Michael Sternbach

According to relativity, time is directly connected to space, thus it's considered another dimension. The faster an object is moving through space, the slower it's moving through time.

What do you think mass is?

simplify

Feynman diagrams frequently show particles moving backward in time. However, on the macroscopic level, things are bound to move forward in time, that is, from a state of lower to higher entropy. I believe there can be exceptions to this, but it isn't what we commonly observe.

Exactly. As I said, to keep the furniture in storage causes high costs, but to have them delivered here requires a nice amount of money too (payable all at once). A lot of the furniture is presents from my parents-in-law in Japan, especially from the mother.. They were/are of both emotional and practical value to my wife and me. Yes. The items were deposited when we moved without having a place to permanently move to yet. They got "stuck" because of lack of finances to have them transported to the new place. Right. I think my mother - who is always cooperative in this and other situations, within her possibilities - could be meant by this. That sounds great! My mother has always been able to communicate well with my parents-in-law. Probably this means that my wife and I should get together with her to make another request to my parents-in-law. This is probably a reference to my parents-in-law again (especially the father this time, it seems), who had helped us acquire the furniture and move it to the store house - but not further, even though I repeatedly asked them for their support. It sounds encouraging! Thank you! Well done. If I am "fleshing it out" right, then this reading already showed how to proceed. Do you agree?

We would hardly know if the past had been altered and therefore the present, as we would have no memory of the present as it was "before" the alteration took place. However, I think that it is possible not so much to alter the past as to neutralize how it is affecting the present.

Theoretically yes.

Well, I once reflexively used an upward block to successfully defend ward off a downward smash with a comparatively harmless object (it was meant to be a "joke"). If done more to the side, the move can also be used to block a roundhouse punch ("haymaker"). But as Nungali demonstrated, what looks like an upward block (i.e. in kata) is often better looked at as a forearm strike, which is a surprisingly useful technique.

Bummer

Hi James, This is just to quickly let you know that you did great. Thanks a lot. A detailed commentary will follow shortly (as soon as I have the time for it) - and a follow-up question as well. Best regards, Michael

I agree with you. I "thanked" Andrei for his profound explanation of how one might view reincarnation from a Daoist perspective, but calling a teacher - or their work, for that matter - held in high regard by many "bullshit" is tactless. And not only because Michael Winn is a forum member. There are more appropriate ways to express one's opinion, to be sure.

Lots of pegacorns where I live.

Boy, don't say this to a rock headed individualist like Marblehead! But actually, what you are referring to, in my own experience, involves both transcending and fully manifesting one's individuality. (Yeah, there's another paradoxon for you.) That's why Jung was talking of individuation. What we leave behind is the boundaries of the ego (perhaps that's what you meant by "individuality"?) and start manifesting the self. This is our true individuality, beyond what societal and cultural influences made us. Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu speak to this a lot. I hope that this is more agreeable to MH as well.

If your school taught you all of what I referred to above (kyusho, tuite etc), then you were lucky indeed. Most so-called traditional schools don't! I'm not against innovation if it is based on sound considerations, and that will generally include going back to the half forgotten roots of the art. A negative example seems to be including boxing type hooks. Even professional boxers frequently injure their hands when they throw them without the protection of the bandage on gloves in a street situation. They still do. Especially Sanchin kata in Goju-ryu, Uechi-ryu and (due to Goju's influence) Kyokushinkai (see Andrei's post above). Like much of Okinawan Karate, this is an import from Fujian White Crane Kung Fu.

Your question implies the answer, that is, they took it straight out of Kyokushin and boxing, respectively. Yes, they keep the non-punching hand up in a guard in sparring. Retracting it as done in the forms (besides being a training tool) generally means that you are pulling an opponent in close by that hand. This also resembles how practitioners of Praying Mantis and Kenpo Karate tend to punch - more of a South Chinese approach. I'm not an advocate of that. As Musashi said, hopping leads to an unstable mind. No, bobbing and weaving are not encouraged in traditional Karate which emphasizes keeping the body upright. It is fair to say that it represents a somewhat stiff approach to fighting. This linear kind of long range fighting, partially inspired by Jigen-ryu (a sword fighting school), was introduced after Gichin Funakoshi had brought Karate from Okinawa to the Japanese main island. His son Gigo and other seniors were instrumental in that, much to the master's dismay. On Okinawa there had been little sparring, the training consisted mostly of learning forms (kata) and their proper application (bunkai); it included pressure point strikes (kyusho-jitsu), 'sticky hands' (kakie), grappling (tuite) and advanced methods of power generation (hakkei). This profound body of martial knowledge was not generally transmitted to the Japanese instructors who emphasized the sportive/competitive aspects, where there was little room for close combat (oops, a pun) and any techniques that were overly devastating. Thus the gap between basic techniques and (poorly understood) forms on the one hand, sparring on the other usually seen in the Japanese styles today. Fortunately, there is an increasing number of instructors in Western countries who are going back to their art's Okinawan roots and do their best to recover its lost aspects. Where free sparring is part of the practice, having a set of rules to keep contestants from maiming and killing each other is mandatory, of course. Even the roughest "anything goes" kind of styles have that. Here is an example of typical Kyokushin sparring (light contact, as usual during ordinary training sessions). Mind that there are no head punches and grappling allowed, which influences how the fighters are positioning themselves and moving, and inevitably detracts from realism in terms of street defence. I agree with Nungali that the best approach to fighting practice today is using protective gear that allows for a wider technical variety and a degree of realism - even though caution still always needs to be exercised.

Thank you. Just call me Michael.

I have been training in both Kyokushinkai and Shotokan. I can assure you that that kind of punching isn't found in any traditional forms, not even in Kyokushin ones. Neither is it part of the style's vast technical curriculum. Kyokushin fighting has been compared kick-boxing, and that's quite on the mark. If you have a particular school in mind, you may also want to find out if they actually advocate full contact in their training. Not all the schools do.

In the opinion of many holistic medical practitioners, even illnesses which are caused by a germ have a psychosomatic background, there is nothing accidental about who would be affected by them, and when. But I don't mean to sidetrack this interesting discussion about Nietzsche's views.

I'm looking forward to the reading. Thanks.

You mean, there is nothing we can do to help the poor man awake?

Okay, here is the situation: I have a bunch of furniture in a store-house roughly 100 miles from where I am living now. The rent is several hundred dollars every month. Having them delivered to my house poses certain problems, but I don't want to get rid of them either. My question is how I should proceed. I see that my post crossed with another member's. Hopefully you can attend to both requests.

Of course this kind of MA training can be hazardous to health. For a related discussion of the pros and cons of heavy contact sparring, see http://www.kenpotalk.com/forum/99-general-martial-arts/15827-deep-thoughts.html from post #13 onwards.

Hero

Light.

Battlestar Galactica.