Tag: kung fu

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Professional Help

Steve Rowe

When you need professional help. When we want to learn martial arts, if we are clever enough we do our due diligence and find a good coach. We check history, who they’ve successfully coached, qualifications and what kind of person they are. It’s a serious and can be a life altering decision. When we finally become a coach, running a club means we have to be able to deal with grading and training programmes, coaching qualifications, tournament programmes, property management, accounts, recruitment, managing others, student welfare, social media, AI, our own professional development, governing bodies, health and safety and so … Continue reading Professional Help

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Fingering In The Martial Arts

Steve Rowe

Fingering in the Martial Arts Hands and fingers are really important in the martial arts. Our arms are tentacles, our hands are feelers on our tentacles and our fingers are our feelers on our feelers that are on our tentacles. Our palms are the ‘arches’ of our hands, our wrists the ‘ankles’ of our arms, elbows are the ‘knees’ and shoulders the ‘hips’, connecting through the body to our legs and feet and working in harmony with them. The nervous system and meridians of chi end and ‘bundle’ in the hands and fingers enabling us to have enormous sensitivity in … Continue reading Fingering In The Martial Arts

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Buddhism & Taoism In The Martial Arts

Steve Rowe

There’s been a few comments recently about the relationship of Karate and Tai Chi to Buddhism and Taoism. You obviously don’t have to be any religion to study either. They are both practised by millions world wide from all cultures and religions, but they do arise from Buddhist and Taoist cultures. The names of the arts and their styles reflect this, any Japanese art ending in ‘do’ (karatedo, judo, aikido, iaido etc) the ‘do’ is the ‘Tao’ and the names often relate to gentleness, softness, emptiness, peace and harmony from the religion in those cultures. The name ‘Tai Chi’ relates … Continue reading Buddhism & Taoism In The Martial Arts

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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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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