But today’s story was different. There she was standing there as always, not yet changed, having put her stuff down a few feet from the bed where I’m always doing digital stuff. She’s telling me about how she was sparring one of the Thai boys at the camp, 30 minutes straight (no rounds), and how frustrated she had become at the tension she could just feel building in her body. She realized then, and was recounting now, how she was standing in front of him in just a different body lean, a different stance, than the one she has in front of the bag, or in front of Pi Nu in padwork. Why was she not standing the way she already knows how to stand?

What this story comes down to is a certain kind of cumulative effect or realization, that has been coming for a very long time, and likely will still be arriving for years. It maybe began with the month long instruction of Karuhat as found in the Intensive and the same we filmed with Chatchai in the same month, which will be published in the Intensive as well. Karuhat, one of the slickest fighters everywhere, began quietly showing her how to “read”. Not how to do particular techniques, or even how to fight a certain way, but how to see. But not see by looking. It’s very hard to see without looking. Karuhat began teaching her this. And as Sylvie’s an excellent student, she tried really hard to learn it. And she did learn it, in all sorts of ways. But the best and sweetest part had not filtered down, into the deepest part…yet.

So she’s telling me this story, and about how she was just sitting with Pi Nu and maybe some others, after training. She recently had a realization about these times, after training, which she blogged about here:

This is a kind of Wolf’s-Light time, when the magic happens. People expect technique to be transmitted during training, when you are really gutting it out. But in Thailand it often will happen in this twilight time, after training. In any case, she said she got up and started feeling…feeling, not doing…her shadow boxing very slowly in front of them. She was saying that she had gotten herself into this funk in how oddly she had been standing in front of her sparring partner, full of tension. She hadn’t been standing right, and had even taken that into padwork afterwards. What’s up with that. So right there she just started working slowly though the movements of her everyday shadowboxing, but trying to feel it, nothing more. Slow. Feeling.

I’m going to tell you something. I’ve watched a hell of a lot of Sylvie’s shadowboxing. In fact, I’ve seen a hell of a lot of shadow boxing from others too. I’ve never seen movements like the movements she was doing in front of me, demonstrating her story to me. Never. To show that she really knew what she was talking about, she would shift between how she usually shadow boxed, pretty regular, nicely composed, technically correct movements, and then shadow boxing in way of feeling. I’m still kind of blown away by it. Never seen anything like it.

The proximate trigger to this possibility probably came from our Mental Training Muay Thai Reading Group we are doing, discussing the classic The Inner Game of Tennis. On Patreon you can catch up on our past discussions here:

Mental Training Reading Group – The Introduction (+Vipassana)

Chapters `1 & 2 – Mental Training (1 hr 17 min)

Chapters 3 & 4 – Mental Training (58 min)

Chapters 5 & 6 – Mental Training (1 hr 24 min)

Or, you can add to the mix on the Open Facebook Group: MTMT Reading Group. In any case the Inner Game‘s “quiet your inner coach (Self 1) and let your body (Self 2) just FEEL techniques” approach, and applying those principles is what lead to this breakthrough moment, this sudden awakening of the body. Also, Sylvie’s journey into Vipassana Meditation, which is all about non-judgemental awareness and observation, also primed the ground for this new edifice, this unusual temple of movements. It’s been a few years of teaching, experience and experimentation that lead to this thing. In a certain sense Sylvie has just said that it’s only that it was the right time to realize it. The student was ready. I write all of this not to praise her, as my goodness, she is incredibly praiseworthy and a hero in all she does, but to just shine a little light forward, a crack of light from the door, into the dark hallway of your own path, the direction to head toward. The thing about these kinds of realizations is that they cannot be rushed, they cannot be forced. You can feel where they are going, but if you hit the gas the realization will vanish, or become constricted. You just keep feeling, let things come and go.

We were driving in the car today to pick up Sylvie’s parents who are visiting us – we do not get to see them very often. I was asking her about her realization, but she really didn’t have much to say about it, which is probably the way it should be. It belongs to her, it’s in her body, not where words are. I’ve often thought about Muay Thai technique, and the beautiful Muay Thai of the legends that we are archiving, and that Sylvie trains with. It’s truly incredible stuff. Sometimes techniques appear that you’ve never seen before, or even a shin angle, or a limb arc. It’s easy to get caught up in all that is visible in a mechanical sense. But, I’ve often thought about how it would be if for instance you were trying to learn to rap like Biggie or Snoop (rap is not really the issue here, it works for Thrash Metal or Baroque Fugues). And how if you spent all your hours memorizing the exact words of their raps, and even thinking hard about HOW they rapped. But…you never sunk down into their flow. I mentioned to Sylvie in the car, with urban, somewhat dirty Pattaya sliding past us, the bright sunlight of late Thai morning beaming through the windshield, you could rap like Biggie using complete nonsense words. You could hum your way through Biggie or Tupac or Snoop, scat your way. You don’t need the words. You need the flow. This is the precious thing found in the legends we film, and the priceless thing that Sylvie has felt first hand.

Want to know what flow is, watch Yodkhunpon “The Elbow Hunter” feel his shadow:

Biggie’s flow:

What I got to see in those few moments of her story, standing a few feet from the bed, her workout clothes still damp from endless repetitions, was Sylvie’s Flow. What Muay Thai feels like to her, her muay, fed by the Ganges of a 100 sacred rivers. What the late and recently passed great Andy Thomson said, Everyone has their own Muay Thai. This is the crazy thing. You don’t get your own muay by pounding it out and creating it. You get it by imitating others, by humming along to their music, their flow, moving your body through the feel of what the movements mean. This is why there is so much intense variety of Muay Thai in Thailand, techniques upon techniques, styles upon styles – and why there is so little variety of the same in the west. Even in a single Thai gym you will find incredible diversity, its an ecosystem of diversity. It’s not a matter of talent. Or even quality of instruction. It’s a matter of feeling. I can’t even tell if that hoop dancer above is any “good” (???), moving to Biggie. But I can tell exactly what he is doing. He is feeling and expressing himself. If you were going to rap like Biggie, or throw elbows like Yodkhunpon, you have to start and end with the music of their flow. The body has to transmit that thing.

We don’t realize it as humans, but we are like radio towers. We constantly are receiving signals of bodily affects of others, states of being, emotional waves and tides, reading what others are feeling and even thinking. This is the only reason why we can accurately predict what others will do, drivers on the road, a shop keeper in a conversation, a wife or a stranger. We are constantly receiving and virtually absorbing, modeling, patterning the affective states of others. And we are then broadcasting our own states to others, very often rippling states forward through the infinite prism of social being. Somehow though, when learning a fighting art very often we put aside this very deep and powerful apparatus of what being a human is (the affective transmitter), and can try to turn ourselves into biomachanical mechanisms, wherein every part has to move a certain way. The oldest and deepest in ourselves is not like that. The artist – even the martial artist – is the one that takes their project into themselves, into the sea of their affective states, and learns to feel the seeds of movements and thoughts.

The Theory of Two Musics

A big mistake is thinking about fighting as “doing damage”. It’s one reason lots of westerners misunderstand Thai style scoring. Some think that you can just add up Health Points like in a video game, when in fact it is much more as if two musics are being played against each other, and the fighting artist is ever using pain and the threat of pain (including social pain, shame) to get the other fighter on their beat, trapped in their music. The aesthetics of fight judgement are the aesthetics of “which fighter’s music played stronger, louder, more clear, more subtly, more satisfyingly”. This is the reason why it is so important to feel your own music, especially in training. When you can feel your own beat, your own rhythm and cadence, your own flow, you are much more likely to be able to keep it when up against another, or return to it after being knocked off beat. This may sound like some pretty arcane stuff, but the truth is that the fighter who can keep his/her music undisturbed has the greatest chance of doing real world damage in the real sense. This is the reason why Samart was so beloved by Thailand, and many feel that he was the greatest who fought. His music was so quiet, so subtle, but was nearly impossible to disturb. And he was able to disturb the flow of almost everyone he fought. If you look at his technique he often will stand with his feet very close together – something some consider to be a major technical flaw in others – but he has incredible feel for himself. He stands that way because it is natural for him. His brother Kongtoranee, himself a legendary fighter, grown up in the same famed Sityodtong gym, has a completely different stance. Here is a little of Samart with Sylvie from the Library. You can watch all of it here.

you can watch the whole 81 minutes in the Muay Thai Library here

The first and last priority is getting on beat. And that means getting on your beat. You can’t maintain your music under adversity if you can’t feel your music. And the more you feel your music, your flow, the better you will get at feeling the flow of others, especially that of your opponent standing opposite you…and interrupting it.

This brings me back to that moment, those ineffable moments, when Sylvie is showing me what shadowboxing looks like when she just feels what she is doing, and doesn’t “do” Muay Thai. There was intense expressive poetry in it, like all those years and years of trying and doing and thinking and aching, and banging through 200 fights, and crying when it wasn’t good, or it felt like it wasn’t good, all of that was registered and etched in on the soul. Not just all the beautiful moments, or the successes, but all of it. Every tumble, every failure and frustration, it all wove itself into a gentle tapestry of movement, what it means to feel Muay Thai…for her. What it was, nobody on this earth can “do”. A transmission from very deep space. The martial artist as artist.

If you want to support Sylvie and the insane thing she is doing, you can do so here.

If you’d like to watch the 30+ hours of Karuhat’s Intensive training of Sylvie, to get her to where she is, you can subscribe to that here – Yodkhunpon is also part of that Intensive.

More on this Topic

You can watch Sylvie’s vlog on Continuity, which she filmed during her Karuhat Intensive training and is related, here:

You can watch the most recent hour with Karuhat which in many ways represents the culmination of the Karuhat Intensive, where she has gotten to thus far, filmed only a week or so ago, here, in the Library:

Karuhat Sor. Supawan – Serpentine Knees & Flow (62 min)

Resources 

Kindle Edition The Inner Game of Tennis

Free PDF of The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation

Kindle Edition The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation 

My Vipassana Retreat Experience – with vlogs

Here is a free course locator for people around the world, if you want to take a multiple day retreat in Vipassana Meditation.

Clairvoyant:

having the power of seeing objects or actions beyond the range of natural vision.

There’s a theme that happens organically in everyone of Sylvie’s Intensives. These themes are brought about naturally by the golden age legends themselves. Each man has there own style and interpretation of what Muay Thai means to them and how to go about practicing and fighting with the art. In watching the whole of the session vlog, one can easily see the theme the legend has. With Karuhat, it’s almost immediately apparent that he is a mind reader. For a contrast, read my notes on Yodkhunpon. Before you begin to think I might have lost my mind, let me clarify. It’s not that Karuhat actually has a super power to read one’s thoughts, so much as as he can see actions one might take as one takes them. Clairvoyance would seem to accurately describe his abilities in the ring, but the reality is that what appears to be mind reading is in actuality a brilliant tactical understanding of the fight game.

An application that one can see almost immediately in the vlog, that show his “clairvoyant” tactics is his body posture, specifically his head and eyeline positioning. Karuhat almost never raises his head from the often yelled “chin down!” position; and so every punch thrown at him is dodged or slipped, every kick blocked. This position is widely understood to be the best as it provides at once protection for vulnerable areas of the body; but it also can allow a person the advantage of seeing the body begin an attack and so potentially provide a person with an early warning to imminent danger. Most coaches will tell you to focus your vision on the upper torso/shoulder region, avoiding the eyes and seeing the hip in periphery. Interestingly enough, Karuhat’s chin is so low he keeps constant vigilance of her navel and hips, keeping the torso and legs in periphery.  Interestingly enough however, many rarely seem to be able to manage this position for long. In watching the full session, you see that Sylvie raises her chin consistently. She’s no slouch in the fight game herself, yet as she engages in close, her chin begins to drift up and her eyes begin to seek the face of Karuhat.

Later in the session, Karuhat might give a clue as to why. He states through Sylvie that many can’t focus on both upper and lower body at the same time, it creates confusion; and so an opening to take advantage of. Right there is his next act of clairvoyance. He uses our common problems against us by exploiting them. If we struggle to activate multiple areas of the body then he’ll attack one to open another. At 11:45 in the session he shows the high low attacks in both strikes as well as clinch. In both he’s massively successful as is Sylvie herself following his instruction later in the vlog. In understanding how this might pertain to the often understood but rarely utilized chin down position; the root might be in what we do when we are confused. Think of the common response to a loud noise nearby. Imagine sitting at home watching the videos in this library. It is quiet except the talking on your computer. All of a sudden a loud bang from outside. What’s the natural response? To look. the head comes up and we look for the source to the sound that disturbed and confused us. It illustrates that clairvoyance, that tactical understanding of not just any opponent, but all opponents natural inclinations.

Consistently, through out the hour he applies this to his techniques. Everything designed to elicit a desired response from the person in front of him. A response he can then take advantage of. And if he doesn’t get it? Well, that’s’ where his other tactical skills come in. At 14:30 in the session we are first introduced to the idea of not being stuck. “You can’t wait for the right thing, the right thing will present itself as you move”. Its easily seen in how Karuhat applies the clinch. He treats the opponent as a washing machine does linens. First one way to achieve the result of opening or throwing, and then the other if the opening doesn’t happen; with the inevitable result that something does open and he is ready to take advantage of it.

A final (as far as this write up goes, he has so much more in this intensive to show than I can cover here) thing the clairvoyant does that I wish to tease out for the viewer, is his tactical mind reading doesn’t just apply to his attacks and defenses, but to his understanding of his own body. Alexander Palma, an excellent coach out’ve San Diego, CA instructs his students in what he’s termed zones. A common misconception of these zones is there spacing to an opponent, meaning by example zone 3 is so and so feet from the person you face. That’s not at all what he means. The zones are the ranges that one can use a specific weapon in. Karuhat also employs this tactic with his opponents. The space between my opponent and me is the space I use a kick in, a punch, a knee, an elbow. The space isn’t about safety, it’s about what I can use to finish my my opponent. And here’s where his clairvoyance becomes a study of beautiful tactics. Karuhat has such an understanding of not just his opponents, but of himself that he can not only take advantage, he creates advantage in a fight. He knows that you will raise you chin. He knows if he confuses you with high to low and back again attacks, your guard won’t keep up. He knows that if he keeps pressure both in striking attacks and in clinching, an opportunity will present itself to catch you with a punch to the gut, or a dump to the floor. Karuhat KNOWS.

Sylvie Study guest writer – James Poidog

You can find James on Facebook, at his gym Kaiju MMA & Fitness, or follow him on Instagram

********

The Intensive Series

click to watch the full On Demand series

Episode 24. At top is a free 6 minute extended clip, but you can watch the full 57 minute commentary video of this session on Vimeo On Demand. Purchase of the video or subscription lends support to legends of the ring as the krus gets 55% of the net proceeds from this series; patrons get a substantial discount (you can purchase Episode 24 individually after the trailer below, or look to Episode 24 in the full list). You can also subscribe to the entire series, there are now over 32 hours of commentary training footage published:

watch all the free videos in this series

Even MORE Karuhat, beyond the Intensive Series

You can also watch these Karuhat Sessions as a patron, archived in the Muay Thai Library – Preserve The Legacy project:

#27 Karuhat Sor. Supawan – Tension & Kicking Dynamics (104 min) watch it here

#20 Karuhat Sor Supawan – Switching To Southpaw (144 min) watch it here

#11 Karuhat Sor. Supawan Session 2 – Float and Shock (82 min) watch it here

#7 Karuhat Sor. Supawan – Be Like Sand (62 min) watch it here 

Bonus Session 7: Karuhat Sor. Supawan – Forward Check | 39 min – watch it here 

Bonus Session 1:  Karuhat Sor. Supawan | Advanced Switching Footwork | 60 min  – watch it here

4 Legends Seminar – Bangkok April 2018 (1 hr 20 min)

Muay Thai Library legends Karuhat, Chatchai, Namkabuan and Dieselnoi were in seminar on two days instructing students from around the world. This is an hour and twenty minute video edit of a first-of-its-kind seminar in Bangkok. watch it here

Two GIFS

In this session you find lots of additional techniques shown, and below are two that stand out for me. The first is Karuhat teaching proper stepback on the caught kick. This is part of a larger technique designed to protect a Southpaw’s fighter against an Orthodox kick to the open side. In Karuhat’s approach, you catch the kick while stepping back, switching stance. This effectively turns your open side into your closed side, demoting the point your opponent might be scoring. You then have an open shot for your own open side kick. In this scenario if you exchange kicks, you out-point your opponent even though two kicks have landed. It’s kick for kick, so the open side vs closed side is what determines who dominated the exchange. This little bit of the GIF though deals with the finesse with which you step back once you have switched stances on the catch. I have a tendency to pull my ass back at this point (that’s bad), whereas Karuhat is telling me to stand upright and relaxed, and to draw back, and even slightly over, to expose your opponent to a big scoring kick. You can see how slack and relaxed he is, and pulling me into his strike to boot.

closing the openside from Southpay, landing a higher scoring kick

The second technique which stands out is in the GIF below. It’s not uncommon that you’ll be locked up, with your opponent having something of an overturn in position (me below, you can see how slanted I am, “overturned” with my left arm too far around on my grip so I’m almost sideways into Karuhat’s stance). He’s showing how you don’t want to really struggle against this, so much as follow your outside arm under. The pull away can set this up (hips in), reversing direction. Note how closely he adheres to my body after he passes the arm, able to lock me up at any moment in the turn.

clipping under the overturned lead arm

You can subscribe to the entire series.

click to watch the full On Demand series

Episode 21. At top is the free 4 minute selected clip, but you can watch the full 63 minute commentary video of this session on Vimeo On Demand. Purchase of the video or subscription lends support to legends of the ring as Karuhat gets 55% of the net proceeds from this series; patrons get a substantial discount (you can purchase Episode 15 individually after the trailer below, or look to Episode 21 in the full list). You can also subscribe to the entire series, there are now over 27 hours of commentary training footage published:

watch all the free videos in this series

Clinch Throw GIFs

Below are two nice clinch throw attacks (on the outside leg) that Karuhat covers in this episode. The first GIF below is a variation of an unusual throw he’s been teaching me throughout this Intensive, mostly for use on the ropes when your opponent’s hip is pushed in toward you (which is a good defense against knees). Here he’s showing how to set it up in the middle of the ring with left knees, and then a dramatic gallop across their body and outside theleg. Ideally, they are leaning forward or putting their hips in expecting another knee. This throw I’ve called the Pickpocket, when it’s on the ropes, because it is done by walking past the opponent and kind of clipping them, sometimes in a casual in manner.

The other clinch throw to the outside comes off of an exaggerated knee, so you score this point and use the landing as a kind of fake, that then becomes a step beyond and behind their leg (below). Both of these throws come from being off-line from your opponent, here favoring your right side, which happens to be where I find myself a lot. These kinds of positions are dangerous for both of you, like you’re both in a pretty symmetrical position so nobody is “dominant.” You can be thrown and so can they, so the first one to commit with the right set up will be the one who grabs the advantage.

Learn both of these throws by watching the entire sessions, just as Karuhat was teaching them to me.

click to watch the full On Demand series

Episode 20. At top is a free 3 minute extended clip, but you can watch the full 56 minute commentary video of this session on Vimeo On Demand. Purchase of the video or subscription lends support to legends of the ring as Karuhat gets 55% of the net proceeds from this series; patrons get a substantial discount (you can purchase Episode 20 individually after the trailer below, or look to Episode 20 in the full list). You can also subscribe to the entire series, there are now over 25 hours of commentary training footage published:

watch all the free videos in this series

GIF – The Clinch

A great little moment in the episode, around the 17 minute mark, is when Karuhat corrects my clinch attack. The GIF below shows it. He starts by taking my (improper) upright, far off stance, and then shows me how he wants my head on his shoulder. If you watch it a few times you notice some very important elements he throws in to keep himself from being thrown from this slightly forward lean. First of all his posture is counterbalanced with the curve of his body. Secondly, he is peppering with light knees to distract, and then does a slight drag back to rock me forward, resumes the knees, and then reverses and steps through to the right. The action and feel is like a boat that is being jostled by waves. Look at my body, how it is constantly pushed off center, sloshing back and forth. I’m relaxed so this is emphasized, it allows you to see the small shifts. This makes his step through extra effective. In this instance he uses the step through to land a big score on the ropes, but if my hips were in defending against his knees, he would turn this into a throw over his left thigh, a throw I’ve been calling the Pickpocket Throw because of how you step “by” someone.

above, quick GIF showing clinch distance, head position, and shifting direction, from the episode

click to watch the full On Demand series

Episode 19. At top is a free 3 minute extended clip, but you can watch the full 64 minute commentary video of this session on Vimeo On Demand. Purchase of the video or subscription lends support to legends of the ring as Karuhat gets 55% of the net proceeds from this series; patrons get a substantial discount (you can purchase Episode 19 individually after the trailer below, or look to Episode 19 in the full list). You can also subscribe to the entire series, there are now over 25 hours of commentary training footage published:

watch all the free videos in this series

click to watch the full On Demand series

Episode 18. At top is a free 3 minute extended clip, but you can watch the full 80 minute commentary video of this session on Vimeo On Demand. Purchase of the video or subscription lends support to legends of the ring as Karuhat gets 55% of the net proceeds from this series; patrons get a substantial discount (you can purchase Episode 18 individually after the trailer below, or look to Episode 18 in the full list). You can also subscribe to the entire series, there are now over 20 hours of commentary training footage published:

watch all the free videos in this series

This is about being relaxed in a range, and moving smoothly through that range. This is really against my basic instinct which is to pop out of range, after a miss, or even a mistake. Karuhat is a pressure fighter, but the pressure isn’t aggression per se. It’s more constantly reading and scanning your opponent, closing the distance.

In the free excerpt above he starts talking about my elbows, wanting me to think about how arm-pressure creates openings for elbows. He is showing me his push-pull, the way he uses tension to flex or melt away. This is a larger principle for him, part of his Be Like Sand. For me a key in working his flex into my style I want to be on my front foot. For me rocking back onto my back foot stagnates me, making me less ready. On my front foot I’m much more ready to kick or check.

click to watch the full On Demand series

Episode 17. At top is a free 4 minute extended clip, but you can watch the full 84 minute commentary video of this session on Vimeo On Demand. Purchase of the video or subscription lends support to legends of the ring as Karuhat gets 55% of the net proceeds from this series; patrons get a substantial discount (you can purchase Episode 17 individually after the trailer below, or look to Episode 17 in the full list). You can also subscribe to the entire series, there are now over 23 hours of commentary training footage published:

watch all the free videos in this series

click to watch the full On Demand series

Episode 16. At top is a free 5 minute extended clip, but you can watch the full 68 minute commentary analysis video of this session on Vimeo On Demand (below). Purchase of the video or subscription lends support to legends of the ring as Karuhat gets 55% of the net proceeds from this series; patrons get a substantial discount (you can purchase Episode 16 individually after the trailer below, or look to Episode 16 in the full list). You can also subscribe to the entire series, there are now over 21 hours of commentary training footage published:

watch all the free videos in this series

I think a lot of fighters can have intermediate success because of the combination approach. They learn fixed combinations that they can just commit themselves to. This is a form of forced continuity. After the combo, there’s the break. Combination fighters grow and learn to extend their combinations, longer and longer, to stay in forced continuity, and then to get out of range. But combinations are something very different than the Reading Continuity that Karuhat is asking for. Sylvie, as I’ve mentioned before, has been both cursed and blessed by the fact that she just can’t throw a combination. She will not commit herself to forced, memorized continuity. This has left her looking behind the curve in terms of using things that easily work in intermediate fighting, but it has also forced her to develop a control style at distances other fighters might not – and lead to her Muay Khao clinch style. In training with Karuhat we uncovered though just how much Continuity – a reading continuity – was missing. The requirement to stop and comment on oneself imposed itself at every turn. The habits of self-criticism made her very knowledgeable about technique, but much less capable of expressing the breadth of it under pressure. The ask, from Karuhat, was to let go and just surrender to the movement itself. To let the movement forward – once the principles were understood – correct the error that just happened, to let the movement itself build on the success that just fell out. To let the next note played as the redemption or the meaning of the note that was just played. To be continuously composing.

The esoteric part of this though is this: If we conceive of the body as more or less continuous with what I’ll call The Great Chain of Being, that is, that the knowledge of the body – the way it perceives and organizes space, the way it rhythms itself, is ever exploring and finding balance, the way it even signals and symbolizes dominance, or guards itself, all of that of its greater instincts and reactions, its animal self – is in continuity of the world around itself. But the Mind…is the Edit, the unique way that the Mind cuts the flow of Being – Sartre called it the Nothingness of Consciousness – somehow painfully diseased when it stands above the body? I say diseased in the component sense dis-eased, ill- or not- at ease. There can be no doubt that much that is magnificent and great has been created by the incisions of Consciousness, cutting into the rhythm of Being, the way that the Mind can hollow out a moment and insert a comment as if it is writing notes on software, or like post-it notes on a refrigerator. But one of the things that we love about fighting, and making and art of and sport of it, is that it is Primordial. It returns us to other truths, truths that may have been lost and that we are in need of. In the exploration of a fighter’s style, reaching toward the fluidity of expression, and having the beautiful spectrum put before me, Karuhat and Sylvie-reaching-for-Karuhat, It struck me just how much Sylvie’s mind interrupts. It interrupts everything. There is a habit of insertion, that may very well be a condition of the Western mind, something I definitely share in. Perhaps even a pathological condition. The world is full of edits and editorials for many of us. And for many who come to Thailand in order to learn technique they become frustrated that Thais (at gyms not overly tailored to western fight tourism) do not seem to be wiling to break things down and explain things to them. This is because “technique” is not the product of edits for most Thai fighters. It is much closer to what many will just call Nature. Technique is learned by lots of watching, and even more doing. Angles, positions, conditions are not cut out from the flow of movement very often. You can see this most in Thai clinch training. There is just continuity, and the adjustment that comes out of that. I sense that the depth of this continuity in Thai fighting is already diluted from the Golden Age fighters, and fighting becomes more phrased and compartmented, less like an on-running dialogue. I may be wrong about that but when you watch a Golden Age fight you can see that it is just different, there is something you can’t quite put your finger on. The Golden Age of Muay Thai reminds me of the basketball of the 1970s and 1980s (having grown up as a basketball fan, of that generation) when players moved differently in space. Gervin, The Doctor, Kareem or Frazier. It’s like they were suspended in air, or had a tempo that escaped time. These were born in the playgrounds of their time, just as the 1980s and 1990s in Thailand the Thai village and Bangkok gyms produced fighters of equal limpidity. What we’ve learned from this intensive with Karuhat is that it is not just a difference in style. It’s not just you do it this way, I do it another way. The style is an expression of a kind of comprehension which probably flowed out the informal but very real pedagogy. It’s a way of seeing and dictating space and time. And for Karuhat this comes through the keyhole of Continuity.

above, the simple grace of a teep counter-parry

via GIPHY – The George “The Iceman” Gervin 

It is perhaps more than coincidence that Karuhat does not like to hold pads. It makes no sense to him. You already know some of the language, let’s have a conversation. Let me guide you into some of the better ways to say something. He does hold his body in positions that could be very much like a padholder would, exposing himself to where a strike would land, and one could hold a pad there as many expert Thai padmen do, but he wants Sylvie to read the shape, to see the turn of the body, where the weight is. I think part of it is also is that dropping the pads lets him move the experience away from the “strike and then stop” mentality. Or the idea that the strike or score is the point. It’s about reading without edits, and I think the art of this drills all the way down into the very structure of our thought and our experience of ourselves as persons. One of the biggest aesthetic enjoyments of the Art of fighting is that for the audience member the fighter weaves the beauty of movements while in physical states that would paralyze an average, inexperienced person in fear. The fighter is sculpting themselves out of the clay of Fear. The agitated state of duress, and the discovered calm and continuity that grows in the elevated state, is the Art. Ultimately, that is what makes it meaningful. To act as another might not. It’s why fighters at the top of their game can feel otherworldly. They skate on ice that we mere mortals could not even stand on. I believe that in these 30 sessions Karuhat showed Sylvie the hidden secret to just what that is, to ever push yourself back down in the stream, to not take your head out, to stay submerged in continuity. What is really remarkable about this is that this rather immense metaphysical conclusion comes out of what may be the most pragmatic fighting martial art tradition and practice on the planet. The things that survive and largely thrive in the Muay Thai of Thailand have been born out of 100,000s of thousands of actual full-rules fights, for decades and decades. I do believe that some of the knowledge of the Golden Age has been lost, but that is largely due to a change in learning path, that’s why this intensive with Karuhat is probably of extraordinary historical value.

It’s pretty amazing that this lesson, which occurred over 30 training days and 40 hours, has been preserved and recorded for others. The path is there if anyone wants to study it and walk it.

For more on this you can watch our long discussion on Continuity:

Watch a Karuhat highlight video, if you are unfamiliar with him.

I’ve written about differences in western and Thai conceptions of motion and learning.

You can learn from watching Muay Thai’s legends by supporting the Muay Thai Library documentary project.

You’ll hear a background hiss in the audio of this session. Its the rain on the tin roof. In the free trailer clip there are lots of little things being show. It starts with my observation of how Karuhat’s micro movements are continually creating the “wrong distance” for me, and how this produces a vague sense of discomfort in your opponent. He also repeatedly corrects me on the height of my knees, they are too high. He wants them to come lower, they will have more length, and develop a natural rise. He also shows me the dynamics of a basic pull towards yourself throw which tangles the legs of a leaning opponent.

click to watch the full On Demand series

Episode 15. At top is a free 5 minute extended clip, but you can watch the full 84 minute commentary video of this session on Vimeo On Demand. Purchase of the video or subscription lends support to legends of the ring as Karuhat gets 55% of the net proceeds from this series; patrons get a substantial discount (you can purchase Episode 15 individually after the trailer below, or look to Episode 15 in the full list). You can also subscribe to the entire series, there are now over 20 hours of commentary training footage published:

watch all the free videos in this series