Ice & Fire Stav Blog

I can’t say I enjoy it but each year I agree to do a Christian Aid collection through my church. I guess it is about playing my part or whatever. Anyway I put the envelopes through letter boxes on Monday evening and did a first collection Wednesday evening between 6 and 7.30 pm At least half were out or their bells were not working or they simply don’t open their doors. But of those that did open to me half of those swore blind that there had never had an envelope through the letter box, okay this was two days later so maybe it had decomposed in that time but in a previous year I delivered envelopes and went back 90 minutes later to collect and a lot of people still swore it wasn’t there even though they were standing on it. There is great potential in the material used to make Christian Aid envelopes, imagine if all crisp packets, sweet wrappers, newspapers and cigarette cartons were made of the same stuff. It would solve the problem of litter in that these items would just vanish when they were dropped, just as they do as they go through a letter box. I guess the only other people who are using the same product are printers of the cheques that are always in the post but never actually seem to arrive.

There is of course another possible explanation and that is that some people don’t want to give to Christian Aid and I respect that choice. All they have to do is say something like. “I don’t give to third world charity because it has overtones of quasi imperialist paternalism and it creates socio economic dependency in the indigenous populations and discourages the development of culturally relevant and geographically appropriate solutions to poverty and I personally have become reconciled to my guilt at the ravages of empire on far away countries,” and I would respond. “Can’t argue with your well informed, carefully reasoned and beautifully expressed argument and thank you for your time.” and move on. Or in fact a simple “Not today mate.” will do.

I just don’t like being treated like an idiot by being lied to. I am a big boy and I don’t need my feelings protected. I know that door to door charity collections are an intrusion so I don’t mind being told ‘no thanks I simply don’t want to give’ for whatever reason. I know in a few cases the dog genuinely has eaten the envelope but I find in those cases I get an apology, a request for a new envelope and money is put into it there and then. Just don’t tell me paper disappears into thin air please.

Another situation where nonsense is talked is when you are told that fancy martial arts techniques will work in a real life self-defence situation. But the raw truth is that violent confrontations are messy, unpredictable, frightening and potentially deadly. So you have to be ready to train for the unpleasant and unexpected and that is hard work and usually not very elegant and whatever you use has to be very simple and to the point. I will be bringing this element into the training in Oxford on Saturday and at the CQC training at the Summer Camp, you will have to leave your comfort zone but I would be lying to you if I claimed you could learn self defence without doing so.

I think I was about seven or eight when I asked my mother how to disect an animal. She was a biology teacher so she was the right person to ask. Her reply was. “If we can find a suitable dead animal then I will show you how it is done.” Soon afterwards on a family picnic I noticed a dog chasing a rabbit. I followed the animals to where the dog managed to corner and kill the rabbit. I immediately stepped in, grabbed the dog by the collar and confiscated the rabbit. Yes, I know it wasn’t a very good idea to approach a large, strange dog and steal a rabbit he had worked so hard to catch. When I think about it now almost half a century later it scares me slightly. But I guess I wanted my biology lesson and I was prepared to fulfill my part by procuring the deceased animal whatever the risk. My mother fulfilled part and I got my lesson in animal anatomy.

Over the years since I have butchered rabbits and pheasants for the pot on numerous occasions but never anything bigger. Until last Friday when my friend Ronni turned up with a very badly injured deer in the back of her car. She had seen it knocked over and stopped her car, wanted to help it but realised that the kindest thing was going to be to put it out of its misery. That and she likes to drum and deer hide makes a very good drum-skin. So, all these years later the situation was kind of reversed with me being asked to use my knowledge (and one of my knives) to butcher an animal. So we hung it up by its hind legs and got on with it. Just for the record a deer is very much like a scaled up rabbit inside and venison is nice to eat. In particular I recommend the liver, it is even better than lambs liver. I am looking forward to hearing Ronni play the drum she makes from its skin too.

My points from this? If you want to learn you have to do your part to show you are serious. I could have just nagged my mother to go and buy a rabbit from the butchers for her to cut up. But once I had wrested a still warm carcass from the jaws of a deadly predator then my mother didn’t really have much choice but to keep her side of the bargain. Real learning doesn’t come easy you have to make some effort and take some risk if you want your teacher to take you seriously. Secondly you never know when knowledge is going to come in handy however long ago you gained it. When Ronni turned up in the drive with the deer we discussed how we would deal with it and she said. “Out of all the people I know you are the only one I can have a discussion with about how to turn a dying deer into supper and a musical instrument.” As I said earlier I had never done a deer before but I learned the basics when I was seven or eight so I knew where to start and went from there.

There are opportunities to learn Stav for those who have what it takes. In Oxford this Saturday, in Salisbury on the 9th of June, In Annapolis USA on the 16th to the 18th of June. And of course the Summer Camp with Ivar on the 10th to 15th of July. All you got to do is get there and train, I won’t even make you fight a dog for it first. Check out my Calender page for current training opportunities.

In one of his books Geoff Thompson refers to a story about a man called Milo and a bull. The gist of the tale is that Milo for some reason wants to prove that he can lift a bull on his shoulders. Not everyone’s aspiration, I personally will stick to kettle bells as per yesterday’s post, but quite an achievement all the same. The story goes that Milo realized that just finding the nearest bull and attempting to wear it like a scarf was unlikely to be successful not to say highly dangerous. So he bought himself a very young bull calf, put it on his shoulders and had a walk to the shops. He made a point of doing this every day and as the calf grew into a mature bull Milo’s strength grew with it and he achieved his ambition.

Geoff Thompson suggests that the moral of the story is that if you want to achieve something big you need to build up to it gradually. The slowly growing bull creates this progress towards truly remarkable strength. I can’t disagree with that but I think there is also another important aspect to this story and that comes by looking at it from the point of view of the bull. As I said at the beginning just trying to lift a full grown bull would probably impossible because Milo would not have developed the strength to do so. It would also be a bad idea because any self respecting ton of prime beef would be seriously annoyed at the impertinence of such a move and the reaction would not be pretty. But by involving a bull calf from a very young age the animal would grow up feeling itself to be part of a double act and would probably look forward to its daily promenade around the town. This doesn’t diminish the achievement in lifting the animal but the cooperation of a powerful beast such as a bull has to be essential to the accomplishment of such a feat.

Building a group or organization of any kind is best done gradually and systematically so that your ability to manage grows with the demand. But don’t forget that the members of the group are growing with you. Making sure they feel that they are a valued part of some kind of community is just as important to success as the efforts of the leader. Find you bull and learn how to carry it but never forget to treat it with respect.

If you would like to join Ice and Fire you can do so at the Ice and Fire Join page.

I recently acquired a new kettle bell, a 20 kg one. A friend sold it to me because it was surplus to his requirements and he knew I would lavish on it all the love, care and affection that 45 lbs of cast iron craves. (Which is not a lot, as pets go they are pretty low maintenance). I have had a 16 kg KB since Christmas 2010 and I had been pondering getting a heavier one for a while but not been sure I could cope with it. I do use the 16kb example three times a week and I have built up to being able to do up to 9 overhead presses with either arm on a good day or 7 on an average day. With the 20kg monster I can do… 1, if I give myself a few minutes rest I can do another 1 and so of for about 5 sets so long as they are in sets of 1 rep.

I am neither proud or disappointed in this. When I was considering taking up KB training I had the chance to try both the 16kg and a 20kg and I could barely get the 20kg off the floor let alone get it above my head, if I had tried I would probably have had a nasty accident, as I recall it was several months before I could do an overhead press with the 16kg.

The point of this apart from exhibiting my unhealthy obsession with large iron balls, hey I am not the only one! Is to show the importance of patience and progression in developing anything, whether it is a business, studying, playing music or anything else. I have a particular interest in physical culture and in developing my own fitness and strength, but whatever it is you want to achieve in life the three key things are:

Start, preferably today, ready or not, if you don’t start then you can guarantee it will never happen.

Be consistent and patient in your practice, really make the effort to make sure the routine does not slip. Thirdly, be ready to step up to a greater challenge when the time is right, you will know it is right because the opportunity comes along just as my 20kg lump of iron did.

Of course if it is starting Stav training that you have been putting off or you want to continue your practice then see the Forthcoming events pages at the Ice and Fire Website.

Yesterday I went to Coventry for session four of the six seminars which make up the Geoff Thompson masterclass series. As with the others so far it was a stimulating and challenging afternoon. We did quite a bit of work on punching focus pads to raise energy and develop striking power. Geoff believes this is the basis of effective self-defence and considering how many times he tested it while working the doors who am I to argue?

As well as practicing from a normal boxing stance we also punched the pads from a kneeling position and from seating as well as with our backs to the wall. As you might expect it is much more difficult to generate much power from such constrained positions. But the purpose isn’t really to prepare for fighting dwarfs (though I suppose one should be ready for anything) or training for arm-chair martial artists, rather it is simply the challenge of seeing what you can do when constrained. When you don’t have access to your normal resources you simply have to dig deep and use what you have got access to. The surprising thing is that when you go back to the normal fighting stance you are more powerful than you where before you practiced from a constrained position.

This principle is certainly worth exploring in any martial arts training you may do. It also applies much more widely to many aspects of life because we often simply have too many resources at our fingertips and become highly ineffective as a result. When we have large budgets available we tend to waste money and become highly inefficient. Too much food we become fussy, greedy and wasteful. Too much time and we never actually seem to get on with anything. But when we are constrained by minimum resources we have to become careful, ingenious and efficient.

Stav training comes out of a culture where you have to manage on about 4 hours daylight in the winter and the ground is frozen for 6 months of the year. So Stav teaches you to be resourceful and effective in all that you do. Next training courses listed here.

Ever notice that the more you try and get away from something the harder it seems to run after you? I really need a couple of weeks to do a lot of work on various aspects of my Stav business. I have been promising for ages to write new books, make new training videos, add extra pages to websites and really get on with promoting the 2012 Stav Summer Camp. And what happens? Venetia and I keep getting offered work and asked to do all kinds of stuff for good money. Even by people we thought weren’t too keen on us because a previous job we did for them didn’t turn out completely to their satisfaction, long story but it happens occasionally when you take on some of the jobs that we do. Anyway, I’m just trying to get some time to work on Ice and Fire and sooner or later I am going to have to start saying no to someone. Thats why I don’t post as often as I would like or do as much promotion as I should and this will be why the Spring edition of Web of Wyrd is probably going to be late again. Sounds like I am making excuses and complaining. Not really fair in the present economic climate to be complaining about having more work than we can handle, well almost. But it feels like the reason we are getting so much is that I keep thinking “enough already, I want to get on with something else!” So of course it keeps piling up.

So two things to think about, if something is lacking in your life, or you perceive that it is, don’t keep thinking about it and desperately chasing after it. Try telling yourself that you are open to what ever it is but your life is perfectly okay without it and making time to include it in your life is actually going to be an effort and a sacrifice. Then get on with making the most of what is in your life and showing real gratitude for that. Try it on whatever it is that you currently think is lacking from your life and see what happens. But you really do have to be happy with what you currently have, it doesn’t work any other way.

And the second thing? I am writing this at my mother’s computer during a day we have played hooky from from the current job, yes still messing about on the river. I have managed to update the dates on my events pages and add a link to my links page. Apart from that I don’t have much time for anything else, sorry. So it may be a few days before you get another reminder. So, next course in Oxford 19th of May, if you want to train State Side then Annapolis 22nd to 24th June and of course the Summer camp 10th to 15th of July.  Visit my calendar page for details.  I have linked to the Bush Craft Page so that you can have a look at Alex’s pyrography.  Got to go, we have a 0530hrs start tomorrow so we can get back on the job.

I had a response to one of my broadcast emails the other day pointing out that the cost of attending a Stav training seminar can be prohibitive. My corespondent has a point, we try and keep the cost of Stav training courses as low as possible, for example you can have a day of training in Salisbury this Saturday for £25 if you are an Ice and Fire member and if you are not and pay on the day it will still only cost you £35. There are concessions if you are a student. It can of course be hard to find the time, I know that feeling but the big problem seems to be travel costs.

But I suppose it comes down to priorities. I have a German Student who is willing to fly from Coln to the UK and travel to Oxford to train in May. I am taking Geoff Thompson’s Master Class this year and that isn’t cheap I can assure you. But these things are investments. If you learn how to train properly in Stav then you can practice the Stances and other drills for the rest of your life and get the benefits accordingly. I travel to seminars including Geoff Thompson’s to improve my teaching and widen my knowledge, I regard that as an investment.

Of course it is up to you how you spend your time and money. I wouldn’t like to think there were children going hungry or mortgages going unpaid for the sake of doing Stav training, but so long as essentials are provided for I would personally consider knowledge of Stav a worthwhile investment. But then I would say that wouldn’t I.

To put it bluntly Ivar won’t be teaching for ever, and I am not getting any younger either. So those who have trained with Ivar will be able in 20 or 30 years be able to share what they learned with those who couldn’t be there, but some opportunities are simply not there for ever and for that reason I don’t really think you can put a price on them.

Over Easter we had a planning session at the campsite we will be using for the Summer Camp. We will do our best to make it a great event but only you can get yourself there.

I have managed to grab a day at home to try and catch up with some Ice and Fire stuff. Otherwise we have been living on the boat and still working on it. Narrow boats are great but my access to technology is limited. I am afraid I draw a line at writing more than short emails on my Blackberry. So make the most of the postings I am able to manage for the moment. I may be limited in what I can do in terms of writing on my computer but that doesn’t mean I am not doing plenty with Stav.

Last Saturday we had a day course in West London. Extraordinarily well attended (by our usual standards) with 12 people training. We only had just enough staffs for the first section of the day. Also three were from Australia, okay they didn’t come especially for the Stav course but Tracel and Rob had been to a day course in Glastonbury a couple of years back when they were visiting the UK so when they were back again they checked up on opportunities to do some more Stav, and they brought their grandson Calim too this time. Great to see you again. We also had Anna from Germany who did come specially for the Stav and is coming back to the Oxford Course in May as well. It was certainly a good days training and I am looking forward to Salisbury on the 14th of April and Oxford on the 19th of May, the opportunities are there so make the effort and grab them.

Talking of opportunities I have had an interesting one recently. The boat we are working on is moored very close to a YMCA centre called the Hawker Centre. There is a lot going on there including a flourishing Karate Class. I decided last week to go along and join a session for the exercise and since I haven’t done Karate on any regular basis for a couple of decades. Any way I was made very welcome, enjoyed the class and worked up quite a sweat. In the free sparring I picked up a black eye and got puffed but discovered I could give as good as I got and, I think largely thanks to the Kettle Bell training, my recovery is good. So at the end of the class I was asked what I really did in terms of martial arts training. (I had admitted at the beginning of the class that I had done karate over 20 years ago, which is true.) and told the instructor that I was a Stav teacher. Anyway I was asked if I could teach a bit of the class on Friday, which I did looking at how to use the web to control the body and it seemed to go down very well. Next Wednesday I have been asked to take half the class and I intend to teach some five principles knife defence, I will let you know how it goes. Oh, and everyone wants to spar with me because it is a challenge to land one on me and avoid being taken to the floor if they get too close to me.

So what is the point of recounting this? Firstly, I went strictly to train for myself, I honestly didn’t expect anyone to take any particular interest in me or what I do for my own training. But Sat, the instructor is very interested in cross training to improve his art and, like me, grabs any chance he gets to learn useful stuff so he was open to learning from me. For me it has proved that intensive Stav training improves any martial practice. As I said in a previous posting I was pretty useless at Karate when I was younger but 20 years later I seem to make a bit of an impression when really at 53 I should be much too old to be getting stuck in with people half my age. Also if you get yourself out there you may find opportunities to teach and share knowledge where you least expect it.

And don’t forget the big opportunity of the Summer Camp in July. Ivar, Alex and I and several other people will be making the effort to make it a success, all you have to do is get there and be willing to learn.

Life should be an adventure, so come and share this one with us.

I sometimes get told that I concentrate too much on the martial side of Stav when I write. It is a fair point, so here I am writing about bind-runes

Some years ago Alex Fell-Bowers and I decided to start providing survival courses as part of Stav training. To assist students in remembering the essentials we decided to create a bind-rune as the basis of the teaching. Basically a teaching bind-rune takes the six most essential aspects of a subject and arranges them in the form of runes on the six lines of a Hagl rune. If you need more than six then you are making the subject too complicated. The runes are arranged either as on an analogue clock face or balanced with a partner rune along each of the stems. If arranged as a clock face we call this kind of bind-rune a progressive one in that its teaching comes from reading each rune in order of priority. If the six runes are arranged in pairs then we are talking about a balanced bind-rune and the relationship within the pair is the significant thing. The ethical bind-rune (which we looked at in depth at last year’s Summer Camp) is an example of a progressive bind-rune and the healing bind-rune is a balanced one, I will write more about those another time.

The funny thing was that Alex and I discussed the survival bind-rune in detail and then each of us came up with something quite different. My version is very much to do with priorities of survival or the rule of three as it is sometimes known, what can kill you in three seconds, three minutes, three hours etc.  Alex’s on the other hand is more skill based and the runes selected reflect the abilities required for outdoor survival, making fire, building a shelter, purifying water etc. From these Alex has created an excellent little book written and illustrated by him. You can find the details on the 2012 Summer Stav Camp Bush craft page (link at bottom of page).

I honestly can’t remember now how Alex and I managed to create two different survival bind runes but I guess it was just a matter of personal emphasis. You could call my version the emergency bind rune and Alex’s the survival skills bind rune. It doesn’t really matter there is something to be learned from both of them.

You can download mine in pdf format here and you will see that it is a progressive bind rune, meaning that you read it as if it were an analogue clock from the top and round to the right. There is another time element in mine in that it deals with the rule of threes that is sometimes given as the basis for survival awareness.

Kreft is the immediate emergency, whatever may kill you in the next three seconds, so get out of the burning vehicle before it explodes , or get to the surface and start swimming before you drown.

Thor is protecting yourself from what may kill you in the next three minutes, you may have got out of your wrecked vehicle but are you going to get run over by the continuing traffic? You may not have drowned but are the sharks circling? Melodramatic perhaps but you get the idea.

Bjork reminds you that you can die of exposure and hypothermia, or perhaps sunstroke in three hours. So your next priority is shelter from the elements or you may not survive the night.

Laug reminds us that we can survive three days without water, but it needs to be clean and potable when you do find some.

Ur concerns food and a healthy person may survive three weeks without eating, although it won’t be much fun and they will have the figure of a supermodel a lot sooner than that.

Ar is about creating a sustainable situation either by getting home or finding some way of coping indefinitely where you are.

Hopefully you could have worked this out for yourself but when you are in a disorientating and dangerous situation it is easy for our priorities to get out of order very easily.  So having an aide-mémoire can be a life saver.

Alex’s is more concerned with the actual skills needed to fulfil these priorities, they are listed on the Stav Camp Bushcraft page and there are details of his book there. If you want some actual practical training then Alex is teaching at the Summer Camp.

There is a story which Geoff Thompson recounts in his book Dead or Alive about a wrestler from Glasgow who was scheduled for a bout with an opponent in London called Bert Asarati. Now Bert had such a fearsome reputation that as the Glaswegian travelled south by train the fear grew in him. At every station an inner voice said to him. “Get out now and get the first train back to Glasgow while you are still in one piece.” At every stop the voice got louder and at Birmingham he stepped off the train, crossed the platform and returned home. From there he sent a note which said. ”Gone back to Glasgow, you beat me in Birmingham.”

There are two possible morals to this story, one is that travel by air is better than by train since you can’t get out without a parachute, the other is that fear can easily be the opponent that defeats us long before we have actually confronted the real challenge. This can of course work to our advantage as well as disadvantage. If you can overcome your fear in a challenging situation then you may find yourself way ahead of any competition. If you were scared then there is a good chance that the competition will have been “beaten in Birmingham” leaving the way clear for you.

But how to deal with our fear and not let it overwhelm us? It isn’t easy but in Stav we have the five principles to work with. If it really isn’t your problem and there is no good reason to take the risk then leave it alone. This is the positive aspect of the Trel principle. Otherwise it is a matter or deciding if getting involved is in your personal interest (Karl), your duty in some way (Herse), or for the greater good (Jarl) or simply because you can and you would rather not live with yourself having not done so (Konge). The Konge mindset takes the attitude that the ‘coward dies a thousand deaths, but the brave man only once’ . I know this is easy to say, fear us a real experience and a most unpleasant one at that, without preparation it is overwhelming when it strikes and there are good physiological and psychological reasons for this which we need to be aware of.

I will be going into these in detail on day courses between now and the Summer Camp and during my Close Quarter Combat programme at the Summer Camp. When we understand fear it needn’t beat us in Birmingham and in fact we can use it to our own advantage with a bit of practice. I look forward to showing you how.