The Paulsonator

Erik coming to town is always a marvelous experience. In the midst of a house move it made it the more interesting.

Erik and Tonya were up at the house to chill out and Tonya likes to see Kali. For me, it was a great opportunity to ask Erik about the best way to adopt his curriculm requirements at the school. We watch some fights and discuss training methods and tactics.

The seminar went well, ending up with all the students in the ring working boxing drills. The ammount of information, technique and advice was immence. There's enough information for students to take and utilise for a year. Early into the late hours Erik and I were watching fights and discussing martial arts.

Seeing them off is always sad. I had wanted to go to Ayr and take in the next seminar as well. This wasn't realistic at this stage of my fight and I had a fighter getting ready for a MMA fight as well as a house move.

Friday consisted of driving through freezing fog to Bathgate, hanging around in a freezing fight venue all for 6 minutes of fight action. Neil Cushnie was competing. He had trained for a previous show but was not matched. At short notice he was in good shape to step up and take the task and did so without hesitation.

I recall some 3 years ago, Neil was helping me moving rubble from our old Justice Mill Lane gym and expressed his desire to fight one day. I am sure Neil wont be embarrassed to hear that he is certainly no hard man and the idea of him being a fighter would have been laughed off by many.

At AMAG though, we have the culture of anything being possible. Neil achieved his dream and at the end of the fight the achievement dawned on him. He hadn't expected to win because he has always been told that he wasn't an achiever. Neil has stuck two fingers up at them and has proved to himself that he doesn't need to be chained to other people pulling him down. You can watch his fight here.

There are a multitude of examples at AMAG and each one of them fills me with pride and satisfaction. I may not have been able to be as active this year but next year I will be turning up the intensity as i return to good health, but having developed so many good students I know they also carry these values.

Establish right relationship with man first

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You will never find it if you seek it. You will never find it if you run after it. You will never find it if your intention is in seeing the beauty of the earth, in seeing the light on the water, in seeing the perfect line of a mountain, and you hope through seeing, to find that. You will never find it because you cannot find that through anything, through your sacrifice, through your worship, through your meditation, through your virtue. You will never come upon it because your motive is all wrong, because you want to find that, not in living, but somewhere else. You must establish right relationship with man first, which means you must know what it means to love, what it means to be compassionate, what it means to be generous when you have a great deal, what it means to share with another the little that you have, to establish this marvellous order in living, daily living. - Krishnamurti in India 1970-71, p157