P.S. If you don’t listen to pop radio either, this song is currently number 1 in all pop charts everywhere.

Yes, 50 Shades of Grey is out, bringing BDSM practices – or at least conversations about them –  into the living rooms of North Americans, a second time in just a few short months.

If you live in Canada or within a radiowave distance of Canadian stations, you’ve heard of the Jian Ghomeshi, a former popular CBC host of a show Q, whose story and downfall broke out late in 2014. As of now, Jian is awaiting trial on a total of seven counts of sexual assault with a maximum possible sentence of life in prison. Ghomeshi claimed and is still insisting he practiced “consentual BDSM”.

That sounded immediately very iffy to me and to several BDSM bloggers who pointed out that BDSM submissives (subs) are usually very well aware that they are going to get hit, in fact, the preparation and discussion of boundaries goes on for a lot longer than for “vanilla” sex. The subs clarify when, where, how and for how long – and the dominant partner’s job is to play on the border, the boundary, balancing on the edge, never going over.

What had also come up in a public conversations that was just as interesting, is the law of consent to violence.  Apparently, “The Supreme Court has said that a person cannot consent to an assault that causes bodily harm. “ If the voluntary activity causes bodily damage, the person at fault can be charged!  The law was mostly meant to protect against “consensual” bar brawls, but has some far reaching consequences for the backyard martial arts groups. Basically, if you break your informal training partner’s leg, he is in construction, out of work for several months and he decided to press charges, the law is on his side.

How is your group dealing with this issue? What precautions you take while training in and out of the dojo?  Let us know in the comments!

P.S. And if you want to watch a good BDSM movie and not that pile of watery s*&^, try Secretary.

I am not so sure…

Here is the link to Ido Portal post about  this side effect of their training program.  

Opinions?

If you don’t know what Ido Portal is, it is highly successful fitness movement based in Israel. Check our blog post about them here. 

The medical professionals have a saying: “not dead until warm and dead”.

Anna Bagenholm

In Sweden in 1999 Anna Bagenholm spent 80 minutes under ice of a frozen waterfall where she was pulled under the ice during a skiing accident. Two rescue teams were called to the top of the mountain, the second one had to bring a pointed garden shovel to break through the ice.

She was taken to the hospital where her condition was described as “She has completely dilated pupils. She is ashen, flaxen white. She’s wet. She’s ice cold when I touch her skin, and she looks absolutely dead. ” Anna was then successfully warmed up and revived by a “ a team of more than a hundred doctors and nurses worked in shifts for nine hours to save her life” and contunied to live her life “with minor nerve damage to her hands and feet”

Lincoln Hall

In 2006 Australian climber  Lincoln Hall became sick and delusional during his Everest climb and was pronounced dead by the expedition leader and left on the mountain to allow his sherpas to descend safely. His family was notified of his death.

The next morning another team was on their way up. This is what they saw:

“Sitting to our left, about two feet from a 10,000 foot drop, was a man. Not dead, not sleeping, but sitting cross legged, in the process of changing his shirt. He had his down suit unzipped to the waist, his arms out of the sleeves, was wearing no hat, no gloves, no sunglasses, had no oxygen mask, regulator, ice axe, oxygen, no sleeping bag, no mattress, no food nor water bottle. ‘I imagine you’re surprised to see me here’, he said. Now, this was a moment of total disbelief to us all. Here was a gentleman, apparently lucid, who had spent the night without oxygen at 8600m, without proper equipment and barely clothed. And ALIVE.”

“Death is not as black and white as it seems,” Mr. Hall told an audience in Sacramento, Calif., in 2008. “In Tibetan Buddhism, death is interpreted as consciousness leaving your body in separate stages over a period of time. It’s different if you’re run over by a truck, but if you’re just dying, say, on Everest, there are stages of death. I ticked the first two of those eight stages, and for some reason that process reversed. So I think saying I died is probably more accurate than saying I didn’t.”

Donna Molnar

Donna Molnar, 55. Ontario found after laying several days in the snow, She went shopping for groceries in her vehicle, then became disoriented in a snowstorm and was found three days later with “..only her face and neckline exposed, and there was little snow underneath her.”.  Snow had acted as insulation until a police dog and it’s handler found her face sticking out from the snowbank. She asked where her purse was – that’s what I would say the first thing too See full story here.

Well, it looks like cold and dead is better than hot and dead! I say bring on the winter!

Jaroslav Flegr says that a single-celled parasite in the protozoan family was subtly manipulating his personality, causing him to behave in strange, often self-destructive ways. And if it was messing with his mind, he reasoned, it was probably doing the same to others.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/how-your-cat-is-making-you-crazy/308873/

Anyhow, I was laughing outloud throughout the whole series and I didn’t even get to “How to do an enema” video. If you have any muscular pain or chronic problems whatsoever, do yourself a favour and check this guy out. I particularly liked the knee issues and the elbow tendinitis videos.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVvBBhtiFPMuGDdqkdF4LhA

And here is a video for tennis elbow issue with the best hand drawn diagram ever

The first level - training, playfighting, martial art for a sake of beauty and pleasure. About the same category as ballet (boring), gymnastics (better) and badminton (fun).  This is most of the training that I have been receiving.

The second level –  restraint and control. That’s where I would like to spend most of my time, because that’s where these people are: the drunk guy in the same subway car,  a male date getting a little too friendly too soon, a neighbour next door having a domestic dispute that is getting rowdy. Most of my neighbours are sweet and tiny Phillipino people though, so I guess I can cross this one out. :). I am a smaller woman, so a stick  in my hand would come in much desired here and I would like to learn how to use it well!

The third level - self-defense – damage to the point of the attacker not being able to do much for some period of time. I would put a guy rudely asking for my wallet or taking off with my laptop in this one. See some fight stoppers here.

The fourth level - going for the kill. I sure pray to God to never ever come across someone who needs to be destroyed ASAP. The scenarios are too scary to even put here – your life or your child’s life against theirs.

I think the training for each of this intent levels should be taught on different days or may be even different months (or different years?) and equally, or at least make the student aware that you are only teaching on one or two planes. Then the women that show up for self-defense training don’t get bored playfighting and the people who want to stick their fingers in someone’s eyes will get a chance eventually too. Then when the situation arises, you hopefully will automatically move to that mode of functioning and use the tools that are appropriate – not too subtle, not too strong.

What do you think?

Ok, I’ve heard of the word, anyway!

Well, I have now felt Zen – literally, hands on.

Sushi has got to be one of the simplest things on Earth to make. It has two ingredients – rice and raw fish. Sometimes also seaweed. Right?

The Zen lesson went as follows:

1. Take a really deep breath.
2. Relax completely
3. Pour that glass of wine back into the bottle
4. Turn the background music off
5. Look at rice, nori sheets and slabs of raw fish and start to methodically and paying absolute attention make sushi. Let the rest of the world disappear.
6. Realize that the closer you get to perfect sushi, the further perfect sushi is going to move away from you. The alignment of grains of rice, the sloping angle of thin fish slices open their vortex of complexity to you. Decide (calmly) to follow perfect sushi to the infinity sign.
7. Catch Zen.

On the way…

I saw these in use by a Saskatoon Bujinkan group and they were really comfortable to practice on, easy to put away, and once you feel ready to roll on your hardwood floors at home, you can just take away one mat at the time :). These are great for your mobile outside practice too, to spread out on concrete etc.

At Home Depot or Rona, twelve bucks for 4, which will give you 16 sq ft rolling area and $25 worth will be plenty for one person anywhere.

Happy rolling!