The Truth of Chi and Pa Kua Chang

Do enough Pa Kua Chang and something really weird happens…

Pa Kua, as many people know, is that martial art where you walk in a circle endlessly. Circles where you find loops within spirals within circles.

To explain this really weird thing that happens in Pa Kua Chang, let me explain a couple of things first. Understand these things, and you will find that weird is normal in this universe, and normal is weird. Okey dokey?

The circle must consist of eight steps from beginning to end. This is about one good leg sweep, or six feet in diameter. And, of course, the beginning is the end, and the end is the beginning, and so on.

Long time Pa Kua students claim that if you explore various positions of the palms as you walk the circle, that the positions stand for various phenomena. Fire palms, water palms, lightening palms, thunder palms, and so on. By following this analogy they have created a separate and entire universe. While this universe can occupy a student for a lifetime, there hasn’t been a good explanation for what is happening, up till now.

When you create this Pa Kua universe, you should understand that the body is a machine. Just like alternating current, power goes down and up the legs. You should confirm it with a good dictionary, at this point, that power is energy, and energy is the capacity for work, and the capacity for work is how much weight you can lift.

Energy of the body is credited with being created by the tan tien. The tan tien is a point a couple of inches below the navel. The tan tien sends the energy down and up and the legs and back into the tan tien. What happens is that the body becomes a capacitor, a storage device, and the energy can be stored for later use.

But also, and most interesting, is that after walking the circle sufficient with the idea I’ve detailed here, you will experience actual lightening going up and down your legs. You will also, as you explore the potential of the palms in conjunction with the storing of the energy, experience a barber pole type energy swirl up and down your arms.

Pa Kua is not mystical, it is common sense physics, but it does take a dedicated practitioner and a calm mind to experience what I have explained here. For the body to start acting as a capacitor one must tell the body to do so enough times and with enough sincerity, and this while walking the circle enough times. If one learns to believe that this universe is not a trap, but a journey, what I have told you here is not only possible, but even easy.

The best Pa Kua Chang for learning what I’ve told you here is the Butterfly Pa Ku Chang. It is specifically designed to fit the concepts here, and it won’t be long before your Pa Kua Chang is giving you lightening legs and thunder palms.

Here is another article describing the Pa Kua Chang universe.

Making the Four Decisions of Martial Arts Freestyle!

Winning at Martial Arts Freestyle

To be victorious while using martial arts in a fight it is necessary to make the decision to win the fight. Without that decision, simply, there is no way you are going to become victorious in freestyle, or kumite. Thus, you have to practice making the decision, and then implement a plan so that the decision becomes reality in your martial arts freestyle.

Amazing new book! click on the cover!

There are five decisions you must make to back up the decision to win a fight. This combat strategy is found in every fight. This is the strategy you must understand and master if you are going to be able to deliver the original decision.

The first decision, and the most important, is that there is going to be a fight. Interestingly, you don’t have to get in a fight if you refuse to make the decision to be in a fight. Even if the other person has made a decision, unless you agree with his decision, you don’t have to fight.

The second decision involves distances involved in the fight. You should understand , at this point, that a fight is going to collapse in distance. And, you must understand that if you can control this distance, and even change collapsation into expansion at will, you can control and win a fight.

The third decision has to do with which side of the bodies the fight is going to occur on. One out of eight people being left handed, a fight will usually occur with right hand, and the bodies will turn to fit the hands, and the fight will be on that side. If you can control that decision, as to which side the fight will be on, then you are going to win that fight.

The fourth decision is going to be whether you are on the inside or the outside. What this means is that if he punches with a right hand, you must block/push/whatever so that his right hand misses you on the outside, and you see the inside of his wrist. And, if he punches with the right, you must block/push/whatever so that his right hand misses you on the inside, and you see the outside of his wrist.

There are other decisions in a fight, there can be millions of decisions, literally. Do you wish the fight to be conducted at a specific distance, such as foot, or fist, or elbow, or whatever. Or, do you wish to control the decisions so that the fight collapses or expands in distance as you wish, from foot to elbow to knee to throw to fist to foot to whatever, your choice, and so on.

The point, however, is that to control all the other decisions, you must control the first four decisions. If you can understand and create drills to back up these decisions, then you can win any fight. Of course, as I said in the beginning, the first decision, that you are going to win that fight, is the most important.

The Matrix Karate course will enable you to figure out ALL the decisions one has to know how to make in a fight.

The Pa Kua Mystery

Do enough Pa Kua Chang and something really weird happens. Pa Kua, as many people know, is that martial art where you walk in a circle endlessly.

Circles where you find loops within spirals within circles. To explain this really weird thing that happens in Pa Kua Chang, let me explain a couple of things first. Understand these things, and you will find that weird is normal in this universe, and normal is weird. Okey dokey?

The circle must consist of eight steps from beginning to end. This is about one good leg sweep, or six feet in diameter. And, of course, the beginning is the end, and the end is the beginning, and so on.

Long time Pa Kua students claim that if you explore various positions of the palms as you walk the circle, that the positions stand for various phenomena. Fire palms, water palms, lightening palms, thunder palms, and so on.

By following this analogy they have created a separate and entire universe. While this universe can occupy a student for a lifetime, there hasn’t been a good explanation for what is happening, up till now.

When you create this Pa Kua universe, you should understand that the body is a machine. Just like alternating current, power goes down and up the legs. You should confirm it with a good dictionary, at this point, that power is energy, and energy is the capacity for work, and the capacity for work is how much weight you can lift.

Energy of the body is credited with being created by the tan tien. The tan tien is a point a couple of inches below the navel. The tan tien sends the energy down and up and the legs and back into the tan tien. What happens is that the body becomes a capacitor, a storage device, and the energy can be stored for later use. But also, and most interesting, is that after walking the circle sufficient with the idea I’ve detailed here, you will experience actual lightening going up and down your legs.

You will also, as you explore the potential of the palms in conjunction with the storing of the energy, experience a barber pole type energy swirl up and down your arms. Pa Kua is not mystical, it is common sense physics, but it does take a dedicated practitioner and a calm mind to experience what I have explained here.

For the body to start acting as a capacitor one must tell the body to do so enough times and with enough sincerity, and this while walking the circle enough times. If one learns to believe that this universe is not a trap, but a journey, what I have told you here is not only possible, but even easy.

Check out the Butterfly Pa Kua Chang at MonsterMartialArts.com

How to Create a Motor in the Martial Arts

Here an old post that deserves a new read…

One of the more profound mysteries in the martial arts is the concept of Chi. Chi is a mystical energy that pervades the universe in mysterious ways. And, chi is supposed to be a mystical energy that after a lifetime, you can use to do superhuman things. Unfortunately, proof seems to be sadly lacking for these claims concerning Chi. Maybe there are a few people who can do things, but most people can’t, and just a few exceptions here and there don’t prove the truth of certain theories concerning the subject of Chi. Fortunately, there is a theory that will result in Chi, that is not mystical, and that will work. A motor is two terminals which result in tension. Everything in the universe can be defined as a motor. Every tension in the universe is the result of a motor. An atom has a proton and electron interchanging to create energy. A cell has sodium and potassium interacting to create energy. Everywhere in the universe that you find two terminals opposing, you will find energy, and you will find a motor. And, when you take a martial arts stance with the human body, you have increased your weight, and this causes energy to move between the body and the planet. When you shift the weight from leg to leg, from stance to stance, the weight moves up and down the legs, and this excites the tan tien, a spot two inches below the navel which generates energy for the body. Thus, there is energy, and the body is a motor, and you can call this energy chi. Here’s the problem: everybody concentrates on making the body strong, and so creates only the low level chi required to operate the body. What people should be doing is focusing awareness on the procedure. If you build the awareness it takes to create the energy, you will build the energy that will result in the ‘superhuman’ potential that people look to Chi for. Thus, do your form, build awareness, and concentrate not on the violence of action, not on building the body, but on becoming aware of what you are doing. Feel the energy going down and up your legs, feel the energy building in the tan tien, and feel your connection with the planet. Do this and you will shortly become aware of energy building in your body in a surprising way. Energy that tingles a body part just by thinking of it, energy that warms the palms upon mere thought. Energy that can be channeled throughout your body and into the various body parts, and can even be felt outside your body. Once you have started building energy in this manner, then you can start searching for more spectacular ways to use it.

Why Does It Take So Long to Learn the Martial Arts?

The bully charges out of the alley and tosses a whole, darned trash can at you! Do you ask him to take that garbage can back because you’re only on your ninth Karate lesson and haven’t reached the deflecting the garbage can lesson? Or do you ask him go away because, here it comes, you forgot to pay your dues at the local dojo?

There is a point to all this silliness, why do the martial arts take so long to learn? You can teach a guy to fly a jet, get in a dogfight and get shot down, spend time in a concentration camp, get released and run for political office, and become a senator, and retire, in the time it takes to learn some systems of the martial arts. I heard of one system that it takes seventeen years to get to Black Belt in!

Some people will make the excuse that you’re learning more than self defense. You’re solving martial mysteries and its all about the lifestyle and you need to invest in your old age, you know? But you’re still lying under that trash can and the guy is pulling out a knife, and no matter how many lessons you’ve taken, you have to do something!

One of the old sayings that I heard, long time ago, is garbage in, garbage out. The sad fact of the matter is that if something is hard to put into your head, then it might not be easily accessed and used. Maybe it would be appropriate to find an art that is as easily absorbed as track, or boxing.

It is true that the Martial Arts are not a sport, they are an art, but they can still be learned easily and quickly. They just have to be taught not by one mystical technique after another, but rather by understanding concepts behind them. Those endless techniques that you memorize, to be truthful, are random data, and, often as not, they don’t really relate to one another.

That is a problem, to be sure, even if you learn a thousand techniques, you might not have enough data to be able to make sense out of the whole thing until you reach one thousand and one. And, let’s face it, a hundred years is to long to become competent. And then go to heaven.

The solution is that the martial arts must be taught on a conceptual basis. Instead of having a fellow memorize endless strings of tricks, have him learn the rather simple principles behind those tricks. Have him learn conceptually and he’s suddenly going to be able to figure out those thousand techniques without any need for endless memorization.

Give him an acorn and throw in the watering pot, that’s what I believe, and then watch the oak shoot upwards. Most martial artists, and I don’t mean to be mean in this observation, are lost in the limbs of the trees. The real way to teach, however, is to show the guy the principles, then have use those principles, and, faster than a rabbit on steroids, you’ve got yourself a fast and competent martial artist.

How to Create a Motor in the Martial Arts

One of the more profound mysteries in the martial arts is the concept of Chi. Chi is a mystical energy that pervades the universe in mysterious ways. And, chi is supposed to be a mystical energy that after a lifetime, you can use to do superhuman things. Unfortunately, proof seems to be sadly lacking for these claims concerning Chi. Maybe there are a few people who can do things, but most people can’t, and just a few exceptions here and there don’t prove the truth of certain theories concerning the subject of Chi. Fortunately, there is a theory that will result in Chi, that is not mystical, and that will work. A motor is two terminals which result in tension. Everything in the universe can be defined as a motor. Every tension in the universe is the result of a motor. An atom has a proton and electron interchanging to create energy. A cell has sodium and potassium interacting to create energy. Everywhere in the universe that you find two terminals opposing, you will find energy, and you will find a motor. And, when you take a martial arts stance with the human body, you have increased your weight, and this causes energy to move between the body and the planet. When you shift the weight from leg to leg, from stance to stance, the weight moves up and down the legs, and this excites the tan tien, a spot two inches below the navel which generates energy for the body. Thus, there is energy, and the body is a motor, and you can call this energy chi. Here’s the problem: everybody concentrates on making the body strong, and so creates only the low level chi required to operate the body. What people should be doing is focusing awareness on the procedure. If you build the awareness it takes to create the energy, you will build the energy that will result in the ‘superhuman’ potential that people look to Chi for. Thus, do your form, build awareness, and concentrate not on the violence of action, not on building the body, but on becoming aware of what you are doing. Feel the energy going down and up your legs, feel the energy building in the tan tien, and feel your connection with the planet. Do this and you will shortly become aware of energy building in your body in a surprising way. Energy that tingles a body part just by thinking of it, energy that warms the palms upon mere thought. Energy that can be channeled throughout your body and into the various body parts, and can even be felt outside your body. Once you have started building energy in this manner, then you can start searching for more spectacular ways to use it.

Combat Strategies in Shaolin Gung Fu!

Shaolin Gung Fu VERY Effective in Combat!

Here is the lie: Kung fu is a physical art based on mythology, and it has no modern combat applications. The point is that Kung Fu is based upon five animals, and that these animals do not relate to combat. This idea, that the animals don’t relate to combat, is, as we shall see, is so ridiculous it is…ridiculous!

The five kung fu animals In the Shaolin Butterfly are not the classical five animals. The butterfly, the crane, the monkey, the tiger, and the dragon are the five animals in this kung fu. The battle strategies of Shaolin are easily illuminated through a study of these five animals.

The first animal is the butterfly, and the stance utilized by this animal is the back stance. This stance is used because the butterfly must flit and flee to avoid damage, and the back stance is a step backward. Thus, the direction of the Butterfly is to the rear.

The Crane is the second animal, and the Crane utilizes a one legged stance. Standing on one leg and using kicks a student will achieve great balance. Thus, the crane goes in an upward direction.

The third animal is the monkey, and the stance used by this animal is the horse stance. This stance requires that a person drive their weight downward and hold their position. Thus, the direction of the horse is straight down.

The tiger is the fourth animal, and the tiger utilizes a forward stance. This stance is designed for charging, for attacking, and it is an aggressive stance. Thus, the tiger goes in a forward direction.

The dragon is the fifth animal, and the dragon utilizes a twisted stance, with the body turned over the feet. This stance is good for spinning to catch an opponent unawares, catching oneself in awkward positions, and so on. Thus, the dragon moves in a spin or a circle.

If you examine the points of a compass you will find the directions that the five animals take, and a strategy based upon handling all incoming potentials of attack. The Monkey goes down and the crane goes up, the tiger goes forward and the butterfly goes back, and the dragon circles, which illuminates a distinct possibility for lateral motion.

The directions of these five Shaolin Butterfly animals create a thorough and strong strategy with no weak points–just one of the secrets of the Shaolin Butterfly, which you can find at Monster Martial Arts.

Energy Beams in the Martial Arts

The ability to create beams of energy, though I have never seen nor heard of it discussed, is at the heart of the martial arts. I include pressor or tractor or any other type of beam in this discourse. A beam is a line of energy thrust outward from thebody of the martial artist, and this beam is usually constructed upon a line, though it need not be. It can be said that your martial art is not a true martial art unless it builds the ability to create a beam of energy at will. Most martial practices on planet earth are aimed towards building muscle, or the shabby excuse of energizing body parts. The purpose of this article is to awaken the reader to the potential of creating beams of energy. The first thing to be understood is that the body is nothing more than a machine. It is an organic machine constructed of meat and bone and various linking systems. Indeed, to the person unused to a body, it can resemble a Rubic’s cube, though, in fact, it is very simple to use. To use the body as a beam generator one must practice classical forms, and understand the value of classical stances. To practice the classical stances requires work, which work necessitates the creation of energy in the Tan Tien, which is the one point, which is nothing more than an energy generator on a body/machine level. This work should be augmented by breathing in accordance with the expansion or contraction of the body. To stance, to work, to breath, to concentrate awareness along the path of the arms, to imagine. It is imagination that sets us apart from the beasts, and it is imagination that is necessary to create the idea of a beam of energy coming out of the body. You must practice until the mind is calm and then it will be able to imagine. To test your ability to beam it is necessary to use a simple and often over looked gimmick. Set up a candle and face it, punch, and stop your fist an inch from the flame. Do not trick flick the flame by leaving the line of the beam, but focus, and keep the line of the beam as straight as possible. With success over time, stop your fist two inches from the flame, then further. increase distance until you can put out the flame from across the room. Eventually, with great patience and desire, you will be able to merely look at the flame and make it go out. There are those that laugh and such practices as detailed here are of little importance, and there are those who will not persist, but seek the instant gratification of simple fighting. Then there are those who will discover the depths of their being through this simple exercise. The difference between the two is faith, belief in yourself, and the desire to awaken your true abilities, and thus awaken yourself.

Chi and the Truth!

Chi and the Truth! Chi, a mysterious energy which surrounds us, constructs us, is us, and…what is it?

To understand what Chi is it is necessary to define exactly who and what we are.

To define who we are it is necessary to analyze the shape of our true body. Your immediate body is the body you are currently in, the one which is playing the guitar, typing the keyboard, talking to friends and using of the six senses.

We are the eyeball and the eardrum and the hair and throat and toenails and everything that is in between and has organic sensation. We journey about the planet and have fleshy existence, and we pursue fleshy pleasures. The body we really care about is the body that is constructed of Chi. This is the body as far as we can perceive, and note that I don’t say experience through the senses.

Indeed, to experience the larger body of yourself you often have to put aside concepts of the six senses, you have to experience life beyond the immediate body. This brings us to the concept that if everything is our body, then what is this thing called Chi?

Chi is the organic thing you have presence in, that thing you call a body, and everything else, too. It could be a wavelength, or an idea, it doesn’t really matter as long as we understand that it is. How do we take control this thing we call Chi?

I mean, if you can move an move your limbs and walk about, why can’t you move that cloud or make the seas surge…if they really are part of our True Body?

Why can’t you stop that volcano, or make it rain when the crops need it, or pull the plug on the those filthy politicos that keep wasting all our resources?

The first reason we can’t make our true Body work is that we are not used to making it work. We are used to sitting around and being made stupid by pills and TV and the things that lull our senses, and our sense of our True Body, into unconsciousness.

We can undo that by turning off the TV, or any type of programming that does not allow honest exchange, and by practicing a discipline. The discipline you practice must make you look at your immediate body, unbind your senses, excite your imagination, and open you up to the idea of your True Body.

The discipline you practice must cause you to examine your immediate body until there is no mystery to it, and so that it is not merely an exercise in scientific examination.

The discipline you practice must make full use of your senses until you step beyond your senses, outside of your immediate body, and experience your True Body. If you are still unable to perspire the rain and wave the clouds at will, then you must understand that the True Body you are occupying is also being occupied by everybody else on the planet. Thus, to make your True Body move, you must make everybody else turn off their TVs and stop taking pills and let go of their unconscious and freezing hold on the True Body. You do this by helping them find a True Discipline that will take them beyond their immediate body and awaken them and take them.

Working Both Sides of the Martial Arts

The Two Sides of the Martial Arts!

There was a famous karateka in Japan.
everybody thought he was the greatest.
One day he up and left for China.
While there,
he began studying Tai Chi,
and Pa Kua,
and all sorts of other stuff.
Now you’ve got to remember,
he was a karate master,
much looked up to,
but this Chinese stuff…
and the whispers started.

‘He betrayed Karate.
He lost his faith.
He was wrong.
How could he possibly stomach that Chinese stuff!’

Several years passed,
he returned home
went back into Karate,
and everybody forgave him.

People said things like
‘Oh,
he saw the error of his ways.
He was just making sure Karate was the best.’
And so on.

But what could they say?
He was better than them!
And it seems like all the little people
want to pull down the big people.
Jealousy.
Small minds.

Now,
here’s the thing,
when people actually asked him
why he went to China and studied
martial arts like Tai Chi and so on,
he said,
‘So I could understand Karate better.’

I began Karate in November of 1967.
I began Tai Chi Chuan about 1974.
Right after I got my black belt.

I started with a book,
Modified Tai Chi for Health,
by Lee Ying Arng.
Probably one of the first books ever printed in English
on Tai Chi Chuan.
Came from a publishing house in Hawaii.
Sold a few copies and moved on.
Some of you old guys might remember it.

Anyway,
the book was a mess.
The pictures were bad,
the motion was depicted with odd arrows
that didn’t always seem to make sense,
and the instructions were weird!
But,
night after night,
I kept at it.

I left the Kang Duk Won,
studied Aikido.
Kept doing that darned Tai Chi book late into the night.

Funny thing,
my wife once asked me,
‘What are you doing?’
I answered honestly.
‘I don’t really know.’
And I kept going.

So,
for years,
I was a tai chi book student,
slowly worming my way into
The Grand Ultimate Fist.

1981,
and I wrote my first article for the mags.
The article was called,
‘The Perfect Strike.’
It was in a karate mag,
it’s somewhere on the Monster now.
Want to know where I got the idea for that article?
Tai Chi.

Tai Chi concepts,
you see
were alien to Karate.
Strange things,
didn’t fit.
But I was finally figuring it out.
So I got paid a hundred bucks,
just because I was studying something
that made my karate better.

Years later I ran into a fellow
who took the time to show me real Tai Chi.
Oddly,
I hadn’t done badly
in my book learning.
And,
here’s the interesting thing,
I would do Tai Chi,
and people would ask me why I was good at it.
And I said,
‘Karate helped me understand it.’

Do you understand?

Here are two arts that are almost in opposition.
They contradict each other.
They are different.
But…
they are different only in that
they are opposite sides of the same coin.

In other words,
they are not different,
only people’s viewpoints are different.

Do you want to understand the martial arts?
Really understand them?
Then do two arts that oppose each other.
Or,
at least provide different viewpoints.
The jujitsu practitioner,
who relies on things like
force and hard leverage,
will find the doors of his art opening wide
when he studies Aikido.

both grab arts,
but one is force,
and the other is flow.

My particular path was karate and Tai Chi.
Lots of other stuff,
but those are the two that had the most impact in my universe.

Those are the two that short circuited my opinions
and gave me facts.

So,
try it.
If you study Karate,
try some Five Army Tai Chi.
If you study Tai Chi,
try some Matrix Karate.
Or,
if you really have an aversion to Karate,
do some Shaolin Butterfly.

Remember,
the old masters were not masters because they studied one art,
they were masters because they studied many arts.

Here’s the link to Tai Chi Chuan.
http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/five-army-tai-chi-chuan/

One other thing before I head out
for another work out…

If you go to the Monster,
look in the menu for the products page,
you’ll find some neat stuff.

Remember,
every time you get a course,
or a hat or mug or whatever,
you bring me one step closer to Monkeyland,
and that brings everybody one step closer.

Now
Talk to you later.

Al

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/five-army-tai-chi-chuan/