Wild Goose Spring Camp

The Spring Wild Goose camp was held on March 9-11 in Delphos, Ohio – another great camp. Friday evening was the martial arts seminar with presentations by Masters Shane Lear, Shane Topp and Steve Cooper (and me). We covered a lot of ground including basic postural points, movement around the centerline, energies of flow and many specific applications of striking, locking and downing. As always, it was a great group of enthusiastic folks.

Saturday was devoted to forms work in the Wild Goose system. There were individual groups reviewing Meridian Patting, Wild Goose 1 & 2 and the Dayan Palm form. Many of the form reviews came with specifics on the healing and hurting applications.

Sunday was instructor’s only time with Master Lear discussing methodologies for seated meditation and some very detailed information on breath work – all great stuff.

The day after the seminar, I was back home and looking through the magazines at a local bookstore when I saw the April issue of Black Belt Magazine. I thumbed through the contents and saw a section on using movements from Aikido in various self-defense situations. As I looked at the pictures, it was easy to see that all of the “Aikido” techniques being demonstrated were also movements out of Wild Goose. As we have often said of the martial arts in general, it’s all one art.

For me, the really cool thing was that this reminded me of the completeness of the Wild Goose system. Not only do we get an outstanding system for healing and personal development, we also get a great system for self-defense.

Here’s the posture Flying Over the Water, from the 1st 64 action form.

Can you see that lead hand smacking into the facial nerves (ST5 comes to mind), while the rear hand has hold of the pressure points at the wrist? After the head smack, the arms swing back across the body – that could be a “nice” throw. Or perhaps, the first swing across is deflecting an attack and the swing back gets to smack the head. So many possibilities.