PeaceWalker Blog

  In the end, everyone is aware of this: Nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones.   ~Pablo Neruda Happy Halloween! ~Craig

Moshe Katz while serving in the IDF I am sitting on the plane now, trying to get comfortable, it is not easy. You see I have this sharp pain in my back. I know the exact spot; lower back, left side, just a touch to the right. And I know the exact moment it came about... It was several years ago. I was still training on a semi-regular basis at the Jerusalem gym, more as a show of support than out of a desire to improve my MMA skills. In this particular MMA class I pared off with a young fellow, about my height but a few kilo heavier. Now when it comes to a fight - I will do everything to defend myself, I will not allow anyone to hurt me. But with training drills we do not protect ourselves, we allow our partner, (not our opponent) to practice techniques on us. We do not protect ourselves; we trust our partner to protect us. But my partner that day was young and dumb. He was a "tough guy" and caution and restraint is for the weak, the soft. So we were ...

As our world continues to shrink, diversify and change, the effects on our daily social interactions also change. There are no areas in our lives where this shift isn't felt: Places of work, recreational activities, family gatherings, social events, etc. have all be affected by this incredible shift in social interaction. The internet has increased the level of interconnectedness between average people to an unprecedented level which in the not so distant past would only have been achieved by a celebrity, or politician. Now-a-days it is as if everyone has their own Conan O'Brien Show. Drama is a drug and there are a lot of junkies running rampant.  Lately there has been a lot of buzz about being politically correct, inappropriate or insensitive. These social constructs which were intended to protect and respect someones feelings and life value can also be misunderstood, taken out of context and misused. Sometimes people are Politically Incorrect, Inappropriate and...

 "All the darkness! I'm going to walk into the light!"  ~Job Sometimes there's just too much to consider, too much to understand and analyze, too many consequences to play out in our mind, too many things to clean, unpack, or repair before we can go out and play. Sometimes the simplest and best use of our will is to drop it all and just walk out from under everything that is covering us, even if it is only for an hour or so (like going to Krav Class!) - just walk out from under the webs we've spun, the tasks we've assumed, the problems we have to solve. They'll be there when we get back and maybe some of them will fall apart without our worry to hold them up. Wouldn't that be nice. Action (or Non-Action) Steps: Sit quietly and try to stop working your problems. With each breath, put a concern down and feel your being intact without it. Breathe freely and realize that your being is whole whether you solve your problems or not. Breat...

Wow, what just happened?  And how did that happen? I mean, after so many years of training, how could it happen? I have heard this many times, thankfully it has usually been after a "mock" attack. A guy comes in from another school, another style, he knows it all, he is already a master, and then he is attacked, caught off guard, unexpectedly, boom. "Can I have another chance?" No. You only have one chance. Another chance may be years away. Train for reality. Get a reality check. On the street there is only one chance. Back in the old days in the Jerusalem dojo , we had a structure set up like an apartment. We used it to train security guards, to prepare them for what they will encounter when when they go into an apartment, to arrest someone, to discuss domestic disturbance etc. As they would walk through the rooms they would be attacked. The results can be see on the " Jerusalem Krav Maga DVD ". This sort of training was also cover...

When I was younger I found myself apart from the "Establishment," now as I grow older and my efforts and organizations are seeing more success I wonder if I have turned into the "Establishment?!" The name for a few of my organizations, "Ronin Martial Arts Academy, Ronin Krav Maga and Ronin Empowerment Group," all have one name in common; "Ronin." For those of you who are wondering, the word Ronin is a term from ancient feudal Japan meaning a rogue warrior or in other words "a master-less samurai." Being master-less was not looked on as a favorable thing in ancient Japan. However many popular "super hero" type legends also stemmed from these Ronin. Stories such as 47 ronin and 7 samurai (or in America with the western spin we called it the Magnificent Seven), Yojimbo, even the movie "The Last Samurai" starring Tom Cruise tells a tail of the samurai that went a bit rogue. These stories were about how the...

I pulled this old blog post from my archives. I originally wrote it on Wednesday, November 5th 2008. It's a great post that I know you'll enjoy, but since it has been buried by years of other entries, I thought I would re-post it for everyone to read: The other day someone asked me if I would train them to fight in a MMA match. I explained to him that I had a different view. I told him that I train people to live, not to fight and although there are many aspects of class that are physical and involve combat training, that aspect was a small part of a larger picture. At first he looked a bit confused and then a look of almost disgust came over him like I was trying to pull some Kwai Chan Cane philosophical BS on him or some how attempting to mask that I couldn't fight or that my classes were not practical because we didn't train to fight in the cage. So instead of challenging him to a duel or something crazy like that, I explained it to him an...