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Showing posts from July, 2012

The insect

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After training martial arts for five years, I learned how to fight. After training martial arts for ten years, I learned how to think. After training martial arts for fifteen years, I learned how to learn. After training martial arts for twenty years, I learned how to breathe. After training martial arts for twenty-five years, I learned how to see. After training martial arts for thirty years, I learned that I know nothing. It does seem that every five years that my training changes in nature along with the way I perceive the world. It was as if after the first five years I stepped through a doorway and found the value of my skills. I was able to fight with more than one opponent at a time and had to in many instances. My focus was kicking harder and punching faster. Basically doing whatever needed to be done to leave the fray unscathed. When I stepped through the next door, I found there were many other doors. Fighting was no longer the best option for each situati

Change of Heart

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Since the age of four years old, the longest time period I have gone without training was a month. Throughout my school years and traveling to Asia, I have been blessed to always have motivation. When I was child it was because I was fighting almost daily, but later it changed to a new type of combat.  Being oppressed as a child created a fire in my heart to become more. To quote Knight, one of the Tianwudao, "Life is like a bow and arrow, the more they hold you back, the farther you can fly." This philosophy has been the core of my being for most of my life. I trained hard so that one day I could show people a black hero on TV that I was never able to see as a youth. I was sick of gangsters being the role models for rap, so I began rapping. I learned Chinese because there were so many that told me that it was an impossible language. While I was teaching martial arts in the university they called me War. It was fitting because I was really at war in every aspect of my

The Correct Path

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My first contact with martial arts began with Taekwondo. At four years old my father had me and my two brothers go into a heavy regiment of training both kicks and punches that were geared for real combat situations. There were often days that we would practice over a thousand kicks just to make sure that the techniques were all done properly. It was nothing like the Taekwondo that you would see in the olympics today, where falling down is a part of the strategy in order to avoid getting hit. We knew that while fighting against a group of opponents that falling down would surely be the end of you. We used low licks, takedowns, footwork and an arsenal of hand techniques to do whatever was necessary to keep our attackers at bay. We never kept track with the amount of fights we had gotten involved in, but as a family it is safe to say  before leaving Ohio our total was in the hundreds. It seemed that when we beat one bully, two would take its place. Through every grade they becam

Lets Go Deeper

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I know that my blog at times may seem to drift away from the topic of kung fu, but actually I am just bringing you deeper within my art and my discoveries. Everything is in fact tied together like a strand of DNA and it is impossible for your martial art to develop if you cease to develop the other parts of your person. Your understanding of your world is essential for you to make progress in anything. After all God is in everything and by practicing, learning and experiencing the many flavors of life, you are fully cherishing the treasures of life. In order to fully continue growing the most key factor is humility. Only through admitting you do not know, will you be able to know. If you already know, it is best to forget you know and learn it again  because you probably missed something the first time. My friend recently came to me with a relatively new scientific research regarding wave movement. You can look it up yourself because I am no scientist. Yet it indicated that the