My brethren...

I have created a new blog... A new public journal for my own well-being as well as for the strength of the bond I have with my traceur brethren. I was just reading an article on BBC and they talked about how Urban Freeflow has training sessions and workshops. I knew this already but now I believe I am opposed to this idea. David Belle left Yamakasi because he believed the art was being too comercialized and the inner spirit of Parkour was being lost to the misconceptions and abuse of the mainstream population. I do not think having daycare-style training workshops like some kind of football team is how Parkour should be approached. I believe in teams, in moderate small group training sessions but when I watch videos of these sessions Freeflow puts on, I see a bunch of freerunners looking for a new way to climb trees and become stunt men. I see obstacles placed all over a padded gym and a bunch of energetic, loud, acrobats running around competing and trying to impress each other by performing a move in a cooler looking way or faster or whatever. Everyone is flashy and quick-witted and motivated... but totally missing the point.
This is not Parkour OR freerunning. This is gymnastics with a freerunning tint to it. Parkour and freerunning are both about the mind and about the art of motion and freedom... Not showcasing stunts. Parkour is a sacred path of dicipline and freedom... Strength. Standing apart from the world and overcoming the limitations placed on us by society in a grey, squared off, saftey-first society.
So yeah I'm not for the workshops.
I've been training a lot more recently I suppose. Not this past week so much because I've been overloaded with school, you can tell because I've found time to create this blog. I discovered a bunch of younger kids practing running up a wall (a wall that I performed my first wall-run on just over a year ago) on my campus and learned they were from the highschool adjacent to my school and that there were about 6 or 7 of them and they have there own little freerunning deal going on. I quickly taught them the distincition between Parkour and freeruninng before we knew it we were running around together vaulting things and leaping off of things and all that good stuff. I have been doing Parkour over a year now and they all haven't reached a month's experience so I was doing a lot of teaching. I didn't focus on the moves themselves though, I kept pressing the state of mind. I told them not to pracitce failing, only succeeding. There are times when repetition leads to accomlishment, and there are times when it leads to an engrained sense of immpossibility and you must know when to stop yourself and try another day.
So anyway yeah that's how things are going. I'm gonna try to get a chick here who does video stuff to go downtown with me and make a good video so I can post my first solo vid. I think I've gotten to the point where that's not so un-feasible.
Farewell, and may the force be with you.