Open to all Shaolin-Do Black Belts and SDA Members of any rank!

Saturday, March 20th, 2010 from 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (lunch break from 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM)

Lexington Catholic High School
2250 Clays Mills Road
Lexington, KY 40503

Grandmaster Sin Kwang Thé has agreed to teach Ban Liang Hua Kung, the 10,000 Lotus Blooming form, at his annual spring seminar on Saturday, March 20th, 2010 in Lexington, KY.  There are no prerequisites for learning this material so everyone should be there. Show our support and thanks to Grandmaster Sin Thé for agreeing to teach this high level form! DVD’s must be preordered and will be handed out at the seminar – no exceptions! The SDA  reserves the right to refuse admittance to anyone for any reason. Please wear a gi, like Grandmaster Sin Thé’s, to the seminar!

The following text is from Grandmaster Sin Thé, describing Ban Liang Hua Kung: It is the most internal of all the internal systems. It goes inside your body so you feel every movement of your muscles and them with your chi. It was created by the Shaolin monks specifically to complement Liu Hsing, the Meteor Fist. However, unlike Liu Hsing’s furious blasting movements, Ban Liang Hua Kun’s movements are more subtle and use your chi to make every muscle in your body turn alive. Arguably it the most difficult and challenging material that has been taught so far, yet it’s implications are not limited to martial arts fighting skills. The greatest benefit is its life-changing aspect.

Through Ban Liang Hua Kun training, you will have a new outlook on life. Science has long discovered that if we humans knew how to use every inch
of our muscles, then we would become stronger than a tiger!

To register, print up the registration form and send it in by March 12

http://www.shaolin-do.com/events/seminars/2010/20100320.pdf

Jason Couch has an amusing blog post at Martial History Magazine that gives 19th century accounts by Englishmen of their (generally patronizing) impressions of Chinese martial arts.

Here’s one passage from 1843:

“I was once threatened with a practical proof of this art near what is called the barrier, at Macou, because a companion of mine had given some offence to the keepers of the wall, by taking advantage of a dismantled part to get a peep at the other side. One of them, as champion of the rest, came up and made a vigorous display of the various body positions into which he could throw his body, either for annoyance or defence. At every important shift, he uttered a thundering vociferation, to give greater effect to what he was doing, and ever and anon his companions shouted as they stood gazing from the wall, while the writer remained quietly waiting to see at what part of these evolutions it might be necessary to interpose as a matter of self-defence; but as this interposition did not appear to be called for, I retired, after giving this soldier and athlete ample time to try his hand at something more than show if he chose.”

See the complete post at:

http://martialhistory.com/2009/11/chinese-martial-arts-in-19th-century-china/

The latest issue of Mike Mahler’s “Aggressive Strength Magazine” has a lot of great information on fat loss, the importance of good nutrition,  exercise, and adrenal health.  Check it out!

http://www.mikemahler.com/magazine/173.html

This is the latest newsletter from my teacher, Master Joe Schaefer of Austin, TX.  This weekend Master Joe is hosting a rare visit by one of the most senior teachers in our lineage, Elder Master Eric Smith.

Information & Registration for Elder Master Smith Seminar

If you are not interested in getting better at Kung Fu then this doesn’t apply.

Four examples to help shape our thinking

1.         There are many reports of cops surviving a shootout and then finding their empty shell casings in their pockets. In other words, they took the time, while being shot at, to pick up shell casings from the ground and put them into their pockets. This has great significance for our Kung Fu training. It turns out the cops did this because they were re-enacting their behaviors at the shooting range. So whatever they repeated on the shooting range they did unconsciously in the shootout.  Whatever they repeat a lot, becomes an unconscious skill.

2            Recently while reviewing short stick for black belts, I noticed that several of them pulled to cat stance when they turned after basic swings. Rather than being a product of being told it’s that way, they felt it was right to retreat to cat stance when turning to face a new direction. This was not a rule they memorized because that rule has NEVER been told to them. However, in the 3 birds and many other forms, this is precisely what happens when you turn to face a new direction. Pretty cool huh? They have internalized a core principle without being told it. Whatever they repeat a lot, becomes an unconscious skill.

3.            Anecdotally I can tell you that in the past several sparring sessions I have grabbed people by the head and repeatedly hit to the body while chasing them. Tonight at class I realized that it was the precise black tiger drill that we had been practicing at least 100 reps each and every Tuesday night. I further realized that whenever I did that move, I found myself performing it and then noticing it afterward; unconsciously. Whatever I repeated became an unconscious skill (and pretty quickly).

4          Final proof. Try any kata on the opposite side you’re accustomed to. You body cannot perform it with the same fluidity or thoughtlessness. If you can’t even do the movement well on the other side, it might be a clue that you haven’t internalized it yet. Repetition increases performance.

We could go into the whole cellular mechanisms of learning by repetition (NMDA receptors and the like), but take my word for it…repetition works. It may not be trendy or new, but it works every time and is the method the monks used to pass their knowledge across the centuries.

There is no mystery here. Piano players play piano to get better at playing piano. They play songs and scales and drills. Whatever they practice becomes second nature. If they really want to be good, they practice hours a day on the same songs. That is why they stand on a stage and we watch them play from the audience. They have paid the price for mastery.

Whatever we surround ourselves with is what we will become. Ignacy Jan Paderewski, the Polish virtuoso from the 1800’s, once said: “If I miss one day of practice, I notice it. If I miss two days, the critics notice it. If I miss three days, the audience notices it.”

I am sure that Ignacy got pretty tired of practicing the same songs and drills, but boredom is not the sign that you’ve reach the promise land. This is the difference between process and outcome goals. Outcome goals are “I want to master this martial art” That is pretty obscure and hard to measure, but you can say that if I practice this tiger form 25 times a day  I will certainly move more like a Tiger master, then that is a process goal and can be easily measured.

Maybe we get too easily bored and distracted to reach the high country of mastery. Which is why there are so few people on stage in the world and so many watching them. But I put this final thought to you all. When that pianist becomes the best in the world, after 20 years of practice, and they look in the mirror, they still have to say “what now?”

So in the long run, do what makes you happy, because no matter how awesome you can become at anything, it will not fill the void if you are not happy inside your own skin.

Ignacy Jan Paderewski

Take few moments and learn about the amazing person pictured above. You will see that while being one of the greatest pianist of all times, he was many other things. I am sure that he used the mastery of the piano to create a mastery of life. A path I think we’re all trying to walk.

Elder Master Eric Smith

When we have a chance to meet a person who has trained hard and “paid a price” for unique skill and understanding, it is a rare fortunate opportunity to hear what they have to say. You have that chance with Elder Master Eric Smith this Saturday at 5PM and Sunday at 10AM. Speaking with Master Bill today on the phone he said “you know Master Eric and I really went through this stuff since the beginning and we actually know some things.” This if course was an understatement.

2136 Rutland Dr #D-1, Austin, TX 78758, USA

Refine your techniques.  If your technique is good, the power will be there.  If you strain to add more force, more power to your technique, you will create extraneous body movements that make it easier for your sparring partners to “read” your moves.

There is an interesting article in the lastest edition of Mike Mahler’s Aggressive Strength Magazine by kettlebell and biomechanics expert Denis Kanygin.

Kanygin’s point is that when training for strength, many people will overlook an important strategy:  rooting out weakness.  He says:

“Think about your body as an empty glass – there is only so much space. You can fill it with weakness or strength. The more weakness you have in you ‘glass’, the less space there is for strength.”

I think this makes a nice followup to my previous post about why I avoid bodybuilding-style, isolative exercises.

Full-body strength training such as the kind I advocate for martial artists focuses on developing strength across multiple muscle groups.  When you are doing Turkish Get Ups with a heavy weight pressed over your head, there is nowhere for weakness to hide: you need to recruit strength from every part of the body.

Isolating muscles and focusing on bulking up one muscle per exercise leaves lots of little nooks and crannies for weakness to take root and create imbalances that make for poor functional performance and a high potential for injury.

The World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer published a report in the latest issue of medical journal The Lancet Oncology that places tanning beds as likely carcinogens on the same level as arsenic or tobacco smoke.

My fitness ethos is always to work from the inside-out.  It is a potentially dangerous disordering of priorities to treat your body like an object to be manipulated into a certain “look”.  This divides the body/mind/soul and can generate a cycle of imbalances through the whole organism. The focus on “isolation” exercises in bodybuilding, geared to bulking up particular “beach muscles” tears the body into little pieces (both psychologically and in terms of motor skills) and objectifies it as a piece of meat foreign to the inner Self.

Fitness training should work to integrate the organism, not divide it.  In my opinion, fitness goals should be directed at affecting the outside world,  at accomplishing difficult tasks, not at beating the body into a certain “shape”.

A tan came to be seen as a sign of health because it was a side-effect of spending time working, moving, and playing outdoors.  Bulging biceps became a symbol of strength, I hypothesize, because they are one of the more useless muscles. In the old days, if your biceps bulged, that meant that your really useful muscles in your back, shoulders, legs and torso must be REALLY strong!

When you shoot for the resulting appearance instead of letting it be a byproduct of real-world work and accomplishment, you cheat yourself and hide your feelings of fear and inadequacy behind a puffed-up shield.

I think that bodybuilding can grow into a kind of body dismorphic syndrome comparable to anorexia.  It can be fine in moderation, but keep a perspective on it.  Realize that nobody really cares all that much what you look like.  It’s what you do in the world that draws people to you.

This summer I’ll be holding a series of optional seminars on higher level forms, open to Shaolin-Do students of all levels.  They’ll take place after the Saturday class, from 1:45-3pm.

I’ll teach each form twice in case people have scheduling difficulties making one of the times.  If you can make both times, then you can come twice without having to pay any more for the seminar.

This Saturday 6/6 I’ll teach Pan Lung Pang, Entwining Dragon Staff, one of the two highest level staff forms Grandmaster Sin has taught since coming to the U.S. in 1964.  This is a fun and exciting form with lots of elegant, entwining moves.

The cost for the seminar will be $25, or $10 if you’ve taken the form with me before and want a review.  You can also volunteer 1 (for review) or 2 hours (for first-timers) of your time to help me clean up or work in the garden in exchange for taking the seminar.

We’ll do this seminar again on Sat 6/26 if you miss the first one or want a free review.

Next Saturday 6/13 I’ll teach Tang Lang Chuan, Praying Mantis Fist.  This is a high level mantis form with lots and lots of challenging kicks, a real workout!  We’ll do the replay on this seminar on 7/11.  The cost for this will be the same as above.

Saturdays August 1 and 8 I’ll teach 7 Section Chain Whip, one of the most challenging flexible weapons to learn.  The chain whip is a chain with a dart attached to the end that you can throw and swing.  The cost of this seminar will be $50 which includes the cost of the whip, or $10 for a review.

These extra seminars are a way to challenge yourself with higher-level material. Once you have learned an advanced seminar form, you’ll accelerate your ability to learn the forms at your level. You increase your movement “vocabulary” by taking on more intricate techniques and longer sequences.

Let me know if you have any questions, and I look forward to seeing you in class!

Farmer’s markets are a great way to get healthy, local, seasonal produce direct from the person who grew it.  The health and environmental benefits of eating fresh and local are profound.  In some cases it is more economical to shop at farmer’s markets, though subsidies to large agri-businessness cut against this natural tendency.

This week, the Upper Ninth Ward Farmer’s Market moves a few blocks down St. Claude to Douglass High School,  3800 St. Claude at Alvar St.  It takes place every Saturday 1-4pm.  There is often a guest chef preparing hot lunches, and other special events.  Supporting sustainable, local food is great for the health of your body, your community and your planet!

This is the fundamental question asked by the Grant Study, a 72-year longitudinal psychological study of 268 men who entered Harvard college in the late 1930’s.  Grant Study researchers have followed these men throughout their entire lives, sending out surveys every two years, conducting physicals every five years, and extensive personal interviews every 15 years.

Study director George Vaillant’s hypothesis is that happiness is determined primarily by how well we cope with challenges and misfortune.  Our “adaptations” or unconscious response mechanisms to personal difficulty can be detrimental or can help us build character, falling along the range from psychotic, the worst kind of adaptation, through immature, neurotic, and finally, mature adaptations like altruism, humor, and sublimation (channelling our anxiety into positive, creative endeavors).

The Grant Study participants were chosen for being seemingly exemplary young men, “well-adjusted” in the psychological parlance of the time.  Many acheived greatness, becoming billionaires, Cabinet members, Senators, and one president, John F. Kennedy.

Some of the observations of the study may seem surprising:

1. Study subjects who were shy or anxious in young adulthood were just as likely as more socially-adjusted subjects to find happiness after mid-life.

2. Subjects who seemed unusually mature in young adulthood were sometimes merely suppressing thier true feelings and motivations and became self-destructive in midlife, while some of those who seemed less mature and disciplined flowered in later adulthood.

3. Cholesterol levels at age 50 have no correlation to health in old age. (Another bit of evidence against the cholesterol hypothesis.  My view is that blood cholesterol is the body’s defense against damage by free-radicals, and not the cause of heart disease.)

4.  Exercise in young adulthood was more predictive of mental health than physical health by midlife, while depression was a great predictor of physical debility or death by age 63.

5. Happiness in no way correlates to success, fame, wealth or social status, but to a web of loving relationships with siblings, spouses, friends, children and grandchildren.

Dr. Vaillant’s Seven Factors of Healthy Aging for Mind and Body

1. Employing mature adaptations to life’s challenges

2. Education

3. Stable marriage / relationships

4. Not smoking

5. Not abusing alchohol

6. Exercise

7. Maintaining a healthy weight

Journalist Joshua Wolf-Shenk, author of Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness, is the first journalist given access to the files of the Grant Study.  You can read his story in the June issue of the Atlantic Magazine.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/happiness

For another illuminating longitudinal study, I also highly recommend director Michael Apted’s documentary series starting with “Seven Up!”  It tracks the lives of 14 children from age 7 in 1964 through the present day, with new installments every seven years.