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My name is Steve Rowe and I have practiced martial arts for 50 years, I am Chief Instructor to Shi Kon Martial Arts International and have written books, articles for magazines and blogged for many years. There are about 400 … Continue reading Welcome To My Blog
There are always arguments about whether Tai Chi is for self cultivation/health or for self defence, but are they mutually exclusive? It’s often said that the highest levels of self cultivation cannot work together with dealing with violence but I … Continue reading Tai Chi For Health/Defence?
Is the purpose if life to be happy? It seems to me that the ‘successful’ people thrusting their ‘happiness’ in our face on every social media media platform every day are actually the opposite, behind their masks (and I know plenty of them) they are deeply troubled and flawed people. They are using that facade to sell ‘happiness on a stick’ to other deeply troubled and flawed people. They think that attention, fame and wealth will create the contentment they seek and their customers are forever chasing the tail of happiness that is just disappearing around the corner in front … Continue reading Is The Purpose Of Life To Be Happy?
I’m a man’s man. We don’t show pain.Not physical, emotional or mental.We don’t accept help of any kind.We’d rather die than ask. We aren’t afraid of getting hurt in a fight.We are afraid of being beaten.We don’t read instructions or maps.We’d rather die than not be the breadwinner. All emotion is sucked inward.It comes out as silence or rage.You can’t make us talk about them.You can’t make us express them. We just don’t have the capacity.We’re a dying breed.Often through passive suicide.Because we also don’t go to the doctor.Better to die early before we need assistance.Or get frail, or useless. … Continue reading I’m A Man’s Man
Do you feel guilty when others around you are soaked in misery? Don’t. Because if they are genuinely suffering, empathy requires a soft front and a strong back to help, you suffering along with them out of guilt doesn’t help. There are also manipulative people who use and exaggerate their own suffering, sometimes even unwittingly, because they can see it makes you feel guilty and they either want to control you or just enjoy making you miserable as well. If you are an empathic person this is really difficult, these people might be at work, family or friends, it’s all … Continue reading Dealing With Toxic People
Metta – Patient/Kindness We have to start by being patient and kind to ourselves. Then toward those we love. Then toward those we like. Then toward those we are ambivalent towards. Then toward those we don’t like. Finally toward those we hate. This is true Metta. Continue reading Metta – Patient Kindness
No Previous Experience Necessary.This one day a month for 10 months programme will be taught personally by Steve Rowe 9th Dan and his team of assistants, Steve is an internationally renowned Tai Chi teacher, Chairman and founder of Shi Kon Martial Arts International. The programme has been running for 6 years and has qualified over a 100 coaches, it is designed to certificate and give Tai Chi Students the ability to teach Tai Chi and run and administer a club to a basic level standard. Participants will be registered with Shi Kon Martial Arts International Association and the British Council … Continue reading 2024 Shi Kon Tai Chi Coaching Programme
Insight while training this morning… Thank goodness the morning nausea has gone (except fort the day of the Tensho seminar 🤷♂️), but I still wake up with chronic fatigue, meaning that even my morning wash and dressing has to be done in stages with rests between each stage, followed by a rest with coffee and toast before I can train. Tai Chi opens my spine, deep front line and through the connection, all the joints and myofascia. Despite the underlying fatigue and pain from the surgeries, amputation, cancer treatment and chronic arthritis in all of my body, the training makes … Continue reading Do I Want My Youth Back?
The history of our Dojo building: An Uphill Struggle by Brian JoyceReaders familiar with Chatham Hill will be aware of the martial arts centre part way up on the southwest side. What they perhaps don’t know is that the site was used for religious purposes for about two hundred years. In the early nineteenth century, the families living on the Hill had a dubious reputation. Looking back in 1873, the Chatham Observer felt that: “there has always been…a moral element on Chatham Hill very difficult to subjugate; a wild, fitful, bohemian sort of spirit, often breaking out unexpectedly and requiring … Continue reading History Of Our Dojo Building
Youth is mostly filled with arrogance, narcissism and blindness to the fact that we’re actually alive. We assume that we’re the centre of the universe and are fully and subjectively consumed by our emotions and thoughts we are our anger, fear and hubris. The tempering of this is often when we have children and have to put someone else’s needs in front of our own. The centre of our universe shifts. Then comes illness, where in the beginning we are always going to recover, young people post memes like ‘it will get better’, ‘tomorrow will be a better day’ and … Continue reading How To Cope With Sickness & Anxiety
Why do we take such a black and white view on dealing with violence? You can’t view violence without looking at peace and conversely you can’t view peace without looking at violence. One only exists because of the other. Martial Arts traditionally understood why this balance is important and for those of us that have taught peace and law officers at the sharp end of violence we have had to teach this balance. You all know my mantra of ‘a soft front and strong back’ because good manners, politeness, kindness and gentleness, patience, tolerance and compassion are the mark of … Continue reading War And Peace
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