The Warrior Foundation

As many of you know, I'm a motorcycle rider. I've been riding recently with a group here in Florida called the Special Forces Motorcycle Club (SFMC). This club is made up of riders who served in the special forces of any branch of the military, and supporters who may qualify. I am not a member but I have supported the club in their fund-raising efforts over the years. The funds they raise go to the worthy charity below, the SOWF. The following description is from the SOWF website.

The Special Operations Warrior Foundation (SOWF) provides free college scholarship grants, along with financial aid and educational counseling, to the children of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps Special Operations personnel who were killed in an operational mission or training accident.
The Warrior Foundation is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit organization.
www.specialops.org.

The club here is having their annual fund-raiser in early April. If you would like to contribute by sending money or by donating something to be auctioned off to raise money on that weekend, please contact them through their website. Tell them I sent you.
http://www.specialforcesmc.org/

Quote

True brilliance, is not a function of understanding one's view of the world and finding order, logic, and spirituality in it. True brilliance is understanding that your view of order, logic, and spirituality is what created your world.

And therefore being forever capable of changing everything.

Submitted by Steve White

Concussions

I found an old article entitled "The Nightmare Punch" in my files. It's now posted on my site in the articles section under Resources. The following comments by Dr. Marc Rowe refer to that article, but on their own are good information for those of us in our contact sport of choice.

In adult and pediatric trauma centers head injuries are the most common serious injury and often associated with multiple injuries. The epidural is a killer. Often victim is knocked out , wakes up is clear and then develops symptoms and then slips into coma. This is a surgical emergency. Bleeding is from an artery (middle menigeal that runs in a groove on the inside of the skull and is vulnerable with skull fracture). With arterial bleeding, blood rapidly accumulates and pressure cause brain herniation and death. Rapid diagnosis and relieving pressure and controlling hemorrhage is the ticket.
A subdural hematoma slowly causes symptoms. Pressure on the brain develops slowly because bleeding is from veins not an artery.
The new stuff is really appreciation of post concussion syndrome and better diagnostic modalities.

Jan's daughter told her she had been "shaken uncontrollably" by one of her friends (I'd put that in quotes, too) and she had a headache for two days after. She's a rail, about 110 pounds, and I'm pretty sure the headache was a mild concussion. Marc and I are thinking we're going to write something on concussions when we get done with our sleeper hold article. What do you think?

More stuff

I'll bet most of you have never seen this brochure for the Ed Parker studios in Los Angeles. I spent the better part of a day scanning and posting onto my site at www.leewedlake.com. I've added more articles for those of you who like to research the system, with more to come. There are a bunch more photos in the gallery now. Some of those pictures are from my collection, some are public. I've placed some letters, and article with copies of diplomas and the like there, too.
The member section of the site is pumped up with even more historical info. I've added the IKKA constitution and some of the USKA constitution. The USKA document is there because it has some evidence relating to disputes about the title Ed Parker was given as "The Father of American Karate." I've got brochures Ed Parker distributed for his school (like the one above) and books. I hope you enjoy it.

Celebration PDS

The 2008 series starts this weekend in Celebration, Florida, outside Orlando. I'm starting the year off with a seminar on the ritual and etiquette of kenpo, along with the Orange belt techniques. Form Six in Fresno, CA on Feb 16, Form Four will be in early March, and a weapons PDS will be held in Charleston, SC. Hope to see you at one soon.

Photo gallery

I've been busy scanning and posting old photos and documents to my website at www.leewedlake.com. There's a photo gallery page there. I've put the original IKKA constitution up in the members section, but the gallery has some of my certificates, Parker pictures and photos from my Oak Lawn school near Chicago.
More to come.

Rambo!

Sly Stallone is releasing his wrap-up of the Rambo story this week. Kenpo black belt Gil Hibben designed the knives for this movie. There was a picture of him with the knives in a recent edition of Blade magazine, and they promised to have an in-depth article on them soon. Gil did the knives for Rambo III years ago. I'm glad to see Gil in the spotlight and wish him the best of luck with this new piece.
Gil has made me a few custom pieces over the years. I have two Parker knives, a Klingon knife from one of the Star Trek movies (one of only 10), a Vietnam-era Special Forces knife made of steel from the World Trade Center, and another odd set. The set is 4 steak knives I bought from Gil in 1984. The blades are etched with his name, just like his other stuff, and I have them in the original shipping box. I never used them. In fact, I'm wondering what their worth because I might sell them. If you know, or you're interested, contact me at lee@leewedlake.com.

He's back!

Jack Nilon is an Australian black belt from the Sydney area. Jack spent six months here with me in 1999, training almost every day. He's back for another six and when he goes back, he plans to get a school going.
Jack is a student of Mike Crim, one of the first people I met when I went down there in 1986. Mike is living in England now and we've crossed paths now and again. He's a great guy.
Mr. Nilon will be coming along with me to some of the seminars I will be doing in the first half of 2008. Meet him if you get the chance.

BPD

One of my brown belts, Kirk Beck, sent a link to this. I thought it might be helpful to some of you teaching "down in the trenches", or dating...

Borderline Personality Disorder

Raising questions, finding answers
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a serious mental illness characterized by pervasive instability in moods, interpersonal relationships, self-image, and behavior. This instability often disrupts family and work life, long-term planning, and the individual's sense of self-identity. Originally thought to be at the "borderline" of psychosis, people with BPD suffer from a disorder of emotion regulation. While less well known than schizophrenia or bipolar disorder (manic-depressive illness), BPD is more common, affecting 2 percent of adults, mostly young women.1 There is a high rate of self-injury without suicide intent, as well as a significant rate of suicide attempts and completed suicide in severe cases.2,3 Patients often need extensive mental health services, and account for 20 percent of psychiatric hospitalizations.4 Yet, with help, many improve over time and are eventually able to lead productive lives.

Symptoms
While a person with depression or bipolar disorder typically endures the same mood for weeks, a person with BPD may experience intense bouts of anger, depression, and anxiety that may last only hours, or at most a day.5 These may be associated with episodes of impulsive aggression, self-injury, and drug or alcohol abuse. Distortions in cognition and sense of self can lead to frequent changes in long-term goals, career plans, jobs, friendships, gender identity, and values. Sometimes people with BPD view themselves as fundamentally bad, or unworthy. They may feel unfairly misunderstood or mistreated, bored, empty, and have little idea who they are. Such symptoms are most acute when people with BPD feel isolated and lacking in social support, and may result in frantic efforts to avoid being alone.

People with BPD often have highly unstable patterns of social relationships. While they can develop intense but stormy attachments, their attitudes towards family, friends, and loved ones may suddenly shift from idealization (great admiration and love) to devaluation (intense anger and dislike). Thus, they may form an immediate attachment and idealize the other person, but when a slight separation or conflict occurs, they switch unexpectedly to the other extreme and angrily accuse the other person of not caring for them at all. Even with family members, individuals with BPD are highly sensitive to rejection, reacting with anger and distress to such mild separations as a vacation, a business trip, or a sudden change in plans. These fears of abandonment seem to be related to difficulties feeling emotionally connected to important persons when they are physically absent, leaving the individual with BPD feeling lost and perhaps worthless. Suicide threats and attempts may occur along with anger at perceived abandonment and disappointments.

People with BPD exhibit other impulsive behaviors, such as excessive spending, binge eating and risky sex. BPD often occurs together with other psychiatric problems, particularly bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, and other personality disorders.

Treatment
Treatments for BPD have improved in recent years. Group and individual psychotherapy are at least partially effective for many patients. Within the past 15 years, a new psychosocial treatment termed dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) was developed specifically to treat BPD, and this technique has looked promising in treatment studies.6 Pharmacological treatments are often prescribed based on specific target symptoms shown by the individual patient. Antidepressant drugs and mood stabilizers may be helpful for depressed and/or labile mood. Antipsychotic drugs may also be used when there are distortions in thinking.7

Recent Research Findings
Although the cause of BPD is unknown, both environmental and genetic factors are thought to play a role in predisposing patients to BPD symptoms and traits. Studies show that many, but not all individuals with BPD report a history of abuse, neglect, or separation as young children.8 Forty to 71 percent of BPD patients report having been sexually abused, usually by a non-caregiver.9 Researchers believe that BPD results from a combination of individual vulnerability to environmental stress, neglect or abuse as young children, and a series of events that trigger the onset of the disorder as young adults. Adults with BPD are also considerably more likely to be the victim of violence, including rape and other crimes. This may result from both harmful environments as well as impulsivity and poor judgement in choosing partners and lifestyles.

NIMH-funded neuroscience research is revealing brain mechanisms underlying the impulsivity, mood instability, aggression, anger, and negative emotion seen in BPD. Studies suggest that people predisposed to impulsive aggression have impaired regulation of the neural circuits that modulate emotion.10 The amygdala, a small almond-shaped structure deep inside the brain, is an important component of the circuit that regulates negative emotion. In response to signals from other brain centers indicating a perceived threat, it marshals fear and arousal. This might be more pronounced under the influence of drugs like alcohol, or stress. Areas in the front of the brain (pre-frontal area) act to dampen the activity of this circuit. Recent brain imaging studies show that individual differences in the ability to activate regions of the prefrontal cerebral cortex thought to be involved in inhibitory activity predict the ability to suppress negative emotion.11

Serotonin, norepinephrine and acetylcholine are among the chemical messengers in these circuits that play a role in the regulation of emotions, including sadness, anger, anxiety, and irritability. Drugs that enhance brain serotonin function may improve emotional symptoms in BPD. Likewise, mood-stabilizing drugs that are known to enhance the activity of GABA, the brain's major inhibitory neurotransmitter, may help people who experience BPD-like mood swings. Such brain-based vulnerabilities can be managed with help from behavioral interventions and medications, much like people manage susceptibility to diabetes or high blood pressure.7

Future Progress
Studies that translate basic findings about the neural basis of temperament, mood regulation, and cognition into clinically relevant insights�which bear directly on BPD�represent a growing area of NIMH-supported research. Research is also underway to test the efficacy of combining medications with behavioral treatments like DBT, and gauging the effect of childhood abuse and other stress in BPD on brain hormones. Data from the first prospective, longitudinal study of BPD, which began in the early 1990s, is expected to reveal how treatment affects the course of the illness. It will also pinpoint specific environmental factors and personality traits that predict a more favorable outcome. The Institute is also collaborating with a private foundation to help attract new researchers to develop a better understanding and better treatment for BPD.

References
1Swartz M, Blazer D, George L, Winfield I. Estimating the prevalence of borderline personality disorder in the community. Journal of Personality Disorders, 1990; 4(3): 257-72.

2Soloff PH, Lis JA, Kelly T, Cornelius J, Ulrich R. Self-mutilation and suicidal behavior in borderline personality disorder. Journal of Personality Disorders, 1994; 8(4): 257-67.

3Gardner DL, Cowdry RW. Suicidal and parasuicidal behavior in borderline personality disorder. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 1985; 8(2): 389-403.

4Zanarini MC, Frankenburg FR. Treatment histories of borderline inpatients. Comprehensive Psychiatry, in press.

5Zanarini MC, Frankenburg FR, DeLuca CJ, Hennen J, Khera GS, Gunderson JG. The pain of being borderline: dysphoric states specific to borderline personality disorder. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 1998; 6(4): 201-7.

6Koerner K, Linehan MM. Research on dialectical behavior therapy for patients with borderline personality disorder. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 2000; 23(1): 151-67.

7Siever LJ, Koenigsberg HW. The frustrating no-mans-land of borderline personality disorder. Cerebrum, The Dana Forum on Brain Science, 2000; 2(4).

8Zanarini MC, Frankenburg. Pathways to the development of borderline personality disorder. Journal of Personality Disorders, 1997; 11(1): 93-104.

9Zanarini MC. Childhood experiences associated with the development of borderline personality disorder. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 2000; 23(1): 89-101.

10Davidson RJ, Jackson DC, Kalin NH. Emotion, plasticity, context and regulation: perspectives from affective neuroscience. Psychological Bulletin, 2000; 126(6): 873-89.

11Davidson RJ, Putnam KM, Larson CL. Dysfunction in the neural circuitry of emotion regulation - a possible prelude to violence. Science, 2000; 289(5479): 591-4.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NIH Publication No. 01-4928

Why me?

If you read Ed Parker's Infinite Insights into Kenpo, Vol. 5, you see the first three forms in the system shown in a line drawing, step-by-step. Those drawings were taken from a series of photographs I posed for in Chicago and shot by Brad Crooks. Mr. Parker had asked me to have them done and he would include them in his book. I shot every move from Short One through Long Three. I brought the black and white shots to him in California and we went through them one by one. He made corrections and I went back and re-did the ones he selected. Cost about $1,000.
Later he told me he had decided to have Ed Jr make line drawings from the pictures. 25 years later Ed told me he found the pictures in a box at his parent's home. I have some of them, too. But why the change, and why me?
The change, I think, was that he wanted to make some changes, corrections, or both and it was easier and faster to have Ed Jr draw it than to go through the wait time for shooting photos and getting them to California. Why was I selected and used as the model in the book? I'm not sure. I was about 29-30 years old and didn't have a lot of cash but I paid for the photos anyway. I had been the first Parker stylist to make the National Top Ten in forms, maybe that's why. Maybe it was a reward, to be in the book; chosen above all the other excellent practitioners out there. I really don't know. Maybe he just liked me and I was in the right place at the right time.
I'm glad he did, though. And Ed Jr gave me some more hair in the drawings.

Back-up mass

Ed Parker did a seminar for us in Chicago on April 14, 1981. Two, actually. The first one was 2.5 hours long. We taped it and I still have it. Yesterday, January 15, was the 17th anniversary of my establishing the Ft. Myers studio and we showed the seminar tape to about 20 interested students to mark the day. Kyle Zwarg has since bought the studio but we thought it would be a treat to show it and it was appreciated.
One stand-out point, among many, was that he did not once use the term "back-up mass". The introduction I made before the video was that some of the things he would say would be taken for granted by today's student but in 1981 he was still formulating his terminology. The term he used in the seminar was body momentum. He mentions torque and gravitational marriage by those names but says body momentum instead of back-up mass. It would be later that he would say there were three types of body momentum and list the three, using back-up mass tied into power generated by changes in depth.
The showing of the video actually generated more questions than he did that day in the seminar. He was excited, and it was fun to watch him teach. I miss that guy.

Kenpo Karate 601 update

K-601 is close to wrapping up. The photos have been shot, the writing is done, and Ed Parker Jr is working on the cover. Now it's a matter of dropping the pictures in place and adding the preface. The preface is being written by Kurt Barnhart of Chicago. Kurt is my most long-time student and one of my oldest friends. We've known each other for about 30 years. I'm happy he agreed to write it for me.
Another good friend of mine, Frank Triolo, is also one of my black belts. Frank is a lawyer and wrote and submitted a piece for the book that touches on the legal aspects of self-defense related to the weapon techniques.
With a little luck the book will be out by April or May. I'll keep you posted.

Twirling Wings question

I rec'd a question through my website asking why the opposite side of Twirling Wings is in Short Form Three. Good question.
Kenpo is often called a "strong-sided" system. I don't necessarily agree with that term but it's commonly used alluding to the fact that most people are right handed. Most of the self-defense techniques finish with the right, "strong", hand.
Some don't, like Circles of Protection (the way most people teach it) and Twirling Wings, for examples. If you are right-handed, and agree with the "strong-side" label, Twirling Wings ends with your weak side.
In Short Three your first rib shot in Twirling Wings is with your weak hand. So, it's really the technique, and not the form, that's taught on the weak side.
Well, Ok, you might say. But the main reason is that the footwork is what's important, and I point that out in Kenpo 301. The footwork to get into Twirling Wings uses the lines of what you did in Crashing Wings, it's "flipped over". The reverse and opposites are in Long Three. If you map out the footwork you'll see what I mean.

Uppercuts

A question was submitted to me about the difference between the uppercut and the vertical back-knuckle as taught in the Parker system. This is often-asked, so I thought I'd address it here.
First off, what we teach as an uppercut is not like the uppercut taught in boxing. There are fundamental differences I don't want to get into here. The uppercut we do in Kenpo is more like an inverted straight punch at times. The vertical back-knuckle is close to the boxing uppercut, but still different enough. In our basics an uppercut stays below the solar plexus and changes its name when it goes above. And the terms are used interchangeably, which further confuses things. (Bottom line is you hit him and don't worry about what the name of what you hit him with was.)
I asked Ed Parker about these punches and the answer I got was that was just the way he saw them. For the basics, if it's low it's an uppercut. If it's high it's a vertical back-knuckle. They both hit with the front of the first two knuckles, which makes them punches - not strikes. Same punch, different name.
There's more to this. I plan to expand on this in the Member section on my website at www.leewedlake.com.

Sound familiar?

I have a very interesting collection of friends, acquaintances, cohorts, connections or whatever you want to call them. A result of that is I get a lot of interesting information sent my way. One such source is a Mensa friend of mine, who sends quite a bit of varied articles. One I just received was about politics in Pakistan, not something I'm particularly interested in, but as a good headline is supposed to do, it pulled me in to read it.
The article is titled Tribes of Terror and the author is Stanley Kurtz for the Claremont Institute. What's this got to do with your interest in Kenpo or the arts in general? I'm going to paste a few of his lines here and all you have to do is think about them in the context of the Kenpo family as it exists after the passing of Ed Parker.
"Traditionally existing outside the police powers of the state, Middle Eastern tribes keep order through a complex balance of power between these ever-fusing and -dividing ancestral groups. (Anthropologists call such tribes "segmentary lineages.")
Ed Parker didn't exercise a police power but he did keep firm control of the IKKA. Some might argue that he did exercise police power, but you guys can hash that out. But it's the second part of the sentence that struck me where he says "Ever-fusing and - dividing" in reference to groups. Doesn't that sound like so many of the Kenpo groups you know of? If you interact with other martial artists you'll hear a story like ours as well. And if you are aware at all of history and current events you know that human beings just do this sort of thing all the time.
Lineage is important for lots of reasons. Who your lineage is aligned with, if any, may or may not be. Getting into a contest about whose art or association is better is like two kids arguing about whose daddy can beat whose. So when I read the occasional blurb sent my way regarding who is now part of an alliance, it really doesn't affect my life. I don't read most of the karate gossip I get, and rarely see the websites like kenpotalk, etc. By the way, I really liked the "segmentary lineages" line. Now we have a term for those who change from instructor to instructor. Just what we needed in Kenpo, another term.
I don't see the fusing and dividing of the various Kenpo groups as really being a factor. Can't do anything about it anyway, although there seems to be a person or two out there who think they can and they make themselves the policeman. I have more important (to me) things to do. I'm sure you do, too.

Martial arts in the future

Click to enlarge.