Wen Hsiu Quan

So, this week has been really busy with surprises at work popping up around every corner. This is the 8th month that I am working for myself without any staff. Before this month I have been able to plan my day and see the planning through. Recently, though, I saw that I needed to accommodate urgent matters that have come up and had to try my best to squeeze in some extra work not planned for and reschedule some of the work I already had planned.  In this tumultuous week I have found that I started feeling frustrated, because I am used to seeing the end of the day ahead, the end of the days work quota and the point at which I could just put tools down and relax. It is often at that time when I feel ready to call it a day when new work comes to surprise me. In fighting I have found that the stressful part of it all is where you can't see the end of it. That part where I can drop my guard and celebrate is not anywhere in sight while my opponent and I are ...

It is a story which Afrikaners my age know all too well. A nation of people subjugated by war with the British and oppressed slowly rising and managing to establish a republic at the Southernmost end of Africa. The story of how these people have  regained their ethnic pride and what they have accomplished with their unity has filled our history books. Then- with no more English soldiers to humiliate, subjugate or kill them, these people, the Afrikaners secured their hold on this country and made sure that no one else rises up to take it from them. That meant that the Black people, who actually made up the majority of this country's people and who regarded themselves as the indigenous people of this country before us- had to be kept in check. Now we can allow some of the most hypocritical among us to come and say that it was for their own good and so forth, but that does not change the situation in which we find ourselves now. In 1994 the tables got turned with...

Ever watched the glorious sport of Rugby? Well- I'm sure American readers will have an idea of what it is by now. It is Football without those sissy helmets and shoulder-pads! :D Something tells me that that remark has bought me a couple of people waiting for me with pumping fists in the comment section after this post... :D Seriously, though- football fans also know that sports like Football and Rugby are really brutal and the kind of injuries sustained by players often exceed those sustained by MMA fighters. Yes- there are worse things than being punched in the face... Trust me. I don't know much about American Football, but did you know that Rugby has a full-contact and a virtually no-contact (or very light contact) version? No- it is not Sarcastaball... :D (Damn! I'm not going to finish this post if I continue laughing at myself like this...) It is called Touch- Rugby. Now- jokes aside- my point is this: In normal Rugby- teams consider being tackled...

My first exposure to Qi-Gong came from an article in the Taekwondo Times in 1994. In the article a teacher by the name of James Lacey gave readers some standing meditation postures. As with all martial arts practices the thing was not about the postures or the photos- it lay in the breathing. I started practicing while being 16 at the time. I had hopes of being able to shoot a fireball from my palms like the Hadouken or Kamehameha one day... That never happened of course. It took me many years to understand the place of Qi in the martial arts of today. In this post I will share some of my experiences and then give some guidelines of how qi manifests itself so that you can tell when someone in a video is bluffing or not. The first thing I experienced was a tingly, needles and pins sensation in my hands. The literature said that I would feel warmth, but that was not the first thing I felt. In fact- I only feel a very mild warmth when my hands are close to each othe...

Now here's something I have not yet written about. :D I have been interested in the Zen side of Japanese martial arts since the age of 16. It was about at this age when I began with Qigong as well. As a young karateka back then I did not have the confidence, strength or aggression of my classmates and looking back- I think it was a good thing. Because of that classes scared me. Now- had it not been to exposure to the mental training techniques provided to me by Zen- I would not have seen this hostile dojo environment as the ideal testing grounds for the things I have read. This is one major factor to which I attribute my development as a martial artist. One very important training tool that has always served me well and that continues to do so to this dat is Zen Meditation. This, in itself, has provided me with a number of benefits about which I can write in detail. One of those- was the development of intuition and sensory acuity. It is actually wonderfu...

In his book Spirit of the Empty Hand Stan Schmidt mentioned a lesson during which his Sensei asked what his hand would be if it stayed a fist all the time. I am certain that philosophers and martial artists alike will find a message in that. As a person practicing a martial art that employs strikes and that uses sparring as a training method- I have a very tangible example of what this metaphor can tell us. Practitioners of WSKF, Goju Ryu and Jeet Kune Do might know what I am talking about here. Most schools of Taijiquan and JKA Shotokan might not get it, though. Wenhsiuquan recognises the importance of relaxing muscles in order to gather energy for a strike, but a fair amount of tension is necessary in areas like the legs and abomen to protect the internal organs and to speed up movement. When facing a sparring partner head-on, a moderate amount of tension in the pectoral muscles protect the ribs as well. This tension cannot be excessive lest it slows down your movement...

From 2014 to now I have attended classes at two different Shotokan dojos and noticed something I did not like at all. First time it happened I was at a class headed by one of the junior instructors. At the start of the class he went for a book in his bag (well- it could have been a bunch of pages just bound together) and then went on to start the class with: "Your basics are..." This was at a JSKA dojo. At the WSKF dojo (where I currently am) a lot of time gets spent on preparation for tournaments and gradings. Around tournament time we get to do free sparring practice, which is always a good idea, but all the other times are devoted to competition techniques and- guess what- a bundle of pages in the Sensei's bag. My first karate teacher actually had me wondering what the syllabus actually required from me. The reason for that was because he kept the lessons ever changing. Those times I have spent learning the next kata and ippon kumite sequences for my grading ...