A Buddhist monastery near Kathmandu is enjoying a surge in popularity after its spiritual leader directed its 300 nuns to use martial arts techniques.
Enrolment is rising and Buddhist nuns as far afield as the Himachal Pradesh in India want to become kung fu instructors.
The Druk Gawa Khilwa (DGK) nunnery near the Nepalese capital teaches its nuns a mixture of martial arts and meditation as a means of empowering the young women. In Buddhism, like many religions, the voices of women have traditionally been muted. But the leader of the 800-year-old Drukpa – or Dragon – order, to which DGK belongs, is determined to change all that.
The article quotes an Indian nun who plans to teach kung fu at her nunnery and says that it will be valuable for self-defence — “when any young men in the area know nuns are kung fu experts, they stay away”.
Well… Danny Kessler has gained a lot of attention for being an entrepreneur and some of that attention for being a entrepreneur with dyslexia. All praise to him for overcoming a disability. (As a quick note, I’ve never spoken to anyone in Korea who had heard of dyslexia and I did read that a UK politician stated with some controversy that the Korean government does not accept dyslexia’s existance. Does anyone know if this is in fact the Korean governments position?)
I would not encourage anyone I know to learn self defense from someone who’s only advertised qualification is a black belt in Pankration which in its present form is a martial art which takes its name from the ancient greek wrestling. It has no direct link to it’s namesake and is a modern combat SPORT. Training in a sport based martial art has many benefits but when you get to a real world confrontation there are no referees and no rules, unlike modern Pankration. Sport techniques do not always work outside the competion where there no rules restricting types of defence.
There must be a reason why every armed force in the world takes it’s unarmed combat techniques from traditional jujitsu. Since the newly created special forces units in WWII until now the techniques are still taken from jujitsu which evolved, over 100s of years, on the battlefields of Japan (and Korea where it was called yusul). I do not expect the day will come that, for example, the DOD or MOD will decide to train military personel techniques from Brazilian jiu-jitsu or other mixed martial arts.
The Grand Narrative 
Meanwhile in Nepal:
The article quotes an Indian nun who plans to teach kung fu at her nunnery and says that it will be valuable for self-defence — “when any young men in the area know nuns are kung fu experts, they stay away”.
LikeLike
Well… Danny Kessler has gained a lot of attention for being an entrepreneur and some of that attention for being a entrepreneur with dyslexia. All praise to him for overcoming a disability. (As a quick note, I’ve never spoken to anyone in Korea who had heard of dyslexia and I did read that a UK politician stated with some controversy that the Korean government does not accept dyslexia’s existance. Does anyone know if this is in fact the Korean governments position?)
I would not encourage anyone I know to learn self defense from someone who’s only advertised qualification is a black belt in Pankration which in its present form is a martial art which takes its name from the ancient greek wrestling. It has no direct link to it’s namesake and is a modern combat SPORT. Training in a sport based martial art has many benefits but when you get to a real world confrontation there are no referees and no rules, unlike modern Pankration. Sport techniques do not always work outside the competion where there no rules restricting types of defence.
There must be a reason why every armed force in the world takes it’s unarmed combat techniques from traditional jujitsu. Since the newly created special forces units in WWII until now the techniques are still taken from jujitsu which evolved, over 100s of years, on the battlefields of Japan (and Korea where it was called yusul). I do not expect the day will come that, for example, the DOD or MOD will decide to train military personel techniques from Brazilian jiu-jitsu or other mixed martial arts.
LikeLike