The Battle Trance and Ordinary People

I have recently come across the writings of Joseph Jordania, an autodidact and polymath (that is to say, self-taught in a wide variety of disciplines, for all of you not as old and pretentious as me). In one of his writings, he examined the battle trance from the perspective of an outsider, and I found what he had to say to be quite fascinating. He wrote about the occurrence of the battle trance in ordinary soldiers, people who are, for the most part, not natural berserkers.

I had always wondered how normal people who are not, as berserkers are, prone to going into the trance at the drop of a hat, enter the state. More specifically, I wondered how soldiers’ conditioning helps then effect the deafferentation of the Orientation Association Area (the posterior superior parietal lobe) the sine qua non of going berserk, a thing most people have a very hard time doing.

Jordania argues that the key lies in the push for extremes of group identity that the military fosters, that one of the purposes of this push is actually to create conditions that make shutting off the OAA a lot more likely. More specifically, the absorption into a group identity involves losing the self, to some extent, and that involves shutting off the part of the brain that keeps track of it, which is the OAA. This is in contrast to born berserkers, who tend to lose their sense of self by merging with their alters, such as the wolf or the bear. I found the idea an intriguing look into a side of the gangr that is rarely discussed.

In the old days, when there was still a somafera forum, there was a debate about whether people who were not born berserkers could deliberately enter the state. We knew it could come over anyone in a moment of danger, but opinions were divided as to whether people not born prone to entering the trance could learn to do it deliberately. We knew of one person who tried. He came to our forum because he wanted to learn to do it, even though he had no gift for it. After years of studying with us, he tried. He ended up coming to the opinion that it was horrendously difficult, and the results kind of drove him mad. I think I can now venture an informed opinion that yes, even those not born with the gift can learn to bring it about deliberately, but that they must use the techniques suited for normal people, while born berserkers need those techniques best suited to our natures.

Training Everyday Movements

Hello, all. I meant to make this post a couple months ago, but I got the damn virus, and recovering took me awhile*. So here goes.

One of the most important parts to somafera training is something I learned in Bruce Lee’s The Tao of Jeet Kune Do. He strongly advised looking at training as being something that you do every moment of your life, not just in set “workout periods.” By this, he meant two things. One was to be constantly aware of everything you do physically, and strive to improve every movement you make, from how you go through doors to how you stand up. Do away with inefficiency, unneeded movements, hesitations, and wasted energy. Once you perfect all of your body’s basic movements, your movements in combat will be far more efficient, less wasteful, faster, and more effective. The other thing he meant is that you should always take the opportunity to do things the hard way when you can, to develop your body further. Carry two boxes at a time at work instead of one. Stand on one foot to put your socks and shoes on, instead of sitting down. And so forth.

I have followed this advice for years, and I can tell you, he is right. If you take your martial arts seriously, this is a critical element of your training. This is even more true for somaferans than most other kinds of martial artist, and that is because of the breath. There is an old saying in the martial arts that as the breath moves, so the mind moves. While martial artists in other traditions therefore sometimes study breath control, a major part of somafera involves breath control, because so much of somafera comes from making the mind move in unusual ways. At the most basic level, in order to pump your strength and reflexes up, you are going to need to be breathing deeply and quickly, and it takes some doing to manage that while still getting enough air to deal with moving, exerting yourself, and maybe getting hit. On a more advanced level, you’ll never maximize your fighting skill as a berserker unless you study the finer points of breath work: inhaling and exhaling at the right moments to power your movements maximally while not losing your broad awareness and meditative stillness.

If you really want to learn how your breath affects the way you move and think, if you want to learn how to time your breathing and movements in a way that maximizes your strength and minimizes your reaction time, start paying attention to the way you breathe while you move throughout the day. As you observe, learn. Once you start seeing how things work. Start making adjustments to how you perform the actions of the everyday, so that every movement you make is boosted by proper breathing. By improving the way you breathe and move this way will improve the way you do everything in combat.

This use of the actions of the everyday to train is something that I have been very much coming to study in recent years. I think it is going to form the basis of many of my posts in the future. It is not talked about often enough when it comes to martial arts training. I had said I would not make filler posts just to be posting something, that I only would write when I had something meaningful to say. This, I think, is one of the areas of my recent practices that I might actually have something worth talking about.

Well, anyway, I hope you’re all doing well out there is virus-land. Stay safe.

 

 

* Word of warning: if you get COVID-19, do not, repeat, DO NOT start working out hard after you’ve been feeling better for just a couple days. Doing so knocked me back from feeling fully cured to deliriously feverish and unable to breath in just a few hours. Took me weeks to come back from there.

Mastering Psychetachia: A Practical Primer

I have recently been asked for some advice on mastering the art of psychetachia. That is not an easy request to answer. Trying to teach the art of psychetachia is somewhat like trying to teach someone how to wiggle their ears. It’s way too specific to each person. However, I will try.

First, for those of you who don’t know, psychetachia is a mental state in which your internal sense of time runs much faster than it usually does. This makes it seem like time in the outside world has slowed down. This gives you relatively more time to act and react than you have outside of this state. Police officers and the military are sometimes trained to learn how to enter this state at will. Its advantages for the fighting berserker should be obvious. It is an especially common technique for berserkers because the gangr makes us very prone to experiencing it. It can range from mild, in which things in the outside world seem a little slower than usual to extreme, in which dropped objects seem to float lazily to the ground, although the extreme states never last long.

There are three components, biologically speaking, that go into setting your body up for the psychetachia state. One is a massive amount of adrenaline in your bloodstream. The second is a raised electrical potential in your nervous system. The third is a deep meditative calm. The first two make signals travel through your brain and nervous system faster. The third one minimizes distractions and resistance to your natural reactions.

To put it in spiritual terms, you need a hel of a lot of wod in your system.

So that’s the first thing you need to develop: maximize the amount of wod you can raise. It doesn’t much matter how you do it, everyone’s got their own techniques, but you need to get to the point where everything in your field of vision seems to shine. (Note: a few people don’t see the shining effect, they hear a buzzing noise instead.) Amongst your wod raising techniques, I would recommend whipping your head around/headbanging. This stimulates blood flow to the brain. I would also recommend deep breathing exercises. Rhythmic movements help, too.

Once you get to this stage, psychetachia is much more likely to happen spontaneously. But that is not the same thing as reliably. If you want control, you need to take it further. This will involve learning to spike your wod even further, but there’s more to it than that. There has to be a need for you to be especially fast. In the deep meditative state that accompanies heightened levels of wod, a genuine need will cause your mind to reshape its function to fill that need. This is how you learn to trigger and control the psychetachia state.

Let me give you some examples. One of the exercises that taught me control of the state involves a little prep work. First I constructed a gallows-like structure, with the support pole sunk into the ground. From it I hung some strings of different lengths, each with a rock tied to the end. Then, underneath this all, I put in some short monkey poles, which are poles that stand at different heights. Each was just wide enough for me to balance on on the ball of one foot. Then, after raising my wod, I stood on the poles and set myself the task of keeping all of the rocks swinging by striking them, while standing only on the poles, not letting them get tangled up with each other, and not letting them hit me. This was all way too much to keep track of at the speed things were moving, and this pushed me into a psychetachia state often enough that I came to understand how it worked, and could replicate it through an effort of will.

This is the approach to training that the Rillway school, my old Pack’s style of the berserkergang, favored: cles. It was an approach used by some ancient berserkers, and it amounts to trying to do feats that require more out of you than you have, so that the need can bring out the ability.

If you do not have access to outdoor space where you can set something like that up, there is a lamer but still effective indoor version you can use. Tack or tape several strings of different lengths to the ceiling in a circle. Tie or tape a coin to the end of each. Standing only in the circle, keep all of the coins swinging without getting tangled up or hitting you.

The most valuable exercise for developing a deep understanding and control of psychetachia, I found, was badminton, wearing a 30lb weighted vest, 5lb weights on each wrist, and 10lb weights on each ankle. Moving fast enough to catch the shuttlecock in that much weight requires a LOT of wod. Controlling your shot when that wod-high so that it stays in bounds requires an insane level of awareness and self control. It pushed my development of psychetachia control like nothing else did.

That one is also a good exercise because it teaches you how to move really fast and then pull back at the last instant, so you get the benefit of speed but retain finesse and don’t overpower things. If you ever master psychetachia well enough to call on it reliably, then you have the potential to become really dangerous to your sparring partners and opponents. Let me share with you an example. During the time after my initiation, I was sparring regularly with an opponent who practiced the same sword style as me (17th century regimental basket hilted broadsword). I suddenly got into a powerful psychetachia state and struck him three times in the time it took for him to raise his sword 1/4 of the way toward blocking my first attack. The third strike shattered my wooden sparring sword. Against his body. It left him with a nasty two foot bruise and an inability to stand. I could easily have broken his ribs if I had hit a little higher. Moving fast means hitting hard. So part of your learning psychetachia must be learning control.

And speaking of the sword martial arts, they also make for excellent psychetachia training. The tip of a sword moves between 200 and 300 mph. If that doesn’t push you into psychetachia then nothing will.

Hmm, I would also recommend the antique video game Breakout. Deceptively simple, it requires reflexes of lightning and a wide awareness when it gets going.

There is also one more thing you can learn to help you get into the psychetachia state. It is what my sensei referred to as a stored meditation. Up to 24 hours before your training, perform some sort of meditative ritual designed to boost your wod. Use a series of mantras or mudras or yantras or something. Intone a series of runes. Whatever works for you. The point is to get into a powerful ritual, and then stop before carrying out the last step. Immediately put it out of your mind and go and do something else. Once you are in the midst of your training, say the last mantra, intone the final rune, or whatever, and if you have done it right, you get the benefit of a long ritual all in an instant.

That is a part of the strategy of using everything you can to get your foot in the door. Eat a candy bar before training. Have some coffee. Heightened blood sugar and caffeine will also make you more prone to psychetachia. The idea is to use every trick you can to experience it a few times, so you can learn enough to access the state without the tricks.

 

P.S. Of course, once you really get a handle on psychetachia, then you are set to begin studying the warfetter, the berserkers’ most advanced technique.

Baritus: The Berserker Kiai

Hello everyone. There was recently a post in the Comments section that I thought deserved a response here. This is the post:

I don’t know if its exactly ‘breathwork’ but all the old stories and reports of somaferan style heroes I’ve read suggest that a warriors ‘battle shout’ is one of his or her greatest weapons and I always laughed and thought it showed how limited they were in their knowledge. Now an article in iscience and referred to in New Scientist and https://www.medindia.net/news/your-aggressive-tone-can-reflect-your-size-and-strength-to-others-180619-1.htm shows that humans male and female can judge height and strength very accurately from aggressive shouting. If as we know somafera style training or ability can boost strength massively, then one way to put people off and slow them down would be to warn them that you were currently much stronger than you look and make them reluctant to fight at all. At the very least it explains why it was so highly regarded in the old stories. OH and I’m getting on fine although old and my 3 children are now adults, two of whom, the girls, have used their innate abilities to fight off much greater nos or sized opponents much to the others surprise. At least it made my kids stop laughing at me for reading your website and other sources of information and teaching them of their available resources in an emergency. As well it reassured me that like my family, my children are much more safe than people might imagine.

Actually, I believe that would be a form of breathwork, good point. It is also one of the few techniques that we actually know that the ancient berserkers used. Called “baritus,” it was traditionally used right before the battle was joined, although it could also be used to great effect in battle. It is pretty much a Western version of the kiai.

I have used it myself to great effect on a number of occasions. Once, during the year I spent fighting in the Broadsword League, I was up against a new swordsman who had only been training for six months, whereas I had been training over twenty years at that point. I found him to be a surprisingly tough opponent where I had expected an easy victory. Turns out he had been a professional dancer for some fifteen years or so before taking up the sword, and he had excellent control over his body, an excellent sense of distance, and truly superior stamina. His lack of experience also meant that he used strange and unanticipated moves that made him more difficult than usual to counter. So, when I judged him psychologically vulnerable for a moment, I used the technique. I am big anyway, and in a berserk state I can manage a good roar. Instantly he shifted from the aggressive approach he had been using to fighting a purely defensive fight. That is always a mistake, because no defense is flawless. To gain victory you need to attack, because sooner or later your opponent will get through your defense. At that point the fight was pretty much over, and I mopped the floor with him. Had he not lost his nerve, he might have been able to beat me, but baritus is a good way of getting inside your opponent’s head.

Let me take a moment here to describe how the technique is done. You see, this is not just loud yelling and a display of aggression. You need to tap into something truly primal to do this right. You have to be pretty berserk to start with, and then you have to really raise your wod as high as you can. You must, if only for a moment, feel truly enraged. As you are probably doing this in a fight, that feeling shouldn’t be too hard to manage. Tap in to all your repressed anger, your inner pain, all the sorrow you have ever felt, all the injustices ever done to you and then, when the tension within is so high that you feel like you will burst, look for your moment. When your opponent has just exhaled, or has finished a move, or looks winded or nervous, give voice to all that emotion in a roar like one of the Tyrannosaurs from Jurassic Park. You should do this in a way that sharply contracts your diaphragm and those muscles along your side, violently expelling the air from your lungs in a large volume.

Not only does this stand a good chance of unnerving your opponent (though beware, experienced fighters will be put off their balance for no more than a fraction of a second), it also will greatly strengthen your own fighting spirit.

Let me tell you something: back in the days of the Pack, I met a lot of fighters of all levels of experience. I fought some, studied under some, and trained some, and if there’s one thing I learned that predicted how well a fighter was going to do in the Shieldbiter’s Cup Tournament, it was whether or not they were able to use the baritus technique. Those who could get into touch with their primal selves and their fighting spirit enough to do it would at least probably make a respectable showing. Those who were too self conscious, or shy, or otherwise unable to tap into that part of themselves did not do well. I usually tried to talk them out of stepping into the ring. This kind of problem indicates some hangups about the more bestial and martial parts of yourself.

If you want to work on developing your fighting spirit and forging a closer connection with your primal self, then practice baritus.

An Update for the Old Pack

OK, this one will not mean a lot to a lot of people. It is meant for the core group of the old somafera Pack, who were into exploring the advanced elements of the gangr. Though the Pack is scattered to the four winds, still do I owe my old kin an update on important discoveries.

Brothers and sisters, I believe I have at long last found the key to the zero wod elevation technique we sought. As most of you know, the problem with elevation rituals is twofold:

• They use a LOT of energy.
• They involve false thoughts, or thoughts that are discriminatory (this and not that). Such thoughts are always approximations, thus they always generate errors that end the gangr state, and worse.

I had long believed that any deliberate attempt to raise or control wod would result in false thoughts, so I searched for a zero wod elevation technique. Many of us suspected that the right combination of thoughts could effortlessly result in effortless and instantaneous gangr, without all the ritual and revving up. Several of us experienced states in which some great power came to us unbidden, while some other force seemed to control our physical actions. Not unlike when a car suddenly swerves into your lane, and you suddenly drive with much more skill than ever before, and Something Else seems to move you. We suspected this was the result of hitting some of the right thoughts for a zero wod state.

Yet such states were random, and did not last long. Also, they tended to ultimately achieve less than a good focused ritual could.

Of course, we said, the last time we discussed this matter. It takes a lot more to go from zero to sixty, as the zero wod thing requires. A ritual is more like shifting slowly up through the gears.

I believe recent experiences of mine have shown a way past this paradigm. The key to the zero wod elevation is in the following sequence of steps, I believe:

• Get VERY familiar with an elevation technique. Use it all the time, for everything. Become very, very good with it. This takes years and years.
• Once you reach the point where you have spontaneous elevation responses on a daily basis, for long periods of time, with no effort or intent, stop using the ritual. Forever.
• The key here is to use an obscure technique some of you know: canned meditation, as some of us called it. If you perform a meditation ritual, and leave out a key element, and DO NOT REACT TO THE RITUAL IN ANY WAY, then you have left a certain potential energy in your memory, your subconscious mind. Later, by performing the missing element, you get in an instant something like the benefit of the whole prolonged meditation. I used this technique to great benefit in the tournament. So, by experiencing spontaneous gangr flashes, and doing things like listening to music that kicks in the elevation response, if you get into a deep meditative calm and do not react to it, you will have “canned the meditation” for later use.
• Doing this constantly, until it becomes reflex, should eventually solve the zero to sixty problem. Your natural habit of thought will then generate tons of potential mental and emotional energy that, when you need to elevate, can be tapped by reflex, without effort. Zero to sixty in an instant. Zero wod elevation. No ritual, full strength.

The benefit of this is that none of this will be the result of false thoughts. No errors generated = no limit to the time you can stay elevated? At any rate, it’s the most credible path forward, and past The Wall, that I have found in years of research. I hope you are all well, my siblings.

Weighted Badminton Training

Today I will share with you all one of the best training exercises I ever developed in my days as a fighting berserker: weighted badminton. That is to say, I played badminton while wearing ten pound weights on each ankle, five pound weights on each wrist, and a thirty pound weight vest.

Badminton is a game of precision and delicacy. It is easy to hit the lightweight shuttlecock out of bounds. It also involves a lot of speed, in getting across the court in time. Doing this in weights, while your opponent wears none, is a ridiculous challenge. It requires berserking to move yourself that fast, and to position your racket just right. Trouble is, if you’re berserk enough to move that quickly with that much weight, you are using so much strength that the tiniest twitch of your wrist will send the shuttlecock not only out of bounds, but probably also over any nearby buildings.

Therein lies the value of this sort of training. Any pup can get stronger in a gangr. No art to that. Trouble is, in that state you waste a ton of energy, and you tend to overbalance and waste movements. You are also dangerous to your partner, if you are only sparring or sport fighting. True mastery of the gangr as a fighting art requires control and finesse. Weighted badminton training taught me how to be very berserk while simultaneously reining my energy in, and wasting none. It taught me to only flash into strength spikes when needed, and to instantly drop back into “floating the suspension” afterward. It taught me to instinctively trigger psychetachia in the moment of a strike, so that I could take advantage of the insane speed to get me where I needed to be, then perceive everything slow down so much that I could reposition or pull back as needed, and strike with precision and with not an ounce more force than necessary.

These lessons made me a much better fighter, one who wasted less energy, lasted longer, and did fewer stupid things. It also made me safe to spar and sport fight with. I heartily recommend this training technique.

Berserker Training for the Poor and Urban

It is not always easy to train as a berserker, or somaferan martial artist. We have no established schools. Our training methods are generally not welcome in most gyms. Many of us do not live in or near the woods. If you are in an area that is urban or suburban enough to not have any public space you could have a little privacy in, then you may be forced to train in your own home, for the most part, and on your own. Do not despair, though, there is still a lot you can do. I have used these techniques to train for more than one martial arts tournament, including some I won.

One of my favorite solo indoor exercises was hanging several coins or small rocks in a circle from the ceiling, using twine. I would stand amongst them and, using only my outstretched fingers, strike them all while standing in the middle. The key is to keep them all moving without letting any of them hit you, without leaving the circle. A good variant on this is blindfolding yourself first. This trains you to greater awareness of your other senses, and helps you develop a good spatial memory.

Bodyweight exercises are your friend! You know Charles Atlas’ work? This kind of exercise tends to build a lean, muscular fighter’s body without bulking up. Good for speed as well as strength.

Got a hallway? Use HIIT, or wind sprints. If you can, go jogging around the block a few times, on a regular basis. Developing endurance is the most important thing you can do as a fighter. Gentleman Jack Johnson, an old-time boxing champ, ONLY trained endurance, and simply outlasted all of his opponents.

Throw punches like in shadow boxing. Seriously. Doing thousands of punches, concentrating on your form, will do more for you as a fighter than almost anything else will. Aiming at your moving shadow will keep mixing it up, avoiding the problems that forms give.

Of course, this approach does require you to be able to elevate as a berserker inside, without bothering or freaking out your hosuemates, if any.

Good luck.

enhancing healing

As many berserkers in training soon discover, the berserker path necessitates a lot of healing. The same kind of enhancement that works for strength will work for healing. Just elevating will speed up the healing process, as long as you keep yourself well fed.

But we can do better than that.

The key is gestaltic visualization. Visualize the location of the injury. Concentrate on the feel of the injury. Try to picture the parts of your body that actually do the healing. Picture your body as a whole, coursing with power. Picture your elevated self. Picture yourself free of injury. Visualize every detail of the injured parts of your body from as many perspectives as possible. Visualize healing runes. Visualize them on your injury. Visualize yourself inhaling healing energy from the world around you, and directing it to the wound.

Keep switching from one image to another. Concentrate powerfully on each, but linger on none.

You are aiming to build up a powerful, complex, detailed image of your injury and your healing, one far more complex than you can manage just by concentrating on one thing. This will recruit and focus FAR more of your mind into the healing effort, and the speed with which you heal should improve.

Tendons, ligaments, and the gangr.

Recently I received the following question in the comments section, and thought it deserved wider attention:

“when someone enters the gangr and try to lift a very heavy weight that would normaly is to much for his tendons en joints to handle, will the enforced healing capability fix this problem? I mean when his tendons begin to slowly rip apart will this be healed so that he still can lift the weight?”

The answer is, unfortunately, no. Berserkers heal fast, but not that fast. One of the hard upper limits on enhanced strength is the tendons and ligaments. A berserker enhances his or her strength in a few ways. The primary source of it is adrenaline, combined with burning whatever fuel reserves the body is holding by for an emergency. Lowering the activity in the antagonist muscles is another, permitting more of the body’s inherent strength to be exercised. A reduction of the brain’s natural inhibitions, a lack of ability to feel fear, and an insensitivity to pain can also allow you to exert more of your strength than you normally would, because you aren’t thinking about the consequences. Finally, one of the odder effects of the berserker unitary state is the ability to very rapidly un-knot cramped muscles, which also ups the amount of strength you can effectively use by a bit.

None of that has any effect on the tendons. Let me relate an amusing story that should serve you all as a cautionary tale. I am a big man. 6’2”, large frame, decently muscled. Most fights I have been in, both in and out of the ring, have been against fighters who were, at most, as large as me, and often smaller. Several years ago, I was in my amped-up training phase to prepare for that year’s Shieldbiter’s Cup berserker tournament when I learned about another amateur MMA tournament in my area, not specifically a berserker thing. So I thought I would enter it as a warmup.

It was a decent warmup. I went through my first few bouts undefeated. Then I was confronted by an opponent who was significantly bigger than me, and who had far superior training in classic martial arts to me. This pushed me to my limits when fighting him. I was deeply berserk. In that state, well, you revert to instinctive behavior, not a lot of human level thinking going on. One of my fight-ending techniques, that had often served me well, was to bull-rush my opponent, drop low, and use my berserker strength to lift him over my head and throw him. I did that with this guy, though he was over 300 pounds. My wolfish self assessed that I had the strength, when berserk, to do it. I did, in fact, manage to lift him completely overhead.

Then my MCL tore. That’s one of the tendons in the knee. My muscle output was amplified. Tendon strength was the same as ever. I fell. My larger opponent fell on top of me, of course. I spent a year on crutches and walking with a cane. I am only recently getting something like my old shape back.

Pavel Tsatsouline

Today, I wish to take a moment to offer you all some good advice: if you are into physical fitness, and especially if you are a martial artist, you need to check out the works of Pavel Tsatsouline. The Evil Russian, as he is known, is hands down the most knowledgeable and effective trainer for fighting fitness and general fitness I have ever run across. As a former fitness trainer for the Spetsnaz, he should be! Following his advice, I went from being a guy who had serious back and neck problems and got winded after a minute of intense activity to being a guy who is the winner of numerous amateur mixed martial arts tournaments and has defeated SEALs and marines in them as often as they have defeated me. Everything the Evil Russian has ever written is well worth buying.

And just in case Mr. Tsatsouline ever chances to read this: thank you, Comrade!