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A Pandemic, A Pond, and Perseverance

In a recent post by Dai Shihan Mark Roemke, he told the story of going to the island of St. Croix for five days of testing survival skills. He ended that post with this nugget of wisdom...

"It’s good to sometimes be uncomfortable in situations that you might not think you could ever endure."

This statement made me think of the local twenty-six acre pond in my neighborhood.

But before I proceed further, first...The Dunker’s Disclaimer

Most written material you encounter about swimming in cold water comes with big disclaimers, in big red bold font, advising of the hazards if you are not careful. I have been teaching wild edible plant classes for years. Likewise, most edible plant books come with similar disclaimers saying to read the material, but don’t go out there and eat wild plants willy nilly. These cautions considered, there is something worth claiming in these experiences. Within the content is an invitation for a life-enhancing experience, but only if you proceed safely, do your research diligently, share your experience with a buddy, and possibly with consultation of a physician. My friend Duncan in the story below happens to work in the healthcare profession, so I had a slight advantage. I consider myself a strong swimmer, so add one more advantage.

So, enjoy the story for what it is, a story and not a how-to guide. But if you want a swim buddy...I’m easy to find.

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Since I was five years old, I've been a creature of the water. Competitive swimming was my life from this young age through college. After college, I "retired" to surfing when I moved to Hawaii and then California. I have stayed wet whenever possible over much of my life. I’m lucky to have lived in South Kona, Hawaii where I could snorkel daily with green sea turtles and swim at night with manta rays and bioluminescence. I've swum through rapids of the Grand Canyon and dunked at the base of pure spring desert waterfalls where you could drink the water while submerged. In Alaska I swam in cold rivers sourced from glacial melt (I didn't last long in those cold waters).

None of these experiences however, could compare to the connection I've had with our local pond over the past twelve months. The onset of Covid over a year ago resulted in the local indoor swimming pool shutting down. Little did I realize that this would change my life and more specifically my relation to water.

70's Fahrenheit— In early June last year, my friend Duncan called me on the phone. "Ken, I'd like to work on my crawl stroke. Since you used to coach swimming, could you give me some pointers?" Duncan showed up the next morning, and we started swimming across the pond. I gave him some pointers. The water was a comfortable temperature, in the mid-seventies. We started swimming three times a week at 7 am. Dawn patrol fishermen dotted the shore, and occasional morning swimmers roamed the periphery. After two and a half years living by the pond, I hadn't "trained" by doing long distance swimming in these waters. I usually ventured down daily to romp in the pond with family and friends. For some reason I had been in a rut. I believed the indoor pool was for "training" and outdoors was for fun and play. That was about to change.

The water was relatively clear and warm. Being a faster swimmer, I swam ahead of Duncan and then floated on my back to watch ospreys, hawks, kingfishers or eagles while he caught up. I was starting to like this routine.

80's— As late summer approached, the water warmed. Occasionally you could see a thin film along the surface. Pollen or algae? Hard to tell. The temperature was warm enough to heat my core and face to an almost uncomfortable level during peak exertion. Duncan was getting faster. He had outfitted himself with fins, and we now kept a similar pace. He started arriving with printed Google maps showing the distance we had covered previously, and a route we could take from beach to beach to fence and back that equaled a mile. The sunfish roamed the shore’s edge and would nibble our toes if we lingered near too long in the calf-deep water of the pond’s edge. My favorite mornings were swimming through a low layer of warm mist in the rain.

70's— As summer drew to a close, the swimming crowds thinned in the morning as virtual or hybrid schooling kicked in due to the pandemic. Duncan continued to arrive at my house on his bike by 7 am three times a week. It was nice feeling the shift back to a more comfortable water temperature. We could swim a little harder without overheating. The die hard morning swimmers still arrived, and you could see their brightly colored floats trailing behind them as they traversed the pond. The early fall bird migrations were beginning. When I did backstroke, I watched geese fly over in "V" formation, while I oriented myself to the cardinal directions. "Let's see, which way is north?" I would think. Some flocks were already beginning their southward journeys.

60's— I remember thinking at the pond one morning..."Where did all the swimmers go?"  Getting in the water in the morning was starting to feel a bit jolting to my body. When I surfed in California, the ocean water was usually between 55-60 degrees Fahrenheit year round. During the early New England fall, the kids and I had continued surfing in New Hampshire, Boston, and Rhode Island. We had been tracking the local ocean temperature at those locations. The pond temperature felt like it was in the same range. Being curious as to the daily pond temperature, I went to the local hardware store and bought a cheap thermometer. It confirmed that the temperature was in the 60’s. The morning swims felt so refreshing. The hot cup of coffee upon returning home after swims tasted better as I hugged it to my chest for warmth.

50's— "That's it. I'm done. Too cold!" said Duncan one morning after making it to the first dock buoy then quickly retreating to the shore. Now what? I went online that day and found a used cold water triathlon wetsuit. The online ads all had the same description— "Used twice to train, then once for the race." It showed up in the mail two days later. I was back in the water feeling super floaty and warm in my new suit. This is awesome, I thought— now I can swim through winter! Maybe. There was the complication of ice. Try as I might, I couldn't convince Duncan to get a wetsuit to join me. So, I borrowed my wife's pink flotation buoy for my safety comfort companion and I kept going. I was expecting the water clarity to improve, but the opposite happened. The water became cloudy. There were days when the multi-colored fall leaves sank below the surface creating a mosaic of oak, pine and maple leaves in suspension as they slowly descended to the bottom. It was beautiful to swim through.

40's— I kept swimming several times a week in my wetsuit. And then I saw the documentary My Octopus Teacher. In the movie, Craig Foster mentioned that he swam everyday for a year in the South African coastal waters. He said the water was around 5 degrees Celsius year round. I was a big fan of his work and had seen all of his previous documentaries. I pulled up the conversion table. 5 Celsius = 41 Fahrenheit. Craig swam in the movie with only a mask, snorkel, fins, a neoprene hoodie, and shorts. The previous winter I had taken a Wim Hof cold training course and had spent 15 minutes up to my neck in the water on the edge of the pond on a sunny January morning. My January dunk the previous winter was a glimpse into this cold water experience.

I froze the frame on the documentary so I could see the brand of neoprene hoodie that Craig wore. I placed my order. A few days later, I put my wetsuit back in the storage box and stood on the edge of the pond in my swim shorts, a new 5 mm thick hoodie, and a pink buoy belt around my waist. I looked kinda goofy, but I didn’t care. There was no one around anyway. The temperature had just dropped recently to 49 Fahrenheit. I dove in.The shock was immediate, but with a warm brain and no "ice cream headaches," I swam. I could feel a shift in my core. My muscles in my arms tightened and felt a bit numb. My pace slowed. I only swam for about five minutes. When I emerged on the shore my legs, arms, and torso were pink, but I felt so good. I'm pretty sure this feeling could be attributed to the endorphin rush that accompanies cold water immersion. The few remaining fall fishermen I encountered in the weeks that followed would occasionally make funny comments when I swam by their boats. But I kept swimming. I was hooked.

30's — Occasionally I coerced my daughter Phoebe to be my "copilot" and accompany me on my swims. She homeschools, and at the time was taking a class across the pond at a local teacher's house. I'd swim with her to class while she paddled the kayak. After dropping her off, I tied a strap around my waist and pulled the kayak back. Later in the afternoon I would reverse the process.

The first day it snowed while I was swimming in the pond, Phoebe joined me, paddling the kayak. She wore her favorite rainbow colored snow jacket. The water was warmer than the air, so it actually felt more comfortable to be in the water than standing on shore in the snow. Some winter days though, when the wind blew, and the snow was on the ground, it was really hard to get out of the water (or into the water). One windy winter day my fingers were so cold that I couldn't get my socks on when I emerged. Attempting to insert a wet foot into a fuzzy snow boot resulted in a wardrobe malfunction, and I had to hobble home trying to push my skateboard while wearing floppy boots. It didn't work well.

Freeze-Up— When the ice first appeared, for a limited time I could break through the thin layer and make a short channel for swimming if I wore my neoprene gloves to keep the ice from cutting my hands. I started researching the effects of cold on the body, so I could understand more about what was happening to my brain and body. I learned about the safety precautions and the benefits to my immune system, brown fat, and mental well being. I joined several cold water swim forums and learned tips to be safe. I never ventured far from shore. I only swam for the recommended time based on the water temperature. As the pond approached the freezing point, the feeling of swimming in water in the 30's was intense and edgy. I would only swim for a couple minutes before retreating to my towel.

Eventually the thick ice came, and the swimming halted. I read Norwegian ice swimming forums where they debated the best chainsaw or axe for cutting holes through thick ice. I missed the routine and the feeling of my weekly swims. I looked for a few windows, when I wouldn't disturb the ice fishing or skaters. I cut a small hole a few times in the thick ice with my maul, just big enough for a shallow stationary dunk.

Break-Up— As spring approached, the ice began to thaw around the edges and I resumed short dunks and then longer forays. One day as the ice retreated, I donned my wetsuit, hoodie, and gloves and called on my kayak copilot. Being someone who studies "survival" skills, I wanted to have a gauge for how thin ice needed to be to fall through, and what it would feel like to break through thin ice. With Phoebe as my backup, I swam to the edge of the remaining ice sheet and scrambled onto the ice. I jumped up and down until it cracked and I fell through. I did this repeatedly and practiced scrambling out onto thin ice after falling through. I appreciated my wetsuit and my copilot. I learned a lot that day about ice dynamics and how to practice pulling myself out should I ever need the skill. I had so much fun that a few days later I tried it again, but the warming conditions had changed so rapidly that I could no longer scramble onto the ice. Instead, it broke under my arms as I swam. I’d have to wait until next winter to try again.

40's— I remember one day years ago, after surfing the winter Santa Cruz waves, when I had an extremely difficult time getting my car key into the lock because my hands were shaking so violently. This past  winter, after I walked home from swimming in the cold water of the pond, when I reached my driveway, the cold core shivers would begin. I did some research.

"After drop", also known as peripheral vasoconstriction, is what happens after you leave cold water. When your body is exposed to cold, it cleverly closes down the circulation in your limbs in order to keep the core and its vital organs warm. When you get out of the water and put warm clothes on, the body reverses the process. The warm circulation returns to the limbs, but this time the cold blood of the limbs returns to the core body and your core temperature will actually drop. So you start shivering. I'd make my coffee with shivering hands and then sit on a couch wrapped in a wool blanket until the shivering subsided while I read a book.

Soon, flocks of migratory merganser ducks arrived. They would spend parts of their days resting on the shrinking patch of floating pond ice. Within a week of their arrival, their icy resting spot disappeared. I slowly started venturing further from shore as the days grew longer and my arms could tolerate warmer water.

50's — The swallows arrived as the water temperature warmed. The dawn chorus of the local birds was finished by the time I arrived for morning spring swims. I started calling Duncan again. I coerced him to try my wetsuit. He reluctantly showed up one morning, borrowed my suit and joined me once again. He soon bought a matching neoprene hoodie. It was good to have a swim buddy again. The water was the clearest it had been all year. It was amazing to swim over the deepest holes of the kettle pond and see the bottom. The bald eagle and the osprey returned, as did the fishermen. The bass started reappearing in small groups from the depths. The clear water wouldn’t last long. With the spring bloom, the pollen soon clouded the water followed by cottonwood fluff on the surface. By 7:15 when we'd hit the water, the sun was well above the trees. I sneezed often from the pollen on the walk home.

60’s— As I write, the after drops are diminishing and all but gone. Parts of the surface water on the south facing shore are hitting the 60’s. Duncan purchased his own second-hand wetsuit, "Used twice to train, then once for the race,” so I’ll hopefully have a swimming buddy as fall returns next time with its chill. The water has warmed past the “brain freeze point.” Tomorrow morning I'll ditch the hoodie. As Duncan and I continue swimming the pond perimeter, we have come full circle in the seasons of the pond. As summer approaches, I am melancholy for the slowly fading cold water.

The temperature cycle is a personality of the pond that will depart but return, as it has for millennia. I’ll continue returning too, but these cycles of the pond will far outlast my human form. Still, for my short time here, I am changed by its waters. I am so grateful for this pond and what it has taught me this past year. While the pandemic raged and worry abounded, I have been able to find windows of hope in the chilly waters. I called my dunks my "sanity swims" even though some people shook their heads and called me crazy. I get stuck in my mind more than I would like. I fret about the past and worry about the future. At times the pandemic amplified this. While some days I was hesitant to venture into the cold water, I welcomed each opportunity to swim, because the pond gifted me moments to truly be present.

It's really hard to describe the sensation of the deep cold swims. The moment I plunged into the cold water, my lungs reflexively gasped, but then, after the first initial strokes, I was just there. Sometimes it was a detached feeling, as if I were an observer watching my arms move through the air and water. Other times I was lost in the experience, as I gazed at the patterns of rocks, stumps, leaves, and fish below me. My favorite moments happened at the end of the swims, when I rolled over, grabbed my buoy and just floated— I lost the boundary between my form and the water, watched the clouds drift, felt my heartbeat in my chest, and was glad to be alive for another day.

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Nin means "to persevere." We'll let you in on a big secret for how to persevere in nature. It's called a sit spot. This is a place that you visit to observe the natural landscape as many times weekly as possible. I once trained at a Wilderness First Responder course. In this intensive training, the instructor made a side comment that stuck with me. She said that people who spend regular time outdoors visiting nature statistically have a better chance for surviving a wilderness survival situation.

Why? It's all about attitude.

People who adopt a sit spot and visit the location repeatedly, year-round, rain or shine, wind or snow, become comfortable being uncomfortable in nature. They also learn to be present in nature, which helps shift your attitude when faced with challenges. Finding a sit spot that you can visit year round is a doorway to developing a present mindset. I've spent a couple decades, from Alaska, to Hawaii, to California, and now to New England visiting and keeping journals of my local sit spots. My year round pond experience was an extension of my backdoor sit spot.

Remember, the most important thing about a sit spot is that it needs to be convenient, otherwise you will never make it there.

What do you do when you get there? Turn off your phone. Observe. "Lose your mind and find your senses," as some say. Ask questions. Breathe. Connect. Tune in to the birds. Just be. If you really want to take a deep sit spot dive, check out our interview with Josh Lane. He's a sit spot Jedi.

Check out the video below where we introduce some perspectives on finding a sit spot.

 

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Sensei’s Island Survival Story

I once asked the Grandmaster of ninjutsu, Hatsumi Sensei, "When do we learn the survival techniques like building survival shelters, making fire, fishing line and cordage, trapping animals, hunting and other survival skills?"

He told me that he was never taught those by his teacher, Takamatsu Sensei. He said that he primarily taught the skills pertaining to being on the mats and doing the waza in the scrolls. He said that the survival skills I was seeking were being done by many really good people on the planet, and that I should find those teachers.

My searching led me to a world renowned survival instructor who actually lived in the same town as me. His name is Tom McElroy. We interviewed Tom in a recent post. If you haven’t read it, his stories have some real gems of wisdom. He’s been all over the planet seeking the ways to survive from the landscape around him.

When Tom taught a survival skills workshop for Pathways Dojo, he mentioned that he had an opening on an island trip where they were going to learn how to survive in a warm tropical island setting on the island of St. Croix. He invited me to go. I jumped at the opportunity.

A few months later I flew to St. Croix. The first thing that hits you when you step off the plane is the heat and the humidity.

It was really amazing. I learned so many new skills. The survival part of the trip was really challenging, but what I really enjoyed most was the pre-survival trip training session where we learned and practiced skills for several days before heading into "survival mode" for five days.

We focused on learning the local plants on the island. Our days were packed with intensive training that lasted all day- from  morning until we went to bed at night. What was really cool was that we learned all of the native species of trees, the wild animals that lived on the island, and how to identify the local hazards.

There were all sorts of stinging and biting creatures that you needed to be aware of. We also learned safety protocols for what to do if somebody was hurt, such as how to treat a broken arm.

When our front-end training was complete, the day arrived for us to head out on the actual survival trip.

We climbed into trucks and drove a long way down a remote island road. The pavement turned into a dirt road. The dirt road turned into a rough trail of bushes and grass. Eventually we left the trucks and headed out on foot with our backpacks. In our packs we brought a few of the handmade items from our previous class. These included items such as cordage made from snake grass, and calabash bowls for eating. What we didn’t bring was food.

Full disclaimer…I love my morning coffee, and I’m what you’d call a “foodie,” so I knew this was going to be a challenge.

We spent the first day hiking to our base camp location. The first thing we did as a group was to set up a large group shelter. We cut grass and made thatching for the roof of the shelter, which when finished would sleep the ten of us participating in this training. Then we prepped an area out for a central cooking fire. For food that day we caught fish and gathered local plants. I was exhausted by the end of the first day. I crashed and immediately went to sleep that first night.

There were so many cool adventures that happened in the days that followed. What happens on a survival trip is that you go back to basics where every day you get up and you think about getting enough water and food. As the days pass.. day four, day five, day six… you realize how you are hungry all the time and how hard it is to find enough food. This is especially challenging when you're with many people and need to feed everybody.

On that trip, I lost about 35 pounds. On our last day we had to hike uphill out of the valley where we had our camp, and then five miles to the cars. I was exhausted on our hike back to the road. It felt like a rite of passage. It was tough. It wasn’t comfortable. Still it was an amazing experience.

That experience taught me that as a human being, we have an innate drive for survival, like wild animals do. I realized that I could connect with this feeling. I learned that when you need to access this part of yourself, you can tap into it in order to survive. It’s a true feeling of perseverance, the meaning of “nin” of ninja.

There’s much more to this story, which I will share in future posts. I hope this story helps inspire people to go into nature and push yourself occasionally. It’s good to sometimes be uncomfortable in situations that you might not think you could ever endure.

Give it a try. I guarantee you’ll have an amazing experience.

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Fire is an essential skill when in a survival situation. You need it for purifying water, cooking food, heat, light, tool making, and more. Odds are you wouldn't survive long without fire. As Sensei Roemke mentioned above, it was one of the first things they focused on when they made their survival camp.

If you have downloaded our FREE Fire Skills videos, we have a bonus fire training below for you. It's one thing to make a bow drill kit. It's a whole different skill to learn how to use it correctly in order to get a fire. There's a lot to body positioning, angling, distancing, and timing.

Sounds kinda like a familiar martial arts style that we study. Hmmmmm....

In the video below we break down some helpful techniques for using a bow drill. Get these skills down, and you'll soon be cooking your own tasty survival island meal.

This video is Part 2 of a series on tips for making fire with a bow drill. To see Part 1, check out the Tom McElroy post.

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Hanbo Drills

Hi, this is Mark Roemke with Ninja Training TV, Pathways Dojo, and Ninjas in Nature with another blog for you. This blog is about hanbo striking drills. This training video below was filmed at our beautiful training spot in the redwoods of Santa Cruz, California. In the video we are gathered at our central fire pit area that we made in the forest where we practice our fire by friction and other survival skills.

On this day we had just finished making our own hanbos from wood gathered in this forest. There is a lot of tan oak that is competing for sunlight in this area, which creates strong growth rings. It's also an area where sudden oak death is hitting a lot of the tan oaks, so these two elements combined offered us an opportunity to "tend the wild" by selecting small trees that were effected by sudden oak death and to help open up the forest for other trees to grow bigger.

After we gathered the wood, we carved them with knives then fire-hardened them. The hanbo is the "half staff" in ninjutsu. There are lots of objects that can serve as a hanbo. You are basically looking for a three foot piece of wood or a length that measures hip height.

This video shows a lot of basic strikes, but also show angling, distancing, and timing. These drills are best for you to figure out on your own how they work. You can do these drills with or without a partner. Make sure you have plenty of room for swinging your hanbo. First start in shizen, or "natural" stance. Practice falling off in all sorts of different directions when doing these strikes. Practice "cane stance" or munen muso, much like you are walking with a cane. The second stance is called kata yaburi where you hold the hanbo with two hands horizontally in front of you. In the third stance called otonashi, you hold the hanbo behind you with both hands horizontally.

In this video you will see a variety of drills to flow through to practice these stances and angling, distancing, and timing. I hope you enjoy this video because it will give you a lot of drills to practice. If you can, take your training outside. You can practice striking dead branches and trees and moving over uneven terrain with these drills.

Enjoy!

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How Hicho Kaiten Saved My Life

Today's blog is about a roll called hicho kaiten, the "flying bird" roll. This roll is from Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu, or ninjutsu, the "art of the ninja". This particular roll is an amazing roll. It has saved my life on multiple occasions and has prevented me from getting broken bones or worse. Here is a true story of how hicho kaiten saved my life.

I was on my motorcycle, driving at about thirty miles per hour down a street. A woman pulled her car out right in front of me. She didn't see me so I tried to swerve around her at the last instant, but I ultimately hit her. As I realized that I was about to impact her car, I leapt up at the last second as my motorcycle hit the car, launching me about fifteen to twenty feet in the air. I went into a hicho kaiten dive roll as I came back to the ground. I was wearing a helmet and full leather riding gear, so those saved my skin.

I stood up and walked over to the lady's door and said, "excuse me ma'am, but you just hit me." This roll literally saved my life. I was able to walk away from that accident more or less unscathed thanks to this roll.

One of the things that I tell my students all the time is that the elements of ninjutsu that will save your life just might be the practical, "basic" skills, like how to roll and fall properly. People fall and have accidents all the time in everyday life, but not everyone gets into a fight or self defense situation, unless you are a police officer, in the military, or are a bouncer.

This roll has also saved me more than once when I have gone mountain biking. I love to do some extreme mountain biking here in Santa Cruz. More than once I have gone over my handlebars, and guess what saved me? Hicho kaiten.

Check out the video below on how to do hicho kaiten. You can practice it on mats, wood floors, cement, rocks, lawns, or out in a forest...anywhere. Once you learn how to safely do this roll it just might help prevent serious injury or possibly save your life one day.

We have much more about hicho kaiten in our white to black belt series at ninjatrainingtv.com for adults or a full white to black belt series for youth at ninjasinjature.wpengine.com.

Keep training!
Sensei Roemke

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How Nature Can Develop Intuition

 
 
Most practitioners of ninjutsu who are part of the Bujinkan are familiar with the 5th Dan test. Students from around the globe travel to the Bujinkan honbu dojo (home dojo) in Nodashi, Japan to take this test. For this level of progression, a would-be 5th Dan sits with their back to a Dai Shihan or Soke (grandmaster) who is holding a training sword above their head. This test consists of one challenge. To pass, the student must sense the exact moment when the sword is coming down at their head and must instantly roll out of the way.
While Hollywood goes to great lengths to dazzle us with feats of "spidey senses" or instinctive reactions (think horror films when the victim has a bad "feeling in their gut"), little attention in our modern world is paid toward actually training the human instinct or intuition.
Nature is full of instinctual moments. If you take the time to watch the little birds in your backyard, you'll soon observe such moments. Every day is a life or death situation for the birds. Something is always lurking, waiting to make a meal of these feathered creatures, be it a furry, stalking ground predator, a silent explosive hawk with dagger-like talons, or an owl that might silently snatch them from their perch while sleeping. As a result, the birds, and all other prey animals for that matter, have their sensory knobs turned up to eleven everyday. If they didn't live in a constant level of heightened vigilance, they would be toast.
While it's relatively easy to observe these daily occurrences in the natural world, how do you actually learn to develop skills of intuition and instinct? Where do you find someone who specializes in this type of training?
Fortunately, we found one such teacher. His name is Josh Lane. He is the author of the award winning new book Conscious Nature. Josh is a wildlife tracker, deep nature connection coach, qi gong practitioner, and musician. When he lived in Santa Cruz, California, he was also a student of Dai Shihan Mark Roemke. Thus, he has an inside ninja perspective on the connection between the art of ninjutsu and training sensory awareness to hone intuition. Josh talks about the baseline feel of nature and how tuning in to this can help hone your intuition. In a recent post interview with Dan Gardoqui, he also discusses this baseline and how he uses this to decode nature's secrets. Be sure to check that one out as well.
In the interview below, Josh talks about a technique of slowing down and tuning in to your senses in nature in order to sharpen your intuitive skills. We have a fun training video on this at the bottom called "body radar."
We had a gut feeling that we should check in with Josh, so we decided to pick his intuitive brain recently.
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Pathways: How can you use nature to increase your intuition?

Josh: When you immerse yourselves in the patterns of the natural world, your brain state effortlessly begins to shift into what's known as the alpha brain rhythm. This is a slightly slower rhythm of activity in the brain than what we use when we're doing day to day thinking or working on problem solving. For example, when your brain focuses on doing math, it is in a beta level brain pattern. In alpha, you turn on your holistic pattern detection, where your senses become more attuned. You relax and get into the present moment. This is a state commonly associated with meditation. It's interesting that immersion in nature brings us into this state of consciousness. Researchers call alpha waves the "windshield wipers of the mind" because they help reset the neural network and refresh our attention.

How do you attain this? The first step is simply to take some time to be in the moment. Let go of your agenda. Let go of the things you were dealing with earlier in your day. Give yourself ten to fifteen minutes to just be present and settle into where you are. Focus on how you are feeling and how the landscape around you feels.

A key point is that there's a feeling of the landscape. Different places have different feelings. This is really evident if you go to a beach where you feel the wind on your face, you hear the sound of the surf, and you feel the texture of the warm sand under your feet. It's a very relaxing feeling. Compare this with climbing a steep rock scramble of a cliff face. This is a very energizing feeling that brings you into the moment in a very different way. Contrast this with the feeling of busy activity around you when you're walking through a crowded urban environment. This landscape has a very different feeling from a quiet place in nature.

There's a different feeling around you in the forest when the animals are going about their usual business feeding, foraging, resting, singing, or working on their nests. That's what we  call a harmonious feeling or baseline versus when a predator is on the move. When a predator is nearby, the birds become alarmed. This creates an agitated sensation amongst the animals. By becoming present, you open up the possibility to tune into the feeling of a place and to the feeling of what's going on around you. This helps you awaken intuition because we have to be present in the first place to tap into it.

However, intuition can often be overlooked through overthinking. You start to learn all the textures, the nuances of feeling that come through our intuition, and through our instinct when you are fully present. When you're out in nature, you may get that feeling of disturbance, such as when you hear birds being upset. You may see them then move from the ground to the tree canopy. If you're wondering what's causing that alarm, you might get a flash in your mind of a hawk. That could be your intuition communicating something to you about what's going on. But if you weren't present, you would have missed the alarms and the feeling that they produced. You probably would have even missed the flash in the mind's eye of that hawk.

When you have intuitive moments like that, it gives you an opportunity to go investigate them in nature. If you do this follow-up, you start to learn that those instincts, those feelings, those intuitions, can be telling you things.  Everyone is different in the way their intuition communicates to them. Maybe you get a feeling or an image. Perhaps you even get a sound or a song. Sometimes when tracking deer, I'll get a particular song coming through in my mind that for me is connected to the deer. When that happens, I pay attention to it. I might look down at that moment when I hear the song and see a fresh deer trail in front of me.

You have to learn how intuition speaks to you personally because it can communicate in different ways for different people. The key here is that nature starts to open us to the moment. Through all those textures and patterns, it enriches our capacity to sense on any level. The key point is to sense. Be with nature. Notice what comes up. As these patterns emerge, follow up on them, and see what they have to tell you. This is how you build your intuitive vocabulary.

Pathway: What's the difference between intuition and instinct?

Josh: Oftentimes these get blurred together. I even see this in modern consciousness research where researchers are confounding these two things. I think of instinct as the body's memory. You could say this is inherited through adaptation. Countless generations have survived by training the body to respond to external cues in order to survive. That information can be encoded on an epigenetic level. This is what Rupert Sheldrake calls the morphogenetic field. You also see this idea in traditional Chinese medicine. It is an energetic aspect that informs the body through acupuncture meridians. The idea is this— the body is informed by the information contained in an energetic field. With each generation, there's an encoding that builds up a database of action and reaction for how to survive. Some of these patterns go dormant when they're not needed. Sometimes they activate again. When you have an instinctual experience, you can think of it as the voice of the ancestors communicating through genetic or energetic encoding. This helps us to survive and thrive. Instinct can speak through a "gut feeling" that we're all familiar with. However, it might speak in other ways.

Sometimes instinct can be confused with intuition. With instinct, I think of it this way— what is it that my senses or past experience have access to right now? You might experience a mind's eye flash that alerts you to danger from the part of our brain and sensory system that's always detecting danger. It says, "Hey, the birds have actually stopped singing right now!" You get a flash in your mind's eye of a Cooper's Hawk. This is where the line can get blurry between intuition and instinct. Instinct can communicate danger, but so can intuition. I think of instinct as being based on our past ancestral experience combined with our own life experiences.  This combination makes a deduction based on the information that's coming through on an unconscious level.

If I get a mind's eye flash that is a sense of knowing or feeling with no context for how I know this information, then that is intuition. I might get a flash of information about something far away from me physically. Perhaps it is something I perceive will occur in the future. That's intuition. That's when you're entering what quantum physicists call the "non-local realm." This occurs when you're accessing information that is not local to where your physical body is now. You're bordering on what we might call the spiritual realm. To me this is where intuition really shines through. This is the voice of that part of ourselves that connects to that non-local realm— the larger field of information that we are all part of. It's where you see that oneness of nature coming through in everything. We are all interconnected in some mysterious way to this. When we get into that quiet mind in nature, it starts to connect you to this larger field of life.

Pathways: If someone is new to spending time in nature, what is a good way to start training your intuition?

Josh: I often suggest that people should begin by walking very slowly. Try slowing down to a third or quarter of your usual speed. Feel each footstep. Be fully in your senses. Notice how you are feeling physically and emotionally. Tend to your physical needs first. This will allow you to be more fully present. Are you feeling open and receptive to nature? How do you feel internally? Once you are present, expand your senses outward. Notice what's going on with the birds and the wind. Notice the scent of the air. Open each of your senses fully. I go deep into this in my book, Conscious Nature. I teach the four stages of meditating outdoors. Each stage is designed to help tap into your intuition. As you get into your senses, start to notice if things arise on the screen of your mind's eye. As your senses notice things, do you get a flash of anything in your mind's eye or a sense of knowing? It could even be a gut feeling that there might be something interesting to check out in a particular direction. Some people call this "body radar." Follow up on your intuition. Explore nature and see what you discover. This is how you build trust and capacity with intuition because intuition is a sense. The more you work with it, the more it comes to life. This is what I teach in my course Exploring Intuition in Nature. It only takes ten to fifteen minutes a day to make a difference and to start developing your intuition.

Pathways: Why would someone studying the art of ninjutsu want to learn these skills?

Josh: Ninjutsu and nature really flow together as an expression of being in the moment. Being present is a prerequisite for the practice of developing intuition. Whether you're on the mat, in a real life conflict situation, or in the woods, cultivating presence through the senses is going to give you an advantage. This skill informs you of  what is actually happening in a situation. This opens the door towards greater sensitivity through attunement. Attunement means that you are able to adjust and detect changes in the moment and shift accordingly. Sometimes receiving intuition is about what's going to happen next.

The dojo and nature go hand in hand. Going into nature is an extension of the training that you do in the dojo. Nature becomes the dojo. Nature teaches you to be present in the moment and to attune. The more that you practice this in nature, the more it improves your awareness when inside in the dojo.  This training is a good expression of "nin" or perseverance. To persevere is to invite yourself into the present moment again and again, instead of getting lost in thoughts and concerns or worrying about the past or future. Ask yourself- what is the opportunity and gift of the moment?

Pathways: Anything else you'd like to share with us?

Josh: If you found this useful, I definitely would invite you to check out my book Conscious Nature and also check out my course Exploring Intuition and Nature. These resources are designed to build a framework for cultivating intuition.  I teach you how to access some very deep, intuitive meditation states. These states of being connect your conscious mind to your unconscious mind using the wisdom of the body  and the field of information to be found in nature. These teachings are built step-by-step so that you can build these skills into your daily practice. These practices are skills you can do both indoors and outdoors, wherever you are, to cultivate your intuition. Calm waters reflect the image of the landscape. As you step deeper into the quiet mind, you find that still place inside of yourself where you begin to reflect that which is around you. If you find that place of quiet inside yourself, you will find a doorway to your intuition.

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As Josh describes above, intentionally slowing down in nature while tuning in to all of your senses is a great way to become present in the moment and thus start training your intuition. Check out the video below from our Ninjas in Nature Program that describes a technique called "body radar". One thing we hear in the dojo often from Dai Shihan Mark Roemke is that "Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast." This is a great way to learn how to embody this concept.

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The Freedom of Natural Movement

In our recent blog post interview with survival skills expert Tom McElroy, he talked about a specific type of freedom that he connects to through survival skills. In this post we connect with natural movement coach Kyle Koch who talks about another freedom to be found through movement in nature.

If you happen to wander the snowy forests of northern Minnesota on a subzero winter day, you might get a glimpse of a creature bounding through the forest on all fours, dive rolling over logs, and quickly scaling the highest trees. Chances are this is not a Yeti, but instead a person named Kyle Koch who is honing his unique art. Kyle is a former IT software technician turned practitioner and coach of Natural Movement.  Kyle has been facilitating transformative experiences in nature for almost a decade: inspiring youth and adults to connect to their gifts through exploration, play, and curiosity through movement outdoors. Kyle is always expanding his practice through the study and application of functional neurology concepts, traditional strength training, martial arts (Systema), meditation and breathing (Wim Hof Method).

We caught up with Kyle recently (after he came down from the treetops) to learn more about his art.

Pathways: Can you tell us a little about your history/background and what it was that led you to this form of Natural Movement training?

Kyle: I grew up on the outskirts of Milwaukee Wisconsin. When I was younger I was interested in rough housing and physical arts. Later, after becoming an IT technician I realized that all of my personal skills depended upon equipment. I relied solely on technology to express my skills. My life was changed when I took a survival course where they taught us how to make shelter, fire, and how to move in nature. I remember making my first bow drill fire at that course. At that moment I realized my greater potential. I realized I was capable of so much with so little. Then I studied and eventually became an instructor at Wilderness Awareness School in Washington State. After years of sitting at a desk as an IT professional, my experience in the wilderness taught me that nature allowed me to express myself physically in the way that I wanted to be. I’ve been teaching since then. Now I facilitate transformative experiences in nature centered around movement and play.

Pathways: You call your art “Natural Movement.” How do you describe it?

Kyle: I describe it as moving from a place of joy instead of a place of fear. I believe a lot of our movements are dictated by conscious or unconscious fears. Social fears in particular are one of the biggest limits to people's movement on a daily basis.

Pathways: In some of your videos you give the disclaimer that what you teach is not about losing weight or building a specific physique, although becoming fit is a likely side effect of natural movement. Can you explain?

Kyle: I consider fitness as a side effect. If you have a good nutritious diet, healthy social relationships, and a movement rich lifestyle, then looking and feeling good is a natural side effect. However the flip side isn't always true. If you just focus on looking good, it doesn't mean you eat well, have a healthy social life, or a movement rich lifestyle.

Pathways: What are the benefits of the natural movement techniques that you teach?

Kyle: My goal is to help people move towards freedom. By freedom I mean the ability to make choices. Your ability to move can dictate the choices you have. If you don’t use it, you lose it. In our modern world most people do most of their movement at a table. With the kids that I work with, I notice that as they get older, they lose their ability to squat. By time youth reach their teens today, most have lost this ability completely. Most adults avoid spending much time near the ground. With the skills I teach, you can regain many of your lost movements and retain them for the rest of your life. I do a lot with coordinating movement on both sides of the body. This has huge neurological benefits. Moving on the ground on all fours also has huge neurological benefits, especially for those who haven’t done this movement before because it is what is referred to in science as a novel complex movement. This is one of the most stimulating things for your brain outside of food. For me this is about learning what keeps you young. I think movement is one of the best skills for continuous learning of new things. The more movement skills I know, the bigger the map I have of my body. The bigger this map, the more choices I have for the places I can go, and ultimately the more freedom I have.

Pathways: Why would a practitioner of ninjutsu (or any martial art) benefit from this training?

Kyle: To be a “protector” in nature requires movement and a level of strength to move through the rough terrain or to climb trees. Ultimately I think of these skills as a relationship with the ground or the Earth. Unless you are in an airplane, you can’t escape the ground. It’s always there. The fear of falling is real for many people. As people age, falling can become catastrophic. Tens of thousands of people die each year from relatively minor falls. I like to think of falling differently. I like to think of falling to the ground as if I am meeting an old friend. What if falling could be like getting a massage? Instead of tensing up and fearing a fall, I try to relax. The ground has so many variables, so you have a diversity of ways to meet the ground and find comfort.

If you are practicing stealth movement as a hunter or a ninja, getting close to the ground and moving slowly is important. The animal movements that I teach give you a lot of options for this. If I’m far away I might move like a raccoon. As I get closer to a target, I might move like a lizard. When I get really close I might move like a worm. I look at this progression as bipedal (human) to quadrupedal (lizard) to belly (worm) and then reverse.

Pathways: For someone just beginning or possibly living in an urban environment with limited access to nature, what is one way they could begin practicing natural movement?

Kyle: One of my favorite introductory exercises is to challenge someone to go from standing to touching their butt to the ground in ten different ways. Most people start to struggle after five attempts. From there you can switch it up. For example, can you get to your back from standing in ten different ways? Can you get to your chest? Can you do it with one hand or no hands? And so on.

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To connect with Kyle for some of his free introductory lessons or to train one-on-one with him, visit his website www.trottingsparrow.com. You can also follow him on Instagram and subscribe to his Youtube channel.

In our Pathways Ninja Training classes, we teach several animal form movements as part of our white to black belt curriculum. Learn how to tap into your inner primate with Kyle's monkey movement tutorial below. These movements are a great way to practice moving low to the ground, build coordination, and develop strength and agility, everything a healthy ninja monkey should add to their training quiver!

 

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Global Survival Savvy with Tom McElroy

Over twenty years ago I met a young instructor at the world-renowned Tracker School, run by Tom Brown Jr. He was teaching bow and arrow making, among other skills. I was blown away by his attention to detail and craftsmanship. In a subsequent course, the "scout class," all students, myself included, made "scout pits" which were hidden, subterranean sleeping shelters that we slept in during the week-long course. This young instructor was also teaching at that class, however, I learned that he had taken the subterranean sleeping shelter to another level. At the time, he was living in an underground hogan shelter that he built, complete with a fire chimney that exited secretly through an old hollow stump on the surface.

That young instructor was Tom McElroy. Since that time in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, Tom has ventured around the globe, from the Amazon to Australia, to New Guinea, to remote tropical islands and beyond. Each of his explorations is fueled by a curiosity to learn from nature and to share this information with others.

Today we interview Tom to get a teaser-sampler of  the wisdom behind some of his experiences. Tom has taught everyone, ranging from children to hunters, to outdoor enthusiasts, and even elite military groups such as Seal Team Six. He has consulted for numerous news programs, Hollywood movies, and was featured on the Discovery Channel. He holds a BA degree in Anthropology and Geography from Rutgers University and a Masters in International Policy related to Indigenous Peoples from the University of Connecticut. At the age of 18, he spent an entire year living completely off the land. During that time, he built and lived in a shelter made from the land, made fire by friction, purified water naturally, hunted, fished and gathered all of his own food.

Tom takes wilderness living skills to the level of a true artist. You can see this for yourself in the detail of his handmade tools. His tools are not only functional, but beautiful. This is evident in the pictures of his handicraft included in the interview below. Pathways Dojo has been fortunate to have Tom guest instruct at some of our events.

Here's Sensei to tell you a little about his connection with Tom...

Tom and I actually live in the same town of Santa Cruz, California. I first heard of Tom through local friends. I met him when we did a podcast interview of him at his house several years ago. We discussed how survival skills and ninjutsu go together. Little did I know that I would be going to one of his island survival courses a few years later. More on that adventure in an upcoming post. That first experience with Tom would lead me to some really fun adventures in nature. I'm really excited that we get to work with Tom. He's an amazing survival skills instructor and is very tuned in to the natural world.

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Here's our recent interview with Tom...

Pathways: You have traveled all over the world to learn and teach survival skills. Is there one place/experience that stands out that was extremely challenging? What did you do to overcome that challenge?

Tom: I really believe that the only way that someone can easily survive off the land is if they have a deep knowledge of place, meaning they have an intimate knowledge of the terrain, edible and medicinal plants, animal behavior, weather patterns, density of wood, strongest fibers for rope...etc.  While indigenous people are the only masters of survival, you still couldn't take an Inuit person and drop them in the Amazon and expect that they would thrive. Some skills might transfer, but it would still be a struggle to adapt and relearn what you need from the foreign landscape. It's always a challenge entering an unfamiliar place to attempt to survive. The second I walk into a survival situation I have to try to soak up a lot about what is useful to me in that area--playing catch up with what I should already know.

I would say, one of the biggest challenges would be in the Amazon jungle where everything is out to get you.  There are spikes on half the trees, mosquitoes spreading malaria, poisonous spiders, and snakes lurking under every fallen log.  These are things I can’t plan for, and sometimes it's just luck that has kept me safe from total catastrophe

Pathways: What was the biggest hazard you have encountered?

Tom: I have to admit, with all the chances I have taken, I've been pretty lucky.  I try to stay very safe in survival and am hyper-vigilant of anything that can hurt me.  In my first full-survival situation I remember breaking firewood and cutting my finger fairly deep when I broke a stick in half.  I still have a scar from that. Every time I see it, I think about how the smallest mistakes in survival can lead to big consequences.  In Papua new Guinea I saw how tiny cuts would get infected and turn black in a day.  That is probably the most common issue that people overlook.  Infection is not as much a part of our modern world, but in survival, it's one of the biggest threats to your life.

Another experience stands out. While staying with a tribe in the Amazon, a hunter named Nanto and I wandered too far into an "undiscovered" tribe's territory in the jungle. They are a very hostile group. Many intruders into their territory have been found dead with a spear in them. One day, we were out blow-gunning birds and came upon Puma tracks on a tree. Nanto mentioned that the shaman had told him that he needed to be wary of Puma as they were a sign that he was in danger. Soon after that, we came across two spears crossed in an 'X' across the trail. Essentially this was our one warning that this one tribe, the Taegeri, were watching and they were telling us that we had gone too far. If we went any further, that would have been the end. Nanto was pretty shaken up when he saw that, which made me literally shake. Luckily we took the warning, turned around, and quickly headed back to his village.

Pathways: Is there a favorite/memorable shelter experience that you have had?

Tom: One of my favorite shelters I have ever lived in was one that was a completely underground hogan.  To get into the shelter you would lift a small oak bush to reveal a door, then climb down a ladder into the shelter.  One could walk directly over it and not know it was there. I even had a “chimney” going into a hollow tree stump to dissipate the smoke so you wouldn't notice it.

Pathways: What's one of the tastiest wild meals that you have eaten?

Tom: In my island survival class we get pretty into creating amazing meals while in a full-survival situation.  We caught spiny lobster and crab and made coconut cream bisque with Mango dessert.  After 4 days in survival, that may be the best thing I have ever tasted.

Pathways: Do you have a memorable/favorite fire-making experience?

Tom: After 25 years since making my first friction fire, I still get a huge kick out of it.  When I lived in the woods at age 18 for a year, I wouldn't allow myself to have any fire unless I got it with a hand drill or bow-drill.  After consistently getting friction fire for 6 months, one day it just stopped working.  I still don’t understand why, but I could not get a friction fire for about 5 days.  This was in the middle of December, so you can imagine how difficult it was to not have light or warmth in my shelter, warm food and all the things I was taking for granted.  After 5 days, to finally get that back was incredible.  I was so grateful then and still feel grateful even today when I get a fire.

Pathways: What about a memorable water gathering or landscape/water experience?

Tom: One time I drank from what I thought was a clean spring when running with the Tarahumara tribe in Copper Canyon in Mexico.  It kicked in after my trip, but I felt like my insides were on fire for a few days.

Pathways: Do you have a memorable tracking experience?

Tom: I once was called in to track a tiger that escaped from a pen in New Jersey.  It was wandering around the woods and people’s backyards.  After tracking cats with prints the size of quarters, it was incredible to track one with prints the size of dinner plates.

Pathways: When you are preparing to go to a new place to enter into a survival living mode, do you have a routine for preparation, such as researching maps, local indigenous practices, hazards, or practicing techniques at home before you go?

Tom: I try to pour myself into every book of that area to learn about plant life.  Then I try to see what indigenous people of that area do/did.  I think through all the potential problems I could face and try to play it all out in my head beforehand.  Of course there are always surprises, and I only find a few of the  hundreds of plants I have studied.  But, I do plan for how to provide the basics of Shelter, Water, Fire, Food.  After that, I just try to get creative based on what I discover in real-time.

Pathways: Shelter, water, fire, food...every landscape/ecosystem is different. Still, are there common themes to your approach to these needs that pertain to most/all landscapes you encounter?

Tom: One thing I try to emphasize with my classes is that it's the principles of survival that are the most important to learn.  For example, when trying to stay warm, in a deciduous forest you would use the principle of insulation with light, fluffy material, like piled leaves, to trap dead air space around your body.  I then ask my students, using the same principles, how would you create insulation if trapped in your car in a blizzard.  By wrapping yourself in the car seat foam, you can also trap dead air space around your body and stay warm.  Totally different situation, different “shelter”, but the same principles.

Pathways: You write that you came to the realization that "experiencing survival-living changes the way people approach their entire lives." How have you seen this in others and in yourself?  

Tom: I feel really fortunate to have spent a year living off the land when I was 18.  That entire year I spent about $300-$400 in total.  What this has gifted me is the ability to know that no matter what happens in my life, I can always go back to that forest and do that again.  Because of this, I felt free to take chances on pursuing my passions rather than always playing it safe.  I always had an answer to the big “what if things fall apart?” question.  I think this gives people confidence to live in less fear, even if they never actually use it. Knowing you can survive off the land gives you a confidence that even the wealthiest person does not have.

Pathways: If someone is new to survival skills, or lives in an urban area, what is a good way to begin practicing the skills?

Tom: Nature is everywhere.  The amount of interesting wild edible plants found in abandoned lots could keep you busy studying for years.  I grew up near a lot of woods, but still spent most of my initial learning stages making friction fires in my basement, or setting box-traps for pets.  While it's good to get into the forest so that you're comfortable with it, it’s very possible to practice a lot of these skills at home.

Pathways: Why would learning survival skills benefit someone who studies the art of the ninjutsu?

Tom: In one of my classes, there was a Master Chief from the Navy Seals.  He was built like a Greek God and probably one of the scariest people I could ever meet.  He had been in the Seals for more than 20 years, and I can't imagine the talents he possessed.  During one class on tanning deer hides, my co-instructor had everyone make small leather bags of the buckskin.  She taught everyone how to sew various stitches and at some point this Navy Seal called me over asking me how to do a ‘whip-stitch’.  I told him that for a guy as tough as he was, I found it funny he was asking me how to sew a tiny little leather pouch to go around his neck.  Surely this was beneath him at this point.  He then looked at me and commented that being a warrior was about collecting as many skills as possible, and the only way he rose to the top of the Seal program was because he never stopped learning, and finding new things to learn.

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To learn more about Tom and to attend one of his upcoming courses, you can checkout his website which also has a treasure trove of tutorial videos. Tom travels the globe teaching and has upcoming courses in the near future that we highly recommend.

As Tom mentioned above, fire by friction is a skill that is a lifelong learning journey. It always has something to teach. Making a bow drill fire kit is a great way to enter this learning journey. Check out the free video tutorial access on our website for making a bow drill fire kit.

But, once you make a bow drill kit, you are only halfway there. There are a lot of small details that are very important to consider when using a bow drill kit. If you know some of these tips, your chances of a successful fire are much greater. This could save your life one day.

In the video below, we go through the next step...some helpful tips for using your bow drill kit that will help you be successful in making fire.

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Respect

In today's post we look for the intersection of the dojo and nature with respect to...well...respect. Sensei Roemke has a short story of learning how to become "invisible" in nature through the practice of respect.

He also has a short video at the end where he teaches ways to practice respect in the dojo.

In a previous post, Sensei Roemke went tracking with a local instructor who introduced him to the art of bird language.

That tracker was a guy named Jon Young.

There's a little more to that story that Sensei wanted to share with you. It's about how approaching life from a place of respect not only will make you "invisible," but it will also get you far in life.

I'll let Sensei tell you the rest of the story...

Did you know that showing respect can make you invisible? Here's how.

I was on a tracking hike with Jon Young. The first thing we did when we went out on the landscape was to pull in our concentric rings of disturbance by quieting externally and internally. Being a lifelong student is one of my favorite mindsets. It's amazing how much you can learn in just a short time if your cup is empty enough to be open to learn new things by just listening and observing without talking.

On this day with Jon, we were going down the trail when we came to a narrow point where two bushes were on opposite  sides of the trail, close to each other. There were some small birds that were flying from one bush to the other, each flying across one at a time.

Jon raised his hand to signal us to stop. He said quietly, "We can't go through that threshold there. Those are some of the most aware birds on the landscape. If we just go blasting through there, they will send out alarms. They'll blow our cover and we won't be part of the baseline of everything here in the forest."

I had never heard of this before. I was intrigued.

We waited. While we were waiting, I started counting birds. I counted twenty-eight birds that crossed between the bushes.

Then Jon asked, "Are there any birds left in the bush?"

"I have no idea," I replied.

He jokingly said, "Use the force Luke."

I laughed and tuned-in to my senses. "I think there's one left," I said.

"You are right. There's one left, and it's not going to let us pass. It doesn't know where we are yet. So, just bend down and start to pretend to pick at foliage and pretend to eat it. It will think we are feeding," said Jon.

So we did just that. We bent over and pretended to pick plants and bring them to our mouth. We took our intent off of looking at the bird and were just busy with our own pretend foraging.

The bird still wouldn't move.

"Ok, it's not going to let us go by. We're going to go around in a different direction," he said.

The bird still didn't make any noises. We casually turned 90 degrees to our right and went off trail and went in another direction.

Then Jon stopped and said, "Just act like you are foraging for food again." So, we resumed this practice.

Before long, a small covey of California quail appeared. Quail are usually very skittish. When they see people they usually run or fly away while making a lot of alarm calls. When these quail came out, one of them flew up to a nearby tree about six feet off the ground. It looked over toward the other bush where the previous little bird was, and then it looked back at us. The quail gave no alarm. The rest of the quail walked by us while continuing to eat. Soon they were right next to us, less than two feet away!

They didn't seem to notice us.

And then a rabbit hopped out and looked at us, then looked at the quail. Then it began to eat from a nearby bush. It was only two to three feet away.

I thought...what is going on?! This is awesome!

That was the first time that I had this lesson of respecting nature.

The reason I was able to respect nature was because of my martial arts training. In my training, I have been told so many times- when you enter the dojo, put your hands by your side and give a respectful bow to honor the space. It's the same feeling for entering nature.

To show respect to nature means that you don't go blasting into a landscape unaware and create disturbances to all the animals, including people. Magical things will unfold if you are coming from a place of respect.

When you are respectful in the dojo, it gets noticed. For example, when one of the teachers is leading a lesson, I will usually take a knee so the people behind me can see. Other people in the room will often notice and will also take a knee. It shows that my intent is to pay attention. I am quieting myself.

Respect will get you a long way in life. When you learn how to give a good handshake and look people in the eye, that opens doors because people feel validated. When this happens, people are much more willing to share more with you, especially teachers.

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Below is a short video by Sensei where he teaches how to practice respect in the dojo.

 

 

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Place of Power Hand Mudra

In today's post, Dai Shihan Mark Roemke shares a technique for locking in the energy of a place of power.

Sensei says...

There is a special hand mudra that I was taught in ninjutsu that you put by your heart. When you do this mudra, you can focus your mind and intent. You can use it to "take a picture" mentally, physically, and with your emotional or spirit body. You can do this on landscapes around the planet that you connect to deeply and then use the mudra to return to this place later as a way to refocus your mind, body, and spirit.

Similar to holding your hands to pray, or using rosary or mala beads, this hand mudra creates a focal point using tactile touch. This helps to direct your mind. Where the mind goes, the chi flows. Where the chi flows the healing goes. You can use this mudra for healing or to invoke your personal power if you are scared or unsettled.

One way to use this mudra is to place it by your heart when you are at a place that you connect to deeply in nature. For example, this could be in a place looking over the ocean on a calm, serene day with a nice sunset or sunrise. Or it could be a really stormy day when there is a lot of amazing power and energy being shifted through wind and swells. Or it could be a the top of a mountain where there is an amazing view and you feel fully alive in your body, mind, and spirit from the physical exertion of climbing. When you are at the top of the mountain and you look out over the beautiful scene, this would be a good place to do this mudra.

I like to call this taking a picture with my heart.

But remember too that nature is everywhere, and that some of the deepest connections to the natural world can happen in your own back yard or a nearby park. These would be good places to do this mudra as well.

Later on, if you are sitting at your office, or at home, you can take a moment and do this mudra. It helps you to instantly go back to those places of power where you took that heart picture. You can go back mentally, emotionally, and physically to tap into this feeling.

You can also do this with your spirit arms. You don't have to physically use your arms.

For example, if a suspicious person is approaching you, and you think that you might need to be in a confrontation, you can imagine your arms doing this mudra by your heart and you will experience the same feeling. It can help empower your mind, body, and spirit so that you will not be overtaken by fear.

I have done this mudra all over the world- in Japan, in high mountains, under waterfalls, and many other beautiful places that I connected to deeply and considered sacred. I wanted to be able to "lock-in" so that I could return to those places whenever I felt the need.

I hope this helps you out. Check out the video below from our NTTV Live online classes where I show you how to do this hand mudra. In this class you can train live with me weekly and request skills and get instant feedback from my Ninjatrainingtv.com curriculum.

Just remember that FEAR is just an acronym for Forgetting Everything is All Right.

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A footnote (from Ken) to this teaching...

My daughter learned this technique in the NTTV Live class with Sensei Roemke the other day. The next day we were out with our Ninjas in Nature Youth Program making rope ladders and then practicing the art of disappearing into the the trees. My daughter was the first to climb into the tree. She disappeared high into the tree. Several other young ninjas followed up the ladder and scrambled around the lower branches of the tree. I noticed my daughter was being very still.

Later when we were packing the car she said to me,

"Daddy, do you know what I was doing in the top of the tree?"

"What?" I replied.

"I was doing the finger weaving Mark taught us the other night to lock-in sugar maple power."

 

Place of Power Hand Mudra

Open post

The Ultimate Free Ninja Pillow

Ok, I know what you are thinking.

This is a promotion for a new ultimate sleeping pillow made specifically for ninjas right? You can buy a ninja blender, so why not a ninja pillow. I'm sure it's already been thought of. But I'm avoiding the urge to google it right now.

This is a different kind of pillow. This pillow comes with an added serving of instinctual training, a helping of bird language, and a pinch of baseline in this recipe.

Oh, and it is free and always available.

What?

Today we have a bird language story plus a fun instinctual training exercise by Sensei Roemke. And, we will relate everything to this mysterious aforementioned pillow.

I want to share a short story that just happened to me on my back porch as I was watching the sunrise, drinking my morning mate, and tuning into the language of the birds.

What's bird language? If you didn't catch the recent blog by Jon Young, who literally wrote the book on bird language, I highly recommend that you check it out. He talks about why ninjas should listen to the birds.

Back to my porch.

It's spring here, and the bird activity is off the charts, especially at dawn. The dawn chorus, when the birds wake up and begin singing in full force, is starting well before 6 am here. This morning I grabbed my morning brew and went to my favorite chair on my back porch to tune my ears into the bird language.

My first thought...I need to recalibrate baseline.

What is baseline?

The natural world has its own daily and seasonal rhythms. To know baseline means that you tune your awareness into this pattern of the symphony of nature that happens all around you. The animals have patterns of activity, much like you and I. Naturalist Dan Gardoqui spoke about how he uses baseline to get close to animals for photography or hunting in a recent post.

At my previous home in California, I had some neighbors whom you could set your watch by. As I sat on my front porch at dawn to listen to the birds, the baker at the local donut shop would walk by. A couple minutes later, a local jogger in a funny 1980's sweat suit would run by heading east. He wore those old-school giant headphones with the antennas sticking out of them. Loved watching that guy. Always made me smile.

Think of the animals similarly. Okay, maybe not with the headphones. The red squirrels in my yard have their morning feeding routines and routes. The same is true with the birds.

There is a baseline to the daily sounds of the birds that is like the score to a musical song. There are crescendos of sound, times of quiet, and then more peaks throughout the day. For example, at sunrise during the dawn chorus, there is a peak of singing, as if the birds are claiming once again...

"I'm alive! The owl did not eat me! Hey! This is my territory!"

After this, the singing typically will settle down as the birds remember..."I'm hungry!" and start putting less energy into singing, and more into feeding. After a full belly, there may be times of rest and quiet (sound familiar?), and then more occasional song to maintain territory. Then at the end of the day there is often a lot of nervous singing and posturing as birds announce territory one more time before scrambling to find a perch to roost upon.

The key to bird language is to recognize baseline, which is a state of activity when the birds aren't having their lives threatened.  Then, notice the deviations from this normal relaxed state. These deviations often appear as alarm calls from the birds.

Here's a simple visual of what baseline with the birds can look like.

But...here's the catch. Baseline for the birds shifts seasonally, and even daily if things like storms approach. Once birds are sitting on eggs, the adult singing diminishes.

Why?

Because there are a LOT of nest predators out there looking for tasty snacks. The birds need to go into stealth mode. Things get even more paranoid with the adults once a bunch of loud-mouthed, uncoordinated, hungry nestlings hatch and then fledge the nest. It's like ringing the dinner bell for the hawks.

For most species of birds, fewer than 50% of of the birds that hatch make it to adulthood. Think about what that means in terms of bird awareness of predators.

So...back to my porch.

I was settling in, hot cup of brew in my hand. The thought in my head was ..."I wonder what baseline looks like this morning?"

But then, unexpectedly things took a left turn into the instinctual zone.

Pillow of silence!

I hadn't even had a chance to start mentally mapping all the cardinal and chickadee vocal locations when this thought popped into my head.

One of the things I've learned over the years from both tracking and martial arts instructors who teach instinctual training is this- "trust your gut" or to trust your first impression. Otherwise, the mind jumps in and starts to mess things up by analyzing and confusing things.

So what is a pillow of silence? This is a concept I learned from Jon Young. Basically silence is an alarm.

Imagine you are at a crowded music concert (remember those?). Everyone is dancing and singing. Then suddenly the music stops. Everyone stops dancing, gets quiet and stares in one direction. It would most likely freak you out and make you really nervous. You would be in a pillow of silence.

The same thing happens in the bird world. The cause of this is often a bird of prey such as a Cooper's hawk. These hawks are designed to survive by feeding on other birds. And they are sneaky and quiet. Imagine an assassin that lurked outside your home every day, with big daggers on the end of their limbs, waiting to pounce on you. Welcome to the world of the little chickadee.

As I shifted my awareness to three dimensional listening- in front, behind, right, left, above, and below me where I sat on my porch, I noticed a few things.

The chickadees were singing their morning "cheeseburger" territorial song, but they were farther away than usual, as if a big bubble had pushed them away all around me.

I noticed too on the ground in the yard below our porch, there were no birds feeding. During baseline, birds are relaxed. Feeding on the ground casually is an example of birds behaving in baseline. Usually our yard would have sparrows, juncos, robins, and cardinals hopping about on the ground searching for breakfast.

Hmm. I thought. I wonder if there is a Cooper's hawk around?

No sooner had I thought this, when I noticed the flapping of wings in the top of the white pine on the north side of our yard. A moment later a Coopers Hawk flew out and headed to some trees on the south side of our yard. As it did this robins erupted in what is known as a "bullet" flight as they flew away from the hawk, and a blue jay flew to a "sentinel" perch in the top of a nearby pine to watch, both alarm behaviors.

Within just a couple minutes of the hawk's departure, a downy woodpecker began its territorial drumming from the pine next to our yard where the hawk had emerged. Then, the chickadees all moved closer to the periphery of our yard and resumed their "cheeseburger" songs.

The quiet buffer zone I witnessed is known as a pillow of silence. Typically, everywhere a Cooper's hawk flies, it creates these zones of silence and stillness in the birds around it.

But then my yard became quiet again. This time, however, it had a different feel to it.

A robin landed in the yard and started hunting, as did a cardinal. Feeding time. A bluebird flew by and landed on the top of our birdhouse that we recently built to poke its head in the nest box hole. This was a return to baseline.

Learning bird language is one of the best ways to train your "spidey" senses. At first you don't have to know the names of the birds, or who is making the song, though eventually it will help. If you listen deeply you can feel the level of intensity in their songs or alarms.

When you hear a bird, ask yourself...how does that sound feel? Is it nervous, relaxed, contacting it's mate? This is the first step to understanding bird language.

 

In the Bujinkan, there is a well known test that is given to those going for their 5th degree black belt, or Godan. In this test a Dai Shihan or the Grandmaster Hatsumi Sensei will stand behind the kneeling ninja student while holding a training sword above their head. The student must sense the exact moment when the sword is coming down toward their head in order to roll out of the way.

At Pathways Dojo, we occasionally practice other methods for training our instinctual awareness. Check out the Energy Sensing video below by Dai Shihan Mark Roemke. This is a fun activity that we do in the dojo to heighten our sensitivity.

Next time you head outside, see if you can sense baseline and the alarms. The pillow is free. It's always been around you. It just takes practice to learn to recognize it. Who knows, it might even help you detect that sword behind you one day.

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