The Sensei's public blog
Here at the-urban-warrior.com we have started the New Year off with a bang; a fresh look to the website, and a new blog. Let us know what you think of the new design. Non-members can contact the webmaster here. Inner Circle members, as ever, can have their say directly with me and the team on the forum.
It's 2008 already, and the New Year brings a perfect opportunity for quiet reflection, contemplation and the kind of realignment of one’s values that inevitably begins a new direction along the road of life.
That is…unless you are the kind of weakling who uses the New Year as an excuse to drown out your consciousness and powers of perception with alcohol, waste your time on the couch or in smoky bars, and generally lay around getting fat and slow.
If you are this kind of person, you need a challenge. So I have one for you—The Urban Warrior Challenge. Make 2008 the year you finally toughen up, and make the most of yourself. Make 2008 the year you become an Urban Warrior!
To be an Urban Warrior you need two things: Mental Power, and a mastery of the Ten Skills.
What is mental power? It is made up of those qualities of character—the qualities that make a man a man. They are considered old-fashioned now…and this is why the west has become corrupt; decadent; feeble. They used to be called “moral qualities”. Factors like inner strength, independence, freedom of thought and an indomitable will. These are the most valuable resources human beings possess. Tragically, they are the kind of qualities most young men today sell out for virtually nothing, exchanging them for the lure of their opposites; weakness, herd-mentality and apathy.
These mental powers are crucial to The Urban Warrior; they are his most cherished possession. But they require expression; having mental power without the tools to express that power in a crisis is like having ten gallons of high-octane fuel, and no car to drive. The “tools” The Urban Warrior needs to complete the package are the Ten Skills. These are the intellectual and physical abilities which ensure that you can protect yourself and make the most out of any combination.
Many people have asked me to define an Urban Warrior. Well, there you have it. Mental power combined with a constant honing and development of the Ten Skills. That is what constitutes a true Urban Warrior. That is the way of life he follows.
Here is your challenge. Spend the next twelve months working on these two areas. You need to do something every day to get better in both your mental power and the Ten Skills—and I expect you to embrace all ten. Three will not do; nine will not do. The Urban Warrior trains in all ten.
Despite what you may believe, this will require virtually no equipment and no money. The challenge is not about these things. And I’ve left instructions for you on how to do it, step-by-step, in The Urban Warrior’s Bible.
This challenge will be simple, although not easy by any means. But if you accept it, this year will become the most rewarding year of your life, and you will finally have realized all you were meant to be. And I am here to guide you, both in my writings, and as a teacher. Those of you who take the challenge will be inducted into my Inner Circle of students, and be given my contact details so I can help you one-on-one.
You will never be as young as you are right now. You will never be as ready as you are right now.
Don’t let another year slip by.
Wednesday, January 9th 2008
Today I received another email from an Inner Circle student living in the UK. In this email, my student told me all about the increasing violence on British streets. It made for sad reading. Assaults are at an all time high, as are knife and gun crime. Gang mentality and drug warfare is now endemic in every part of England. The threat of serious terrorism is rated as even higher today than it was during the IRA heyday—due to the rise of internal Islamic Fundamentalism and al-Qaeda sympathizers.
Sad reading. Sad, but predictable.
But the story is not over! I have a message for UK readers. It’s the message of The Urban Warrior!
You can win through this.
You can learn to stack the odds in your favor. You can master your body and mind in the face of the most punishing and ghastly city environments. You can learn to toughen up and deal with daily violence (in fact, I can teach you to thrive on it). You can learn to vanish—melt away into the background of a world you have learned to fully manipulate. You can learn to defend yourself against terrorism and find powerful ways to reduce the threats facing you. You can stop being a victim—for good!
In short, you can become an Urban Warrior.
Recent social changes don’t alter any of these truths—in fact, they render them essential. You have to get real, now. For your sake and the sake of your family!
Wherever you are, the self-defense principles and ideology outlined in The Urban Warrior’s Bible remain valid. Adaptations need to be made however, due to different legal systems. For example, handguns are banned in the UK, as are a great many self-defense weapons (such as TASERS, etc). In Britain even pepper spray is considered an offensive weapon and its use limited to the police force. It’s currently illegal to purchase many martial arts weapons. Following a series of recent incidents, it looks like swords (even replicas) and combat knives will also be banned, shortly. (Get what you can, now.)
This attitude never ceases to amaze me. It’s as though the UK government deliberately wants to stop the right-minded majority from defending themselves. Obviously, the point of this plethora of anti-weapon laws is to keep weapons out of the hands of people who would use the weaponry for criminal purposes, not legitimate self-defense. But here’s newsflash for all you dumbass politicians—criminals don’t obey the law. That’s why they’re called criminals. They’ll get their hands on the weapons they want anyway. If this was untrue, there would be no gun crime in Great Britain; anti-gun legislation is tighter and more prolific in the UK than ever, stricter than anywhere else in the world. Yet the stricter the law becomes, the more gun crime statistics increase.
It’s all very well to say; “protecting the public is the job of the police force, not individual citizens”, but what if you don’t happen to have a police officer in your pocket when you get assaulted next to a cashpoint at night?
Wherever you are, you have to balance your self-protection methods with the law of the land. This is something only the individual can do. But what I will say to those of you bound up by local law is: Get creative.
Sure; it’s illegal to carry a knife around in your bag. But what about a razor-sharp pair of scissors? Self-defense tools like kubotan and yawara are not illegal in most countries and some will even fit on keyrings. They can be very effective weapons if you learn how to use them. Perhaps you can’t carry a quarter-staff around in your car. But what about a baseball bat? (Don’t forget a mitt and a couple of baseballs—if anybody asks, you were going to meet friends to ask for a game, right?) Maybe you can’t get hold of a firearm for home defense. But what about alternatives like compound bows or crossbows?
Next time somebody breaks into your home because you aren’t allowed to defend it where you live, don’t forget to have a nailgun by the side of your bed—for property maintenance purposes, of course. The latest kinds are pneumatic, lightweight, powerful, and shoot out forty nails per second at the slightest pull of the palm trigger.
Give the bastard a nail job he’ll never forget.
Monday, 14th January 2008
Today I cleaned and trained with some of my knives. I’ve been training with blades for years and find it relaxing and almost therapeutic these days. Knives are probably the ultimate tool—good for both survival and self-protection. They’re cheap, long lasting, self-contained and don’t require much maintenance.
The latest addition to my armory is a kukri knife. The kukri is the traditional weapon of the Gurkha warriors of Nepal. It’s a holy weapon—not unlike the samurai’s katana sword. Its origin may be unbelievably ancient; one theory dictates that it was invented by the Iberian people in the Bronze Age, and spread into what is now India with Alexander the Great, when his armies invaded the Punjab.
Whatever its origin, the kukri blade is undeniably bizarre; long and curved, and heavier towards the tip than the base. This design means that the knife can be swung in a horrendously powerful arc in the hands of an expert. Kukris can act as survival knives, and function well as machetes against undergrowth. But their primary design is as brutal combat knives. The legend goes that in WWII, Gurkhas in the field would slash at the throats of Nazis, decapitating them with a single effortless motion. In fact, many legends surround this amazing knife; the most romantic is that a Gurkha never unsheathes his kukri without drawing blood. Sadly, this isn’t true—in fact the kukri is more often used in Nepal as a bushcraft tool than a weapon.
In the twentieth century, many Nepalese blacksmiths made kukris from the leaf-springs of trucks which reached the region during the great wars. Traditionally, handles were of water-buffalo horn. Technology has caught up with the kukri, and the latest versions are forged from carbon steel, with a rugged polymer handles.
If you are looking for a really meaty close-range melee weapon, relatively easy to use and somewhere in between a dagger and a knife, you need to get your hands on one of these beauties. My favored manufacturers are Ka-Bar. Their version features an 11.5 inch blade with a total knife length of over 17 inches. The leather sheath is included. Check out their site, here.
Thursday, 24th January 2008
Today has been rare in the sense that I’ve had an afternoon off. I’ve checked some of my equipment, written a couple of emails, but that’s about it. I’ve spent the rest of my time kicking back—which for me, means more training. This time, intellectual.
I've been re-reading an old favorite of mine: Thick Face, Black Heart. The book, written by Chin-Ning Chu, is based on an older manuscript called Thick Black Theory, banned in China since 1911. Were it not for its long suppression by the Chinese government—who feared it would liberate the populace and create dangerous free thinkers—the philosophy behind the original book would be a lot better known in the west than it is.
For those of you unfamiliar with this classic work on psychology, it’s centered around developing the most powerful, effective method of thinking possible. The way to do this is by developing the two qualities of the title—the thick face, and the black heart. A thick face means total emotional control; including control over the signals we give out to others. The black heart is a state of absolute, Zen-like focus on your objectives—almost ruthlessness.
These are essential qualities for The Urban Warrior and Chin-Ning Chu’s work makes fascinating, thought-provoking reading. If you want one of the best practical psychology books around, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy.
Wednesday, 30th January 2008
Today I had an interesting email from one of my Inner Circle students who accepted The Urban Warrior Challenge, but had a query relating to my wording. Jim from Utah wrote:
“Hi, Sensei,
I have a question. In your recent blog, you said the following:
Many people have asked me to define an Urban Warrior. Well, there you have it. Mental power combined with a constant honing and development of the Ten Skills. That is what constitutes a true Urban Warrior. That is the way of life he follows.
But in TUWB, you kick off with a massive discussion on the art and science of building all the resources possible. Shouldn’t this be included in the definition of an Urban Warrior, too?"
Good question; thanks for giving me the chance to straighten this point out, Jim.
I included an extensive section on resources in The Urban Warrior’s Bible, because preparation is enormously useful. Tools, weapons and operational equipment can really give you the edge in a disaster scenario. For this reason, I’d feel I was remiss if I didn’t teach my students all there is to know about building resources.
But the truth is that all the equipment in the world is simply the icing on the cake for The Urban Warrior. His true worth lies in his own attributes; both those inner qualities of Urban Warrior spirit, and his hard-earned skills and abilities (i.e., The Ten Skills).
You need to cultivate this attitude, Jim. You never know when your equipment will be taken away from you, so you can only ever depend on it as a secondary resource. As I point out in TUWB, your most valuable resource is you! I know I could blindfold any one of my personal students, bundle them into the trunk of a car, and dump them naked three hundred miles away, only to have them watching me from a rooftop with a full wallet and a new wardrobe six hours later.
Survival in any context is about stacking the odds in your favor. So wherever you can, cultivate your own resources. But being a true Urban Warrior is about honing body and soul, not all the junk that surrounds that.
****
Tuesday, January 1st 2008THE URBAN WARRIOR CHALLENGE
That is…unless you are the kind of weakling who uses the New Year as an excuse to drown out your consciousness and powers of perception with alcohol, waste your time on the couch or in smoky bars, and generally lay around getting fat and slow.
If you are this kind of person, you need a challenge. So I have one for you—The Urban Warrior Challenge. Make 2008 the year you finally toughen up, and make the most of yourself. Make 2008 the year you become an Urban Warrior!
To be an Urban Warrior you need two things: Mental Power, and a mastery of the Ten Skills.
What is mental power? It is made up of those qualities of character—the qualities that make a man a man. They are considered old-fashioned now…and this is why the west has become corrupt; decadent; feeble. They used to be called “moral qualities”. Factors like inner strength, independence, freedom of thought and an indomitable will. These are the most valuable resources human beings possess. Tragically, they are the kind of qualities most young men today sell out for virtually nothing, exchanging them for the lure of their opposites; weakness, herd-mentality and apathy.
These mental powers are crucial to The Urban Warrior; they are his most cherished possession. But they require expression; having mental power without the tools to express that power in a crisis is like having ten gallons of high-octane fuel, and no car to drive. The “tools” The Urban Warrior needs to complete the package are the Ten Skills. These are the intellectual and physical abilities which ensure that you can protect yourself and make the most out of any combination.
Many people have asked me to define an Urban Warrior. Well, there you have it. Mental power combined with a constant honing and development of the Ten Skills. That is what constitutes a true Urban Warrior. That is the way of life he follows.
Here is your challenge. Spend the next twelve months working on these two areas. You need to do something every day to get better in both your mental power and the Ten Skills—and I expect you to embrace all ten. Three will not do; nine will not do. The Urban Warrior trains in all ten.
Despite what you may believe, this will require virtually no equipment and no money. The challenge is not about these things. And I’ve left instructions for you on how to do it, step-by-step, in The Urban Warrior’s Bible.
This challenge will be simple, although not easy by any means. But if you accept it, this year will become the most rewarding year of your life, and you will finally have realized all you were meant to be. And I am here to guide you, both in my writings, and as a teacher. Those of you who take the challenge will be inducted into my Inner Circle of students, and be given my contact details so I can help you one-on-one.
You will never be as young as you are right now. You will never be as ready as you are right now.
Don’t let another year slip by.
Wednesday, January 9th 2008
Today I received another email from an Inner Circle student living in the UK. In this email, my student told me all about the increasing violence on British streets. It made for sad reading. Assaults are at an all time high, as are knife and gun crime. Gang mentality and drug warfare is now endemic in every part of England. The threat of serious terrorism is rated as even higher today than it was during the IRA heyday—due to the rise of internal Islamic Fundamentalism and al-Qaeda sympathizers.Sad reading. Sad, but predictable.
But the story is not over! I have a message for UK readers. It’s the message of The Urban Warrior!
You can win through this.
You can learn to stack the odds in your favor. You can master your body and mind in the face of the most punishing and ghastly city environments. You can learn to toughen up and deal with daily violence (in fact, I can teach you to thrive on it). You can learn to vanish—melt away into the background of a world you have learned to fully manipulate. You can learn to defend yourself against terrorism and find powerful ways to reduce the threats facing you. You can stop being a victim—for good!
In short, you can become an Urban Warrior.
Recent social changes don’t alter any of these truths—in fact, they render them essential. You have to get real, now. For your sake and the sake of your family!
Wherever you are, the self-defense principles and ideology outlined in The Urban Warrior’s Bible remain valid. Adaptations need to be made however, due to different legal systems. For example, handguns are banned in the UK, as are a great many self-defense weapons (such as TASERS, etc). In Britain even pepper spray is considered an offensive weapon and its use limited to the police force. It’s currently illegal to purchase many martial arts weapons. Following a series of recent incidents, it looks like swords (even replicas) and combat knives will also be banned, shortly. (Get what you can, now.)
This attitude never ceases to amaze me. It’s as though the UK government deliberately wants to stop the right-minded majority from defending themselves. Obviously, the point of this plethora of anti-weapon laws is to keep weapons out of the hands of people who would use the weaponry for criminal purposes, not legitimate self-defense. But here’s newsflash for all you dumbass politicians—criminals don’t obey the law. That’s why they’re called criminals. They’ll get their hands on the weapons they want anyway. If this was untrue, there would be no gun crime in Great Britain; anti-gun legislation is tighter and more prolific in the UK than ever, stricter than anywhere else in the world. Yet the stricter the law becomes, the more gun crime statistics increase.
It’s all very well to say; “protecting the public is the job of the police force, not individual citizens”, but what if you don’t happen to have a police officer in your pocket when you get assaulted next to a cashpoint at night?
Wherever you are, you have to balance your self-protection methods with the law of the land. This is something only the individual can do. But what I will say to those of you bound up by local law is: Get creative.
Sure; it’s illegal to carry a knife around in your bag. But what about a razor-sharp pair of scissors? Self-defense tools like kubotan and yawara are not illegal in most countries and some will even fit on keyrings. They can be very effective weapons if you learn how to use them. Perhaps you can’t carry a quarter-staff around in your car. But what about a baseball bat? (Don’t forget a mitt and a couple of baseballs—if anybody asks, you were going to meet friends to ask for a game, right?) Maybe you can’t get hold of a firearm for home defense. But what about alternatives like compound bows or crossbows?
Next time somebody breaks into your home because you aren’t allowed to defend it where you live, don’t forget to have a nailgun by the side of your bed—for property maintenance purposes, of course. The latest kinds are pneumatic, lightweight, powerful, and shoot out forty nails per second at the slightest pull of the palm trigger.
Give the bastard a nail job he’ll never forget.
Monday, 14th January 2008
Today I cleaned and trained with some of my knives. I’ve been training with blades for years and find it relaxing and almost therapeutic these days. Knives are probably the ultimate tool—good for both survival and self-protection. They’re cheap, long lasting, self-contained and don’t require much maintenance.
The latest addition to my armory is a kukri knife. The kukri is the traditional weapon of the Gurkha warriors of Nepal. It’s a holy weapon—not unlike the samurai’s katana sword. Its origin may be unbelievably ancient; one theory dictates that it was invented by the Iberian people in the Bronze Age, and spread into what is now India with Alexander the Great, when his armies invaded the Punjab.
Whatever its origin, the kukri blade is undeniably bizarre; long and curved, and heavier towards the tip than the base. This design means that the knife can be swung in a horrendously powerful arc in the hands of an expert. Kukris can act as survival knives, and function well as machetes against undergrowth. But their primary design is as brutal combat knives. The legend goes that in WWII, Gurkhas in the field would slash at the throats of Nazis, decapitating them with a single effortless motion. In fact, many legends surround this amazing knife; the most romantic is that a Gurkha never unsheathes his kukri without drawing blood. Sadly, this isn’t true—in fact the kukri is more often used in Nepal as a bushcraft tool than a weapon.
In the twentieth century, many Nepalese blacksmiths made kukris from the leaf-springs of trucks which reached the region during the great wars. Traditionally, handles were of water-buffalo horn. Technology has caught up with the kukri, and the latest versions are forged from carbon steel, with a rugged polymer handles.
If you are looking for a really meaty close-range melee weapon, relatively easy to use and somewhere in between a dagger and a knife, you need to get your hands on one of these beauties. My favored manufacturers are Ka-Bar. Their version features an 11.5 inch blade with a total knife length of over 17 inches. The leather sheath is included. Check out their site, here.
Thursday, 24th January 2008
Today has been rare in the sense that I’ve had an afternoon off. I’ve checked some of my equipment, written a couple of emails, but that’s about it. I’ve spent the rest of my time kicking back—which for me, means more training. This time, intellectual.
I've been re-reading an old favorite of mine: Thick Face, Black Heart. The book, written by Chin-Ning Chu, is based on an older manuscript called Thick Black Theory, banned in China since 1911. Were it not for its long suppression by the Chinese government—who feared it would liberate the populace and create dangerous free thinkers—the philosophy behind the original book would be a lot better known in the west than it is.
For those of you unfamiliar with this classic work on psychology, it’s centered around developing the most powerful, effective method of thinking possible. The way to do this is by developing the two qualities of the title—the thick face, and the black heart. A thick face means total emotional control; including control over the signals we give out to others. The black heart is a state of absolute, Zen-like focus on your objectives—almost ruthlessness.
These are essential qualities for The Urban Warrior and Chin-Ning Chu’s work makes fascinating, thought-provoking reading. If you want one of the best practical psychology books around, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy.
Wednesday, 30th January 2008
WEAPONS, TOOLS, VEHICLES!
The Urban Warrior Challenge (see my first blog entry of 2008) has created quite a buzz on the ‘net, and I’ve received a considerable batch of mail about it, some of which I hope to share with you.Today I had an interesting email from one of my Inner Circle students who accepted The Urban Warrior Challenge, but had a query relating to my wording. Jim from Utah wrote:
“Hi, Sensei,
I have a question. In your recent blog, you said the following:
Many people have asked me to define an Urban Warrior. Well, there you have it. Mental power combined with a constant honing and development of the Ten Skills. That is what constitutes a true Urban Warrior. That is the way of life he follows.
But in TUWB, you kick off with a massive discussion on the art and science of building all the resources possible. Shouldn’t this be included in the definition of an Urban Warrior, too?"
Good question; thanks for giving me the chance to straighten this point out, Jim.
I included an extensive section on resources in The Urban Warrior’s Bible, because preparation is enormously useful. Tools, weapons and operational equipment can really give you the edge in a disaster scenario. For this reason, I’d feel I was remiss if I didn’t teach my students all there is to know about building resources.But the truth is that all the equipment in the world is simply the icing on the cake for The Urban Warrior. His true worth lies in his own attributes; both those inner qualities of Urban Warrior spirit, and his hard-earned skills and abilities (i.e., The Ten Skills).
You need to cultivate this attitude, Jim. You never know when your equipment will be taken away from you, so you can only ever depend on it as a secondary resource. As I point out in TUWB, your most valuable resource is you! I know I could blindfold any one of my personal students, bundle them into the trunk of a car, and dump them naked three hundred miles away, only to have them watching me from a rooftop with a full wallet and a new wardrobe six hours later.
Survival in any context is about stacking the odds in your favor. So wherever you can, cultivate your own resources. But being a true Urban Warrior is about honing body and soul, not all the junk that surrounds that.