If you follow these steps you will be able to demonstrate ‘empty force. ‘ Actually it is fairly easy. The trickiest part is how to start. Once you have demonstrated your power a few times to a core group of students it gets a lot easier 1. Act like a master. This involves keeping your [...]
Recently a number of women have asked me about self protection or self defence training. There has been enough interest that I will run some courses in the near future with a specific emphasis on the keys to staying safe in stressful situations. We will cover environmental awareness, body-language, pre and post encounter psychology, mental [...]
Internal martial arts are an interesting way to reap all kinds of benefits to your health, flexibility, strength, focus. They also present a number of challenges. The first is to find a good teacher since you cannot really learn from books or videos even if they can be a useful aid when used with intelligence [...]
Akuzawa Minoru’s (Ark) and his students clearly have a quality of strength that is unusual. They showed this clearly at their recent seminar and demonstrations in Paris. Aunkai is relatively simple, and Ark has taken care to make what were considered ‘secret’ skills accessible. Still it is not easy to understand how the method works [...]
I’m standing at the bottom of the hill. My heart rate has dropped down to about 140bpm, my breathing is full and even again. I have decided what I will work on next. I take a deep breath feel through my body and relax. I take another breath and imagine my focus for the next [...]
In many Chinese martial arts you find the principle of balanced, reversible movement. To explain, imagine that while in motion, at any moment your body can either stop, or change to move in any direction – which includes the reverse of your current direction.
If you can move this way then you are most able to utilise any opening a partner gives you, adjust to their attacks, or flow around their defenses. You can move swiftly and catch opportunities, in combat and in life.
Some time ago I started doing this in a quiet moment. It is very simple exercise I’ve put together and decided to call Kinesthetic streaming. It is similar to a number of other techniques. In doing it the first time I gained some interesting insights into how I think about and use my body. But [...]
It is easy to think of meditation as a static, cross legged activity involving incense and mantras. In fact meditation is any activity that repeatedly brings attention back to a single focus. In religious meditation this focus can be a deity visualisation, a prayer, sacred word or question. Extracted from the religious context [...]
Aunkai is a method created by master Akuzawa Minoru that develops the body in a specific way to create unusual internal strength. It is simple, streamlined and physically demanding and about understanding how your body moves. We will mostly practise solo exercises, and some controlled partner training. We will train until about 20H30. Akuzawa (or [...]
I’ve been practising a wide variety of martial arts for around 30 years. During that time I have met many people with many ages from many countries. They all have different motivations, some of which they are aware of, some of which they are less inclined to admit. Many people have a variety of reasons, [...]