Anyone who had anything to do with the highly successful MAF festival last year will have had contact with Kwoklyn Wan.  He was everywhere at the event, from the gate at the entrance to making sure that every exhibitor had the opportunity to have their photo taken with his famous fashion guru brother Gok Wan.  What started off as a local ‘fairground’ fun exhibition turned into a ‘happening’ with people from everywhere swapping techniques and telephone numbers in a fun filled, friendly atmosphere.

Running a successful kwoon with 700 members in the middle of Leicester and successfully teaching JKD both here and in America with some of the world’s best instructors, this larger than life character is beginning to take the martial arts world by storm.  Kwoklyn and his partner Andy took the time to visit me at my Dojo for a photo shoot and chat…..

SR  Hi Kwoklyn, how did you get involved in the Martial Arts?

KW  I started in 1977 at 4 years old, my Dad is Chinese from Hong Kong and my Mum is from Southampton in England.  So even as a small child, my uncles were forever coming over and practicing their martial arts in my house and so it was always in my environment.  My parents owned a restaurant in Leicester and the Secular Hall was only 2 minutes down the road, they enlisted me into the Shotokan Karate club there run by Anthony Conroy.  I was so young, all I remember is my Mum taking me there on the bus and having Kentucky Fried Chicken afterwards!

SR  Tell the readers a little bit more about your uncles..

KW  I remember them visiting and training in various styles and under various names, sometimes Kung Fu, Wing Chun and sometimes Chinese Boxing.  I remember them drilling their strikes on the hessian rice sack, teaching me various moves and demonstrating the one-inch punch on me!  It’s been like that for the last 30 years!

SR  How long did you do the Shotokan Karate for?

KW Only for about 2 or 3 years, later I did Wing Chun with Derek Frearson in Leicester - I trained with Derek for many years on and off .

SR  I didn’t know Derek did Wing Chun!

KW  Yeah, and 7 Star Praying Mantis.

SR  I know he did Tai Chi with Bow Sim Mark…

KW  That’s right, he did Tai Chi as well, although I never really got into that.  Instruction was mainly from my uncles, in half hour to an hour lessons each time they came round.  I don’t hold any certificates in Wing Chun although I’ve been practicing it most of my life.

SR  I’ve always loved the ‘family’ aspect of Kung Fu, at parties everyone would get up and do something however good or bad they were and no one was ever ridiculed, it was all enjoyed, usually most of them were three sheets to the wind anyway!

KW  Usually on brandy!  As I became older, my training became more structured, I returned to Derek for more Wing Chun, trained in Kickboxing, Muay Thai, Ju Jitsu, Judo and Systema, trying a bit of everything becoming a ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’…  that was until I found a Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do class, I stayed with that until I found Lamaar Davies and then Tim Tackett found me.  Jeet Kune Do was me…  it was a freedom that I needed, although you did techniques in a certain way it was ‘principle led’ and you could adapt as you went along.

SR  I always think that there’s no point in training in anything if you can’t then validate it.

KW  The functionality of what you do is prime.  I have no objection to kata or form, but if you can’t be shown the reasoning behind it – it just becomes a dance!  You would never be able to use it in a combat situation because you’ve only learned it to a set rhythm and timing.

SR  I understand you also worked the doors?

KW  That’s right I did them in Leicester from 16 years of age, working at the ‘Dome’ in Leicester High Street.  I’ve been in plenty of ‘real’ situations and worked them continuously until I opened my own school about 5 years ago.  So I’ve had the street confrontations, I know what works and what doesn’t. I was using a ‘fence’ before it had a name!

SR  I’ve always called it the ‘wedge’ originating from the ‘jeet’ point and bridge in Kung Fu.  A ‘fence’ sounds too defensive to me.

KW  That’s right, in Jeet kune Do once your bridge has been met – you’re on home ground.  So I have the background and I have had to make my knowledge work, which a lot of martial artists don’t.

SR  There’s also a lot more information readily available now, in the old days we’d have to travel all over the place to learn the next couple of moves of a kata, there was no video, DVD, internet or ‘youtube’ available.

KW  That’s right – ‘youtube’ and other martial arts TV on the internet like WOMA are a valuable resource, once you’ve got your foundation in training you can always pick up additional drills and methods from this media.

SR  It’s also a good tool for the students to broaden their knowledge.

KW  Definitely!  Then by speaking to people like yourself and Pat O’Malley, my technique can be ‘tweaked’ to make it more effective.

SR  You can have a technique that’s 99% correct and it still fails you, that last one percent that’s the ‘magic’ that can make the difference between what works and what fails.

How did you come to open your academy up in Leicester?

KW  I always wanted my own place, wooden floors, big windows, I’d been teaching in various halls for about 4 years and decided I wanted to teach martial arts full time.  I started to look for a location, found where I am now and just started up with my existing students, our membership is now up to 700 so we’re a busy school!

SR  What’s your ratio between children and adults?

KW  We only have around 30 children and the rest are adults.  I don’t teach the children because I swear too much!

SR  What do you teach?

KW  Thai Boxing and Kickboxing, I don’t profess to be a qualified teacher, but I have the foundation.  We’re a fitness oriented, hard hitting, full contact club.  The Jeet Kune Do is traditional under the guidance of Lamar Davies.

SR  Who is Lamar Davies?

KW   Lamar is a Jeet Kune Do instructor in America and founder of the ‘Hardcore Jeet Kune Do Association’.  I found him on the internet, trained with him and liked what he was doing, I found it really practical.  He is ‘old school’ in the way that he has a huge training syllabus, but it’s up to us what we do with it, we can add and delete as we wish.

SR  You mentioned your connection with Tim Tackett, who’s he?

KW  He graded under Dan Inosanto in 1973 as a full Jeet Kune Do Instructor, for me and many others he is the ultimate Jeet Kune Do instructor, he was there right from the start.  I was lucky in that he approached me, came and trained with me and I did several weeks intensive training with him to be sure that I had a grasp of his system - he was surprised that a 25 stone man could move so fast and apply the principles.

I’d like to record that at no time did I ask him for a certificate, he asked me to represent him in the UK.  People will always bitch, but I’ve had the honour to train with him on a regular basis and have been over to America and trained with the famous ‘Wednesday night’ group and taught on his Summer Camp.  Some of the people I was teaching had been training 20 years longer than me!  They still enjoyed my teaching, which I think is down to the varied martial arts background that I have.

SR  How did MAF come about?

KW  I went to a boating show with my wife and kids in Leicester and a Capoiera group were doing a demonstration, I was walking around, the sun was shining,  kids playing, people were looking at the boats, having barbeques and so on.  I thought “what a good idea, to have a martial arts show in a similar vein!”  I’m not talking about the big shows or exhibitions but a festival.  It took me two years to put the idea together.  Last October I took Adam as a partner, he’s been training with me for 6 years and has a background in arranging events and building websites.  The event turned out to be an enormous success.

SR  MAS certainly did very well at the event.

KW  It was all about people going there to have a good time.  The festival had a ‘local fair’ feel about it; we had the capoiera group, bouncy castles, spiritualists, healers and lots of people having fun just showing what they do.

It was a local place that people could go to with little money and have a good day watching people that loved what they do showing their arts to an appreciative audience.  There was no hierarchy or bitching, just people training and often ‘trading off’ techniques with each other showing what they do.

I didn’t get the time to speak to everyone, but I got around as many people as I could.

The exhibitors, demonstrators, workshop instructors and participants have all said that they would love to come back next year.  Hence April 2010 we’ll have another big show, we’re looking at locations now.

SR  It was a winning formulae because it was so friendly.  I was only there for a couple of hours but arranged enough interviews to fill the magazine for months ahead.

KW  Saturday, I was a bit stressed as it was the first day and although Sunday was packed, I really enjoyed it.  The next MAF will be for 3 days so that we have that extra day to make sure we have everything right on the Friday for the weekend.  We would also like to a have a special  “A Night With….”  show and for the Bruce Lee Foundation to come over.

SR  Where are you planning to hold it next year?

KW  In or around the Midlands, there is one location that we’re considering that has a Bedouin tend that holds 20,000 people… it wouldn’t matter what the weather was like then!

SR  What are your future plans for your school?

KW  The school is doing well and we’ll just keep going as we are, I’ve been teaching professionally for 10 years now and tend to teach the ‘invitation only’ classes, where we train together more than it being a hierarchal structure.  I’d like to focus on those classes rather than teaching everyone.

SR  Do you have any plans for other events?

KW  We’re looking at a Bruce Lee Convention on his birthday, he was a great fan of birthdays so we’re looking at getting everyone together on that day.  We’re flying out to Los Angeles to talk to his wife Linda and daughter Shannon to put a few ideas on the table and get a Bruce lee Convention UK arranged.

We have the ‘Concrete Arena’ that launches this summer in August that is a full MMA show with 3 UFC fighters acting as judges to the first show.  We’re hoping for Mike Bisping to be there and Ian Freeman to compere.  It’ll be an all ‘glitz and glamour’ cage show.

I’m going to help Pat O’Malley out with the British Padded Arnis Alliance and help to build that up in the UK, he has groups in Europe that want to come over and compete.

Maybe we’ll also run a Freestyle Championships, as there seems to be a big market for it and we are considering promoting a series of events.

Quite a few spin offs from MAF really!

SR  I wish you all the best for the future and we’ll be there in 2010!

KW  Thank you.

I spent the time in Czech at the end of February priming everyone for the Summer Course in July.  We worked on the importance of studying each bit of advice from the classics in synergy with the others.

“Raise the head as if suspended by a rope from above” goes naturally with “lighten the top of the head”.  There were a few problems with ‘lighten’ in translation, but when everyone realised that they didn’t need a light bulb on the top of their head, (which I would argue with) they realised that when they tried to ‘straighten’ the head they invariably tensed the neck muscles, but when they ‘suspended’ and ‘lightened’ they felt like it was ‘floating’ upward and the entire body moved with a lighter feel.  Add on to that the feeling of tying a weight on to the bottom of the spine and it allowed a gentle opening of every vertebra in the spinal column and access for the bodyweight to the soft tissue of the legs.

This also opened the waist and allowed it to ‘loosen’ and freely drive and manipulate power through the entire body.  The head was the start of the ‘5 bows’ (spine, arms and legs) and the spine itself consists of a separate 3 bows, the upper spine is bowed by the action of the head, the upper back by the ‘sinking of the chest’ and ‘raising of the back’ and the lower back by the softening into the legs and pulling the PC muscle to draw the coccyx forward.  The whole bowing process is driven by ‘peng’, which opens the joints and soft tissue, allowing a free flow of energy and with an action like blowing up a balloon ‘frames’ the entire body with ‘animated’ energy.

We looked at how to put our ‘strength in the tendons’ by angling and rotating the joints to ‘reticulate’ them through the body connecting the power down to the feet.

We finished by working on ‘continuous movement from the waist’ to make the connected, light, framed and spiralling power become actualised into that essential Tai Chi motion that repels all boarders!

By pre framing everyone’s mind for the Summer, it means that as they are already moving in that direction and won’t feel too uncomfortable as we apply these ideas throughout the form!

Don’t forget that on the Instructors Course in April we’re working on the Jian and Dao with a deeper level of skill, so bring your wooden swords!

“With all this work we do to improve, do you think there’s a time that we’ll start getting worse?”

We welcomed the break in between Tai Chi classes, apart from the physical break, it gave us the chance to discuss anything from the latest kung fu movies to the deepest Buddhist philosophy with Sifu.

Teresa had a stressful job in accounting, worked long hours and would come into class looking tired, sigh with effort at the beginning and end of the class but the years would slip away as she appeared get younger and always seemed to lose her ‘cloud’ whilst training.

“Why do you ask that?” queried Sifu.

“I was just wondering what it was all about, we come along here twice a week, work and study really hard to improve our technique, train every day at home and chances are that we will eventually get worse over a period of time as we age and then die…..  is it all worth the effort?”

“Aren’t we the cheerful one!” laughed Joseph.

“It’s alright for you”, moaned Teresa, “but I’m nearer the ‘getting worse’ part than you!”

“Do you think it’s a case of ‘good and bad’ then?” asked Sifu.

“Of course it is” answered Teresa, “the purpose of training is to get better, otherwise there’s no point.”

“That’s not why I train”, said Sifu.

“Then why are you always correcting our technique?” asked Joseph.

“To help you enjoy your training more” answered Sifu.

“But that means that you’re just putting us under more pressure to get better” complained Teresa.

“I’m not putting you under any pressure”, said Sifu, “the only person that can put you under pressure, is you!”

“But when you’re correcting me I can’t help but feel pressured and when I’m doing my own training I feel pressured to improve to please you.”

“And whose fault is that?” asked Sifu.

“I don’t know now!” bleated Teresa….

“I train because I enjoy it” said Sifu, “the pleasure of getting up in the morning and looking forward to the meditation, the qigong and the Tai Chi form training.  The sheer sensual pleasure of clearing the mind, making it more aware and focused, stretching the muscles and fascia and moving the body through our animalistic routines……  I love it!”

“But you must train to improve as well” asked Teresa.

“The better I get at it, the more I enjoy it” answered Sifu.  “The point is that it enhances my pleasure, it’s not WHY I train!  You are treating the learning process as a burden, if you’re not improving fast enough you feel guilty, you’re training to please me….. how daft is that?

Tai Chi is learned by osmosis, the knowledge gradually soaks in; the paradox is that the harder you try, the worse it gets.  You have to let the information hang in your mind so that the body can absorb it in it’s own time.  We learn the language of our body, we encourage it to function better.  The learning process is a part of the whole sensory experience, as it improves it becomes more pleasurable.

The point of Tai Chi is that you learn to de-stress, not put more pressure on to an already stressed mind and body.  Tai Chi is MY time.  I don’t do anything until I’m ready, I meditate, when I feel ready, I do my qigong, when my mind and body are ready, the form does me….  It’s said that Tai Chi is like a great river, when you are prepared; it sweeps you up and carries you along on the experience.

If you have the ambition to ‘improve’ – you won’t.  The ‘grand ultimate’ (the translation of the term ‘Tai Chi’) is lost at that point.  You are exhausting yourself further by pressurizing yourself instead of allowing your practice to nourish you.”

“But isn’t the purpose of life to become the best you can” asked Teresa?

“The purpose of life is to engage as fully as you can in every moment, the paradox is that more you can do this, the better you get at everything because you are fully engaged with whatever you are doing.  There is a difference between ‘wanting’ to be the best and actually ‘being’ the best.  Remember you are a human ‘being’ – the word ‘being’ is often forgotten!

Only you can make yourself happy, only you can make yourself unhappy, only you can put yourself under pressure, you don’t need to do this.  Tai Chi gives you a route out by a process of direct experience and learning by the most advanced process.  A happy person learns and experiences best, this is a simple decision that you can make and then form it into a daily habit.  Training and learning then becomes a pleasure and a part of the daily routine to look forward to.”

“But then what happens when my body starts to deteriorate and my training is not so easy?”

“It’s still enjoyable because improvement was not why you trained….”

“I think the penny has just dropped” smiled Teresa, “I’ve just been punishing myself with the tool for making myself happy…”

“Exactly..” said Sifu returning a big smile

“I would consider tai chi to be the ultimate skirmish art” said a night club doorman of 28 years and lifelong martial artist.  “This is exactly what happens on the doors and it gives us the skills to deal with being pushed, pulled grabbed and hit from all directions at the same time, we’re often in a melee and the ability to cope with simultaneous multi directional attacks is essential.”

The mental image that most have of Tai Chi is that of the ‘hippy’ or ‘health’ version and of old age pensioners creaking along to the only range of movement and speed that they can cope with.  Or it may be of the ‘youtube’ version of bodies flying unconvincingly away from an aged masters ‘magic’ light touch or of bad karate or aikido applications to the strange movements.

Tai Chi is a martial art.  It can be taught very methodically.  Those that consider it a martial art often say that you have to practice it for years to be any good, in fact the same can said for any art. Tai Chi starts with the qigong exercises, in the Yang Family these are essential foundation training that releases the body core to allow internal softening, connection and rooting.  They then work methodically through the body, opening the joints, softening the muscle and fascia connections, flexing the spine, correcting the posture and working all the powerful directional movements that a human body can do.  The ‘exercises’ also work the ‘jins’, the energy lines through the body exciting the system to engender a vigorous health and positive, powerful movements and technique.

When skills are taught, they are taught in the exercises first, then put into the hand forms, weapons forms, push hands and finally boxing and grappling applications.

Being taught properly and methodically means that the student is taught what he ‘needs’ rather than what he ‘wants’, this is known as ‘eating bitter’ and can be construed by a part of modern society who want to be ‘entertained’ as boring and painful.  Those people would be attracted to what is known as ‘tourist’ Tai Chi where they are entertained with simple unskillful movements that make them happy and keep the instructors rice bowl full.   This is the popular form of Tai Chi.

To be taught properly, the student needs to learn how to stand, how to breathe, how to think and focus his attention and then how to move.  He must ‘empty his cup’ of whatever he thought martial arts and fighting were to be able to learn the skills from exercise to form in a pure liberated movement free from emotion and wrong intention.  He would then learn how to generate power from the feet, through the legs, manipulated by the core and torso to be fed out through the arms and hands.  Different forms of connected power are used for striking, manipulation, locking, escaping, strangling, choking and throwing.

It takes time and effort (the meaning of the words ‘kung fu’) to work these skills into the body until they become natural and any form of trying to force them will result in unnatural tension and anxiety.

Development is a lifelong process, it’s said that the student will first learn in feet, then inches, then hundredths of an inch, then thousandths… then hundredths of a thousandth of an inch.  BUT….. he is better on day 2 than he would be on day 1, any skill learning is the same process.  ‘Tourist’ technique in any art may work until the student meets a powerful, internally connected fighter, who will simply walk through or disrupt anything he has to offer.

The difference with Tai Chi is that it is a skirmish art; it is a continuous double helix spiral of movement and momentum, during this continuous movement the practitioner remains actively powerful and responsive in all directions for every hundredth of a thousandth of an inch.

The founder of the Yang style, Yang Lu Chan, was the son of a farmer who loved the Martial Arts and had studied Shaolin Hung Quan with a local instructor before studying in the Chen family village under Chen style Master Chen Chang Xin.  Yang Lu Chan was his most talented student and eventually returned to his home village at Yung Nien where he taught for a living.  He was undefeated locally and in his travels where he won many matches utilising his soft and yielding art that as a result became known as ‘mien quan’ (cotton boxing) or hua quan (neutralising boxing).  ‘Cotton boxing’ because for the opponent, it was like putting their hands into soft cotton and finding a needle in the middle!

By the time he was middle aged Yang taught at the Imperial Court and was tested by experts many times and never defeated, this earned him the title ‘Yang the Invincible’.  He became the martial arts instructor to the Shen Ji Battalion and taught in the Royal Households earning the title 'Ba Yeh’ (Eight Lords) because eight princes studied under him.

Teaching at the Imperial Court was a grave responsibility in that he was obliged to teach well or it would be considered treason with a probable death sentence!  It also gave Yang the opportunity to meet with and compare his skills with the best in the land.

Yang was a hard taskmaster to his three sons with one dying early, one attempting suicide and one frequently running away and attempting to become a monk.  Eventually both remaining sons became masters in their own right and both taught at the Imperial Court.

‘Cotton boxing’ is an interesting term because it indicates where the vital secret of Yang Tai Chi Chuan lies.  In combat the mind tends to be coarse and responds only to harsh and sudden movement ignoring the soft and sensitive.  The Tai Chi practitioner develops the skill of  ‘four ounces to move a thousand pounds’ and when the opponents mind is going coarse, his becomes more sensitive and works on a subliminal level neutralizing the opponents force with light touches, sticking, following, redirecting and controlling with power connected from the feet and legs up through the core, manipulated by the waist and out through he hands.  The ‘soft’ strikes carry that same connected power that although deceptively soft, carries the ‘kick’ of a donkey!

It becomes a ‘skirmish art’ because the body moves in that framed, posturally aligned and internally connected manner and is able to repel attackers from any direction at any time.  I remember when I talked about ‘fa jin’ being ‘like a whip’ to Ma Lee Yang she thought about it for a moment and then said that it was more like a ‘pin ball machine’.  This troubled me for ages, as I couldn’t see her point until I grasped the double helix and the ability to bounce or send power to any point of the body and in any direction in an instant.  A whip has vulnerable points in its’ movement and is committed – the pinball isn’t.

It makes the martial aspect of Tai Chi very different to that of most other martial arts.   I don’t think there is a ‘best’ art, only the best art for the character of each student.  It’s never the art, but the person that practices it that makes it efficient.

Good Yang style Tai Chi as a ‘skirmish’ art certainly suits doormen, security personnel and law enforcement officers.  I have taught all 3 categories successfully for over 3 decades.  Sometimes you have to search for the right instructor and art and not be put off or be influenced by others or by the first instructors you meet.  It can take as much time and effort to find the right instructor as the actual training itself!  People have often said to me “I always knew it was there in Tai Chi, it was just not easy to find”…..

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Steve Rowe is an International Tai Chi Instructor teaching Presidential Bodyguards, Security Personnel, Police Self Defence Instructors and runs an association with over 15,000 students across Europe.  He is also an 8^th Dan in Karate, 3^rd Dan in Iaido, 2^nd Dan Jodo and 1^st Dan Ju Jitsu.

He is the Chairman of the Martial Arts Standards Agency and Shi Kon Martial Arts International.

You can read his blog and articles at www.themartialarchive.com and his website at www.shikon.com

We’ve been working on the idea of continuous peng in all directions whilst maintaining continuous spiraling motion in the form.

One of the ways we’ve been practicing this idea is with 4 people gently pulling or pushing the form practitioner in all directions making him find his feet and spiral into them, maintaining peng and taking the ‘opponents’ just out of their feet with the first couple of millimetres of movement so that they are still attached, weakened, but not really aware of it.

The skill is in utilising the right-brained ‘spatial’ mind that has the ability to treat all four opponents as one and as one ‘balancing point’ instead of trying to deal with 4 separate people and 4 separate balance points.  This is easier than it reads and it’s the sensitivity that’s the real skill.

The idea of the ‘pinball’ is that it’s the strike that comes from the spiral AFTER the weakening of the opponent and into them on the curve.  This means that it continues to move on the curve and into the spiral from the strike.  The pinball effect also means that the ‘fajing’ can travel quickly from point to point in the body and hit again and again into the weakened opponents with a ‘pinball’ effect.

Bear in mind that many people can’t get their balance in the first place or lose it as soon as they start moving and are therefore vulnerable all of the time.

In Tai Chi the hands are only one option for hitting, more often than not it will be the spiraling, curving forearms or any other part of the body, Dao (broadsword) training helps to understand the spiraling forearm ‘cutting strikes’ to the vulnerable points, breaking the opponent’s structure.

The use of the syncromeshed multi spiraling 'peng' provides the rooted, waist manipulated, spiraling emission of energy that can be powered through the hands with little or no arm extension whilst either first or simultaneously displacing the opponents structure with the other hand or by pulling, pushing, 'nudging' with forearm, shoulder etc.. So this is best practiced on another person with minimum or no padding and either pushing the strike in (to lessen impact) or controlling it, as a hit on a weakened structure is different to hitting a rooted and aligned one. Finding angles through a human body to de-structure joints, hitting vital points, shortening tendons, separating muscle and fascia whilst the body is moving are all hitting skills worthy of a lot of study. As the hit itself is on a curve and therefore will continue in momentum and not lose structure, hitting bags and pads is not always particularly useful.

In summary…. Grasping the ideas of working subliminally, utilizing peng, spiraling from the feet in continuous motion, breaking the opponent’s structure and hitting from the spiral, on a curve, in continuous movement and using the pinball effect of fajin will give us the skills we’re after!

 

For those that don’t see me too often I thought I’d give you all an update as to what we’ve been working on lately….

The opening of the spine in both directions
To not only stretch the spine upwards, but to also feel like you have a weight attached to the coccyx, pulling it downwards to open the spaces between the vertebrae.  This goes along with the idea of ‘parking’ the spine and you cannot help but ‘loosen up’ through the ankles, knees and hips at the same time.  This also allows you to be more sensitive to gently pulling the PC muscle to create the ‘bowing’ of the spine and limbs.

Using the waist to change the hands.
The hands are always ‘driven’ by the waist.  We never ‘throw’ them. When changing the hand technique it must be ‘spiralled’ into change from the waist displacing the opponent at the same time, we have been paying particular attention to grasp sparrow’s tail (as ever), single whip, shoulder stoke, stork cools wings, cloud hands and fair lady plays at shuttles, but the idea is in all techniques.

Continuous movement from the waist.
The waist never stops and as it’s driving the hands they are always in continuous ‘driven’ movement.  As it’s sometimes difficult for the student to know when the waist and link to the hands has ceased, we have been working in pairs with one student watching the other and by observation and discussion have resolved any problems or anomalies.

Spatial energising of the skin.
Instead of identifying an individual opponent in the mind when performing the form, we have worked on the idea that the performer is being held by many people and pulled multi directionally so that he has to secure the drive from the feet, spiral in motion to displace them and keep peng and frame to maintain power in all directions.  This has the added benefit that the awareness and energy is bought to the surface of all the skin spatially as opposed to just towards one opponent.

That’s enough to kick the New Year off!!  I’ll let you know where we go from there.

Don’t forget the seminar this Sunday 17^th January is on meditation, the chakras, their relevance, and healing.  11am – 3pm at the Chatham honbu £20 for members, £30 for non members.

The Shi Kon training system is mnemonic.  At each grade the ‘form’ is mnemonic for the basics and applications to be practised for the next grade.  The system is progressive from grade to grade. It works from kicking and boxing to close quarter fighting, to power striking and on to the study of the 16 gates of the human body, to the 13 remaining hands of the system, taking those ideas into curves, circles and spirals to the internal system, the method of employing it into the 5 animals, the methods of emitting power and energy and all these ‘minor mnemonic’ forms are eventually rolled up into one mnemonic ‘Taiki’ (for Karate) or ‘Shi Kon Tai Chi’ (for Kung Fu) form that intensifies and compounds all the previous training.

The underlying principles of the system are brought mnemonically into 8 words.  Each word is the doorway to a world of exploration and learning.  This way you can never forget all the most important components of the Shi Kon training system, when working on your own you only have to pick a word and start exploring, never forgetting that the Shi Lon logo is a mnemonic for the entire system and is depicted as a Buddhist dharma wheel, giving the philosophy as well as the practical aspects and reminding you that even though you are concentrating on one mnemonic, you can’t forget the other 7!

The Shi Kon coaches have the perfect method of teaching and assessing the progress of the students. All they have to do is to work their way around the wheel in a cyclic fashion at each grade focusing on the one that is particular for that grade to ensure that everything gets covered and then take each mnemonic to a deeper level at each stage.

Whoever thought it all up was a genius!

Click here to see all the the forms from the Shi Kon syllabus.

I paused in the clear night air to savour the moments before death, I was lucky to know the time of the completion of this incarnation so I was properly prepared, the icy fingers of fate clawed inside my abdomen making me draw in the crisp air and centre myself. When my family had been slaughtered and I had been the only one to escape my fate had been sealed, I had trained day and night with Sensei to be able to complete my Karma
the right way, tonight there was no win or lose...... only completion.

Revenge powered my black heart into the next world....... I was already dead, I could smell the sickly dying blood of this family's entire line just waiting for my blade to fulfil its karma and release it from its suffering in this world.......

I no longer controlled my actions, destiny was fulfilling itself..... I slid open the shoji and announced my presence and my intentions, the eldest son grabbed his Katana and moved forward unsheathing the blade at the same time.... I drew and cut across his arms in one powerful, fluid, classic `nukitski' movement, his eyes registered shock as he lost control of his movements and blood spurted from the arteries in his arms, the ice cold rage welling in my Hara powered my major cut from the top of his head through to his lower abdomen.... releasing his soul from this painful incarnation.....