Mind Body Kung Fu

Category: Uncategorized

  • Malaysia Trip Recap

    Malaysia Trip Recap

    A little over one week back in the U.S. and I feel like I’m just getting over my jet lag.  It’s a weird feeling popping wide awake at 1-2 a.m. and being dog tired during the daylight hours.  Anyhow, I thought I’d jot down a few notes on my experience in Kuala Lumpur and training…

  • Point of Contact

    In my experience with learning and teaching I-Liq Chuan, I have noticed that a lot of time is spent training the point of contact.  Once the basic understanding of body unification is achieved, training can quickly progress to framing movements in terms of the point of contact.  The point of contact provides a context for…

  • Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

    Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

    An unfortunate fact of life is that not all progress is forward moving.  At some point, all of us realize that we took a wrong turn somewhere and have to backtrack.  For a period of time, we can be in a state of regression until we reach the turnaround point and begin moving forward again.…

  • Spin to Flow

    Spin to Flow

    Spinning to flow seems like such a simplistic exercise.  Start on the lower hand position, spin until you land on the upper hand position, and then wait for your partner to do the same thing.  One partner moves, while the other partner listens and flows.  It is so easy that the exercise bored me when…

  • Full On Frontal

    Sometimes it just takes a while for a concept to sink in.  Like the frontal plane for instance.  It’s not like I haven’t heard it explained and felt it demonstrated many times before, but the understanding didn’t hit me for quite some time.  How hard can it possibly be to move parallel to the plane…

  • Conditioning Gone Wrong

    Conditioning is one of those weird subjects in martial arts training.  A lot of people aren’t conditioned enough to actually use their arts, and a few have taken their martial conditioning perhaps several steps too far. Today’s post is a little more light-hearted in nature, and will touch on the more extreme side of martial…

  • Why Train?

    Why would someone dedicate so much time and energy into a martial art?  If you believe in the 10,000 hour theory, proficiency can take a long time to achieve.  After all that time spend training, what do you have?  The physical skills achieved from martial arts training are not always relevant to modern life.  The rewards…

  • Starting from the Body

    Starting from the Body

    One of the things that took me a while to understand was changing the force interaction at the point of contact by starting my movements from joints relatively distant from the point of contact.  In the beginning, my first response was to change at the arms (i.e. moving primarily from the elbows and shoulders) since…

  • Suspending the Crown

    Suspending the Crown

    Suspending the crown is one of the 13 points used to harmonize the body.  It’s a standard cue for teaching body alignments.  Why is suspending the crown important?  There are several reasons for suspending the crown. The first reason is that your head is, roughly speaking, a 10-12 lb round object balanced on the seven verterbrae of…

  • Peng

    What is peng? a. Description of someone who is quite good lookingb. A mythical giant bird that arises from the northern seac. Ward off energy Actually, that’s a trick question. Any of those answers would be correct. If you gravitated to answer (a), you have a better grasp of urban slang than me. That was…