Back in 1967, I had just start Kenpo Karate, one of the Tracy Brothers offshoot branches, and the head instructor decided to put on a breaking seminar. I don’t know what he was thinking, maybe he had a side business selling insurance or something. At any rate, the potential for disaster was looming.

On a saturday morning a dozen students entered the school and big stacks of freshly cut pine boards were waiting for us. As a group we were taught all the fine points of focusing your energy, of punching through the target, and all that sort of thing, and we were all truly excited. Then we took turns breaking short planks of lumber, one at a time, as the head instructor watched carefully.

One of the attendees, a nice guy by the name of Jeff, asked if it was possible to break a board using just the head. The head instructor’s answer was in the affirmative, but he cautioned that it shouldn’t be attempted until one had trained extensively. We then went into another room to break boards, and no one noticed that Jeff had not come with us.

We were heavily engaged in a group discussion, and suddenly there a tremendous cracking sound came from the room we had just left. It was such a sickly sound that we all turned and stared at the entrance to the other room. The other room, where the sound came from, where Jeff was.

Suddenly, Jeff appeared at the door, he was standing a bit crooked, and the look in his eyes was like little birdies whistling. We all held our breaths as Jeff crossed the room, walking crooked, the birdies whizzing around his head in a neat, little circling pattern. Jeff settled, well, sort of collapsed, into a seated zen position, and the head instructor, with an eye on Jeff, continued his speechifying.

Now, if you’re going to break a board with your head, and I don’t care if you study Goju or Kyokushinkai or Hung Gar or whatever, work up to it. Start with thin boards, even an eighth of an inch, through a quarter, through 3/8s, and so on. Heck, even wear a football helmet the first few times, the potential for injury is that great.

Oh, and at the end of that breaking seminar? Jeff approached the head instructor after it was all over and asked if is it possible to break a board using just your head. Maybe he should have concentrated on developing the hardest punch instead of just a hard head!

Al Case has examined martial arts for over 40 years. If you want to learn how to Matrix your Martial Art, pick up a free ebook at Monster Martial Arts.

Tags: Self Defence

The truth of what happens, however is not quite as it sounds. In fact, the truth of the matter is an oddity that is hard tobelieve. Let me tell you what really happens.

In the mid seventies I was sitting on a cinder block in my backyard, tapping a length of rebar on the patio and listening to music. Donk, donk…and the world glowed golden and I couldn’t tell where the music was coming from. Everything I knew suddenly became irrelevant, and I realized that I had had a moment of enlightenment.

And, about that time, my instructor retired. So, here I was, an enlightened being, and I didn’t know where to go to get my lesson. Hey, the student was ready, so where was the master?

Then a bizarre thing happened. People started coming along and telling me what to do. Whenever I was in a quandary, some fellow, not necessarily a martial artist, would come out of some alleyway and tell me the exact thing I needed to know to understand my next step.

I was teaching a class in Karate one day, and I looked out the window, and a guy was doing in the parking lot doing gung fu. I went out, introduced myself, and he turned out to be a master, and he taught me his style. And, in a bizarre circumstance, he taught me the exact thing that had been next to learn in my system before my instructor retired.

And this thing, of people telling me what to do entered all aspects of my life, giving me a life that was entirely different, bizarre but golden, from the rest of humanity. I would go to a buy a car, know that the salesman was full of dung sticks, and suddenly some other customer would draw my attention to another car, or tell me about another dealer, and, suddenly, everything in the universe seemed balanced and right. The master had appeared, and he was people, and he never led me wrong.

So this thing of when the student is ready the master will appear works, but not the way you expect it. People, as a race, are a more pure and magnitudious rendition of consciousness, and, when taken together, and a person who has been enlightened will tend to take them, they are the master. All of us, we are connected by a consciousness that we do not usually understand, and even reject outright, and yet this is the secret of where we are going, We are part of a Cosmic Mind, a Godlike consciousness, and when the martial arts are done right, and this can be ascertained by whether they lead to enlightenment, humanity knows what you need, and when, and it delivers.

Al Case has more than 4O++ years experience in the martial arts. If you wish to enter the Cosmic Mind, visit either Church of the Martial Arts, or pick upa free ebook at Monster Martial Arts.

Tags: Self Defence