Martial Arts and Me

Long time ago, when I was a college undergrad in the "capital of Siberia", I had a roommate who was totally passionate about martial arts. I remember he would regularly get the 3 or 4 of us out at the University stadium and teach us some Karate - punches, blocks, stances. Being young and having too much extra energy, we would often get into dynamic sparring sessions, occasionally getting each other's noses to bleed, or knocking the wind out - but it was fun, and we kept it friendly. One day, a real Karate sensei showed up at our school, and for about a month I had my first real martial art class experience. I really loved the class, but unfortunately, life circumstances prevented me from continuing on this path for a number of years...

Years went by, I moved to the US, and every time I would pass a martial art school, I would feel the urge to go and join it... But I thought I was too busy for that. Until one day, already in California, one of my friends finally dragged me into a dojo of a Korean martial arts called Kuk Sool Won. I liked the instructor and his gentle yet quite precise way of teaching. I was fascinated to see my progress, and stayed with the school for a few years until I got my black belt rank.

However, something was still missing in that school. Even though I was pretty good at doing forms and kicks and various techniques on the mat, I didn't feel confident that I could actually fight in real life, if the need be. Also, I had a sense that there has to be more to martial arts than what I was learning...

...And I was right. Not too long ago, I met a sensei of a rare Japanese variety of Aiki Jujutsu, who graciously agreed to teach me the art. And after a few classes, I realized what I have been looking for, and could not find in the other schools - the practical approach of simplicity, elegance, time-proven concepts (not just techniques!) that really work in a real fight. My new sensei has been systematically showing me new defenses and movements that were so effective that I just couldn't believe it! It took me several years and many tests to get to the black belt rank in another system just to be totally blown away by the techniques I never thought were possible! I feel that after only a few months in the new system I have probably learned more ways to defend myself than in all my previous years of martial arts experience.

What is also remarkable about my current sensei is his amazing level of skill. He has been studying for many years under a Grand Master of the system - and before that had many years of martial arts experience from other schools, some of which were also quite effective for a practical fight. Listen to the Grand Master talk about the art himself.

In addition, this art is not just an extremely effective self-defense system. It is a rather holistic art that pays a lot of attention to the balanced development of body and mind, together. And it starts right there, in the first class. I cannot really do a good justice in explaining or describing it here, you have to go and experience it for yourself.

By the way, for a limited time, my sensei has opened the school for new students. So, if you live in or near Mountain View, you are welcome to join the school. This is truly a rare treat, as this particular art is usually not openly taught to the public, and if you are serious about martial arts, you don't want to miss this one out.

How to join us? Really easy. We practice in the Rengstorff park in the open-air dojo, in Mountain View every Monday and Thursday from 5:45 to 6:45pm. The cost is only $75/month (which is a steal compared to most commercial schools), and we have some scholarships available for students in need. All you have to do is show up, and ask to be admitted to the floor.

If you have questions about this art, feel free to contact me through my website at http://martial-arts.sergeyberezin.com

On Purpose

Piles of crap are accumulating over my head. No, it’s not a bad crap - in fact, it’s a pile of gems, jewels, and precious stones in the form of knowledge that was almost lost to the world, and by sheer accident has landed on my laps - yet there is so much of it right now that I don’t know how to even begin to unwind this big knot of the million threads, and the billion of ideas. I don’t know how can I possibly find time just to absorb all this, much less to integrate it into my bones and muscles, before I will be able to share it with you. And yet I must... This is my mission. This is what I’m living for...

Has it ever occurred to anyone that our mission has always been there at the moment we were born? I think we have become too arrogant in believing that we can choose our mission, that we can decide our destiny. As if a liver cell can one day decide that it is bored to be a liver cell, and it wants to become a neuron cell instead, or a heart cell, or a muscle cell. How arrogant and selfish. You know what happens when that happens? Cancer. Not only the cell fails to achieve what it was set out to do, but it also ruins the entire organism, and after a seemingly overwhelming success of that particular cell to replicate and “take over the world” - suddenly things become worse and worse, and the entire organism dies... How selfish and arrogant, and what a great price to pay for it.

What if we as people are “cells” in the organism of the culture, or even humanity as a whole? Or, how about the entire biosphere of the planet Earth? What is the price of becoming selfish and arrogant about the World and our role as gods and rulers and kings of our own destiny?

A cell cannot decide what it will become - it has to discover its purpose, through the interaction with other cells, through its own introspection of its DNA and the unfolding of it specific to this cell, is how it discovers its purpose. And if it lives its purpose, the entire organism is living happily, and many other cells, for many generations, are living a healthy life.
Likewise, we cannot decide what our purpose is, we can only discover it. And a way to discover it is through observing the signals the Universe is sending us, and observing the unfolding of our own DNA, or what makes up our personal code - from within.

How can I communicate these ideas to you? How can I even comprehend these ideas for myself in a way that they become communicable? How do I find time to absorb and integrate all that mass of collective wisdom before I even begin to think of a possibility of pointing it out to someone else?

Questions, questions, questions...

Come on, come in, get up, shut up, and dance!

I lose myself to the wave of love

to the spirit of fire

to the water of waves

to the rhythm, to the force,

to the air, to source,

I lose myself - my mind, my body

to that which is me,

to that which is I

to that which will be after I die

to others, to planet, to this Universe,

I dance - I don't think I have any words

I know I'll dance again & again

till midnight, till dawn, and till midnight again

I'm starting my week with an eternal dance

and nothing exists after eternity ends.

It ends... With a dance...

The Cultures and Colors - what would happen if Clare Graves and Daniel Quinn got together?

Spiral dynamics, also known as vMemes, or "colors", apply to individual people, groups, organizations, countries, and (here's a new one!) - cultures. Not what we usually think as different cultures (e.g. Easten, Westen, etc.), but the cultures as Ishmael and "B" talked about them - the Takers' culture, and the Leavers cultures.

Or, more precisely, the interaction between different cultures. In the Leavers cultures, not only the people in tribes are in "purple", but the way the cultures live together is also "purple" in many ways. The interaction of different cultures are very much the same everywhere (our way is the only way - and it's the only way we know and understand), and how the cultures evolve and co-exist is "magical" to the different tribes. I don't know if there was ever a "wise elder" among those cultures, but I suspect some cultures in the past might have served a purpose of an "elder" culture in promoting certian ways of being around them.

The Takers culture, on the other hand, has changed the equation about 10,000 years ago. Takers happened to discover a very strong source of power - a particular way of agriculture, and then technology, and on it went. Intoxicated by their power, they presumed that the World is theirs to rule. They kicked the gods out of the garden high into the Heaven and deep under the ground, took their place, and proceeded to conquer the world until there was no more place to go. The Takers' culture is clearly on top at the moment, the sole dictator of the World populated by many other (now very small, powerless, and therefore, rather insignificant by Takers' standards) "indigenous" cultures. The strongest takes the food, and kills anyone it considers a threat. In a way, countries, sub-cultures, even Takers' wars, are created as a way for the Takers culture as a whole to strengthen and spread itself as much as it can.

The Takers are burning red. In a world populated by many cultures with one of them being one big bully, it is as simple and obvious as it gets. This is what Hell is really about. It is a Hot Red World.

And now the Takers culture is in crisis. They don't quite believe it yet, although the rats are already leaving the ship, but as sure as hell we are going right there, and the temperature's rising. In fact, quite literally - the global warming is no joke.

Is there any hope at the end of the Red Tunnel? Am I seeing a Blue Light, or is it an oncoming train? Well, it was just a random thought.

Just a thought...

PS. If none of this makes any sense, read Ishmael and The Story of B by Daniel Quinn, and study Clare Graves work - e.g. "Spiral Dynamics" by Don Beck and Chris Cowen is a good intro.

Don't read this!

What did I just tell you? Don't read it!

OK, since you are still reading, at least do NOT think about a green elephant, and remember that there is no pink ball under your chair.

So, what am I really not saying here? Let's not think of an example: you are on your first date with someone you really like, and you really don't want to say something stupid, or do something awkward. And you don't necessarily keep imagining what you don't want to do over and over again, until your mind gets trained so well that when you get there, you actually DON'T DO IT!

I don't think I'm making you imagine all these weird things. It's not the way your mind works. And I'm not saying that next time you don't want to avoid not thinking about something, that you shouldn't say to yourself not to think about it.

Instead, imagine what you want. The space under your chair is empty. On your first date you'll be relaxed and friendly, and everything will just flow. Be yourself, and treat your mind well.

Oh well... I don't think it makes any sense anyway. You won't notice in the future when you are not thinking in "donts" anyway, so don't use my advice. In fact, avoid not thinking in negatives.

And don't take it seriously... :-)

KinoReading: Beyond PhotoReading

PhotoReading: the Whole Mind System?

Paul Scheele, the developer of PhotoReading, explains this technique
as an integration of your conscious and "other than conscious" (or
unconscious) mind in the process of extracting information from
the written material. However, the way he teaches it first separates
the two "minds," and only loosely combines their efforts at the last
two stages of the process.

Specifically, setting the goal and previewing the book (the first
two steps) are mostly conscious processes of becoming familiar with
the content, extracting keywords and key concepts, which will later
serve as triggers for the unconscious mind.

Next step, the actual photoreading process, is a totally unconscious
activity. In fact, this step is designed specifically to take your
conscious mind out of the way (chanting, rythmic page turning, photo-focus),
and let the uncoscious take over. The idea is to "download"
the photographic images of the pages into our unconscious memory for
later (completely unconscious) processing.

Finally, activation and rapid reading steps connect
the conscious intent and unconscious memory and processing power together
in extracting the most important information and re-coding it for
our conscious mind. Normally, only one of the two steps is done (either
activation or rapid reading), and this is exactly when the conscious
mind finally gets a chance to talk to the unconscious and receive
the knowledge and information it needs.

Integrating the Steps

While the above steps can be done much faster than regular reading
(conscious cover to cover linear processing), it is still far less
than optimal strategy to process written material. In my experience,
separating the process into purely conscious and purely unconscious
steps limits our brain processing power. What if we could make conscious
and unconsious minds cooperate from the start? Can it improve our
ability to process information?

My experience suggests that the answer is definitely yes! Here
is an alternative strategy that I found myself using much more effectively
than the classical "vanilla" photoreading.

The following are the steps of my own version of the photoreading
system. It is very important to note that all of these steps are only
effective when done in a special state of trance called accelerative
learning state. Paul Scheele does a great job teaching it, and in
what follows, I assume that you always go into that focused and relaxed
state of mind before even taking a book.

1. Prepare

The first step is to state your goal, purpose, and intent for reading
a book. It is similar to regular photoreading, however I like to make
a fine distinction between a goal and a purpose, and stress the
importance of intent.

The goal is what you want from the book, what kind of
information, what specific ideas, techniques, specific knowledge or
data you want to extract, and how do you know which data is the right
one or not.

The purpose is why you want that information or data. The
purpose provides you with motivation, the reason for taking the
effort, and helps you focus on the task.

Finally, the intent is the commitment to obtaining the
information from the book. The intent provides the driving force for
accomplishing the reading, sharpens the focus of attention to the
stated goal, and keeps you in the best flow state of mind while
reading.

For example, a goal for reading a textbook for a programming class can
be to learn the syntax and semantics of the specific programming
language (for instance, C++), and programming techniques which are
required by the instructor. The purpose, on the other hand, is to get
a good grade in class, to become an expert in C++ programming, to get
a better job, or whatever else is important to you and motivates you
to read the book. Lastly, setting the intent to achieve the goal is
what makes you to take action and actually do the reading.

Notice, that not only I distinguish the goal from the purpose and intent, but
I also suggest that your goal should be verifiable. That is,
there is a specific way by which you know you have achieved your goal.
In our example it may be the ability to answer the test questions
on the midterm, or read the course syllabus and match the keywords
with the concepts you have learned from the book.

Often, it helps to go through the table of contents, especially if
you are not familiar with the book, and study it for a few seconds.
This often gives you a very good idea of what this book is about,
and what information more specifically to look for in the latter steps.

2. Quick Scan

This is a version of the photoreading step taken to its
extreme. Mechanically, you will take a book and flip through the pages
as fast as your eyes can perceive the images (about 5-15 pages per
second) by running your thumb through the right edge of the book. The
purpose of this step is to get an idea of what is inside the book, to
pick out some important keywords and illustrations, and to understand
more precisely the structure of the book and the quality of
information it provides (what we often call depth). Quite
often, the phrases in the table of contents are rather ambiguous and
not as descriptive as we would like. This step helps you clarify what
the author meant by certain keywords or idioms in the table of
contents, and provides you with a rough map of what you can get from
this book.

To some of you, this may sound too unreal (how on earth can I go
through the book so fast and still get something out of it?!).
Nontheless, each of us has done this many times in the past, for other
reasons. For example, have you ever used a piece of paper as a
bookmark, and had it slip inside the book? How do you search for it?
Exactly! What are you looking for when you flip the pages at a
movie-frame speed? Obviously, you have an image of that piece of paper
in mind, and you let your eyes match it when the pages fly by.

So, you can do it already. By the same principle, you can be searching
for the keywords from the table of contents which you want to
understand better, or notice the length of the description is of each
idea that you want to learn, thus, estimating the depth of
explanation, and so on. The key is to be able to do this on purpose,
and take the skill you already have to the new context -- extracting
written information.

The scanning step is so fast that there is no excuse not to do it with
any book you are considering to read. It will take you 10-20 seconds
to zip through the book several times, back and forth, so you can see
both even and odd pages, and have several passes through the material
that attracted your attention in the table of contents, or on the
first pass through.

The bulk of the data processing in this step is done in your
unconscious mind, but a few most important bits and pieces of
information trickle through to your conscious mind in real time,
giving you a sense of participation and progress. Your conscious mind
can then steer the focus of your unconscious mind to a more refined
goal, which improves the quality and precision of the extracted data.

3. Deep Scan

This is a much slower and thorough process of going through the
material, and I usually do it at a normal photoreading speed (flipping
1-2 pages per second), and scanning both pages with a soft (but
focused!) gaze. Since this process takes 5-10 minutes for the entire
book, flooding your conscious mind with too much information in too
short period of time, I prefer to deep-scan only the most interesting
and the most important portions of the book, which I identified
through the quick scan process and from the table of contents.

Again, both conscious and unconscious mind participate in the process
together, providing you with immediate feedback and sense of
involvement. You will construct a detailed picture of the material,
especially how it is structured, what are the most important keywords
and their meaning, and what more specifically the book provides to
you.

The amount of information you get after this step is roughly
equivalent to the quick activation step of the "vanilla"
photoreading. Taking into account that you would have to photoread,
incubate (wait for 20 minutes, or better overnight), and then
activate, which is generally a slower process than photoreading, the
"prepare - scan - deep scan" process is at least 5-10 times as fast,
and in my experience, provides much better results.

It is important to mention that deep scan does not have to be done
linearly. In fact, it is often more advantageous to deep-scan various
portions of the book, jumping back and forth as you sense the need for
more information about certain keywords, ideas, and notions.

By the way, it is perfectly fine to slow down to skittering and
dipping speeds during the deep scanning step whenever you happen to
notice a very important piece of information and want to absorb it in
more detail. Just make sure you don't get caught into slow regular
reading or studying at this step, and resume deep scanning as soon as
you have gotten enough information to proceed. Remember, the goal of
this step is to get a more detailed understanding of the important
parts of the book, but it is still a very high-level and approximate
view. If you need, you can always go back later and study that
particular paragraph or section in more detail.

4. Skittering and Dipping

This step is directly taken from the Paul Scheele's photoreading
process, and in my version it becomes a slow and more thorough version
of deep scanning. I usually do it after finishing the deep scanning of
all the parts of the book that I consider important. This way I know
that I am not going to waste my time on a section which is not that
important.

Often, this step gives me so much information that I tend to call it
"studying." For many popular technical and not-so-technical books,
skittering is all it takes to really study the material in sufficient
depth, at least intellectually.

5. Rapid Reading and Studying

Once you have decided to really go for the gory details, depending on
whether this is your pleasure reading or a class textbook reading, you
have a choice of rapid reading or studying the book.

For most pleasure reading books I would heartily recommend rapid
reading, or even regular reading from the start. This way you get all
the pleasure of re-living the lives of the main characters and being
in the moment that the author intended to create. In other words, do
not photoread a detective novel, you'll know the answer to the puzzle
before you even start, which spoils all the fun. Remember, not all
books are meant for fast information processing. However, rapid
reading technique may be a good way to speed up your consumption
of prose, and Paul Scheele has a good tutorial on that in his
PhotoReading course.

For technical books, once you decide to go for the really deep
understanding of the material, you are up for studying the
book. Examples of when this step is useful is taking an exam on the
material from the textbook, or acquiring new skills or knowledge for
your work.

Studying should only be done once you have completed all the previous
steps, including skittering and dipping. You will be spending
significant amounts of time going through the material and
scrutinizing every word the author is saying, possibly doing the
exercises or reworking the proofs of theorems. Therefore, you have to
be sure you are studying exactly what you need in the best portions of
the book. Also, the rest of the book is always there for you to
consult, in case you want to clarify the details of a certain
definition or an idea. If you do not remember where this definition is
located, and the table of contents is not giving any useful hints,
then fast scanning is your friend again. You will be amazed at how
easy you can find the right page in the book any time you need it!

Conclusion

The new system of photoreading which I have just described works for
me orders of magnitude faster and better than the regular photoreading
by Paul Scheele. I believe that the reason is a tighter integration of
the conscious and unconscious mind at every step of the process, and
together they work as an interactive team, adjusting and refining
information processing in real time.

Regular photoreading is similar to having two people working
independently, briefly communicating the results to each other once in
a while, and immediately going back to their cubicles.

In contrast, my system resembles two people working together in a
team, brainstorming together the ideas and new information the moment
it becomes available. One plus one in this case is certainly much
greater than two.

If photoreading is orders of magnitude faster than regular reading,
just as photography is much faster than drawing pictures by hand, then
a better name for my system would be KinoReading, as
cinematographic capture of information is orders of magnitude more
efficient than photography.

I see what you are saying!

"Yes, I see what you are saying." How many times
have you heard this phrase before? How many times did you say it
yourself during conversations? Probably a lot. But how many times
did you really notice that you can literally see
what the other person is saying? I bet, not that often, if at all.

Meaning

Most of the time, we are conscious of not even the words the other
person is saying, but the meaning (mental pictures, sounds, or
feelings) that those words trigger. Remember, when after some
confusion you suddenly went, "Ah! Now I understand what
you really mean by it." Why didn't you understand it the first
time the person said it? Because they didn't explain it well? Not as
far as they are concerned, since what they said made perfect sense to
them. Just not to you. What is the difference?

Different people often assign different meanings to the same word.
Take, for instance, comfort. When someone says "I'm comfortable
now," what do they really mean by it? That the chair they are
sitting in is soft and of the right shape, allowing them to relax? Or
that the topic of the conversation makes them feel relaxed? Or is it
not about being relaxed, but about being confident, or strong, or
calm, or... And you thought you knew what they were saying, huh?

Words

It is much more interesting to let go of the meaning, or
immediate content of the conversation, and notice the actual
words people are saying. Don't interpret the words just yet,
just notice them. This way you have a chance to re-interpret the same
sentence in multiple different ways in the process of understanding
it, and if there are too many possible conflicting meanings, you know
you did not really understand what they just said. Or, you may find
that what they say reflect the way they store the information in their
head. How about the following conversation:

-- I want to take a bath now, I want to look good.

-- Is there anything else that will make you feel better?

-- No, I think I'm OK.

-- Huh?

Do these people even talk to each other? Apparently, they have
trouble communicating, since neither of them pays attention to the
words. The first person wants to look good, while the second
one interpreted "looking good" as "feeling
good," which confused the first person ("why is he even
asking me about feeling?"), and her reply definitely confused the
guy ("Didn't she just say she wants to feel
good???")

Playing with words is fun, and with some practice you'll find that
you can communicate much better, because you automatically start using
similar words to what the other person is using, and paying attention
to the meaning that the other person assigns to those words. In other
words, you will start noticing that their meaning for the
same word is different from your meaning, and you will
recognize and utilize that during the conversation.

Structures

Once you mastered the words, you will start noticing the
structure of the other people's thoughts. Watch for their
gestures as they talk, this is often the easiest way to elicit their
internal representations. People literally draw complex pictures in
the air, and then methodically and consistently follow that mental
image with their hands, eyes, or even legs (rocking side to side, or
walking along the same curves).

In technical discussions, people often draw their ideas as circles
and arrows, or as a hierarchical outline, and then use that picture to
refer to their specific thoughts by pointing to the picture. It's fun
to watch them do that even after the actual picture is already erased
and replaced with something else! They keep seeing the old one and
pointing to it, as if it is still there!!

Just like with words, different people use different structures, or
internal representations, for their knowledge (data, ideas, ...).
When two people with radically different representations talk to each
other, even if they are paying attention to the words, they still have
hard time finding a "common language."

It is, therefore, very useful to be able to think in terms of
different representations. Find an interesting topic, possibly your
project at work, or some abstract philosophical idea which you can
discuss with a friend, and find out exactly how you represent it, and
how is it different from your partner's representation. Do you see it
a an image? As a sequence of images? Do you have to talk to yourself
in order to think about it? Or do you have to feel something specific
about it? What are the specific details of all these pictures,
sounds, words, and feelings? What is the sequence, if there is one?

Investigate this for yourself, by noticing how you come up with
explanations or new ideas as you speak. Then do the same with your
friend. Ask him or her about the specifics, if you cannot tell what
they do by just watching them and listening to the words they say.

Once you determined the structure, try thinking of the same subject
in your friend's representation! Most likely it will be quite
disorienting and confusing at first, but try it anyway. See how close
can you get to your friend's way of thinking. And notice how he or
she responds when you take his/her representation. You will suddenly
get in sync, and start completing each other's thoughts, even if you
don't really know each other that well. Sometimes it might even be
a bit scary...

Mental Pictures

But the freakiest part is only one small step ahead... Practice
taking other's representations often enough, until it becomes easy and
natural, like an old habit, and watch what happens next...

You will start seeing their mental pictures! Yes, I am not
kidding. Of course, this is not exactly extra-sensory acuity, but it
surely gets frighteningly close, especially for the clueless
observers. My theory is that it's your unconscious mind learns to
guess the other person's internal images based on their words,
gestures, posture and body movements, eye cues, facial expression,
muscles tone, skin color changes, and many many other little things
which are constantly happening at the same time as they talk.

It is practically impossible to keep track of all these cues
consciously, but not a big deal for our unconscious mind, which will
happily preprocess this vast body of information and will present it
to our consciousness in a form of simple pictures, sounds, or
feelings. And when your unconscious mind gets enough experience in
guessing what the other person imagines, says to themselves, or feels,
it will communicate its guess to your conscious mind as those same
images, sounds, and feelings... Now that feels like peeking
inside someone else's head and seeing what they are seeing! It's
really freaky at first, trust me on this one :-)

Deep Trance Identification (DTI)

Finally, you are at the stage where you can literally observe the
other person's internal thought processes, notice many minuscule
movements of hundreds of muscles, detect the tiniest changes of skin
color, and still have your conscious mind completely free to think of
other, more important things of the moment. What is possible in this
level? What do these skills give you?

With some more practice, you will be able to literally
become the other person. In the literature, it is called
Deep Trance Identification. It is a profound state change,
when you temporarily put away your own identity and personality, and
take on someone else's internal representations. For the complete
experience, you might also take along their beliefs, values, memories,
and whatever else you consider important to simulate the other person.
Then just be yourself... No, I mean, be them. Well, at this
point it doesn't matter. You are them. Just do it.

Now I wonder, is it how the world's best actors play their roles?
I don't know, but most likely. And now you can do too.

Isn't it scary what kind of things you can do with it? Try being
another person for a moment, figure out how to make them believe in
something, or want a product you are selling, or find out what kinds
of people they like and trust, and become such a person to make them
trust you for no apparent reason. It is a great power, and with power
comes great responsibility.

What's Next?

I don't know what lies next after DTI, but I'm sure this is not the
limit of what is possible, and even more profound and deeper skills
can be developed. I will find out. Keep watching!