Category: Articles

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Filming Seminars

Steve Rowe

Why don’t I allow students to film during my seminars? For 2 reasons: I rely on ‘direct transmission’ (face to face and the ‘spirit’ of the teaching) when I’m teaching and that can’t happen if the student is looking at me through a camera, has their mind distracted because they’re filming or are relying on the video to remember instead of taking notes. The physical act of paying attention and recording with the mind and then writing it down at the time is important for their understanding. If I allow one person to use a camera everyone wants to use … Continue reading Filming Seminars

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Why Should I Be ‘Happy’?

Steve Rowe

Why should I be happy? One thing that’s always intrigued me is the human pursuit of happiness. Every quote, meme, lifestyle and business guru advert is about how to be ‘happy’, yet with only a little bit of examination we can see that to obtain and maintain the ‘happiness’ being shovelled to us is impossible. It’s an illusion that society’s manipulators captivate our souls with to keep us unfulfilled and forever chasing their carrot. Life consists of order and chaos and we need the wisdom to accept and deal with both aspects. All the time that we’re imprisoned in this … Continue reading Why Should I Be ‘Happy’?

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Sneezing In Tai Chi

Steve Rowe

Sneezing in Tai Chi When we sneeze, there is an incredible build up of energy, a hover, then a powerfulrelease. This is the natural way our body works and we can use it in our Tai Chi practice. The lines in our body that we can use this skill in are called ‘jins’, to identify them we need to practice neigong (meditation and standing postures) to calm the body, mind and emotions and then qigong (energy work) exercises to understand the sources of power in the body created with movement. When we have practised these skills we can employ them … Continue reading Sneezing In Tai Chi

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Waking Up Our Chi

Steve Rowe

Waking up the chi…. The most important part of the day. To get the energy working and vibrant we have to exercise the spine, core and vagus nerve together. Using the mind, breath, emotions and Tai Chi movements, we meditate, calm the system first and then open, close, stretch, compress, twist and release the three together firing up the neural system and releasing the good hormones into the system. It’s an incredible feeling, opening all the cavities in the body and pumping and manipulating them, the stretch goes from tiptoe, to head and fingertips like the ‘yawning stretch’ and release … Continue reading Waking Up Our Chi

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Confidence v Authenticity

Steve Rowe

We advertise that martial arts give you ‘confidence’ and that intimates a form of self belief. I aways see confidence as being false, like a mask, something that can be taken away. There’s very little power to it. In a confrontation confidence can easily crumble, and I’ve seen that mask slip many a time. I know it’s probably semantics but I prefer ‘authentic’ as that’s developing your good qualities and being who you really are. No one can take that away. Authentic people can smell BS a mile away and so trying to put up a false mask of confidence … Continue reading Confidence v Authenticity

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Manipulators & Indoctrinators

Steve Rowe

“If men lack knowledge and desire, then clever people will not try to interfere.” – Lao Tsu This reads to most people like you should keep people simple and stupid, but the meaning is far from that. We are indoctrinated and manipulated from birth, by family, school, business, culture and society to ‘want’ and think what they want us to desire and think. In fact the true qualities of empathy, kindness, patience, tolerance and compassion are only true if applied in a simple way to everyone and everything. It’s only our indoctrinators and manipulators that tell us that this is … Continue reading Manipulators & Indoctrinators

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Soft Cotton Boxing

Steve Rowe

Yesterday we were looking at the practicality of self defence in Yang style Tai Chi. So many people seem to think it’s only for health or that it takes many years of training to make it work and that the moves have to be heavily adapted. Not true. The great thing about Yang Family Tai Chi is that it’s an art of self defence. The side benefits are good health and emotional intelligence as these are required as a base to protect yourself. It’s been passed down through the family uncorrupted and contains many of the deadliest techniques of kung … Continue reading Soft Cotton Boxing

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When It’s Not Video Friendly

Steve Rowe

Talking to one of my kung fu brothers we were discussing why we don’t feel the need to demonstrate or video ourselves doing forms or techniques anymore. High level skills are supposed to be ‘hidden’ and subtle so they’re not necessarily social media friendly and if people don’t have the vision or perspective to see what’s being done there’s no real point in putting it out there. Being old and disabled I’m not so easy on the eye anymore either but last Sunday on the Coaching programme, instead of limiting my demonstration to what I wanted the students to work … Continue reading When It’s Not Video Friendly

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The No Inch Punch

Steve Rowe

The No Inch Punch I’m writing about this because of all the arguments you read about ‘magic chi’ on the Tai Chi and Kung Fu pages. It started as a joke in the 80’s with the Bruce Lee ‘one inch punch’. I joked that I had a ‘no inch punch’ and demonstrated it to show how the ‘internal mechanism’ of power worked. By placing my fist on a student and applying pressure from the feet to the floor, turning the waist against the hips to release power and vibrating the hips to send power to the wrist, hammering and screwing … Continue reading The No Inch Punch

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Receiving Feedback

Steve Rowe

Receiving Feedback I need constant feedback from my students to improve my coaching. Not flattery, but constructive feedback as to what is good or bad. It’s the only way to validate what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes in class when I ask for feedback no one speaks up and when anyone does it tends to be the same people. Some don’t like to speak in front of others and will message me afterwards. What at first appears to be a silly question or feedback often creates the best teachings and discussion, stimulating more questions, so everything is welcome in these … Continue reading Receiving Feedback