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Hi everyone, Hopefully this is alright for a first post, wanted to share my experiences training with Sagat over the next few weeks. I arrived in Thailand in Mid-march coming from Egypt, I was in a mad dash to make it somewhere calm before the lockdowns took full effect. Over 10 years ago I trained Muay Thai while in college, and had always wanted to go to Thailand (the usual Muay Thai dream), although I didnt expect to arrive under the circumstances. I got an apartment and I spent the past month trying to condition myself as best I could (lots and lots and lots of burpees), and I discovered 8Limbs while watching Lawrence Kenshin videos on youtube, and one thing led to another and I became a patron and here I am Anyways, I got into contact with Sylvie, and I was able to meet with Sagat, and told him I want to train daily with him the next few months. Side note-Im going to be living in Thailand for the foreseeable future long term, Currently we are two days in, and I cannot recommend Sagat enough. I'm basically a total novice, and I was uncertain if I would even be worth teaching for him, but he was incredibly excited He is very 1st principle based in everything, and his way of describing things, you realize there is both the technique he's showing you, and the technique behind the technique of how it fits into a larger contextual picture. He teaches on a continuum, and he talks about most students that come to him for 1on1, there's no way to people to learn more than 1 or 2 details, and that really acquiring the skill takes time, "organization" is a word of his, both in how you move, and how build techniques Should you ever come to Thailand, you must train with him --13 Coins does have active fighters, He introduced me to two of the younger ones that are actively fighting (they've won some junior titles). Right now its only a handful of younger kids training there, although i got the impression its normally much busier minus the lockdown situation. Sagat has an arrangement with the hotel next door if anyone wants to stay there and train. Its very far outside any tourist area.

I've written before about my theory that Phra Pirap arguably is the god of Muay Thai. There is no such officially designated god, but there is no doubt to me that this deity figure powerfully combines the elements that distinguish Muay Thai from many contemporary forms of combat sport fighting, and is in that way a protector for a call to preserve those precious elements that may very well be lost to globalizing modernity. What I wrote a few years ago: "There is a small holy statuette that sits on a mantel in our apartment. It is a bronze-looking figure of a man, a warrior, posed with a spear pointed upward at a diagonal across his body, and with the other hand near the spearpoint he holds a bouquet of green. His face is that of a demon. His body that of an athlete. He is a little known god, much debated in niche circles, Phra Pirap. He as I understand it is a kind of god of war and battle, but mostly is known as the god of dance, the one that leads the arts. At his left hand come together both the spear point and the bouquet. This the unfathomable combination of what makes up Muay Thai in Thailand. For us in the west there is a fundamental division in how we parse the world. There is the "real" and the "unreal". In Thailand these two things come together to braid into something else. People looking at fights want to say "that's a fake fight!" or "that's a 'real' fight!". What makes them real or unreal are supposedly the intention of the actors. But because Muay Thai is an art, and not only a sport, these things come together. It is ultimately both dance and violence. The reason for this is timing. Phra Pirap happens also to be the god of timing. Of finding the perfect moment. Nietzche made a big deal of this in Beyond Good and Evil. In Greek there are two important fundamental kinds of Time. Chronos is circular time, the time of the seasons. Kairos is the time of the moment, the perfect moment to act. Kairos makes an incision in Chronos. Phra Pirap is the god of Kairos. This is why he is god of the dance. This is why the Muay Thai of Thailand is both real and unreal. It carries the power of artifice into the world of the "real" of violence, to steer it. It recognizes the moment of change, and therefore may spend much of its time in the realm of the fake, the performed. It is steering the cooling schedule of the steel, when all the molecules are afloat and changing their positions. In the west we only think of linear time. For us the "real" of fighting is merely the degree of "heat" in a fight, and the application of force of one body against other bodies. In Muay Thai, for Phra Pirap, it is the point in the circle when real change can happen, it is the art of taking hold of that change and shaping it to a valued outcome. It is where the spearpoint and the bouquet come together." - original context here Some years on I reflect back upon how much I've come to believe this. It's why Muay Thai krus will urge you over and over "timing", "timing", "timing". Or, why legends will praise Samart's genius as found in his "eyes". The god itself appears to be a syncretic fusion of two gods, one related to the destructive powers of Shiva (hence the spear, perhaps), an emanation of Shiva, the other is the presiding god of Dance and Music, of performance. One of the conundrums that westerners face when trying to really delve into the intensity of Thai Muay Thai is how much the aesthetics of scoring in face relate to performing postures, senses of timing, playing narrative themes in a round or across rounds. These are the art of the sport. We in the west, especially the era of MMA's demystification of Kung-Fu and Karate bullshido, versions, experience the term "art" much in the vain of artifice. Something unreal. Something just surface. What traditional ring Muay Thai embodied though, I believe, are the affective potentials of performance, the unconscious fathoms of what a fighter can draw out far, far beyond "perfect" technique, or practices patterns. This, I sense, is the power of where Phra Pirap reigns.

Sure, I contacted them through their website email tsm@thaismai-tsm.com They sent me bank details and price including shipping. I deposited the money no problem straight into their account. The book including shipping to Australia was just under 100 Aussie dollars which is about 2000 Thai baht.

The challenge to performance is a saying that Jackie Chan once used to describe the "fake" martial arts of some actors in action films. "Brocade leg, flower fist." Your performance is pretty, but there is no power to it, no reality to it, it is just show. In terms of Phra Pirap, too much bouquet, not enough spear. If Samart didn't have stunning power, or tremendously potent timing, his displays of boredom in the ring would have been false, a check written he could not cash. Too much bouquet. What characterizes so much of the beauty of Muay Thai that enthralls westerns is how it is so beautiful, so performed, yet so viscerally powerful, and effective on the whole. Both the bouquet and the spear.