Never underestimate the wisdom of the ages. Everything that’s being put in front of us today seems to me to be gloom and doom and pessimism, and those things are contagious. This contagious attitude and mindset is the one thing that everyone needs to guard against, not only during this “uncertain time,” but during all occasions because life itself is a struggle, from the first breath you take, from the day you are born, until the day you die. You find it so hard, yet no one wants to leave. No one wants to die. Life is about living, so live life to the fullest. Live life in the physical, in the ..read more

Νοῦς ὑγιὴς ἐν σώματι ὑγιεῖ “A healthy mind in a healthy body” - Thales of Miletus I’m here in Chinatown drinking my coffee, listening to music and training with one of my senior students who is feeling the pressure from the negative perception that has been built up by people and the media about the current panic over Coronavirus. Let’s just clear the air with a little good Kung Fu and some Stoic philosophy. I’m not a doctor, but illness of the mind is sometimes worse than anything else. People’s mindsets exasperate the situation. You have a choice of how to perceive things. You can go ab ..read more

Today I was taking some time to think about the Confucian concept of being a gentleman, which should not be misconstrued as someone with eloquent speech who is dressed to the nines. We’re not excluding the ladies, either. You have to understand the context and take into account the time, place and era that these Confucian doctrines were made. It’s not to say that this concept is geared only towards men; it applies to people in general, so, you’re not off the hook. Everyone can act with a gentle demeanor, gentle meaning respectful and honorable towards everyone in all things. Now, that bei ..read more

Apologies for being AWOL with my blogs for the last several weeks, but Chinese New Year takes a lot of energy and preparation and training and so on. I was noticing in those weeks how people’s satisfaction ranged, ebbed and waned during all the training. It’s very interesting to see how people react when put through pressure, pressure to perform, pressure to produce, pressure to bring it up to the next level. I noticed that pressure brings out the best or the worst in all of us. Fortunately, most people that I’ve trained rise up to the occasion and are able to be triumphant over their own pers ..read more

Today in the martial arts, you see many individuals chasing after the so-called rainbow. Many people try to acquire as much knowledge and techniques as possible. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but we all have to be weary of becoming greedy. What I mean is, how many shoes can you wear at one time or cars can you drive? If you find yourself wanting to chase that so-called rainbow, ask yourself: Have you truly exhausted the full scope of understanding within your originally chosen discipline? The breadth and depth of Kung Fu knowledge is as wide as the Grand Canyon and as deep as a crater ..read more

The last few weeks I’ve started to concentrate on training my class on some weaponry, and several instances have come up where students were able to draw analogies between their empty hand form and weaponry. Kung Fu weaponry and empty hand training go hand in hand, one helping the other, beginning and ending, one full circle. The question is, which came first, empty hand fighting or fighting with a weapon? This has always been an ongoing debate. Different individuals claim one or the other. Some claim that empty hand was first and then transitioned into weaponry; another argument says that wea ..read more

So over 4th of July weekend, we had a bunch of days off. We didn’t have classes for several days because everybody wants to take a break and go away. It’s not my norm, but I said, okay, well, this year I’ll just cave in and do as the natives do. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday classes were packed. Everybody was packing it in before they left for the long weekend to get in their last licks. Thursday was 4th of July, and I wake up and say to myself, you know what, you deserve to take it easy so let’s sleep in. I sleep in a little bit, get up, make some coffee, start doing stuff around the house, and ..read more

I was reading something the other day that said if you can hold a smile for 30 seconds or more, just the sheer act of holding the smile, even though you may not feel happy, is purported have a therapeutic effect and make your day happier. I just spent the last half hour or so on the phone with a very good friend of mine who I consider a brother, and that action itself already put me in a good mood. This got me thinking about how we need to play our Kung Fu. Don’t train Kung Fu; play Kung Fu. That’s the term that we use. We don’t say “work” your Kung Fu or “do” your Kung Fu. We say “play” your ..read more

Rank is a double-edged sword. It can cut for the good and cut for the bad. There is a point in time when you need rank. Rank gives structure and goals for the individual to shoot for. It is totally required in today’s day and age because people have even less attention span and focus than they did 30 years ago, let alone hundreds of years ago when no rank existed whatsoever. In the “old days,” you apprenticed yourself to the master for your entire life until he retired or passed away, and then you became the master, hopefully. There was no other incentive other than learning the art for the sa ..read more

I’m sitting here… Wait… I always say I’m sitting here. I’m actually not sitting. I’m walking back and forth between working with different students and on this blog, and I see a message coming over on Kung Fu In A Minute from a gentleman in South America claiming that he can’t learn Kung Fu because he’s very strong (his words, not mine), but not agile. This reminded me about a conversation that I was having with a group of students last week in regards to the debate between nature vs. nurture, which comes up in a lot of different areas in life. Looking at it from the standpoint of training in ..read more