The basis of all Stav training is learning to work with the lines of the web. This applies to everything. If craft skills then working with the lines of the grain in wood or making a construction in accordance to the web. In rune counselling it is about connecting the lines between past and present and into a probable future.

When training in Stav as a martial art we are not learning how to use any particular weapon or technique, simply how to recognise the web lines and work with them. This may make it sound rather theoretical rather than a practical system but it is actually a very effective system. Weapons are used to train with and they are very helpful for learning to work with the lines. You only actually need three or four sticks. A staff length (to shoulder or eyebrow height) as a pole weapon. An axe length (to navel height) as a two handed cutting/striking weapon. A cudgel length (effectively a walking stick) to use as a single handed cutting/striking weapon and a tein length (your forearm or a little less) to use as sax, knife or tein itself. With those four which can easily be cut from a combination of Hazel, Ash or Oak in Northern Europe, (substitute local equivalent any where else in the world), and you are kitted out for training, and pretty well armed too.

Yes it is fun to have training equipment which is a bit more sophisticated and I do make wooden axes, swords and spears which are great to train with. But they are not necessary and there is always a danger in martial arts that the practitioner is in fact a master of a particular technology and therefore pretty defenceless without it. So sword training for example is great fun and very interesting. But swords have not been carried in Europe or America on a daily basis for over 200 years. The Samurai famously stopped carrying them in Japan in the 1850's. But you can still have a walking stick and you should be able to keep access to a staff or axe length stick without any real problems. But even that is not really the point. We need the sticks for training but once you have learned to see the lines you can see how an attack is unfolding and avoid the relevant line and use the attacker's weapon and their own body against them.

The process of learning to see the lines takes at least 8 years of correct teaching and regular practice. If you practice a great deal and train very hard you can learn a lot and get very fit but you can't seem to accelerate the process of discovering how to see the lines. It isn't a matter of learning stuff, rather a process of inner transformation.

The good news is that techniques that are taught to practice working with the lines also have a massive degree of redundancy built into them. For example there is a line through the head from about half way along the jaw bone and exiting at the opposite top corner of the head. If you know how to take this line correctly you can throw someone off balance with very little force. I teach several techniques which exploit this line and when done properly the effect is pretty extraordinary. But, if you are relying on hitting exactly that spot along the right line under combat conditions you are going to be very lucky to get it right. But if you practice very gently with a partner in training you will get pretty accurate so that in a self-defence situation the same technique applied with force and speed will hurt an attacker even if it doesn't achieve the subtle result a correct application of the line would. But that doesn't matter so long as it keeps you alive.

So Stav martial training has three stages. Simple exercises to develop the awareness of our own body and how to work with it. Then two person drills to learn to see how the web connects us to other people and how to work with their web. Then intuitive practice where we learn to feel the lines of force the other person is using and turn it to our advantage. Then finally back to individual training but with the awareness of the web that means that every strike and cut is reinforcing our awareness of the web.

It is a journey to say the least.

Regards

Graham