Mystical forgeries in the Martial Arts

"Just as yellow leaves may be gold coins to stop the crying children, thus, the so-called secret moves and contorted postures appease the unknowledgeable martial artists."

Bruce Lee - Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Martial Arts is filled with legends of people who were able to achieve superhuman feats: Being able to move objects with their minds and cause injury and death to opponents without touching them. Being able to leap and levitate in the air. There are plenty of demonstrations of hard Qigong where practitioners will have scalding water poured on them without being burned. Laying on beds of nails and having concrete slabs smashed over their bodies. Taking sword cuts to the body without any visible marks remaining.

While there may be people with such mastery it is extremely rare. You are more likely to encounter the charlatans and fakes who display magician like parlor tricks. There are plenty of snake-oil salespeople in the martial arts with promises of god-like powers. Techniques so rare and so deadly that they would give the person who knew them an aura of invincibility. The ability to knock people out without touching them. They even have students who are so brainwashed and believe in the forgery that they go along with it. Falling to the ground when their master waves his hand over them to simulate a knockout. Here is a video of one such "master" who boasted a 200-0 fight record and specialized in no touch knockouts. There was a challenge with a prize of whoever could beat him.



As expected, he got his ass kicked! Imagine his students with years of practice confident in their teachers and their own abilities watch their teacher get the stuff knocked out of him. They spent all those years learning how to move chi balls when they should have learned how to block. You can see after the first punch connects, he wipes at his nose and cannot believe that he is really bleeding. He really believed his own bullshit.

What do I believe? I believe that the human body and mind has almost unlimited potential when subjected to lengthy rigorous training. Kung-Fu has metaphysical concepts such as Qi (Chi) which is essentially the unseen life force that is part of every living thing. I guess the easiest way for me to conceptualize Qi has been as an invisible bio-energy field. It would take many posts before I could accurately describe Qi and there are numerous definitions of what it is exactly. Internal (Nei Chia) arts focus on developing a practitioners internal Qi and allowing him to harness and manipulate it. This is also the basis of pressure point striking and acupuncture - striking or manipulating vital points or meridians for combat or healing. Skillful manipulation of Qi takes years, decades of study. You can't master the meta-physical without first mastering the physical: Punches, kicks, joint-locks, blocks, parries, evasion, offense, defense, rooting, strength, flexibility, speed, coordination, power and timing. Strengthening and mastering the body must come before you are able to manipulate and channel the energy within it. Simply put, learn to block.

Fanboyism in the Martial Arts

Fanboy –noun

a person willing to defend and promote the object of his affection regardless of fact and objectivity. This encompasses everything from technological items like PC's and game consoles to gearheads and fishing fanatics.

definition courtesy of urbandictionary.com

I used to be an avid gamer growing up. I've been into video games since the Nintendo NES came out. I grew up playing video games and owned many different platforms. Although I don't play as much as I used to (kids and a job will do that to you), I still enjoy playing now and again. I haven't gotten hold of a Wii yet (you have much better chance finding plutonium in the mall than finding a Wii) but I enjoy playing when I get a chance. I've owned numerous platforms and I love how far the graphics and gameplay have progressed. Each system had its loyal fans who swore allegiance to their brand. They would criticize any other system which was not theirs. Heated debates come pretty close to fist fights over who made the best consoles (or as close to fistfights as geeks would ever come): Nintendo or Sony. Sega was in the mix briefly and I came as close as I'll ever be to being a Dreamcast fanboy (It sucks that t hey had to kill it). Now you have Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo with Microsoft and Nintendo in the front right now. The console wars still rage on in gaming website forums, each side with their loyal enthusiasts.

You see the same phenomenon in the Martial Arts. Practitioners will swear that their style alone is the best and that all other systems are inferior. Kung Fu vs. Karate. MMA vs. Traditional. Internal (Nei Chia) vs. External (Wai Chia). Tae Kwon Do vs. Hwarang Do. Muay Thai vs. Silat. Traditional Kung Fu vs. Modern Wushu. Western boxing vs. Eastern martial arts. Each practitioner believes his art is the absolute best system devised.

All martial arts have a primary purpose: self-defense. Humans are equipped with 4 limbs a head and a torso so there is a finite number of movements to all martial arts. Many arts incorporate the same movements that were refined over centuries. Many borrow from each other and add new pieces. Each martial art has a specific emphasis that was designed to serve a purpose. They incorporate the cultural and spiritual philosophies of the people that devise them and also incorporate a host of other factors such as the physical characteristics of the founders, geographical characteristics of the land they were created in and any other historical factors that may have spawned a need to create them.

Each art is simply one unique branch on the same tree. No better or worse than all the others, just different. There are no good or bad martial arts, just good or bad martial artists. If you aren't very skilled at your chosen art you will probably lose to someone from a different art who is, even if his/her art has less techniques. As the Shaolin saying goes "I do not fear someone who studied ten thousand techniques in one day, I fear the person who has studied one technique for ten thousand days".

Whatever art you pick should align with your own personal philosophies. Some people like the grace and acrobatics of Wushu. Others like the gentleness of Tai Chi. Some arts emphasize tournaments and competition, others favor more combat training. Sometimes examining the principles and philosophies behind a different art can greatly enhance your own martial understanding. There is a wealth of knowledge to be gained from masters of the various arts. Whether it is Morihei Ueshiba, Mas Oyama, Gichin Funakoshi, Bruce Lee, Sun Lutang, Chen Man-Ch'ing or any other master, by examining each art, you begin to see the whole tree and its vastness from your branch. You may also find training or technique that you may find useful and adopt it into your own training regimen.

Stereotypes and Racism in Kung Fu aka 'Is your master chinese?'

There are many times I have been asked by different people about Kung-Fu and their questions are usually the same. There martial arts knowledge is filled with stereotypes that they see on Television. They are usually disappointed when you or your answers don't fit their preconceived notion of a martial artist looks or acts like.

The questions I usually get are:
Person: Can you do a back flip?
Me: No I can't do a back flip. They only do back flips in the movies. You wouldn't want to do a back flip before you got in a real fight.
Person: Oh. (The disappointment in their voice and on their face is palpable)
Person: Show me a move.
Me: Sorry I can't. ( I know they are expecting me to perform some super-secret death strike. )
Person:Is your instructor/master Chinese?
To which I reply , "My instructor is not Chinese, he is Caucasian. My grand master is Chinese."

The person will usually look at me with a skeptical look and say, "It can't really be real if your Instructor isn't Chinese". My first thought is, "I bet if I kicked you in the groin, or did a crushing fist strike from Xingyi, your pain would seem pretty real". Unfortunately, I wouldn't be much of a martial artist if I committed random acts of violence on people who didn't know any better. I usually tell the person that skill is not usually dependent on race, only time and effort. You wouldn't question the credentials of an English teacher if they were not from England. All that would matter was their depth of knowledge in the subject matter that they were teaching. There are people from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds at my school and other martial arts schools who are skilled practitioners of their respective arts. My instructor happens to be an extremely skilled martial artist. The skill he possesses were hard earned and are not any less valid because he isn't Chinese.

The beauty of Kung-Fu is that at its heart it is egalitarian. Time, Effort, Sincerity and Humility are all that are required to succeed. I am an African-American who studies Chinese martial arts. Somewhere on the other side of the world, there is a Chinese rapper who knows more about hip-hop than I do. The beauty of it is that ideas and beliefs can spread far beyond the countries that gave birth to them and become universal. We must always respect the origins, cultural context and history of whatever we study but not let ignorance and cultural bias deter us from seeking our path to true knowledge.

The Gift of Failure

Holiday time usually means frantic shopping and gift giving for some people. Other people take it as a chance to refocus their efforts on trying to help others. I like most people will procrastinate until the very last minute to get gifts for people and I will be doing my best Bagua stepping and evading trying to beat out the other holiday shoppers for gifts.

The best gifts are those that will stay with you long after you have received them from the giver. As a Kung-Fu student there is no better gift than that of failure. It is at the point you fail that you can come face to face with your limitations and work towards overcoming them.

One of our school's Elder Masters has a saying, "Invest in Loss". I took this to mean that you shouldn't be afraid to lose. I later understood that you should be able to invest your time even amidst continuous failure to one day achieve success. Try a technique hundreds or thousands of times before gaining insight into its true application. It sounds so simple but it is one of the hardest things to do in life. To persevere after continuous failure and setback. Most people give up at the first sight of failure. Our egos can't handle not achieving success after the first few tries. Rarely do we persevere and refuse to quit until we have reached our goals. It is closest to the point of success that most people give up.

We live in a society where it is not okay to fail. We try to soften the blow and remove obstacles for people whenever they encounter the risk of failure. This robs people of the ability to learn their strengths and weaknesses and try their best to push past them. Martial Arts teachers and senior students should allow students to fail and encourage them to keep trying. We do our fellow students a great disservice when we do not allow them to fail and are not honest with them when they do.

I have tried incorporating techniques I have learned in sparring. I usually have gotten bruised body parts and a bruised ego trying to apply them. I record my observations and try them until I get them to work in sparring and I can perform the technique automatically. Then I can move on to trying something new and failing again. I am going to keep investing in loss because so far the immediate returns may have not been great but in the long run it pays dividends.

The world is your training hall (Kung fu outside the kwoon)

If you are like me and most people who do martial arts, you have a regular 9 - 5 and train several times a week. During the weekdays I work as a Software Developer, other students at my school have jobs in a wide variety of fields. There are software developers, students, artists, cooks, film-makers, nurses, security guards, Engineers and a host of other different jobs. I try to include a training regimen outside my regular class time by doing Qigong and practicing forms but I never feel like it is enough. I always feel like there is room for improvement and I can do more.

We each compartmentalize our lives and we have jobs, family and a host of other responsibilities that we each have to deal with on a daily basis. We may perform and train with maximum effort in the kwoon but rarely do we display the patience and focus in all other areas of our lives. How many times do we focus on our different jobs and responsibilities as if our very lives depend on it. Kung Fu simply means "Time and Effort" or "Accomplished person", Kung Fu is a metaphor for all of life. Only by applying maximum effort over a period of time will you acquire mastery of whatever endeavor you choose.

Picasso was a Kung Fu master of art, Einstein and Stephen Hawking are Kung Fu masters of physics , Stevie Wonder is a Kung Fu master of music, Oprah is a Kung Fu master of talk shows. We should apply the same focus and excellence that we demonstrate time after time in the Kwoon in all our areas of life.

Intro - Ode to Martial Arts (Way of Life)

My interest in Kung-Fu or Gongfu began when I watched kung-fu movies as a kid growing up. 108 Shaolin wooden men, Snake vs. Crane, Drunken Master, Shaolin vs. Wutang, Revenge of the Ninja may have had shaky dialogue and plot holes so big that you could drive a semi through them, but my friends and I spent plenty of hours mimicking the punches and kicks, the over-dubbed mouth movements, the sounds (whoosh-bap-bap-yeeaaaahhhhhh). We would watch Bruce Lee and reenact scenes from our favorite movies. I promised myself if I ever got the chance to study Kung-Fu, I would. I've been studying Shaolin Kung-Fu for the past 6 years and I can't jump backwards onto rooftops just yet but I am working on it.

I also grew up listening to hip-hop music. I've been a fan of hip-hop since I was a kid in the mid-eighties. Way back when mix-tapes were on cassettes that you would trade with your friends and play at a low volume because you didn't want any grown ups hearing cuss-words coming from your tape player. Although there have been groups who have incorporated the martial-arts symbolism (like the Wutang Clan), I hadn't really heard a group describe the martial arts journey so perfectly until I heard a song from one of my favorite groups Dead Prez. The song is called Way of Life from their RBG-Revolutionary but Gangsta album.



Here are the lyrics:

Dead Prez - Way Of Life

What you know about the running, the stretching
The katas, the weapons
The path, the journey
The jewels, the learning
The fear, the focus
The aches, the pains
The contact sparrin', the breaks, the sprains
The trial and error, the ranks, and belts
The spiritual growth, the science of breath
The tests, the techniques
The forms, the stances
The flow, the rhythm, the internal answers
The herbs, the healing, the quiet meditation
The truths revealed through daily dedication
The love for the art, the sweat on your shirt
The mind, the body, and the spirit at work
The feelings of failure, the hope to succeed
The battles with questions like "Should I smoke weed?"
The water, the thirst
The cleansing, the blessings
The flash of insights, the teachings, the lessons
The grappling and locking, trapping and boxing
The training and slacking
The starting and stopping
The stayin' committed, when your homies ain't with it
The hours or practice after the class is finished
The cause of your ignorance, flaws in your discipline
Broken laws of nutrition, and poor conditionin'
The vitamins and supplements
Salves and ointments
The kin-ships, pulled joints and doctor appointments
The dues, the pads, the wraps, the gloves
The mouthpiece you left home, the taste of your own blood
The hunger, the blocks
The punches, the squats
The crunches, the example you set for the youngsters
The will, the skills, to kill or to heal
The separation between what's fake and what's real
The laws of physics, The class camaraderie
The vows of humility, the bow, the courtesy.

Well everything except the "Should I smoke weed" part I can cosign.