Read Sylvie’s Post on the Mental Training Reading Group: LIVE
edit: We’ve started an Open Group to discuss themes that come up
As Sylvie’s Patreon has expanded, we’ve taken on new projects, all the in vein of increasing the awareness of legendary fighters, and their techniques – for instance in the Preserve The Legacy – Muay Thai Library project – and then by creating a new website sylviestudy.com which hosts in-depth study of Intensive Series with single legends, one at a time. I’m writing this to give a little insight into where we are headed, and to let you know what we are attempting to do. Sylvie does a lot of the heavy lifting in the content, and I do most of the long term planning, and the editing, and structuring. I try to set up the pins, she knocks them down. Patreon success has allowed us to take more risks, buy better equipment (a new camera and gimbal is on the way – trying to tame my shoddy camera work, and improve the quality of photography), keep up with the technical demands of projects which are always a challenge in Thailand. When we started the Sylvie Study website, meant not only as a huge resource for in-depth study, but also as a revenue stream directly to the legends themselves who are included, it was a big reach, both financially and I have to say emotionally as well. Sylvie is the hardest training fighter I’ve ever seen, both in and out of Thailand. She fights like nobody on record, busting through fight-rate ceilings, so every time a “wouldn’t it be cool if we…” idea, it does exact a pretty heavy demand on her efforts and psyche. But, we feel like we just have a tremendous responsibility to everyone. The support has been so impassioned, and as it’s a privilege to even be here at this point in life, we always just say: Let’s do it! This is the story of the Women’s Muay Khao Summit that Sylvie’s going to be hosting in December, bringing together women from around the world and the greatest Muay Khao fighters who ever lived, and the best Thai female fighters as well: Read about the Muay Khao Summit here, and secure your spot in it here. This is just to say, we feel an incredible responsibility to do more, and we are doing more. The Muay Thai Library is already the greatest archive of Thai technique ever assembled. The Intensive Series is already a never before done deeper version of that. We are now putting together an idea for staff writers on Sylvie Study to help bring out all the information that is buried in these amazing videos, made possible through their sale (55% of the net profit of On Demand sales goes to the krus). And, we are thinking about a way to create a virtual attendance of the Muay Khao Summit, so that people all over the world could benefit from this one of a kind event. All this is to say, we are going towards deeper, richer and more informative content that over the years will add to the art of Muay Thai, possibly in a profound way. We are moving away from “viral”, and more towards invested learning, binge watching hours and hours of the most beautiful technique you have ever seen (for instance what you can do in the Karuhat Intensive), or finding ways to create rich community, digitally, so conversations can be had that can change and turn people’s lives.
All of this is to say that even another exciting thing is being started right now, something never been done before, and it’s a bit of a reach for us, but we are going for it. The mental training aspect of fighting is one of the hardest and most important things to do work in, and for a while Sylvie has wanted to do some sort of reading group. Starting 11:30 pm Friday EST Oct 4th, 10:30 am Bangkok Time Oct 5th, we are going to get it going. It’s for $10 patrons, so if you aren’t a patron yet you can quickly become one. If you are one, you can always edit your pledge. Hop on to the introduction live stream with Sylvie and find out what this reading group is going to be about. The link will be posted on Patreon. This is really in keeping with the mission of the sylviestudy.com website, hosting in-depth knowledge resources and writing, but building digital connections between passionate thinkers of Muay Thai. We are doing it with the documentary project of the Muay Thai Library, and now we are starting to do it with mental training.
The Reading Group is also a way for us to work out the kinks that are involved in running live conference style seminars, getting used to the tech, and realizing what hurdles we might face to keep things smooth. So join in on the experiment to help us figure out what is possible. If everything goes well – and I think it will – then we should be able to pull off a virtual attendance of the Muay Khao Summit in December.
This is just a heads up on our thinking. If you can’t make tomorrow’s first introductory session, it will be recorded for later viewing, and the first “real” session that covers the 1st two chapters of the book Inner Game of Tennis, will be happening next week. You can get your copy of the book and read the handful of pages in that time.
If you are interested in all these experiments you can:
Join the Summit: bit.ly/jointhesummit
Subscribe to the Sylvie Study website: bit.ly/sylvie-study
Read Sylvie’s Post on the Mental Training Reading Group: LIVE
