Home
This site is intended for healthcare professionals
Advertisement
Share
Advertisement
Advertisement
 
 
 

Summary

Join David Organ, a retired cardiac surgeon and current medical education professor, as he opens a fascinating dialogue about the intertwining nature of martial arts and surgery in this on-demand session. He invites Sensei Dan Dave Fanning, a distinguished martial arts practitioner, to share his journey and the parallels to medical practices. They explore the intricate discipline surrounding martial arts and the direct correlation it has with surgical skills. Discover how martial arts can aid in enhancing focus in surgery, highlighting the importance of precision and the practice of mindfulness. An inspiring session that goes beyond the operating room, intertwining philosophy and the concept of continuous learning. An intriguing exploration of how martial arts can redefine surgical practice and approach. This session is sure to leave you with an innovative perspective on surgical skills!

Generated by MedBot

Description

"you have sided to have mastered the art when the technique works through your body and limbs [and fingers] as if independent of your conscious mind". Mastery is a journey and not a destination. BBASS explores the art of surgery and the parallels with the art of Japanese swordsmanship. We explore the principles of practice, precision and discipline in the art of Iaido and surgery. We are privileged to be joined by Sensei Dave Fanning. Do you have that focus (zanshin) and how can you cultivate the mindset? Join this exclusive interview with one of the UK's leading instructors in Iaido and past captain of the UK team.

Sensei Dave Fanning budo biography

Previous to studying Iaido I had studied some judo and karatedo, but hadn’t found a teacher I could dedicate myself to and unconditionally trust. In 1997 I attended a trial session at Hagakure Dojo and met Kancho Bean Sensei, who I instantly recognised as a man of great ability, experience and character. Twenty-seven years on I am now the head teacher under Kancho, having done nothing more than observe him, follow his advice and attend regularly. After I had learnt the basics to Kancho’s satisfaction he encouraged me to study under a wide variety of teachers to supplement my knowledge and to broaden my experience, which I did and continue to do, checking in with him all the while.

Kancho encouraged me to take up positions of responsibility within the British Kendo Association to further enhance my development, which I did, notably becoming Grading Officer and Secretary on two occasions.

In 2005 I opened what I believe to be the only children’s iaidojo in the country.

I was also fortunate enough to be selected for the British iaido national squad on several occasions, the highlight being accorded the honour of being appointed captain of the squad at the 2018 European Iaido Championships in Poland.

My work is teaching British history to home-educated children and assisting my partner in her organisation, which advises the UK government on healthcare policy regarding health inequalities in marginalised communities. I have a 21-year-old daughter who was home-educated.

Learning objectives

  1. Understand how medical practices and training can be influenced by martial arts principles, specifically Eido, focusing on the basic concepts of this art.
  2. Explore the parallels between martial arts and surgery, particularly in relation to precision, discipline, focus, and practice.
  3. Recognize the importance of commitment in medical practice and identifying the attributes necessary to excel in challenging fields, using martial arts as a metaphor.
  4. Understand the concept of Zanshin, or mindfulness in action, and how it could apply to surgery and patient interaction.
  5. Learn the importance of teacher-student relationships for optimal learning, as illustrated in the relationship between Sensei Dan Dave Fanning and his own sensei, and apply the lessons to medical education and mentoring.
Generated by MedBot

Similar communities

View all

Similar events and on demand videos

Advertisement
 
 
 
                
                

Computer generated transcript

Warning!
The following transcript was generated automatically from the content and has not been checked or corrected manually.

Hello, good evening. Good day. Good afternoon, wherever you are in the world and welcome to the Black Belt Academy of Surgical Skills. My name is David Organ. I am a retired cardiac surgeon and now a professor in the Medical Education Research and Development Unit and the Faculty of Medicines in the University of Malaya. We often talk about practicing skills and as I've done previously, I look for guest speakers who can highlight elements of practice and what it's like to be a surgeon. And I'm delighted this evening to welcome Sensei Dan Dave Fanning. No, Dave started his career in martial arts and I'll just pause there to say that we say martial arts and we study martial arts and we don't play it like a sport. But in 1997 he attended a trial session and met Kang Bensen and his career inada took off. He was encouraged to join the British Kiner Association and became the grading officer and secretary on two occasions. He opened the first children's in the UK and was selected for the British National squad. The highlight of his career was captaining the side in 2018 to the European Championships in Poland. Welcome Sense. And thank you very, very much for joining us this evening. Absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me, sir. You started martial arts and judo and karate. Why did you move to? It was uh, essentially because of the teacher, I was, I'd have various breaks in my, er, training sort of times and I've become fascinated by martial arts films and at um one point I thought it's II need to get back starting it again, but I had no idea which martial art might suit me or which one that, that II might enjoy. Cos I, by that time I thought to myself really that all martial arts are essentially the same thing. So I just decided that the best thing was to find a teacher that I could really get on with and connect with. And so I met various, er, teachers who were doing Chinese, mostly Chinese martial arts. Um, but the Western people and I didn't really hit it off with any of them and then, until I met uh beans and almost immediately I just thought this, this is my teacher and then I'm stuck with him ever since it was just a, a sort of gut feeling and then I just determined to become one of his students rather than just someone who turned up at the Morley College, you know, educational sessions. But I actually wanted him to be my proper teacher. So to speak. And so I then harassed him for two years until he, until he accepted me, you had to persuade him to teach you. Well, you could turn up to the class. It was part of Morley College, which is a, a college in South London that there were all sorts of different courses. So it was affiliated, uh, to, to Morley College. So you could pay your fee and join up and be taught like anybody else. But I actually wanted my teacher to be my teacher in life in general, not just in the dojo and I didn't really appreciate at the time, what a, what a huge burgeon that is for someone to have full responsibility for another person's education. So, um, but I was kind of, I was 99% enthusiasm and 1% any other thoughts at the time. So after two years of him telling me, you mustn't call me sense outside the dojo. And I just persisted and annoyed him. And then we had, um, I, I'd supported him in, in some affair that he was uh engaged in. And he decided at the end of that because of my support for him. Um, that was above and beyond, I guess what you'd normally expect from AAA normal student, so to speak, he decided to take me under his wing and then he was my sense and still is you recognize in him, a man of great ability and experience And as you said, in your biography, when you say he took you under his wing, what do you mean? Well, he then became my teacher in life in general, not just inside the dojo. So he was my sensei 24 hours a day. So we could phone each other whenever he wanted in the middle of the night at any time, uh discuss things. I could ask him questions about anything. He gave me lots of excellent advice when uh my daughter was born cos he's had, he had had two Children so I could talk to him about that and he gave me loads of sound advice about that. Uh He helped me um in my work when I had decisions to make at work, he was always on hand to give me his experience. So it's always a mentoring role. Uh Well, yeah, II guess so. I mean, especially more as it became apparent that other people that had joined the Dojo when I joined had stopped training for whatever reason and I was still there. That's why I said in my biography that all I really did was attend. So I just hardly ever missed a class over the last quarter of a century. And that meant that I got lots and lots of tuition and meeting sense outside the doja of course. So I think as a teacher, you don't, I don't have favorites in the dojo. I just find that the people that turn up more, get taught more because they're, they're more really. So I was always around c, at the classes or whenever he had to go somewhere to help him. Uh, and so I was just always around him. So that's how I learnt. And so in the end I was naturally mentored to take over running of the dojo because I just learned more than everybody else I think. And that teachers is a relationship that stood with you for life really to date. Yeah, 27 years I've been with since I Yeah. So what does, what we didn't say to our audience that is the art of drawing the sword. And it goes back 400 years and described it by the samurai and was regarded not just the art of growing the sword but a way of life. What is interesting to me is that the Royal College of Surgeons of established in 1705 and we draw the scaffold, but the art of growing the sword is somewhat different. Firstly, what does I mean to you as a sensate and a practitioner? I think it's, it can be used as a uh what would the word be? It's like a melting pot of life experience. It's a way of minutely ud studying who you are uh in detail and how to change who you are to make yourself into something more. How are you, how are you doing that wielding a sword? The Well specifically ei well, a lot of martial arts, they, the targets that you make are specific areas of the body and you target those areas to cause a specific effect. So in life, if you target specific areas that you want to learn or develop, um if you learn how to focus on those things, then you can change those things in detail. But of course, at the same time, you have to have uh I noticed in the questions that you were asking about Zans. So Zans is er ultimately being able to focus on one thing and everything and also to have moving focus. So in the IDO, you have to focus on the point that you want to cut and you have to cut it as accurately as possible and we can talk about that as slightly separate. And at the same time, you have to be aware of your own condition, the condition of the person that you're cutting and the environment. So there's various levels of awareness that are operating at the same time. So once you can examine that idea, you can examine that idea in anything that you do in your life. So that's what for me makes BDO fascinating. So this, this is summed up as you say in the word oo, which is a, a philosophy. It's a way of life, isn't it? Yeah. For, for me, certainly it is a way of life. So the interesting thing though, since when practicing. I, you don't have a person in front of you. How do you focus when you have nothing to focus on? Ah, now this, er, is, er, a big problem for the IDO and possibly what makes the Ido, uh I'd say possibly, possibly the hardest martial art to, to practice because there's no one there. So we encountered, I was talking about this very thing on Friday with two students who said they find it, the hardest thing is to visualize the opponent. So we're going to work on some paired exercises that help them form an image. So the I've, I've got lost from the original question now. But the the idea is is that the the opponent is you. So it's your shape and your movement capabilities. So you have a very clear idea of how you feel about where your body is. Then you can feel very clear about where the opponent's body is. It's almost like being able to feel the pain yourself of being hit so that you know, whether the strike has been successful and accurate or not, but also being able to look back at yourself, which is a bit like some forms of meditation is to be able to be outside your body and look back at yourself and then see how you're performing and how that differs from what's in your mind's eye. Because the nervous system obviously lies to the brain all the time. And this is a big problem. Ok. So what then would you say are the attributes of someone who wants to practice and master the sword? Enthusiasm? Really? I think the, the, what I've asked some of my students over the years, especially the, the junior ones is, do you trust me? And if they say yes, then we can start from that basis that I'm not going to tell them anything that's gonna harm themselves. I'm only gonna tell them things that is gonna be good for themselves. And if they don't trust me, then we have to muddle along until they can find that trust. So for, for, for them to actually start, I think it's the enthusiasm. Some people start with lots of enthusiasm and then suddenly realize that e io isn't what they thought it was. So then they lose their enthusiasm and perhaps find something different that's more suited to them. So the key element is enthusiasm. So when did you start practicing? And, and, and why do you practice? Uh I kind of get the feeling. I just can't stop. Now, there's a phrase that um was used. Um But if you run, if you, if you see your development as leaping over a precipice onto a another cliff on the other side of, of a crevasse, there comes a point where you're running so fast towards that, that you can't stop. Otherwise you're going to fall in to the crevasse and you're doomed. So once you start running at a certain speed and your mind is determined to leap. That's all you can then do. So, I find that that's what's happened to me is that I just can't stop. I can't see any reas to, to stop. So it's not so much a reason to continue. It's, I can't see any good reason to, to not continue. It's had so much benefit for me personally and other people, I hope, um, may modestly say I've, I've had an effect on other people. Um, that's improved the quality of their lives. So it's everybody's winning. I think. So. Why stop? How frequently do you practice? Actually in the dojo? A actually going to the dojo premises is twice a week, but I have cleared space inside my flat in the living room so that I can do stuff here. But also I find that just walking out in the street, going into town to do the shopping and so on. I say into town, I'm in the middle of London, but we, we call the high street into town, um is uh is a constant training opportunity to be honest living in London. Um, the traffic, the people, the general conditions here, you have to II find II have to be on the ball all the time and I just, I enjoy observing things. I don't like turning off and walking around town in uh what do they call it white mode or whatever? I like to observe things. So II think that that in itself is training, even if you see an unusual plant grown in someone's garden that you never noticed before, that is something lovely and why not? Who knows? So, in your daily activity, then it sounds like you're cultivating or increasing your situation awareness wherever you are. Yeah, absolutely. Once again, I can't see any reason not to maintain your posture, be benevolent towards people that you meet. And that's a difficult one, I must admit sometimes, well, the amount of people that are sort of like walking around in a sort of selfish frame of mind. And I don't mean that by the they're going out of their way to be evil. It's just that people are obsessed with their own, their own situation and don't always look out for other people. So that does become a, a problem, especially my wife's in a wheelchair. So pushing the wheelchair around, we encounter people all the time that just aren't aware of where they're walking or where they're going. And I have to constantly make adjustments for that. But that's an extreme example. It's uh there's no reason not to uh be aware of your surroundings. I think this counterproductive to me, situational awareness and you use the word benevolence, the adjective I heard with the use of the sword for serenity. OK? I haven't actually come across that before. I saw that you'd written that in the, in the notes. So I can try and talk about it if you want to know. Well, it's interesting that the practice, the movement naturally involves a way of thinking that extends just beyond what you're doing. And that I find intriguing. Right. Well, I think this, there's the uh the matter of gracefulness which my um definition of gracefulness is economy of movement and that will give the outward, the a mote if you like in Japanese appearance of serenity, I think comes from that. Well, of course, you also have to have uh some sort of inner serenity that allows you to control your body and control your emotions. But I think more in terms of the reason I mentioned benevolence was because the one of the things I said about my teacher was that the, the thing that I like most about his ei ei don't is that it is benevolent. And by that, I mean that he cut so well that the opponent wouldn't know that they've been cut. So it's a completely painless exit from the world. I mean, it said that the, the, when you get hit by a sword, it's silent because it travels faster than the speed of sound. So you won't hear anything before it hits you. So if, if you have that aspect added to the precision and the er superior technique, then there is no pain. And I think that's a wonderful thing that's I have not heard that description before and I smiled to myself because as we wield the scalpel, our patient did feel pain because they are. But you're not kidding me. But it, it, to make a cut without the pain, it's interesting. And, and, and those people who are in charge of completing CC, which is suicide, they stood behind the person and brought down a cut that took off the head, but it didn't roll off. It was left hanging by a flap of skin. So the precision of the cut had to be extremely accurate. Emphasize. Yeah. Well, the, the cat for beheading a uh I'll think of the name of it in a second. Um But that, that is generally agreed to be the hardest cat to perform. Not only the mental state but the absolute position of the car. If you imagine it's your friend, your best friend that you are um dispatching. You want it to be the best cut that you've ever made. That is intriguing because I talk about the indelible signature and that the cut in the scar you leave on the person is your indelible signature on that person for life. And I'll remember you for everything you said did and how you made them feel. You talk about economy of movement and technique. Could you go into that a bit further? So really every, every movement that is wasted is wasted energy and wasted time. So it makes sense to economize and only to do what is absolutely necessary. So in the ei in the as, as I teach and I'm aware of it myself. Um But I can see it in other students that any fidgeting movements that they make I put, once they get to a certain level, I say to them, do you realize that after you cut you, uh you wiggle your fingers slightly, you adjust your grip or that you wiggle your toes to adjust your foot positions. So all of these things from a combat point of view, because obviously we're doing a marshal way. So we have to relate it to the combat point of view is as soon as the enemy sees you twitch your fingers or your toes or anything, that is an opening at which point they attack. And because the sword only takes a split second uh to change its position to become lethal. Uh a wiggle of the finger is enough of an opening. And certainly the uh I haven't done much. I haven't practiced much Kendo. I haven't had much opportunity for that. But the Kendo students that I teach say that definitely the higher grade teachers, if they see your glove move slightly, they know that you're adjusting your grip and they will hit you at that instant and there's nothing you can do about it. So in a fighting sense, economy of movement is essential. But we could also say that in life, in general, economy of movement is essential because it all burns calories and they, they all add up. So the two observations I make firstly, is your sense of your ability. And I've noticed that in, in your student, uh Vincent who is teaching me his ability to see there's little details and point them out. Well, that and that sorry, that is in contrast to being taught how to use a scalpel scissors or forceps, nobody's pointed that detail out to fall in surgery. How do you learn to pick up those details? Using a sword? I think by teaching, that's I keep teaching and teaching uh by sense. A uh Cano had me teaching absolute beginners when I was at firsthand level just a little bit here and there just to develop my ability to observe. And so then I gained experience by teaching what little I knew in little amounts to absolute beginners who we're not gonna go too far astray. If I er wasn't observing exactly correctly, they could still copy what I was doing. And of course, Ko was checking on me to make sure I was teaching them good basics. But it's only through teaching experience. I think that I've learned to see that and observing the higher grade teachers. I mean, one thing that II found useful was every time I saw a teacher do a cata, I tried to imagine it was the first time I'd ever seen it and that I was going to be asked to teach it immediately afterwards So that would be the kind of extreme motivation for observing. It's it's tiring. But I think it, it makes good use of your time to think that way to think as they say with the child's mind. So seeing something for the first time and being amazed by it and wanting to copy it, I like that because in your biography, you said you having done nothing more than just observe him. So I would actually say that how can you see what you cannot see? Uh This is the difference between perception and sight, which is difficult to quantify. But I think that by just every stud, every student that goes to a, a dojo and stays there for a while, they eventually adopt the dojo style, the dojo way without even knowing it. So it must happen without any uh conscious input that you observe the teacher and you absorb their teaching. But ob observation isn't just by site. Of course, you, you have to observe what they say to you and then you have to trust when their feedback. This is a problem when you cut and the sensor says the Kasie, the tip of the sword is dropping down your back and needs to be above horizontal. And you, and you're thinking my nervous system is telling me that it is pointing up at the ceiling when it's, but the teacher's plainly telling you it's not. So if you trust the teacher, then you know that you have to change that. And then once the teacher says to you, right? OK. That's what I wanted to see. You still can't see it, see that particular point, the sword when it's above your head. But then, you know, the it has a different feeling, the sword has a different feeling in your hands. So then you remember the feeling. So that is something that's not done by sight at all when the sword's out of your range of vision, but you still have to control it in a particular way. So for example, making sure the point of the sword is controlling the enemy behind you. Whilst you're looking at a different enemy, there's no way that you can tell that apart from being told that it's worked. And then you have to remember the feeling how the sword felt in your hand and ignore what your nervous system and your brain is trying to tell you just put that to one side because it's lying and have faith in what you've, you've just been told and then have faith in what you can feel actually in your hands and in your body. So how can you learn or practice this feeling? It's, it's, it's interesting as I'm teaching people how to use surgical instruments and pointing out that the instruments are an extension of your fingers and you need to hold them like in fuel. It's the same in the I do. Is it not Absolutely. Yeah. Well, as I've become more experienced as a teacher and observed other people teaching what I'd like to teach, you just find different techniques of convincing people of this, this point. So you just have to bring up experiences from your own life, things that you've seen in films, things that other people have told you of why it doesn't work to grip tightly. I mean, sometimes in the class in the IO I can show the difference between two techniques. One where you don't grip tightly and one where you do and you can plainly see the sword completely changes direction as soon as you squeeze it too hard. So the student can then see for themselves and then I say, try it yourself and then they can see for themselves that different pressures without even trying to move the sword around cause the sword to move in strange ways that we don't want them to move. And when I say my questions, how is that pressure applied to the sword? Is that grip or position of the hands or? Well, it's both, there's some general another thing about uh just to interject in this in there with the IO is there are general principles, but there's always exceptions. There's always the the odd time where you have to do something completely different that disobeys the rules. So I make it clear to the students that we're talking about general principles for most situations. So mostly with the swords, you need to have the handle, the scar needs to be in contact with the palm of the hand and the fingers have to be touching the fingertips, have to be touching the handle. So if you're in a situation where you're holding the sword and your fingers have come right off because the handle's at such an angle, then that's probably not correct because you're, you're not in complete control, you'd have to adjust before you could move again. And that adjustment is the opportunity for the enemy to strike. So exactly how you performed, Shuri, for example, squeezing the hands, whether you do it by moving the wrists in or clenching the finger slightly is a matter for experiment. Different people find that different things work better for them. And I've changed my views several times for myself, how I handle my sword, how I hold it, how I squeeze it, which fingers I used to squeeze the sword for different purposes, certain fingers for projecting the Kaki forward to cut. So using these ones controlling the f with the other fingers. So and using the index finger, a metaphorical way of pointing at the enemy without poking the finger out. So there's all sorts of different things you can do with your hands. Once again, I try to examine the teachers, especially cano but other teachers examine what they do with their hands and listen to what they say about the feeling in their hands. So, so you allow your practitioners to experiment to achieve the best feel that adhere to the principles of the movement and economy of movement. So just to go into a little more detail for most of the audience would not know the practice of E IO, there are four basic elements, aren't there the draw, the cut, the chivalry and the not the return, right? OK. Yeah. Could you explain the firstly, the draw in the kids care? OK. So the style of Ido that we do, which is the Z and Kr all Japan Kendo Federation, Ido, the basic principle of the whole way of doing this, this martial art is to avoid conflict. So to use the sword in such a way, hopefully that you don't and your, your, well, your whole being in such a way that hopefully you don't have to draw the sword. So you have to convince the opponent that they are staring death in the face so that they decide that whatever their aggressive action was that to try and pursue a more peaceful way of resolving the disagreement. So Nikiski is at the point that your general demeanor and so on has failed to suppress the opponent. So then you use the drawing of the sword as the next escalation of suppressing the opponent. So you need to draw the sword in such a way that they feel threatened by it and hopefully will put their hands up and say I've had enough already while you're drawing. So to split it down for the first Cata you have Joe Hay. So Joe is the preparation and then the hash stage is the braking. So that at that point, the preparation is ended and the technique begins and then Q is the delivery of the technique. So if you can make the preparations strong enough or meaningful enough, purposeful enough, hopefully that will be enough for the opponent to think I've had enough. I don't like the look of this and they've only got a split second to make that decision, but it is possible. So then that Joe's stage is where you prepare the body. So you stretch and you make your body in the optimum position for the cut to take place. And then there comes a moment which how you decide on that moment is not something really that you can do intellectually, a moment appears at which there's no turning back and then you deliver the technique is that sort of thing you wanted to know or more mechanical that, that, that's exactly it. And what about the cut itself and achieving the precision? So the cut itself interesting with uh um well, the Japanese sword, the part of the sword that you cut with the monoi is determined on the by the balance and the length of the sword. So you can find that place on your, on your sword. There's a, there's a mechanism for finding out where the optimum balance point for hitting the enemy is. And it's usually roughly 67 inches down from the tip of the sword. It's on the curve, isn't it? On the Bosie? It's past the Bosie usually. Um So it's usually about that far down from the end, but you can discover this point. There's a, there's a method for discovering in your individual sword the best place to hit the enemy with it. And it's usually a lot deeper than people imagine. Quite often, people think it's quite near the tip. And some schools actually focus on cutting with the tip. But I presume that they've got slightly different techniques to how we use the sword. So you have to find the, the, the optimum part of the blade to hit the enemy with so that you can make a proper incision and a slice with it as for accuracy. That is something that you just have to cut again and again and again and again. Uh my teacher used to get me to, used to get a matchbox and stick two matches up in the thin end of it and place it on a chair. So I'd put this on the chair in the dining room in my living room. And then I would cut and try and get the sword to go between the, the two matches and to stop before it hit the box, the matchbox and not knock the matchbox over. So you just have to do that again and again and again, 100s and 100s, thousands of times. So that would be the kind of practice I would do in my living room, sat on a chair cutting, you'd be, you'd be sitting on a chair doing that, would you? Well, otherwise the ceilings a bit low in here. So if I'm doing, if I'm doing the Sabur II in my house, I have to sit on a chair and do it or kneel on the floor, but usually sitting on the chair and having a target ahead of me on another chair is a, is a good way. II love that. So you've got a matchbox with two matches in it and you have to bring the sword down and the sword, the can kind of ways to those who don't know about one kilo to 1.2 kg depending on the blade. And you got to bring it down and stop that precisely between the two matches without cutting the matchbox. I love it because again, I am going to start doing that. Definitely going to start doing that. So and, and, and then you've got this interesting action called Shy, which is a, as Vincent described as a Japanese salute, but you're bringing the sword down but not just shaking the blood off but continuing a cut and at the end of it, keeping the sword within your body frame pointing at 45 degrees at your enemy on the ground again, a controlled movement. Probably this is one of the hardest things to do in er ZN Kr Ei. Though Furi Kuri taking the sword above the head correctly and the large Tabori and the small Tabori, both of the Turri are probably the hardest thing to do because of the angles involved and also to put sufficient meaning into it without piling on too much force or any force. I would say that although it's called shaking the blood off the sword, I think that's, uh, that is a philosophical idea, more than a physical idea. I get the impression that, well, I have cut myself with my own sword and of course, there's no blood on the sword because you don't start bleeding until a few seconds afterwards anyway. So I suppose if you were in a masked battle there could be blood everywhere but it would congeal anyway. Uh You would know better than me probably how quickly blood congeals it's quite quick, isn't it? So, it used to be when I see films with vs drinking blood out of a wine glass. I wonder if, what the anticoagulant is that they've got in there. But you've got 78 minutes, 78 7 to 8 or 7 to 15 minutes. Sometimes there's letters in an 78 minutes. The joke is, what's the reading time? And they say 21 40 100 hours. That's right. But, um, so it's not so much. I mean, you clean, you would, obviously you would clean the sword after using it anyway. So I think the idea of shaking the blood off is that if you have any residue, feelings of animosity or disturbance in your body, you use the Turri to, to throw off any residue of blood that's on your uh in your, in your, your person yourself rather than your body if you know what I mean? So, so it's an action of discharging your anger. Yeah, or any residue feelings left over because remember, you may be attacked again by someone else. So you have to start afresh. You can't, you can't still have a connection with the person. It's also breaking the connection to some extent with the previous opponent. If you've sent them, if you've dispatched them to meet their maker or, or whatever, they're not living anymore, then you have to really draw a line under that. And Turri is a, is an opportunity to draw a line under things and move on. I can see the same himself. Well, I can see the same in surgery is that you do have to move on, you've done that bit, move on. Or if something hasn't gone as well as it, you've got to be able to put it aside and continue operating and continue moving as if you had started again. I had not appreciated that before, but that is very relevant in surgery as well. The last element is returning the sword to the sir noted. So obviously, there is you also asked in your Q questions about rhythm um the the the notes you sent me. So on one level, uh the er not to is an opportunity to, to discover a rhythm, to examine the rhythm because there are three different basic speeds during the not to procedure. So there's bringing the sword from the JBOURI position to the mouth of the Sayer. Then there is the lining up of the sword ready to go in the s and then there's the action of putting the sword into the ser so the scabbard, the scabbard. Yes. So recovering the sword with the Scabbard rather than putting the sword in the Scabbard because it has a different feeling. So the first part which is bringing the sword to the scabbard, it has to be done in such a way that you can squeeze and cut again. So that if you're attacked while you're doing no to it means that you can change direction. So you have to do it in a controlled smooth way. So without any tension in the hands so that you can squeeze and operate the sword again, the bit where you line the sword up. So it the, the uh the, the, the sword touches the say near the handle and then you have to move it in contact with your fingers. So you know where it is. So you don't have to look and then line the sword up and this is the point at which excuse me, there is the, there is an opening for the enemy because the sword is moving in such a way. It's not really possible to cut easily from there. So you have to do that sharply. So you have a medium speed, then a sharp speed and then putting the sword recovering the sword with the Sayer, it's very slow because for Z and Kr Ei, you have a Zans moment where you're putting the sword away. So the easiest thing is to have a large slow movement, it's easier to develop the sensation. When you do Chio, the sword is covered very quickly and there's only a small section left near the handle for you to do your Xan have your Zans moment. So usually in k you the the further you go along, the less opportunity you get to do Zans and the more of the sword that gets covered up in that initial sharp movement if you're following me. So I explain to the audience again what Zhen is it it that that is a concept that I am beginning to appreciate, but many listening would not understand what Xen is. OK. So Zan's most basic description would be awareness, but of course, there's different levels of awareness. So one thing that people that don't train martial arts make a mistake of thinking is that they think all martial artists are on high alert all the time and cannot be ambushed. And if you can ambush one as a novice, then that shows you the level of that person's training. But of course, that's not true because we're not on high alert all the time. We're on low to medium. I mean, as I'm sat here, it's unlikely that anything dangerous is going to happen to me. So I don't need to be on full alert. And I think this is, um, people that serve in the armed forces that are on active service for a long time, have trouble and become traumatized even by just by this very factor that they're on high alert all the time because at any second, someone could snipe at them from behind a building or, or anything could happen to them, they could step on a mine. So they have to be on high alert pretty much all the time. And the only way they can come down off it, I think, uh quite often is by drinking to suppress it. So you end up with ex servicemen that struggle very badly with this, that there's no way to come down off the high Xan that you're subjected to 18 hours a day for months on end. But that would be the kind of tension that you, that you would turn on during a combat. So that's the kind of Danshen you're expected to show at the end of a Cata or as a Cata develops into a fighting situation is that you're on high alert and that the slightest movement, smell or sound is going to have all your attention because that is the place where the threat is coming from and you perceive the threat and then you have to deal with the threat. So that's the highest level of, of Zans. But when we get out of bed in the morning, we have a certain level of X because we don't wanna stub our toe on the, on the uh leg of the bed for the umh time. So you develop a sense of where all the objects are around you, familiar objects and you navigate without even realizing that you're using your Xan, you nevi navigate your flat, your street to the shops. When you come to a busy road, your level ideally should go up, of course, because there could be cyclists, motorbikes, people coming from any direction. So I think that there's, we all use it, but it's once you're aware that it exists and there are different levels, then you should train yourself to be able to change between the different levels of Danshen depending on your circumstances. And you see obviously in the street, people don't people, it amazes me that people are replying to emails and texts or even people reading a novel while they're walking down a busy street. It's like uh I don't understand that to me that's asking for trouble. That's a too low low level of Xan for the circumstance, the awareness required to reply to a text isn't the same awareness I would say required to cross a busy street. But some people consider them to both be the same thing. I guess they're relying on the overwhelming benevolence of strangers as we all do. But there's a limit I think. So in sense, when you practice, what are you thinking when you're practicing? Oh, that's a question, isn't it? So there's this idea that you should be not thinking of anything. But of course, what I try to do what I, what I endeavor is that I use Keyon for the actual molding myself into what I want to do what I want to do. You mean by that? Well, because if you're thinking of, am I delivering the technique correctly while you're in the middle of a fight, then you're probably dead. But you can do the opposite, which is to imagine an opponent in a situation where you're inevitably going to win. And that is Keon. I think. So, key on is just repe repetitive practice of one technique. So you can start slowly that gives you the idea to ability to analyze what you're doing while you're doing it. And then you can build up to a state where it starts to become without thought. And I think that is the ideal really, you don't need to think of anything while you're um actually doing the cat. But that doesn't mean that it's mindless. It's, it's a very thorny or tricky thing to navigate. But I think that there's an expression, considered action. So a moment of consideration isn't really a moment of thinking. It doesn't have to be. So, as I say, in general life, we make all sorts of judgments without thinking and we know when they go wrong. So, for example, the other day, I thought a curb was a certain height and stepped off it, expecting my foot to land at a particular height, but it was a deeper step. And I thought so it actually jarred my leg. So I made have considered, I considered my movement, but it, it, it was not the right consideration. I hadn't taken in the details properly. So I wasn't thinking about stepping off the pavement, but I had obviously considered the distance in some way. So there's a indefinable fine line between consideration and thinking. Thinking takes too long. Thinking is as long as the sentence is where consideration is uh almost, I guess, intuitive judgment on the situation. And I think that's what we're training for is to for the sword to become such a part of us. The same as picking up a pen to write. Nobody really, unless it's a really unusual pen that you've not used before. And it's one of an odd shape like it's triangular or something like you get, unless if it's a normal pen, nobody really thinks about how they hold the pen until there's a problem, the ink won't come out properly. Oh, it's one of those pens you have to hold up, right? For example. So those are examples of considered action. But if you had to think about writing every time you wrote, uh it would be a very laborious process is that the point of mastery? Then when you've reached the state of consideration and techniques work through the body and lemmas or fingers, as I'd say, as if independent of your conscious mind. Yes, I would say that's a good description of mastery, but I don't think you can just leave it alone though, you can't master something and then just put it to one side. I think you have to keep practicing, keep practicing, keep educating yourself because our bodies change as well. That's the other thing to take into consideration what you mastered. I and I found this, especially with Children. And it's part of the research I did for teaching Children was that once Children reach puberty, a lot of what they previously learned disappears and they have to learn it all over again because the something to do with the pruning of the neural pathways in the brain. Um I'm not by any means an expert on nervous systems, but I do have a obviously an interest in them. So I found that with, with Children that you have to be patient, the fact that they may have to learn things all over again because their bodies have changed so much. Once you're past puberty, of course, your body changes, you reach a, a kind of peak, I guess where, where your experience and your physicality cross over about the age of 50 perhaps different for each person. But where you feel very strong and you feel like you've got enough experience that you can make full use of that strength. And then of course, your experience continues, but your ability with your body starts to dip away. So then you have to use your experience to compensate for what your body is no longer able to do. And then you find a new way, a different way of doing things. So I think you have to be master of all stages in your life as well as just the particular art people do become rusty. I think if they don't persevere with uh you know, trying to progress all the time has advanced progression, what drives you to be a teacher? Then c I think that it's, it's something that you just have to do to progress. I think it's difficult to progress without learning to understand other people. And the best way to understand other peoples to have some responsibility for their wellbeing that drives you to understand them so that you can answer their questions, help in terms of helping them. Because when people come to the dojo, they, they've come for a reason. They want to be taught something. So it's not like I'm being presumptuous at all. They've come to me, they want to be taught. They don't always know what it is that they want to be taughtt. They have an idea. But the path and the actual question they're asking may not be the question they thought they were asking. So you have to push yourself to understand them, what, what they need from you. And that is part of your own development. It causes you to study harder. II found for myself, students have particular problems that need solving. It causes me to study harder, harder. And then I discover something about myself while I'm trying to help them. Well, that doesn't necessarily answer your question because you're saying, why did I do it well, partly because my teacher told me that I had to do it. So student does. But I think it's just a natural progression. II think it's why would you want to be, have, have knowledge and experience and not want to share them? It's kind of, it's a bit weird. And II think the five Confucian virtues, the fourth one. Um Jing Qi is wisdom and I thought I puzzled over this for a long time. Why is w how is wisdom of virtue cos virtues are usually things that you, that you decide that you want and you cultivate them? But how can you decide to be wise? So I thought about this for quite a while. And I thought actually wisdom is the ability to pass on what, you know, just purely that and that is something you can desire. So if that is a fundamental virtue of BDO wisdom, then it is a fundamental virtue of BDO that you must attempt to pass on what you've been taught and what you've learnt for the benefit of other people. That's it. Say, thank you very much indeed, for your insights and wisdom. I think ladies and gentlemen watching, you might have had some insight into why I think the dojo and theater have many similarities that the practice of surgery in the practice of the I shared many things in common. Not only the practice perseverance, the quest for knowledge and getting it right. So you got the finest cut, but it's often said that surgery is a way of life. I believe it is as the I ass F has said, is a way of life as well. Thank you very much indeed. Stay safe for your wisdom. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for joining us. And we invite any questions from anybody on the subject, Venice. Have you got any questions? Uh No problem. There is no questions on the floor at the moment. I think a lot of people echo what you've been saying that teaching is sharing your knowledge, reinforcing what you've learnt, exploring new ways of learning. And I love the way that the art of and the learning of a technical skill interweaves between what you think, how you behave, how you act and it creeps into every aspect of life. Very interesting. Indeed. Thank you very much. Indeed. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, my pleasure. Thank you very much. Please stay on Dave because I do have some questions for you. But ladies and gentlemen, we will continue next week where we going to begin to understand mastering the art of using the needle to work for you and in the needle holder as this will be the first of the four part series that'll be looking at stitching in particular. Thank you to everybody who has joined. We had registrations this evening again from 30 countries across the globe, from Bangladesh, Egypt and welcome to Finland, Georgia Libya, Poland, Sri Lanka, Sudan Turkey in the USA. Wish you well see you next week. Please fill in the feedback forms and I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you. Thank you.