Our three days of training have come to an end. We fit a lot into the last few hours of the advanced training. We practiced the Herse, Jarl and Konge defenses against knife attack. The Jarl principle is that of the sage, the scholar, the religious leader; the Konge is the king, the elder, the wise man. We also filmed a number of exercises and reviewed the various Galdre stances. We completed our time together with the fulgyia exercise; more about that in a future post. Finally, Graham, Miki (the coordinator of Ice & Fire USA) and I did our presentation at the UU Church of Annapolis. All in all, it was a very satisfying training. We look forward to having Graham back again in the fall! In the meantime, follow the Stavbear blog for more information on Stav, more events, and the upcoming Stavcast!

Our North Carolina members have just headed for home - we wish them a safe journey! The rest of us are finishing lunch. In our late morning session, we started with the Foundation exercises; Graham then demonstrated all of the Five Principles two-person drills with the staff. We spent the balance of the time working our way through the Five Principles in self-defense, defending against both unarmed and knife attacks. We did these for Trel and Karl; we’ll continue on after lunch. Looking forward to tonight’s demonstration at the local Unitarian Universalist Church!

Axe training! After doing warm-up stretches, we practiced the basic axe cuts solo and in partner drills. It’s all about body position and footwork, people! Your Runereader is pretty sore this morning, and suspects she’s not the only one . . .

Getting started on the advanced training today. Conversation obviously focused on big international news story, but we will shortly move from conversation to practice. Ahead: more hand-to-hand training, axe training, fulgyia exercise. More to follow!

One of us is in the midst of preparing stir-fry shrimp and broccoli, while the rest of us chat and eagerly await the dinner! After lunch we started with hand-to-hand skills based on the Foundation exercises. The rain chased us indoors, so we came in and discussed the Healing Bindrune. Bindrune bring several runes together to encapsulate information and wisdom in a particular realm; to see the Healing Bindrune and learn more about it, go here. We braved a few minutes of drizzle to go outdoors and finish our training day with the left-hand Karl stances. More tomorrow!

We’re all finishing up lunch. During the last session, we reviewed the first two Five Principles drills and moved on to Herse, the third. The Herse principle is that of protecting the community - the police officer, the soldier, the master at arms. While the Trel drill emphasizes mimicking the speed, direction and distance of the attacker, the Karl drill is designed to stop, evade and neutralize the attacker, and the Herse relies on presentation, freezing the attack and taking control of the situation.

We started the training day with the basic and advanced staff exercises and the right-hand Karl stances. The Karl stances involve chanting the name of the rune while going into and out of the stance; they are good for improving the breath. Most of us are feeling pretty sore after yesterday’s work, but the staff exercises helped loosen us up!

Good morning, and welcome to day two of our training weekend! Let’s start the day with an elementary understanding of the Web - not the one you’re reading this post on, but the Web of existence. Stav suggests that the Web underlies all things. At its most basic level, understanding the Web allows us to grasp the essentials of a thing. Graham says, “The essentials of a table, for example, are four legs, a flat surface, and something to make its structure rigid. Once you’ve got that, you can elaborate however you like.” (I find this reminiscent of the ancient Greek term eidos.)

Each of us operates within our own Web. In martial terms, being able to see the weblines allows one to move confidently within one’s own Web and to grasp what one’s opponent is doing within theirs. As you can imagine, this put one at a considerable advantage in a self-defense or combat situation. Go here to see a two-dimensional representation of the Web.

More as the day unfolds!