Good Posture

By "good posture" I mean the practice of while you are standing or moving, keeping your spine in a straight line (usually perpendicular to the ground):

This has numerous advantages for self defense. Naysayers of good posture are generally justifying their own bad posture from overspecialization in some kind of combat sports or fitness training, ignoring 99% of physical therapists everywhere. Here's another view on good posture I agree with:

Recap checklist of that video:

1. Crown of your head stretches for the sky, with a chin tuck as a side effect.
2. Slightly tuck the lower ribs.
3. Keep your hips slightly tilted forward so that your hips are under your shoulders.
4. Shoulders rolled back instead of rolled forward (thumbs facing forward, elbows back.)

The first advantage of being in good posture is having awareness. It requires mindfulness to maintain good posture for most people. You are more likely to defend yourself successfully if you are present rather than when you are distracted.

The second advantage is that you appear stronger and taller. You look like a harder target with good posture. You are less likely to be attacked with good posture.

The third advantage is better posture = better strength. Consider the similarity to dead lifting posture to healthy standing posture as listed above:

The fourth advantage is better posture = less injury. Injury is a poor strategy in a self defense situation:

The fifth advantage is that better posture gives you more lower body flexibility. This is because your nerves and spinal column are a limited length, and slide around inside of your body. When your back is as straight as possible, that uses less of your spinal cord and gives more slack to the nerves in your legs:

Sixth, good posture also gives you more upper body mobility:

Seventh, be it charging or fleeing, running speed is valuable for self defense. Posture improves running speed as well:

Eighth, in grappling we often speak of trying to break the other person's posture in order to dominate them by taking them off of their feet. Part of this is because posture significantly impacts balance, which is valuable for self defense even beyond grappling:

Ninth, good posture helps you keep maximum control over your own head. If your jaw is sticking out forward with your shoulders hunched, your jaw is more exposed to a strike, and it's easier to yank down on your head to control you:

10th, good posture helps our breathing. This helps us heal, but it also helps us get more oxygen into our body when we need that oxygen in an emergency:

11th, good mental health is valuable for making good decisions, and making good decisions is valuable in self defense situations. Good posture helps with mental health:

12th, if you want to verbally de-escalate a situation, which is arguably the most important self defense skill, posture helps with this as well:

In several Chinese martial arts there is an exercise called "standing meditation." One of the most valuable reasons for doing standing meditation in martial arts is simply to consciously work on your posture and postural awareness, for all of the above reasons:

Weaponized Tai Chi

When I was studying MMA in 2018 at Kitsap Combat Sports, I was surprised to discover that light contact continuous sparring had returned to the USA as the preferred form of sparring for training fighters. This picture is a screen shot from their website, the person who's back is facing the camera is me, and the guy with the beard is an amazing instructor:

I was there mostly to learn more about clinch fighting to improve my Tai Chi, but this revelations about light contact was a rude awakening for me. When I had been training in combat sports in my prime in my early 20's (mid 1990s,) we were going beyond full contact, more like daily gym fights, as the only true way to learn how to fight. Even our instructors were telling us back then to take it down a notch, even though they themselves were advocates of full contact training. In retrospect I can see this wasn't healthy, but it did get us to learn the basics of what would now be called Dutch Kickboxing very quickly.

My very first martial art style was Tae Sho Arnis, also known as Tae Sho Karate Do. It was considered "full contact Karate" (similar to "American Kickboxing,") but the regular form of sparring in class had highly controlled contact, basically light contact continuous sparring, which I think originated in the Tae Kwon Do community in the 1970's. We never had matches outside of point fighting tournaments, but the thing is that EVERY SINGLE STUDENT WHO STUDIED THAT ART LATER OR AT THE TIME PROVED TO BE COMPETENT AT DEFENDING THEMSELVES. Was it the strong Arnis influence on the style? Was it some kind of lingering martial benefit from 1960's Shotokan or TKD? Some combination of influences? Who knows, but it worked at the time (late 1980's,) and though I learned later (1990's) mostly through gory full contact slug fests, this new revelation in 2018 helped me connect the dots with that first art I studied.

 

By the time the 2020 pandemic started, I had studied at another martial arts school all together, and realized that I had learned more techniques I wanted to master than I had time left in my life to master, and I wasn't in need of new regular instruction outside of occasional private lessons. I am one of the founders of weapon fight club Tres Espadas, and I do not lack for sparring partners willing to beat on me while I work on my techniques against them.

But in the social abyss of the pandemic, people reached out to me, wanting me to teach them martial arts. The problem was teach them what? Where do you start on something like that? As a martial arts consumer advocate I had strong opinions on what this should entail, but I had no curriculum to go by.

At the same time controversy was erupting about an MMA gym owner in China promoting his line of MMA gyms by beating up cult leaders who thought they knew Tai Chi. It bothered me the state that Tai Chi was in, because in most cases people don't even practice Tai Chi as a martial art, but rather as a much more reliable form of Yoga than mainstream Yoga. Then I got to wondering, what if I applied best practices from a martial arts consumer point of view to Yang style Tai Chi?

My Weaponized Tai Chi project is applying the best practices I have described on my blog to the worlds most common and most controversial martial art: Yang style Tai Chi. Here's the general idea:

1. Every training session or lesson starts with the core Tai Chi exercises, including some minimal posture & strength training, stretching, standing meditation and push hands (including the single hand sensitivity drill, the two hand resistance balance drill, and the moving step free sparring.) 
   
2. I strongly believe that real fights involve weapons. The only way they don't is if YOU are unprepared. I start with the Knife Badge from Tres Espadas, as it teaches evasive movement and a real way to handle multiple attackers if necessary. The knife can easily be substituted with pepper spray which is legally encouraged in my state.
3. Mostly because of popular demand, I then include some Arnis basics for stick fighting. 
4. Once the student understands the basics of knife and stick free sparring, then they are ready to get into real-weight fighting weapons, such as Nihozashi Padded Katanas. This more closely resembles the weight and heft of most improvised weapons, and the Yang style Saber Form (which I have modified mostly to include the same moves practiced on both the left and right sides,) is the perfect way to show how to swing heavier weapon around with precision, power and defense in mind. So yes, the way _I_ teach Tai Chi is the way Kung Fu would have been taught originally to ancient soldiers, Saber (or Spear) first (spear being the less practical option in today's world. The following picture is not me, but it is a picture of the Katana-like Yang style Tai Chi Saber.)


5. Once the student has mastered the long journey (40 or so training sessions) of learning the Tai Chi saber, they are ready for adding controlled contact sparring with punches, kicks and other techniques from an unarmed Tai Chi form. (I use a modified version of the Yang Style 16 movement form, replacing moves I don't like (stork spreads it's wings) with moves I do like (golden rooster, high kick) and again rearranging the form to make sure the same moves are practiced on both sides of the body.)
   
6. Once I am satisfied that the student is prepared to fight with and without weapons, then we explore grappling deeper. Head grabs, chokes and leg grabs are added to the moving step free sparring to form Tai Chi Wrestling. Also an attacker versus defender focused sparring is practiced, where both partners start on the ground in side control; the one on bottom is trying to escape to their feet and the one on top trying to get in a guillotine or RNC, and when one wins, they trade roles and continue.

As for the longer Tai Chi forms or famous Tai Chi straight sword, I don't bother, this curriculum is intentionally brief. It's all limited to 100 lessons. After that 100 lessons, if they want they can keep training with me on the same curriculum, if they want a wider variety of weapon sparring they can participate more fully in Tres Espadas, if they want to learn more about knife and stick there is plenty of Filipino Martial Arts in the area, if they want to perfect their striking they can study Muay Thai at a few different gyms in this area, if they want a wider variety of martial arts knowledge there's plenty of Traditional Martial Arts around here, if they want to work on their grappling I would send them directly to Kitsap Combat Sports for MMA, and if they want to get more serious about Tai Chi there are a few legitimate Tai Chi masters within a few hours of here that I can refer them to. Weaponized Tai Chi is only intended to be for beginners or to augment someone's training if they are not a beginner, it's not meant to be a comprehensive martial art for the life long martial artist, nor is it a catalogue of all the knowledge I have regarding self defense or martial arts.

Mormon Dope

I noticed that in Vice's documentary on Mitt Romney's polygamist relatives in Mexico that those relatives openly consumed alcohol at bars, in that very documentary. In the Book of Mormon there is a story about how a spiritual leader becomes corrupt, replacing his priests with wicked men who would support his wicked polygamy and alcohol consumption. This brought the curse of alcohol onto his people as they struggled to cope with the adverse social consequences of their leader's abuse of women, as seen in Mosiah Chapter 11:

"14 And it came to pass that he placed his heart upon his riches, and he spent his time in riotous living with his wives and his concubines; and so did also his priests spend their time with harlots. 

15 And it came to pass that he planted vineyards round about in the land; and he built wine-presses, and made wine in abundance; and therefore he became a wine-bibber, and also his people.”

Distilled spirits, particularly whiskey, was the hardest drug of the old west. Keep in mind the other candidates for hardest drug would be tobacco, coffee, cannabis, smoking opium, and Laudanum (opium tincture.) We need to consider what makes a drug "hard":

1. Level of intoxication from the substance, how much judgement is impaired by using it.
2. How serious the withdrawals are from the substance.
3. How addictive the substance is.
4. Long term health consequences.

Contrary to popular belief, even today alcohol is the worst drug you can use. I am not saying to avoid using vanilla in cooking or a sip of wine in a religious communion ceremony, but in any mount strong enough to give you any kind of buzz, alcohol damages all of the soft tissues of your body, reducing your brain volume, damaging your heart (never helping it,) and liver, and shooting your cancer risk up as much as tobacco or asbestos. Alcohol more so than other drugs leads to bad life choices and dangerous accidents while under it's influence. And on top of all that, alcohol has the most deadly withdrawals of any drug:

Alcohol is clearly than far more dangerous than cannabis, tobacco and coffee, since withdrawals from those drugs amount to irritability that lasts for several days, the health consequences are far less severe, and the behavioral problems caused by the drugs are not nearly as extreme as alcohol. But what about the opiates, opium and laudanum, are they not more addictive, are the withdrawals not as serious? Well as per the video above, no, opiate withdrawals are NOT as bad as alcohol withdrawal, alcohol withdrawal is far more dangerous.

While it's true that opiates may be more addictive than alcohol to some people, this is also true of tobacco for all people, and not the only consideration in how "hard" a drug is. What gives opiates a bad name in today's world is we are dealing with highly concentrated forms such as heroin and fentanyl that are very easy to accidentally fatally overdose on. Smoking opium or measuring out laudanum one drop at a time is a much less concentrated form of opiate that is a lot harder to overdose on. Other than that, the long term health consequences of opiate use though definitely not good for you, are relatively harmless compared to the universal soft tissue damage that alcohol does to your body.

So that's it, the hardest drug of the Old West was definitely distilled spirits, especially whiskey. As a Latter-Day Saint I have been disappointed a number of times by people living in Utah who have a care-free attitude when it comes to the consumption of alcohol, because it is against our religion. In general I have found them quite ignorant of the harmful effects of alcohol, and just how hard of a drug it was that Brigham Young was peddling in Utah as he owned a Whiskey facility. The Lord said in Doctrine and Covenants chapter 89 verses 3-5:

"...to the ...weakest of all ...who ...can be called saints... thus saith the Lord unto you: In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days, I have warned you, and forewarn you... That inasmuch as any man drinketh wine or strong drink among you, behold it is not good, neither meet in the sight of your Father..."

Brigham Young owning a Whiskey distillery, according the the Lord, would then qualify Brigham as someone who was less than "the weakest of all who could be called saints," and that Brigham Young was a "conspiring man" who hand "evils and designs existing in his heart." Of course as an active, faithful, mainstream Latter-Day Saint I realize this is not "The Church of the Prophets of Latter Day Saints," and that in the above D&C quote the Lord "forewarned" us about Brigham Young. This is instead "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints," where we all strive to develop our own individual relationship with God rather than on gambling on reliability of Church administrators:

I Told You So

People talk like martial arts has arrived, and that we have good solutions for teaching every day people with an every day lifestyle effective fighting skills that they can reliably use to protect themselves, and that we can do this without injuring them worse than they would be if they were mugged on the street. But we don't, martial arts has a long ways to go before we have any such training developed.

There are 4 Olympic Sports, 2 striking (Taekwondo and Boxing,) 2 grappling (Judo and Wrestling.)  1 striking and 1 grappling have Gi (martial arts uniforms, Tae Kwon Do and Judo) and there is a striking and grappling art that do not have Gi (boxing and wrestling.) Of these 4 arts, Judo (Gi grappling) is the most injurious and Wrestling (no-Gi grappling)  is the least injurious: https://combatsportslaw.com/2020/11/23/study-judo-has-highest-injury-rate-among-olympic-combat-sports/

I have been concerned for a while now that the more over-specialized a martial art gets, the more disconnected it gets from applicable self defense technique, and the more there is a risk of repetitive stress injury. My personal experience is that grappling in a Gi is far more injurious than grappling in regular exercise clothes, and that fits well with the Judo rate of injury vs Wrestling rate of injury listed above. I have been particularly concerned about Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu becoming both more dangerous and less applicable to self defense the more disconnected it gets from MMA.

I told you so in 2023 in regards to my own experiences and observations, in regards to Icy Mike seeing huge mobility problems from long term practice of BJJ, and based on Joe of Fight Bible getting his neck broken in BJJ practice. One study found that 2 out of 3 BJJ practitioners are injured in their first 3 years of training: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8721390/

Now BJJ advocate Rokas has gotten a taste of how much BJJ improves your ability to defend yourself:

Feeling the Spirit

Once critics come to the realization that Joseph Smith (or anyone else in Joesph Smith's time and place) did not write the Book of Mormon, one possible next step for them is to say that the LDS are misled by the devil. Because we "feel the spirit" and trust that the good, peaceful, warm feelings we get (when we are doing our best to do what is right) are from God, supposedly we are vulnerable in this way to being misled by the devil's manipulation of our emotions. The problem here is that if you are NOT "feeling the spirit" as we do, you are not experiencing the spirit Jesus promised his followers.

Jesus said to his followers in John chapter 14 verses 15-17:

15 If ye love me, keep my commandments. 

16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; 

17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.

And in verses 26-27 Jesus again emphasizes this is a supernatural experience Christians should expect to have:

26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. 

27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

Later Paul writes to fellow Christians in Phillipians Chapter 4 versus 6-7 that what the LDS call "feeling the spirit" should be a normal part of your daily prayer:

 6 Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. 

7 And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Those relying primarily on human interpretation of ancient scripture in order to communicate with God would do well to consider that God understands the human mind, and knows that in order to communicate with us effectively, he has to pass knowledge to us in a way that goes beyond words, he also communicates directly to our hearts. This is probably because humans make decisions primarily through their feelings first, and then justify those decisions through logic later:

When Joseph Smith was translating the Book of Mormon as commanded by Jesus Christ, Jesus taught him a basic formula for divination, when Jesus told him in Doctrine & Covenants Chapter 9 versus 7-8 (1829):

7 Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me.  

 

8 But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right. 

This divination exercise of first studying something out carefully in your mind before asking God about it, and then second praying to ask God about it, then third God will let you know if your are right in your heart, is repeated in the last chapter of the Book of Mormon itself:

3 Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts. 

4 And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. 

5 And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is one of the most effective tools counselors have today for treating personality disorders, suicidal ideation and chemical dependency. One of the core concepts is similar to what God was telling Joseph Smith (to get his heart and mind in the same place, if he wanted to know what was right.) In DBT this secular concept, usually pursued without prayer, is called the "Wise Mind" (late 1970's):

LDS religious practice is not the only place I have "felt the spirit," and LDS believe that the Holy Ghost will often communicate to people through their hearts outside of religious observance. While I was a student I was required to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for certain addictions classes I was taking, and I "felt the spirit" very strongly at one of those. It is very interesting to me that the Serenity Prayer asks God to bring peace and wisdom by reconciling our hearts and minds:

Secular Justification for Faith Selection

Faith is those beliefs you hold so strongly that they impact your decisions. When it comes to free will, what faith you chose is one of the most important factors in determining what decisions you will make. God insists on us having free will, and so he makes us chose our faith. But in so far as God will judge you for any decision you make, God will most certainly judge you for what faith you chose.

God knows you can not with 100% certainty determine if God is really there or not. Therefore God expects you to chose your faith for the best possible reasons, spiritual, historical, personal and secular. The secular and practical reasons for choosing a faith are some of the most important reasons for choosing a faith, because God knows you have 100% certainty about secular and practical reality you experience. God will judge you for your secular reasons to pick a faith.

A religion is an organized faith system and faith community. In order to do something well, we almost always require feedback from others. In order to exercise faith competently, it is clearly best to participate in a religion.

Your choosing a religion is key to God's evaluation of you, and your secular reasons for picking a religion are the most important reasons, because they are the most tangible reasons.

"I am in my religion because my family is in this religion and they are very serious about me staying in the religion" is actually a very good reason to be in a religion. "I picked this religion because I liked how the people acted who were part of this religion" is another good reason to be in a religion. "I picked this religion because their rules made sense to me for having a better life" is a particularly excellent reason to pick a religion, as is "I could see myself raising a happy family in this religion." 

God IS watching your decision and why you are making it. In fact the worst thing you can do is to just avoid choosing a religion, because life goes on without you having the benefit of having effectively pursued faith.

Avoid religions wear shunning is encouraged. In a worst case scenario this would be where family members are not allowed to speak to each other because of their status in a religion. This behavior is not socially sustainable, it is anti-family, it implies unhealthy power dynamics inside of the organization, and it suggests ulterior motives by the leaders of that religious organization. Religious shunning is not good and not of God.

LDS Opinions

 There is a huge diversity of belief when within the mainstream LDS faith, with possible differing opinions on many topics. Here I will explain what my current opinions are on various common LDS disagreements. 

My basic principle behind all these opinions is "quality of evidence over quantity of evidence." In general a witness statement is more accurate: 1) how soon it was after the event happened, and 2) from a first hand witness. When we get into recollections from long after the events happened or start playing the telephone game, evidence deteriorates in quality. This has caused me to be what I call "Vanilla 90's LDS." In the 90's we generally considered embarrassing "facts" about the Church to be attacks by anti-Mormons:

1. I think the Book of Mormon took place in Mesoamerica, at the dates suggested in the book. The quality of evidence for the Mesoamerican hypothesis is superior to alternative theories:

2. I don't think Joseph Smith Jr used a "magic rock" to translate the Book of Mormon, I think he did it with the tools that came with the plates...

3. I seriously doubt Joseph Smith was a polygamist. In a nutshell:

4. I think polygamy has always been a sin, and that when ever it has been practiced, it has been a mistake. I don't think God has ever commanded anyone to do polygamy, I think it's a social contagion that forces of evil use as a weapon of mass destruction against humanity:

5. I don't have a big problem with Brigham Young going off the rails and the LDS Church still being of God. Jesus had Judas, that doesn't mean Jesus wasn't the real deal. Normally when organizations change as much as the LDS Church did between the time of Joseph Smith Jr. and the time of Brigham Young, that organization will continue to go off in that crazy new direction. Instead with the LDS Church we saw big course corrections making it like what Joseph Smith Jr. established in the first place. I take this as evidence that this is not "The Church of the Prophets of Latter-Day Saints," but "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints."