from the lessons and apparently she said that now she wasn’t afraid to walk across the park in the dark any more. This was not the answer Geoff wanted to hear, as far as he was concerned the first thing she should have learned was ”Don’t walk across the park in the dark!”

To finish this chapter I will sum up the basics of self-defence in one paragraph as Geoff Thompson lays it out.

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Firstly avoid places and situations where violence is likely to occur. Be aware at all times, and if danger does threaten escape at the earliest opportunity. If a confrontation does develop then dissuade the attacker verbally. You may want to consider deception, an old wallet with a few coins and some out of date cards can be given to a mugger in place of your real wallet. Loopholing is when you give a potential attacker a reason for not attacking you by, for example admitting you are in wrong and apologizing even when there is no real reason to. Posturing is when you act tough and do a lot of shouting and swearing even if it is an act. Finally, when there is no other choice hit once, as hard as you can and run away as fast as you can. That is basically it and the key elements are: Avoid dangerous places and situations. Always be aware of your surroundings and people nearby. If you sense any danger do not hesitate to make an escape. Does this have anything to do with martial arts? Not really but if you ever find yourself having to sort a problem out by hitting someone then something has gone seriously wrong so avoid violence whenever possible.

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A Stav Approach to CQC Training

In the previous chapter I may have seemed to be suggesting that you don’t really need to be good at martial arts to express it in various practical ways. In a sense this is true in that you may be a good athlete and actor and thus be able to do well choreographed stage or screen fighting. Tom Cruise was most impressive in The Last Samurai but as far as I know Mr Cruise has never claimed to be a martial artist in any sense, just a very dedicated actor. To me it always comes over when there is a real knowledge behind the acting. Steven Segal’s films are an acquired taste but I always enjoy watching him in action because he is very good martial artist as well as being a film star. (Ivar will vouch for this having trained with Mr Segal in Japan many years ago) True martial arts knowledge can provide a foundation for any of the activities described in the previous chapter. It depends which way one is travelling, whether into Martial arts via one of the doors described or from a place of some knowledge into a specific application. I don't believe that just getting good in the area of one specific window or doorway of martial practice will necessarily lead to a deep understanding of the ‘core’ or ‘soul’ of martial arts. Neither will developing a profound practice of martial arts necessarily enable one to function effectively in an unfamiliar application without practice and experience. But it does provide an invaluable foundation on which to build that practice. Over the last couple of years I have attended Fight

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Camp and trained with Kevin O’Hagan and Geoff Thompson simply to test out my core knowledge in unfamiliar training situations. It has been very enlightening. The other benefit is that I am better placed to teach others since I now have a wider repertoire of ideas and techniques to share rather than just the ones that work for me.

There are a number of factors one has to consider when developing CQC skills. One is the background knowledge and experience of the student. Many people do come into Stav with previous experience of martial arts training. It may have been many years since they actually practised but the knowledge is still there in the muscle memory and the neural pathways do get reactivated when training starts again. I encourage a student with pre-existing skills to use what they already know but according to Stav principles. In my own case I found that the training I had done in Feng Sau Wu Shu at least ten years before I started Stav came back to me. These were obviously moves I was comfortable with and when I started applying the strikes and pushes according to the lines of the web I realised that I at last knew how to use them effectively. So I always encourage my students to revisit their previous knowledge and let it emerge in their Stav training. There is sometimes an added bonus for me in that a remembered move or technique may prove to be very useful and then I learn something. Yes I am quite shameless in my pilfering from other arts and this is partly how one learns. I am also perfectly happy for students and teachers of other styles

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to do the same from me.Another factor is the age, gender and physical condition of

the student. If a student is younger and more athletic I would encourage them to develop power and strength through bag and pad work and strenuously test out control and restraint techniques with other students of similar physique and capacity. If I think it is appropriate I may recommend that the student joins a club where they can be involved in competitive sparring of some kind. As stated before I believe the benefits of competition are limited but there can be times in one’s life when we need to test ourselves. As I suggested above all experience can be transmuted into something useful through Stav practice later. If I am teaching an older person with perhaps a more delicate constitution and little or no previous experience then the approach is different. I would expect them to do the stances daily, that is non negotiable if you are serious about Stav. This will greatly improve their balance, breathing, basic flexibility and range of movement and calm and focus the mind. I would then expect them to work with the foundation exercises to develop balance and coordination. After that we would look at avoiding and escaping trouble and how to keep calm in a potentially violent situation. I would focus their training on the application of Trel and Karl principles and how to make these work with the minimum of force. In fact most of the time these two principles can be expressed just with the voice and a calm demeanour. In a real situation there would be no recognizable martial technique

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demonstrated at all yet an attacker may be effectively dealt with in the sense that he doesn’t manage to grab hold of his victim or is denied entry to the space he was trying to invade. If a 70 year old 8 stone woman with no previous experience said she wanted to learn control and restraint techniques then we would have to have a serious conversation as to why she thought she needed this. Nothing of course is impossible if you are sufficiently determined and Stav looks for the highest degree of efficiency in all applications but I would have to offer some reality checks too.

For anyone in between these two extremes I would simply recommend that they worked to reach their own potential. At time of writing I am mainly using the following training methods for developing CQC skills. I am presently on a steep learning curve where this area is concerned and I may well learn things in the next few weeks from various sources which will become part of my teaching if I believe them to be useful. The nine foundation exercises were developed with the help of my student Nigel Smith from a set of five exercises he was using to teach the essentials of Wing Chun Kung Fu. These exercises are divided into three sets of three, the first set are weight shifting and balance exercises. The second set are intercepting exercises, one against a head attack, one to the middle of the body and the final one against a low attack. The third set of exercises cover strikes, the first one linear strikes as used in a Karate punch, the second a chop along a specific line through the head and finally a circling palm strike action,

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an exercise the Chinese call ‘Cloud Hands’.I also teach kicking the strike shield and punching using

focus pads. There are a number of reasons for this. Kicking is a good way of keeping someone at a distance so we practice a front push kick from the front let and from the back leg. These are always practised against resistance, snap kicks in the air can easily damage the knee. One develops confidence in delivering the kick and the person on the receiving end who is holding the shield gets used to absorbing impact. They are effectively becoming desensitised to being thumped in the stomach which can make the difference between coping with an attack and simply going into panic if there has been no prior experience of being hit. Obviously holding a strike shield in training is not the same thing as being punched in a street attack but as far as the body is concerned an impact is an impact and the mind won’t have to cope with a body going into shock and this makes a very big difference when coping with a violent encounter. The same applies to punching practice. We learn how to deliver a basic punch, again not just in the air but to a fairly solid target so should it in the last resort be necessary to hit someone we know how to do it. By using the pads we learn how to receive a punch and anticipate its arrival so having someone in front of you throwing punches in your direction is less disconcerting than it would be other wise.

After kicking and punching the third threat is being grappled. If a strong attacker can successfully apply a grappling technique then you are going to be in a very bad

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situation. So we train in a simple grappling technique which has a very good chance of taking an attacker to the floor. I also teach how to do a basic strangle and choke since the strangle is the best way to finish a fight and a choke the ultimate in compliance techniques. If you want to learn how to use these methods to their fullest extent then obviously you need to train in Judo/wrestling/jujitsu, boxing, Thai boxing, Tae-Kwon-Do. Karate etc. As stated above I am all in favour of a broad education in Martial arts. In Stav we tend to keep our range of actual techniques quite limited and then we explore deeply all that we can learn from the drills we do use.

The training described above really has nothing to do with Stav per se, it is simply basic martial arts literacy and desensitising training. So the next exercise is working with a counter to the grappling attack and then exploring how to exploit the situation this creates using the five principles. From here we will be working with applications from the nine exercises, seeing the lines of the web within the body and developing an understanding of the five principles.

Dagger training is partly about desensitising to weapon attacks and developing a deeper awareness of body mechanics and effective control and restraint techniques. If working against the grapple as described above is basically Trel and Karl training, eg how to escape from a situation or prevent someone forcing their way into your space, then dagger training is working on the Herse level, eg how to control an attacker and force them to submit. There are

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basically six stab attacks coming in around a clock face and defences against each line of attack using the dagger for defence but also practising the same basic moves unarmed. The dagger training builds confidence and develops a detailed understanding of body mechanics.

There are also five knife defences which are primarily to develop an understanding of the five principles. The training described above actually has considerable scope for practice and development of individual skill, knowledge and confidence. As well as developing real competence in CQC ability there is also an important element of flexibility created. By not being focused on any one kind of fighting, the three kinds being based on kicking distance, punching distance or grappling distance, we can use whatever we observe to be the distance the attacker least wants to use, so a potential grappler can be kept at distance by kicking, a puncher can be grappled and a grapple can be countered and the attacker struck at close range using the lines of the web. Kicking is rarely used as an initial assault as it is too easy to simply step away from. Obviously this is a massive oversimplification of what can happen in a violent encounter but most situations don’t actually become physically violent unless the victim allows them to. If you are aware of threat and know what to do at each distance they you can remain calm and confident and a potential attacker will not see the opening he is looking for. In this way an assault may well be deterred without you ever knowing that it was a possibility. We should really train for our

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own pleasure and satisfaction and for the joy of sharing our skill and knowledge with fellow martial artists. If we have no thought of violence and no attachment to it then it will in all likely hood never visit us. This is actually the secret of training for self defence.

There is also one other element in training which I should briefly mention. This is the idea of working with one’s fylgia. The fylgia is one’s totem creature or power animal and discovering yours can be seen as a way of discovering something of your true nature. We have a simple exercise in Stav for finding your fylgia so most people know theirs from fairly early on in training. In traditional Chinese martial arts the 12 animal forms were considered to be the foundation of the various styles which have developed over the centuries. The usual explanation given for how these developed is that early teachers watched animals going about their everyday activities and copied their moves and created martial training systems from their observations. This may be true except that it is very difficult to copy an animal which is as structurally different from a human being as a Praying Mantis, a Tiger or a snake and how do you account for the Dragon? I believe that the founders of the different animal styles were accessing their power animals, and having done so would then have observed their real life counterparts. Having the same fylgia as a particular animal gives you a certain insight into that animal that another person simply won’t have. Understanding one’s fylgia then informs the development of your fighting style.

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However you first have to develop the foundations of training as described above and you need to explore and test out the implications of your particular fylgia and the results will be totally individual. So at this level no one can really teach you, you have to access an inner source of inspiration and knowledge and embark on your own journey of discovery. I wish you all the best with yours.

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ConclusionI hope you enjoyed this account of my experiences in Stav

training and found my reflections useful. I trust I have made clear the importance of continuing to learn throughout our lives. Personally I feel fresher and newer in my Stav training and practice than I did when I wrote my previous book over sixteen years ago. Perhaps this is because I realise now how little I actually know, yet I have had to experience a great deal to gain that insight. It has simply been a fascinating and challenging journey and I am privileged to have shared a few of the highlights with you.

However, learning Stav depends so much upon movement and direct experience that a book can only whet your appetite, but never satisfy it. I did not learn Stav from a book. An article got my attention in the first instance but I learned through Ivar's generous instruction and my own willingness to practice. If this book is your first exposure to Stav then I hope it has stimulated your interest, I will be delighted if it has done. But never forget that there is no substitute for actual participation in training. I teach as often as I can and you would be very welcome to attend a course or class and discover first hand what it is like to practice Stav for yourself. If you are already dedicated to another style of martial training then I hope my experience will encourage you on your own path.

Whatever your endeavour remember that the only route to success is persistence and dedication.

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References and Resources

Stav resourcesDetails of books and DVDs currently available can be found

at http://www.iceandfire.org.ukDetails of courses, camps and classes can be found at the

same web address.Geoff Thompson's website is at:http://www.geoffthompson.comI particularly recommend his manual on Self-defence Dead

or Alive

Kevin O'Hagan's website is at http://www.kevinohagan.com/I strongly recommend attending his regular open seminars

For regular updates on the world of practical Martial Arts training I would recommend visiting http://bunkaijutsu.com/ which is run by Charlie Wildish and sign up for his newsletter.

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http://bunkaijutsu.com/

http://www.kevinohagan.com/

http://www.geoffthompson.com/

http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/

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