I’m not what you’d call a body beauty obsessed person and don’t really have any physical features that I’m particularly dissatisfied with.  Don’t get me wrong I’m no Brad Pitt and am under no illusions that I’m one of gods beautiful people being blessed with a busted nose and generously sized ears, but on the whole I can live with the image in the mirror.  The only thing I desperately wish to change about my body is its posture and this is only something I notice when I catch my reflection occasionally in the mirror during tai chi and I…

Some martial artists are obsessed with fighting; they think about, dream about it, talk about it, write about it and think if you’re not actively ‘fighting’ every training session you 'ain’t a proper martial artist'… this  attitude I think is worthy of contemplation. I personally agree with the need to challenge ourselves in allow for growth.  Growing up amongst martial artists and those who engage in physical pursuits has given me very strong sense of the type of personal growth that can be achieved when we challenge our perceptions, horizons and fears and the various methods we can employ to…

When I was in my early 20’s I got my first place and moved out of my parents home.   The independence was great, no more being told to pick up dirty socks off the floor or being berated for being too loud coming in after a few drinks.  It didn’t take too long for me to realise that liberation came at a price and whilst not being told to do the dishes was exhilarating  the downside was that if I didn’t do the dishes no one else did either.  Very quickly my lovely new bachelor pad resembled a cesspit and…

In my shiatsu training I was told that one of the most powerful components of our treatments was the ability to bring our clients back to the ‘here and now’.  Having been a devotee of Zen and other eastern ways of thinking for the majority of my life the concept wasn’t alien to me, but it’s importance wasn’t truly understood really until I started delving into bodywork and my taiji studies. I was on a course with the world renown shiatsu practitioner and teacher Saul Goodman who described the phenomenon of being ‘displaced in time’ by explaining that most of…

I have a lot of ‘discussions’ with many martial artists and personal trainers, particularly on my treatment bench, about my thoughts and feelings on exercising the human body.  My view is that many of the routines and training regimes implemented today are based on extremely outdated knowledge of human anatomy and physiology.  Many still believe in the myth the of the ‘single muscle theory’ and view our soft tissue system as a series of discreet individual units that in some abstract manner weave themselves together to form the whole we call ‘us’.  What I mean by ‘single muscle theory’ is…

A phenomenon rarely seen in nature outside of human beings is the deliberate killing of another member of the same species - especially in animals that live within social groups.  Killing a member of the same social group would actually weaken the groups collective strength and as such disputes are usually resolved using bravado and posturing.  If they do turn physical animals will rarely use their full offensive abilities on a member of the same species.  Here is an example of two large male lions fighting but only inflicting a fraction of the potential damage that capable of.  In contrast,…

One of the pieces of advice handed down in the tai chi classics is to 'bow the five bows'.  The five bows consist of the legs, arms and spine and enable what we call a 'connected' body.  With the five bows of the body engaged the muscles can be drawn and utilised as bow strings.  In my post 'The Bones and the Bodyweight' I discussed the idea of viewing the body as a suspension bridge and that the soft tissues were 'cables' - bowing the bows creates the structure needed to draw the bow strings of the body.  In this…

"If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run - Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!" - Rudyard Kipling A couple of weeks ago I performed my first demonstration on a stage in front of a busy and excited room full…

A while back I briefly introduced the importance of the head in the martial arts and this is a subject we returned to on the Shi Kon international instructors course over the weekend. In the tai chi classics it tells us to 'hold the head as if suspended from above to lighten the body' and over the course of the seminar we really delved into the genius and far reaching implications of this advice. This advice is actually quite simple but on the course we found that hardly any of us were quite getting it right. I often advise students…

"If you can push with it you can strike with it!" - Steve Rowe One of the pieces of advice we are given when learning to strike is 'put your whole body behind the strike' but this is very rarely seen in the martial arts in practice.  Often there is talk of having the body weight behind the strike and 'driving' it forwards but upon closer examination very few people actually do this. In tai chi one method we use to test our structure and alignment is pushing.  A partner will provide mindful resistance and we will then drive the…