Monday, July 24, 2023

Have you found your North Star?






When I was a kid, I saw Shogun, a TV mini-series aired in 1980. It was about an English explorer who became part of Japanese society. After it was over, I was completely taken in by the katana and Japanese culture. I was in karate, and I was already enthralled with Kung fu from that TV show, which aired in the 70s. 

I was raised by hippie parents who were always making stuff from leather. They had artist friends, and I supposed they were artists themselves. I also grew up in Brooklyn during a violent time; there were cops chasing robbers; in fact, while playing on the sidewalk, an armed robber jumped over me, fleeing from a policeman. Both men had a gun drawn. There were many other instances, but I don’t want to come across in a bragging type of way. I am creating the context of my childhood. In other writings, I have discussed the level of bullying I lived through as well.  I have always had these seemingly dual paths, that of the artist and the man of violence.  These dual paths pushed me towards new ideas and stressed the need for self-defense. 


Seeing, Shogun inspired me to make a bokken out of hardwood and start practicing cuts. I wanted to pursue weapon study further, but my Sensei didn’t teach weapons until one was a black belt. Disappointed but not dissuaded, I explored other ways to learn about weapons and frequented China Town in NY and purchased some weapons like nunchucks and staffs, etc. I knew from then on weapons would always be in my life. 


I remember sitting in karate after class, and we were all talking; well, the senior students and sensei were talking. I was listening because that was what kids did back then. I was a young 15-year-old. In the days before karate kid, there were no kid classes. You worked out with adults and sparred with them. Anyway, the highest-ranking student said he was going to Japan to study karate and live there. I remember thinking that was about the coolest thing ever. 


And here is where we get to the point of the story, deep in my heart, I was ecstatic about the thought of living in Japan, but it never occurred to me that I could actually do it.  Whether we attribute that to low socioeconomic status or low self-esteem, it seemed beyond my reach, and further, no one in my life would tell me I could actually make that happen. 


After that moment in the dojo, I went on many journeys and adventures but never made it to Japan. I am writing this mostly to my kids who don’t seem to have a direction yet, and I want to let them know how to recognize that feeling when their heart leaps and that they can make it happen. They may not get to the highest levels, but they can certainly get where they want to go. 


I am not writing this out of regret; I still practice martial arts religiously 43 years later. Not many people can say that. In some respects, my journey might be the one I was supposed to be on all along. However, it is always good to remind people, especially young people; they can pursue what makes their hearts leap. 


The idea of Japan in my heart at 15 was more important to me than actually going there; perhaps that idea was a rough but concrete marker for the martial path, a path that is still to this day my North Star.  



Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Insulin and your health


Insulin helps blood sugar enter the cells, which your body needs for energy—turning it into glucose. It also signals whether to store excess energy as fat.


What does this mean for your health?


Metabolism helps your body decide what to do with the food you just ate. If you eat a bunch of food, specifically those high in carbs and sugar, and don't exercise, insulin will tell your body to store the calories as body fat. If this happens consistently over time, you can get Type 2 Diabetes or other related metabolic disorders. Too much sugar in your blood is toxic, and it can lead to atherosclerosis and heart disease. Regularly having high blood sugar levels for extended periods (over months or years) can permanently damage parts of the body, such as the eyes, nerves, kidneys, and blood vessels. Diabetes is the leading cause of heart attacks and early death.



The example that I like to use is comparing your pancreas to a small restaurant that comfortably serves a dozen people and is suddenly overwhelmed with 100 customers. That small restaurant can get through it a few times, but if it is constantly being overwhelmed with more people than it can handle, eventually, the staff will quit. One thing the restaurant can do is set up a maĆ®tre d', which can help regulate the number of people being sat at tables and orders of food.  

If you have a normal functioning liver and pancreas and are steadily using energy by exercising and eating moderately, your body isn’t storing much fat. Said another way, if you are not overwhelming your body, you will allow your liver and pancreas to handle the inflow of food, and you will be in balance. But if you consistently are not exercising, not using the energy up, and adding more processed carbs and refined sugar, eventually, your pancreas will give out.


Why are our bodies susceptible?


Overwhelming your liver and pancreas is a problem because, for most of human history, there was not enough food, and especially, carbohydrates and sugar were difficult to come by. A good example I use is for hunter-gatherers to get honey; it was quite a labor-intensive activity. First, you had to find a beehive. Then you had to climb the tree; if you needed smoke to disorient the bees, you had to make a fire by hand. These are all high-calorie expenditures. Said simpler, IT WAS HARD WORK. Once you got the honey and woofed down a couple of pieces, you would share some. Also, the bees don't have that much honey available in their hive, so if you wanted more, you would have to find another hive and repeat the whole process, or you would have to forgo honey. Adding to this, you wouldn't want to decimate your food source, so you would ration it and save it for later. 



The same goes for dried fruit. The same issue occurs with drying fruit. First, fruit only lasts for a while, and you must store it. Second, you still have to process it, which is work. How much could you process? On the Pueblo, I often see homes with drying racks, but I usually see one or two. That isn’t a lot of fruit. 


Nature was our dietitian and our fitness coach at the same time!


Now that we've industrialized food, we can go to the store, buy 20 jars of honey, and consume them all in a day. Unfortunately, our liver and pancreas did not evolve to process/digest/metabolize all that sugar in that short of time. 


The same thing happens with dried fruit; I could purchase bags of dried blueberries, cranberries, and cherries and consume them all in a day. I have reduced the time and labor to almost zero.  


So this massive radical change in our food system forces our liver and pancreas to go from a small restaurant that handles a dozen or so people to corporate-level dining. This is really the food problem we are facing now.  I hate to simplify things, but it is literally a problem of scale. 


I've just outlined a scale issue, and our bodies are not up to scale! 


What can you do? 


So the problem is easy to identify. The hard part is instead of nature determining what you eat and how hard it is to get food, you have to step in and regulate your intake.  


There are many diets out there, but the first step needs to be eating less refined carbs and less sugar. I would completely cut out juice and soda. And alcohol. 


Soda is a direct sugar infusion into your liver, making it particularly bad for your body. There has to be some level of caloric restriction, and that means going without eating. You have to tell yourself, and I always do this for myself. I tell myself it's OK to be hungry. There's nothing wrong with it with going to bed hungry, especially in this day and age. Second, you do have to be active, and it doesn't require running marathons or being a bodybuilder. You just have to be active because that starts the reverse process of burning the energy that is stored as fat, and you can't reward yourself with a snack because you will never burn the stored fat. 


As I mentioned, one of the roles of insulin is signaling the body to store energy as fat. Understanding this vital function is an opportunity to get involved in your health and start reducing damage to your liver and pancreas. 


Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Nunchaku and Demons

When you get to your mid fifties, you start  spending a lot of time being nostalgic and realizing those moments when you strongly connected with something because they are rare. 

One of the first things I developed a strong connection with was the Japanese white oak, octagon-shaped nunchaku. They had such an aura for me, they almost became sacred. That moment in Game of Death, when Bruce Lee pulled out nunchaku in his fight against Dan Inosanto was electrifying. I made a pair as soon as I came home from the movie. 

 

Then, as I researched them and bought books, it was Fumio Demura and those Japanese white oak octagon ones with a cord attaching the two with a hidden knot that took me to a whole new level. I remember learning to tie that knot. Moreover, those 8 flat sides felt so powerful in my hand and I felt invincible as I practiced in my back yard.  


The nunchaku represented control and power. In a time when I was getting beat up and picked on as bullies used their power to put others down; so they could lift themselves up. I saw the nunchaku as a tool to turn the tables on my bullies to say, “Fuck no, you aren’t doin that to me!”   


And it worked. Even though, I never had to use them in a fight in high school, they meant more than simply fighting. They became the very idea of empowerment, of using a tool to equal the odds. In another movie, Bruce Lee used them to fight off a gang of armed attackers. This was powerful to me. It meant I could buy two pieces of wood and a simple cord and make a weapon that could defend against a gang attack, a nightmare for many. I knew at once my role in life, and even more importantly, who I was. It meant that by any means necessary someone was not simply going to walk into my life and control me. They weren’t going to take my life, or my loved ones easily. They would have to fight because I was going to fight. 


During my 20s and 30s, there were several times I needed a weapon to dissuade someone from trying to do me harm. And deeper still, there is the larger battle inside every man and it is with one’s fear of death by other men. It becomes the ritual of defeating one’s own imaginary demons. These demons can look like a home invasion or a gang of men or an evil serial killer and your mind conjurors these demons to set upon you. True martial arts uses these demons to challenge themselves via the mastery of weapons.  


Once you continually face your demons you can achieve peace and realize more of your true self and align your self with essence of the universe. This is the way.



Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Getting lost in infinity


Practicing martial arts forms on the deepest level manifests your cosmic kung fu training teachers. They train you. They are the cosmic ancient masters and their accumulated experiences are held in two different places, one in suspended animation in your DNA and second in the specific martial patterns. Once these are linked, the secrets can be unlocked through a deep visceral training of the ancient forms. 


After I was done with fighting highschool bullies, I realized fighting is not healthy. I ran to the Yin side to pursue the arts. I had grown up in an artistic household and thought this path would offer me the most out of life. It seemed an exciting choice and coincidentally not much different than martial arts with its physicality of moving the brush, charcoal, or chisel.


 Again, I heard those ancient voices but there were also voices of temptation like Lorelei whispering to travellers in the woods. I was soon coaxed into territories deeper than I could fathom, listening to the whisperings of lost souls whose threads were not connected to the ancient voices, my tether was cut and I was free floating in infinite space.

Floating in limitless space you brush up against those who are also untethered and there you can experience extreme connection but it is only temporary. Everything seems to fall apart and nothing lasts. Although this is true for much of the things found in life, there are however, some things that are rock solid and indestructible. Religions speak of such structures but, words can only be of little help. 


In martial forms, we walk with the ancient masters without form and our souls touch their footsteps. Those footsteps lead us to the energetic cathedral which forms the structure of the universe. This is indestructible and always changing.This is the place to reside. 


Chris Aloia, July 21, 2020


Tuesday, May 19, 2020

A Small Epiphany about Animal Consciousness




Recently my wife mused aloud questioning what could be occupying our pet's minds. I quickly brushed it off saying that all they think about is food. Since it was a rainy weekend and I had time, I decided watch a few TED talks on animal consciousness. One talk was given by Carl Safina, a noted writer on animal ecology, who wrote a book entitled Beyond Words; What Animals Think and Feel. Here is a link to the video  Not too far into the video, he made me feel foolish about giving short shrift to my wife's question. I also watched a few others but for the sake of brevity and clarity I will just stick to the one video. So not only did I immediately feel foolish, I also decided to open my mind and that simple but difficult action was like the sun bursting through the clouds on a rainy day. This inspired me to take my dog, Chewie (Short for Chewbacca, my kids are Star Wars fans) out in the back yard and let him wander around, while I did some T'ai Chi. During the practice I felt a deeper level of awareness of my whole body, as I moved through the T'ai Chi form. I felt these physical epiphanies before but, this time I felt increased neural connectivity.

In addition to greater connectivity, I became poignantly aware of the tightrope walk between flight or fight responses and more graceful responses. This fertile place of true realization in the moment that doesn’t stick around too long is what T'ai Chi cultivates. T'ai chi in combination with some other more direct combative training is a great match for walking that tightrope. Some might and some have questioned why practice T'ai Chi at all. 

I still practice it for three reasons: one, it makes my mind and body feel connected and that feels great; two, the research says T'ai Chi is good for injury prevention and pain management; and thirdly, I believe T'ai Chi develops a deeper understanding of form and biomechanics and forces me to think about movement efficiency.

When my practice was done, I got a bow saw and cut a freshly downed branch of tulip poplar into smaller throwing size sticks, and threw one about 70 feet, so my dog could fetch it. He was in heaven, prancing about with that stick in his mouth. We just played and enjoyed the freedom of the moment. I am usually very critical, almost cynical about TED talks, but I have to admit watching that TED talk about animal consciousness really helped me become more aware of his sentience as well as my own.

Monday, November 18, 2019

Reminiscing About How I Found Martial Arts

I was lucky that I grew up in the 70s and 80s when Asian culture, particularly martial arts, was becoming popular in the US. With the popularity of Bruce Lee movies, and the TV series Kung Fu it almost became a prerequisite to have a martial arts fight in many TV shows. I remember waiting for those fight scenes with great anticipation.

Additionally, my father was practicing Tai Chi from Robert Chuckrow and he took me to one of his classes. I remember watching him and his friend practice the Tai Chi form in our yard. My father even tried to get me to stand in a Tai Chi posture and it was really uncomfortable.  I was so rambunctious I was definitely not ready for the slow practice of Tai Chi. Then in the 80s, the TV mini-series, Shogun came on and I made myself a bokken and practiced cuts with it. I was so excited by Asian culture and swords that I really wanted to learn more.

All that media exposure sparked me to explore further and I remember going to the local book store and checking out the martial arts section. It was only a few books and there was an orange book, much like this one pictured, that had historical illustrations of old time Jujitsu techniques. I bought it and became enthralled with those mysterious techniques. I tried to understand them but I couldn’t figure out the movements from the illustrations alone. 
Japanese Jiu-jitsu - Tuttle Publishing

I looked in the yellow pages and I remember seeing an advertisement for an Aikido class in a neighboring town. It seemed like it was a thousand miles away. Then I saw that our town had a Karate school so I did not have much choice. I ended up in Okinawan Goju ryu class and got my yellow belt. I remember the sensei telling us stories of the Okinawan masters he learned from, while in the military in Japan. Unfortunately, the school soon closed but luckily I found people who were into boxing. So I was still in the martial arts. However, in the back of my mind I still wanted to learn those traditional techniques found in Jujitsu and Aikido. After a couple of years of boxing I quit fighting all together. 

I had met some famous old boxing champs and realized that fighting and getting hit repeatedly in the head was not a healthy lifestyle choice. I forgot about the self development aspects of martial arts and boxing didn't teach those. So I thought I was done with the martial arts path. 


As I continued to explore other aspects of myself and grew as an adult, I once again saw a need to get back to martial arts.

This time I was in Seattle and there I had my pick of almost every imaginable martial arts style. I lived close to the International District and visited all kinds of schools offering Kung Fu, Brazilian Jujitsu, Hapkido and Aikido. I finally had my opportunity to study Aikido and learn those amazing mysterious techniques I dreamed about as a kid. So after many years I began learning everything I could and practiced intensely. Plus, there was a great group of people and we quickly became friends. The camaraderie at the school was a amazing.
 
Martial arts always came to my life in times when I needed guidance. In martial arts there is this important work being done that touches you on every level from the social to a deeply intimate and most personal. There is something compelling working out with people in a friendly but challenging manner that I have only found in martial arts.  I am very thankful that I grew up in a time when it was accessible to me. I honestly don’t know what I would have become had I not found the martial path.

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Spiraling Patterns in Tai Chi (Notes from class on 9/17/19)


Yesterday in class, I discussed thigh rotation during Tai Chi movements. In the illustration from Chen Style Tai Chi, it depicts how your body should coil during most movements.



One exercise I use in my warm-ups is the reverse punch (Seen in the illustration below). Many people think the reverse punch is obsolete and a waste of time. However, they miss an important point, it is not directly for fighting but for training the body to coil, which is storing and releasing power. 


In fact, most of the reason why Tai Chi is performed slowly is to understand how this spiraling force is transmitted from one part of the body to the other without having gaps or hiccups, which can be exploited by an external force. This slow spiral movement also "ties" up the joints to protect them by keeping them aligned.
This is why Tai Chi is particularly good for balance, because it develops a counter spiral which "locks" the body into a stable structure. The lines in the Chen Style illustration show how force moves through the body, and of course, it is a spiraling motion, which follow patterns found in most organic structures because we live in a spiral universe and on a rotating planet.

When performing the reverse punch over time you will see every part of your body from your feet to your hands embodying a spiraling motion.