Irish Martial Arts

The Warrior and Intimacy

 The Warrior and Intimacy

 

            Time and time again I hear women complain about the lack of intimacy in their relationships, especially if they are involved with a “warrior” or someone who has chosen to walk a dark path. It should come as no surprise that these men put up a series of defenses around themselves and their heart. When you see the evil that people do to each other and to themselves it leaves emotional and spiritual scars that sometimes never heal. What makes things worse is when you have done the same thing yourself, whether it was for duty or for cash it still damages you.

 

            No wonder that relationships fail time and time again when one person or both have walked the warrior path. I can only speak from a man’s point of view so that is what, I’m going to concentrate on. Ladies, the hardest thing for us to do is to allow you to really see into our hearts.

 

            Intimacy, in to me see; see into my heart, into my soul. See my fears and my shortcomings; see my wounds and my pain. If I open up to you, will you look into the darkness that is there and run away? Will you take the one good thing that has happened to me and leave me less than I was before? Can you ever understand how hard it is for me to fit into your so-called polite society, with all its bullshit and shallowness? I sit and listen to you and your friends as they go on and on about things that I can never care about.  Then you get mad and tell say, “Why cant you just be normal and act like everyone else?” Well, because I am not like everyone else.  I know just how precious life is, just how quickly it can change or at worst, end. You keep at it over and over again, thinking that I can change. Thinking that because I love you, I should want to.

 

            Do you honestly think that I like being this way? That when we go somewhere I have to scope the entire place out and choose where and how we will sit. Or maybe I love the idea of flinching every time I hear a loud noise or when someone walks behind me. I just love waking up at night in a cold sweat and walking around the house till the shakes stop, and I have checked every door and window. The nights that I can’t sleep are the worst though, nothing quite like chainsaws and razor wire ripping through my psyche to keep the old eyes bright and full of life. Maybe you like the anger that I have to deal with, anger that you can never understand. Anger so deep that it has become a part of me, a part that I fight to keep in control. When we argue and I walk away it is because I don’t know how to carry on without throwing punches or saying something I can’t take back.

 

            I wish I knew what to tell the women in these situations, I would love to have some sane advice to give you.  I think Dr Deborah Harper summed it up best when she said, “don’t get a German shepherd and expect it to act like poodle.” These are two totally different versions of the same species, don’t expect one to act like the other.

Sifu Glen G. Doyle Irish Stick Fighting Seminar in Boston, USA 2008

Visit Sifu Glen G. Doyle's website. Visit Guro Robert Masson's website.

Notes from Boston - Introductions

Life it seems...  has some imaginative writers!

Who could have penned the script that put the set of circumstances I find myself in today.  Surely it would have been rejected by an editor as implausible, ridiculous, too fantastical!  But yet Life seems to have a very open minded editorial board; and I am thankful for it!

My name is Rob Masson and I teach the Doyle Family System of Irish Stick Fighting, Rince an Bhata Uisce Bheatha, or Dance of the Whiskey Stick.  My instructor is also Canadian, Glen Doyle, who lives and teaches out  of the greater Toronto area and is the keeper of his family's system.  I am originally from New Brunswick Canada and of Scottish decent (my middle name is Bruce and my Great Grandmother who helped raise me was from Glasgow..  And I own a Kilt!) I emigrated to Boston some 10 years or so ago and have since settled in and married into a wonderful family and made New England my home.  

So we set the stage, a Scottish maritimer in Boston teaching Irish Stick Fighting to Yanks...  Ohhh surely this will be MUST See TV!  *grin*   Perhaps though this amazing confluence of nationalities and skills and backgrounds is apropos.  After all the history of the Irish in North America is a complex one and their martial history is certainly rich in it's depth and complexity.  I have come closer to my Celtic history through meeting people in this community and visiting Ireland to train with Martial Artists there and find in this crossing a great insight into my past and hope for my son's future and indeed our next generations future.

I'm Rob...  I teach Rince an Bhata Uisce Bheatha in Boston.  Stay Tuned..  You won't want to miss how this goes!  *smile*

An Interview with Sifu Glen Doyle Part Three

MP3 File

Length-1 hour, 25 minutes, 37 seconds

 

Dr. Kevin Keough, clinical psychologist and host of Warrior Traditions and North Star Guardians, interviews Sifu Glen Doyle about Irish stick fighting.

Born in Avondale (Middle Arm), Newfoundland, Canada, Glen Doyle began his martial arts education at a very young age. Greg Doyle,Glen's father, was a military man who was also a marathoner and a boxer. Greg ran for Canada many times and boxed for the Canadian Armed Forces during and after the Korean War.

Greg felt his son would need the education of the fighting arts to help give him confidence and drive. At the tender age of four, Glen put on his first pair of boxing loves and began his pugilistic career. Under the strict guidance of his father, Glen continued to train for over eight years in both boxing and the Doyle family style of Irish stick fighting.

However, at age twelve, Glen startled his father with an observation about his boxing art. He told his father that although boxing was an outstanding sport for both endurance and coordination, he found it limited in its realism for street combat. Glen sat his father down and mapped out boxing limits with respect to striking and defending below the waist, and weight disadvantages.

With the support of his father, Glen decided to look for a more complete fighting art. The search took him through a sampling of the Japanese and Korean arts, and even into the military for a few years to test out its hand-to-hand combat program. Nothing seemed to make him feel complete.

Then in 1983, strictly by chance, Glen met an elderly Chinese gentleman, Mr. James Lore (Lore King Hong). Lore was a Hung Gar Gung Fu teacher at the Jing Mo Kung-Fu Club, which operated out of the Chinese Community Center of Ontario. Glen watched one class and signed up...the partnership had begun.

For the next five years, Glen trained every day for six to seven hours and moved up his club's pecking order. Though Glen was not Chinese, he threw himself totally into both his martial art and the Chinese culture and became a recognized face in Toronto's Chinatown, earning the Chinese name of Lok Siu Fung (after a figure in Chinese mythology).

Glen's next step was the competition circuit, and on his first outing he won the Eastern Canadian Championships and won a chance to compete in the Canadian National Championships, which saw teams from all over Canada and numerous teams from the U.S. The competition was fierce, but Glen emerged as the Canadian Champion, and would keep the title, until he stepped down to pursue other interests in the form of training sports teams and adopting his fighting theories to all aspects of life -- from self-defense to self-help.

Developing his andmartial arts cross-training techniques, Glen went on and became the martial arts coach for figure-skating mega-star Elvis Stojko (who still works with him), ice dancers Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz,Pro-Roller Hockey teams, AHL and OHL players, soccer teams, football teams and more.

Glen now offers unique, highly effective martial arts cross-training classes and seminars specifically tailored for hockey,figure skating,running, soccer, basketball, and other sport. Using his keen ability to analyze motion and movement within sport, he takes the muscle explosion, muscle awareness, focus, breathing, power, control,and emboldening self-confidence found in the martial arts and directly applies them to each specific sport and athlete. This streamlined approach allows the athletes to reap many of the benefits of martial arts that are directly applicable to their sport without the time required for studying martial arts in the traditional manner.

Glen's style, flair, and open approach to his martial arts has landed him on the cover of numerous magazines, seen him perform at both national and international events, on television shows throughout Canada and the U.S., and even won him the prestigious honor of being the special guest performer at the historic Opening Ceremonies of the World Wu Shu Championships in 1995, held in Baltimore. It was the first time the games had been held outside Asia, and the event was to be seen by millions via satellite.

Always looking for new ways to spread his teachings, Glen accepted assignments as a fight choreographer for Cynthia Rothrock and for Canadian film and television programs. This helped him realize his potential to both teach and learn, and Glen began to set aside much of his time to explore this area. Studying film arts and screenwriting at Ryerson University and then journalism at Humber College, Glen developed new creative avenues to increase his power to teach and invent. However, he did not want to stray from the purity of his art, and he still had a drive to continue to educate and help those wishing to better themselves so Glen decided to put some of his thoughts and ideals into a book entitled The Martial Artist's Way. It is not a picture-filled "how to" book, but rather a simple set of thoughts and suggestions for those wanting to get more from their martial art or sports experiences.

Glen recently opened his own martial arts club in Milton, Ontario. The Céad Bua Club offers traditional Kung Fu, Irish stickfighting, Sports Cross-training, as well as Theatrical Martial Arts forFilm. Contact Glen at cead_bua@yahoo.ca for more information.

Glen has made foray into the entertainment world via screenwriting. He has had three of his scripts produced within the last few years - and they have been seen at numerous international film festivals and TV networks. Look for Sometimes a Hero, The Circuit, and Circuit II at a video store near you.

IRISH MARTIAL ARTS-WHAT IS UP WITH THIS ?

Dr. Kevin Keough

A short story: Last week I listened for the first time to an interview I'd done with Sifu Glen Doyle. Doyle is the most visible teacher-practitioner of Irish Martial Arts (IMA). Doyle is an accomplished practitioner and teacher of Chinese martial systems along with IMA. By the end of the interview some of the unique aspects of IMA hit me between the eyes. So I called him to see if he'd consider a follow-up interview. He answered, gave a friendly greeting, and said he'd be happy to talk again.

Next, I re-read excerpts from books written by John W Hurley about IMA, Irish stick fighting, and the rest. Hurley offers some ideas that help explain the relative obscurity of IMA. So I called Hurley to schedule an interview. We'd talked a few times before many months earlier but seemed to pick up where we left off. He was up for an interview.

Then I spent several hours doing google searches on IMA. Aside from Doyle and Hurley there was virtually nothing to be found. I looked through every martial arts school listed in Ireland and couldn't find a single one that offered training in IMA. The Irish Martial Arts Regulatory Board listed virtually every martial system but there wasn't even a hint of a reference to IMA. Western Martial Arts Organizations and journals feature martial traditions from every country in Europe including Eastern European systems but IMA are completely absent.

By the end of the googling I was grumpier than usual. How is it possible that virtually nothing appears in a search for IMA ?

I grumped about the whole thing to my friend Deborah who seems to be nearly as bothered by the matter as me. This wasn't the first time we'd gone over this ground. Sometime during the last year as I ranted on I remember she was checking Whois for url's related to Irish martial arts and Irish stick fighting. I think I found reason to grump about the fact that both url's were available. Rather than grump she bought them.

Next morning I talked to Deborah who asked me to check out something she'd put together overnight when she couldn't sleep. Now, she always has me looking at things she's found or created or whatever--she rarely disappoints. But she didn't seem particularly excited as she asked me to check out her insomnia inspired creation, so I wasn't expecting much.

Well, she had put together the beginnings of the Irish Martial Arts blog  that stunned me. It seemed something kind of significant had happened. We'd been talking about how people seem to go Chinese or Japanese or Korean or anything other than their own martial traditions. Seems there are plenty of Irish-American or Scots-Irish cops, firemen, veterans, first responders, etc. that would really take to Irish martial arts if they knew about them. The question has been how to heighten public awareness.

As I looked at the tag-line "The Fighting Irish" something clicked within me. I asked if I could get off the phone to make some phone calls (yeah, I ask when talking to Deborah--who gave permission). So, I left messages for Glen Doyle, John Hurley, and shot a few emails off to guys who'd get a kick out of the whole thing.

Who knows what will come of it. I intend to do my part to spread the word, ask people to submit articles, essays, videos, recommendations for books, movies, dvd's and all the rest. Hopefully, enough people will get involved that we reach a 'tipping point'. It feels a little strange that a woman in CA and a guy in Delaware with no formal training in Irish martial arts would end up putting this thing together. I know that's why I called Doyle and Hurley right away--to let them know about it and our intention to promote their life's work. It's hard to toot your own horn so we will toot it for them.

There are other people out there involved in Irish martial arts that we hope to meet. I believe this is to be a community effort. No need for competition and turf battles. We get farther by promoting other people, cooperating and coordinating, and having fun in the process. So, please join in and pass the word. It does seem high time we explore the cool things sitting in our backyards and telling the world about some obscure guys who've devoted their lives to something with no real expectation their work would see the light of day. I hope this one act of good can play a part in changing this and lead to similar efforts to promote the work of other unknowns doing very important work.

So, I thought we might kick things off with some thoughts courtesy of Glen Doyle. After this, I hope to share some of John Hurley's work. After that, we improvise

Visit the Irish Martial Arts blog..

It's a good day. Enjoy ..............