I’ve studied various arts over the years, and been in more than enough encounters to vouch for what worked for me. Training the way you would actually fight provides the best option.

My list:

American Kenpo
Muat Thai
Kali / Escrima
Jeet Kune Do
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
Classic Boxing

Combine a couple of those arts and you will be prepared for any encounter. It will also help to train with someone who has actually been in a fight or two. That helps avoid the macho movie multiple opponent crap.

I found an interesting statement by the famous chaos magician & Rune Master Dave Lee: “The Chaos Magic approach can be done naively – without any critical appreciation of the belief structures used. This leaves the practioner open to accusations of mall-shopping superficiality in their paradigm-hopping, and sometimes people accuse chaos magicians of just that.
That aside there is a real problem with the technology of belief. We have an uneasy compromise going on here – if we do magic to change and re-enchant the universe, then we are seeking a change of belief, but belief is itself devalued by demonstrating its relativity. When our magic uses belief as a technique, then belief cannot help orientate us in the world. It cannot provide a centre for the chaos magician. So what can?
The two features of the core technology that has come to be called chaos magic are belief and gnosis, or what I call ESCs – extraordinary states of consciousness. It is the very extraordinariness of gnosis that releases us from the trap of postmodernism, by being a privileged state.”

Well, and just another thing I’d like to ask you. I wanted to ask this in the context of your last article, but I was too busy to do so. My question is: Is there any martial art that you REALLY can recommend? I’ve been looking around for years, but haven’t sticked to any style for a longer period of time. I cannot decide between a traditional Japanese martial art or a modern ‘free-style’ one like Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do. What is your favourite martial art?

Wassail!

Matt

I’ll agree. The study of language, hypnosis, and NLP should be required.

Good work!

In this vein I highly, highly recommend reading up on Milton Erickson (from whose work NLP was derived). The guy was so good with words that he could even cure _physical_ illnesses with them. If only psychiatry had followed his model and not that of the drug barons… err.. big pharma ;)

A good book start with Erickson would be _My Voice Will Go With You_, edited by Sidney Rosen, as its very accessible, profound, inspiring, etc, etc, etc. Its a collation of the teaching stories Erickson used with trainee psychiatrists.