Wen Hsiu Quan

Hi, guys!  :D I am super excited about today's post because of an awesome app I have found in the Google Playstore during this week. I was going to write a post titled "Karate Spoilers" today, but it seems like a higher power intervened this week and gave me something much cooler to write about. Before I tell you more about it and SHOW you what I found it does- let's first look at this scene... https://youtu.be/QsDDXSmGJZA Those of us who know the Dragonball franchise very well know that these scouters first made their appearance in Dragonball Z with the arrival of the malevolent Saiyans. This scene where an amazed Vegeta reads Goku's new power level after his return from Kaio Sama is definitely one of the most memorable scenes. The scouter was alien technology that measured a living being's Ki. We have seen a similar device being used in the Street Fighter II animated movie. https://youtu.be/Fk0OxjpkE0k?t=130 Now the app that I have found i...

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...

Earlier this week Abisha Soans from our Martial Arts Forums group on Google+ asked what I have meant by "gathering of energy" in an earlier post about kata. I always know in the back of my mind that not all martial artists emphasise- in some cases give any regard to- the same things that others do, but I I am often so careful not to ramble off the topic in my posts that a lot of explanations never come. The best example I can think of giving you to illustrate when energy is gathered and when it is released is with strikes and percussive blows. When non-martial arts folk (can I call them Muggles or something like that?) want to hit someone really hard they inhale, pull back the hand and then swing through. Then- when you teach them to cock the fist at the hip like a karateka to do a straight punch you will still notice some unnecessary preparatory movement before the punch goes. Don't laugh too hard at this. I also know about karate folk who do not make a...

Earlier this week Abisha Soans from our Martial Arts Forums group on Google+ asked what I have meant by "gathering of energy" in an earlier post about kata. I always know in the back of my mind that not all martial artists emphasise- in some cases give any regard to- the same things that others do, but I I am often so careful not to ramble off the topic in my posts that a lot of explanations never come. The best example I can think of giving you to illustrate when energy is gathered and when it is released is with strikes and percussive blows. When non-martial arts folk (can I call them Muggles or something like that?) want to hit someone really hard they inhale, pull back the hand and then swing through. Then- when you teach them to cock the fist at the hip like a karateka to do a straight punch you will still notice some unnecessary preparatory movement before the punch goes. Don't laugh too hard at this. I also know about karate folk who do not make a...

Just so that we have a point of reference with regard to what I am going to talk about I want us all to understand how I perceive qi energy in martial arts training. A person with a healthy qi flow is that person whose body seems unaffected by your blows. It could also be that person whose wrists feel like "iron bars wrapped in paper" when you grab them. Unwavering focus and even an infectious joi de vivre   are singns of an abundance of qi. For those of us who have developed a sensitivity for these things the amazing aspect of some people's qi flow is that with some you can feel the tingling sensation of their energy from about 2 metres away. With some you need to be closer. In two cases I have felt a warm pleasant sensation emanating from the persons in question. In other cases a paralyzing sense of being drained of energy. Now comes the ironic part- Only one of the people I have met was a martial artist. And he was also the only person conscio...

https://youtu.be/Ar1B1YLIJPg I love this song from the Crash Test Dummies. Some of you who don't know who they are are probably far too young to remember them. In their song "Here I Stand Before Me" the singer sings that his mind's eye is missing from his body. Well, I can probably say I am missing an entire network of chakra points and meridians! Fact is we have been taught that our bodies look like this inside... ... and it would most likely be what we find if we were to dissect our bodies. Studying martial arts the way some of us have, however, we know that- in the heat of battle- we don't experience our bodies like this. What good does it do us? Well... the way we think of our bodies actually play a large part in how they perform. A body-builder will probably tell you that thinking about the muscle you are working during your workout actually makes that muscle work harder. So doing the muscle actually develops f...

I really pity those of you who train with an instructor who does not teach anything about Qi! The one big difference between Wenhsiuquan and Jeet Kune Do is that Qigong is expressly part of Wenhsiuquan's training regimen.  Last week I have learnt a really cool training method from Wu Style Taijiquan. I must admit that the writer of the book actually gave a lot of complex information that I have still not digested, but one really cool technique did find its way from the pages into my morning work-out's warm-up. It goes like this: Standing in an upright posture ( yoi for the karate people), feet flat on the ground, shoulders relaxed, and so forth (Taijiquan people know the drill...) you begin to stretch your neck upwards so that all the vertebrae have a space between one another. This is not done by straining, but rather in a relaxed posture and while breathing slowly.  Just by doing that I have already felt a surge of Qi course through my veins. Not qu...

Where other people would read about a thing such as "mind over matter" and continue doubting whether they could ever attain something like that we as martial artists are in a position to practice and train with it and experience it first hand. We already know the value of conditioning. Some of us will know about skills such as Shaolin's "Iron Shirt" and "Golden Bell Cover" and may still not know how to develop the ability. Well- I reserve that kind of knowledge for my students. Something I will leave for my fellow martial artists to contemplate however is this: When is a body part a target and when is it a weapon? Short answer- It depends on how qi is focussed. A more understandable explanation would be more like this: If you accidentally bump your hand against a table while rushing off somewhere in a hurry- it hurts. When, however, that hand is used to break a board or a tile- it does not hurt (or at least not that much...) What was differ...