Martial Art can be studied and appreciated in numerous ways. One can enjoy the art, the science, the competition, the self defense, or the realistic fighting. My own journey started with self defense having been attacked with a knife while walking home from school. The options were few commercially to study anywhere, so word of mouth was the way most people found a place to study.

It was 1965 so I ended up with a teacher at the university where my mom and dad taught. The focus then was tournament competition and doing demonstrations of various martial art stunts. Although my teachers changed I remained in the tournament aspect of Karate and Kung Fu and it was more about learning the game and influencing the judges back in the day. The reward was to be noticed and possibly become ranked in some of the circuits. Being quite busy with college, teaching high school, getting married and having a family, tournament competition was about my only involvement. I was then drawn away into a more isolated martial art group. It is the sort of group that gave most of its time to the head teacher who had great charisma and magic . He was very persuasive, but finally his antics drove me away. At this time I had students and wasn't sure what direction I would go.

By chance, or design, I met a teacher that loved philosophy and martial arts. His martial arts was all about energy and deciding what would be the best way to fight in a realistic situation. That was light years away from where I was. I had a great love for learning new things and I was starting to understand my weaknesses so this was an ideal situation for me. Since outside of martial arts I had a world view related to following Jesus Christ, I was use to a philosophy which defined the priorities clearly and had a purpose and mission for life. So as I was now studying martial arts seriously from a person who was very steadfast in his purpose and goal in the martial art, I started to see the harmony between the two areas ... my marital art study and my entire world view.

One of the lures for many in studying martial arts is the pursuit of rank and being recognized and respected. Early on rank was very important to me and as I got older this importance began to reduce. We all have seen the no rank or low rank person defeat a higher level or "Black Belt" instructor. Of course, this gives everyone pause to realize that the rank really doesn't say what a lot of people think it says.

After several years of studying realistic combat and after my teacher passed, the UFC Ultimate Fighting Show came to the martial art world. The UFC was interesting as people could go hard and we could see how practitioners in great shape with many assets could do this competition and it would satisfy the imagination much more than the old tournaments did with all their rules. Then after a while the UFC also became a competition with countless rules and with the environment being favorable to grapplers. Evolution pretty much saw all fighters learning to both strike and grapple in order to compete. At the same time, there were so many techniques you were not allowed to use.

So the journey and philosophy was coming into view. Since competition have to have safety aspects one is directed in training to do those things that fit a rule situation. This is not to say that various competitions cannot help one learn to fight. It means that it still would not be the same with no rules. So now the challenge became to find ways to train that would create habits and instincts toward no rules realistic fighting without getting injured. Some may say that this cannot be done but I think it can. It does need people who understand realistic fighting and people who are creative in finding ways to train toward this end.

Philosophy literally means the "love of wisdom". Wisdom is the correct use of knowledge. The martial art has been a most interesting topic that for me, turned into a job I could make a living in teaching. While the martial art is not my "way of life" like many say when study and teach, one's purpose and meaning of life can be lived through many occupations. One can find many parallels in one's world view and the chosen occupation. Martial art is rich in parallels and illustrations. In both areas there is a striving for truth. This is learned through experience and having the right template or standard to strive toward.