Category Archives: pa kua chang

The Truth About Martial Arts Belt Ranking

Posted on July 4, 2013 | Leave a comment

Martial Arts Belt Ranking Made Understandable!

Martial Arts Belt Ranking does tend to be a little…strange. There are so many levels, and what does a black belt mean, what is a master, and so on. In this article I will tell you where the various levels of rank came from, and what they actually mean.

Martial Arts Belt Ranking came from Japan, where it was originally used in swimming classes.

blind justice

Martial Arts like Karate and Judo picked up on them because it made it easier to arrange the karate class, or judo class, and teach it.

Before then people would join a martial arts school and there were junior students and senior students, and the point was to get your Teaching certificate.

Some people didn’t want to go that far in the martial arts, but the serious students did. After all, why do something half way? And, of course, a person who knew enough to teach would certain have sufficient self defense skills to protect himself.

In 1967 I joined a Kenpo Karate school, and the belt ranks were eight to Black Belt, and then eight after one had achieved Dan ranking.

The colors were: white, orange, purple, blue, green, three stages of brown, and black. First Dans usually just put a tip, or a strip of white on the end of the obi for each advanced dan ranking.

Later, 1969, I jointed a classical Karate school, and here was where I experienced martial arts belt ranking as it was meant to be. Sort of.

There were three ranks to Black. These were white, green, and brown. But, to be honest, these had been subdivided into an eight and eight system.

The theory (one of the more predominant theories, I should say), was that one started as a white belt, like an unwritten piece of paper. Then one experienced the green of spring, became worn, like autumn, and finally entered winter.

This was an interesting sort of mythos. There was a logic to it, and it did describe the growing process, sort of.

But, what I noticed as the years rolled by was this: Martial Arts belt ranking doesn’t matter to people who have been in the martial arts for a while.

Yes, they are important, if only to spur the beginning student on. And, one should take pride in an achievement. It takes a lot of work, a lot of stick-to-ivity, to progress through the martial arts belt ranking systems.

But the real measure here is whether a person makes it to teacher.

Why do things half way, eh?

And that is the truth about Martial Arts belt ranking.

Here’s a great article on reality martial arts belt ranking. You can get started on Learning Martial Arts right here.

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Posted in aikido, karate, kung fu, martial arts, mixed martial arts, pa kua chang

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Change Your Martial Art into Light Gung Fu

Posted on July 1, 2013 | Leave a comment

Light Gung Fu Can Be Made Out of Any Martial Art

It’s true, Light Gung Fu can be made out of any martial art you study, and that includes Karate, Silat, Aikido, whatever! In fact, it is incredibly easy!

All you have to do is go get some cinderblocks, set them on end, and do your forms (kata) on them! Instant Light Gung Fu!

light gung fu

But whatever you believe…chi energy power exists!


Here are some key items to help you out in this search for light body Gung fu.

You don’t need a lot of cinderblocks. As little as four, but you can use as many as you want.

It is best to lay them sideways the first few times you do this. After you are comfortable (won’t take but a day or two), you stand them on end. After a week or two, you can lay two on the side. Then you can go to one on end on top of one on end, and then two on end, and so on.

You want to pick a good surface to eliminate brick wobble. And when you purchase the cinder blocks, set them on end and pick out the ones with the most stability.

IMPORTANT: when you fall, learn to pick up your legs and search for a place to land. You don’t want to break a leg by stepping on the falling cinderblock.

Now, this method of light Gung fu has been around for years. It is called sunken post, or sunken pillar training. Usually you dig holes and sink them, and climb the poles until you are six or eight feet off the ground, striking Gung fu postures and dancing around like a kung fu crane.

But, that’s a lot of digging, so my method is simpler and quicker, and saves a lot of digging and measuring and leveling and basic construction work.

Nothing wrong with the ancient sunken pole tricks, especially if you are an official Gung fu school, but, my method of light kung fu is much simpler.

Now, the main area where you grow is going to be in balance.

Everything is balance. From being able to stop yourself in an aggressive karate move without falling forward, to the delicate hourlong meditation of holding the bowl. Everything is balance.

So standing on a couple of cinderblocks on end is going to give you tremendous balance.

First, you will feel awkward, the body will shift back and forth in attempts to keep your balance.

After a while your kung fu maneuvering will become easy as pie, and it will be as natural as walking, and you will likely feel a nice, little glow developing in your tan tien.

The muscles on both sides of the leg, you see, are going to fire up, work back and forth, and that will start up the body energy generator, which is what the tan tien actually is.

And that is how you create light Gung fu out of Karate, or taekwondo, or pa kua, or…ANY…Martial Art you might happen to study.

Here’s a great article in which the author demonstrates light gung fu. And here’s a great article on how to learn Shaolin Kung Fu.

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Posted in bagua zhang, chi power, karate, kenpo, kung fu, martial arts, ninja, pa kua chang, tai chi chuan, wing chun

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Bagua Zhang Technique is Simple to Use!

Posted on June 18, 2013 | Leave a comment

Bagua Zhang Technique is Too Simple!

Bagua Zhang Technique is an easy thing to learn and simple to apply. The problem is that they might actually be to simple.

Too simple to learn because most people don’t have the discipline of mind, the mental ability, to make Bagua Zhang Martial Arts work. They get lost in the endless possibilities of intricacy, and lose sight of the simplicity.

bagua zhang techniques

Come on! All of you! At once! I know the best martial art!

 

When you walk the circle you must do so with an eye to developing Martial Arts Bagua Zhang Technique. These martial arts gems rely on one simple principle: the opponent must extend his arm, and the person doing the circle walking self defense must use the extended limb like a captain’s wheel. That is, he must turn the spoke, that the hub of the body would revolve.

If the punch is fast and hard, this is difficult to do, and what punch is not going to be fast?

The solution is to practice until you see the energy forming, until you see the punch generating, and then be willing and able to use whatever part of the arm you get.

For instance, the attacker launches a strike, and it is a short, circular type of jab. To make a bagua zhang technique work the student must go with the punch, let it pass, and push on the elbow, or even the shoulder.

This means you have to not only walk sideways, but you have to fine tune your distance, so that the opponent misses, passes, and is the right range for your push.

When you push you must not do so faster than the strike, nor slower. The best bagua zhang techniques are going to be the ones in which you harmonize with the motion, and therefore with the attacker.

Think: if he feels you touch him, he will resist, so if you use too much force he will change. But you don’t want him to change…you just want him to be slightly out of kilter, unable to follow up, at a slight disadvantage.

Now, what do you want to do? Continue your circle walking and tie him in knots? Spin him to the earth, circle the arm and reverse direction into a lock or takedown? These are all potential bagua fighting techniques, but the one you choose will depend on one thing: what is the most simple.

What is simple, that is what is difficult. You see, most people train to do something, but when you reach the point where you do nothing, then you can let the attacker guide you to his self destruction.

There is a phrase in The Tao: ‘Do nothing until nothing is left undone.’

Do you understand how this works with a bagua zhang techniques?

The point is that you must practice not the technique, but the concept behind the technique, then your kung fu will work, and then you will have the effortless Bagua Zhang technique that is easy and simple to do.

There is a great piece of writing on how to learn kung fu fast at Monster Martial Arts. Or you could just go to the ultimate bible on Bagua Zhang techniques.

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Posted in aikido, bagua zhang, chi power, kung fu, pa kua chang, tai chi chuan

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Pa Kua Chang Give Entry to New Universe!

Posted on June 11, 2013 | Leave a comment

Pa Kua Chang Creates a New Universe!

Pa Kua Chang founder Dong Hai Chuan was most likely a Shaolin Gung Fu stylist. Like many martial artists of his TIME, he wandered the land, looking for employment, and looking for opportunities to improve his Chinese martial art.

He would look for OPPORTUNITIES to use his Gung Fu as a bodyguard, fighting off bandits with spear and sword and hand.

Pa Kua Chang

Pa Kua Chang was created by Dong Hai Chuan

One must wonder then, how he became involved with a band of religious fanatics.

It is doubtful whether the monks of this unnamed sect could beat him in  hand to hand combat, but they had to have something, or he wouldn’t have stopped his sojourning for eleven years and studied with them.

For the first nine years, it is said, Dong Hai Chuan walked in circles, possibly chanting religious mantras. He walked and he walked, and one can imagine the unspooling in his mental apparatus. It is invariable that his martial arts would start to manifest along the lines of this new practice he was doing.

Around and around, making gung fu motions with his limbs, bending his legs into gung fu stances, and thinking about how walking the circle could enable him to move better through hordes of bandits.

After nine years of doing these gung fu motions, which would become the basis for his Pa Kua Chang style martial art, he told the monks that he felt that the trees were bending after him, actually chasing him.

Trees Chasing a man? How could that be?

Have you ever caught the eye of somebody sitting on a bus? They are in journey, in a different universe, and for a moment the souls see each other. Across separate universes they touch.

Or, have you ever played in a soccer contest, run next to somebody, and been immersed in your own separate communication with that fellow, created a world that is not the same, that seems stable while the ‘real’ universe of the cheering crowd passes by?

This is the universe that Dong Hai Chuan made. This is the universe he found, a universe so mighty that stout trees bent to the wind of his passing.

The point here, however, is not about Dong Hai Chuan, it is about you. Can you use Pa Kua Chang (also called bagua zhang), and walk in a circle so that the universe bends to your will?

Can you go around in circles and learn the amazing hand motions of Pa Kua Chang until a mob of attackers is confused by your simple walking the circle self defense?

An interesting question, this Pa Kua Chang thing, for it opens the door to a new world, and a new you.

Here’s another great piece of writing about a Pa Kua Chang universe. Monster Martial Arts has a fantastic Pa Kua online martial arts course you can do.

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Posted in chi power, kung fu, pa kua chang, tai chi chuan, wing chun

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Qigong Power that Drips from Your Fingertips!

Posted on June 7, 2013 | Leave a comment

Qigong Power Has You!

Qigong Power is a quite real thing. The problem is that it is undefined. I mean…REALLY undefined.

There’s a lot of mysticism out there, so let’s define it perfectly right here.

chi power

Your body is a motor

Qigong Power is when you shovel food into the body. It starts the chemical transformation into mechanical energy. You don’t see it, except that your body is warm. It is giving off heat. That is the lowest, grossest form of chi power.

Qigong Power, on the second level, is when you become aware of the energy in your body. This includes things like reaiki healing, and other forms of spiritual healing, acupuncture, meditation healing, chakras, and so on. A lot of people experience this, but because they are experiencing this from different arenas, they describe it differently, and so people get confused. These are definitions specialized according to the various fields they are in.

The third level of Qigong Power, and the most important, is when you manifest it outside your body. This includes such things as personal charm and charisma, moving objects, telepathy, and so on.

This third level of Qigong Power is the big bugaboo, as it is so wildly differing in causes and effects hardly anybody can nail it down. But, it can be nailed down.

The ultimate definition for Qigong Power is that it is intention. This can be seen on each of the levels of existence that we are discussing here.

You decide to have a better body, so you start eating proper, non-GMO foods, and you get healthier.

You decide to become a more aware human being, so you take classes in yoga, healing, martial arts…ah, Martial Arts. Be it Karate or Kung Fu, Shaolin or Tai Chi Chuan, this is the best field for becoming aware of the chi power energy flow inside your body. This is because it deals not just with the imagination necessary to become aware of and manipulate chi power energy, but because it has the added reality of dealing with the actions of the universe. Mind you, this is only if you find a martial arts instructor who truly understands this.

You decide to be a magnanimous personality, and you back it up with charitable acts, and the next thing you know, you have charisma. And, you decide to give energy to others, to think and have that thought picked up by another, to move something without touching it.

It is all in the decision…and the intention to make that decision work, that we come to the final and ultimate proof, a proof which IS the definition, of Qigong Power.

If you liked this article on Qigong Power, check out the book on how to develop Qigong Power.

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Posted in aikido, chi power, karate, kenpo, pa kua chang, qigong, tai chi chuan

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How and Why Matrixing Will Work in Your Martial Art!

Posted on May 23, 2013 | Leave a comment

Learn a Martial Art in a matter of months!

A lot of people read my site, or articles on the web, and they raise their eyes and say, ‘Oh, right. A guy can learn a Martial Art in a few months? Ha!’

Lot of cynicism out there, and I understand it. Some fellow studies for years to learn Karate or learn Kung Fu or whatever, and I come along and say, ‘You could have learned it ten times faster.’

martial art

Don’t just look at the moon…BE the moon!


That guy is going to be upset! He’s going to think I’m full of it, just because if he doesn’t, then it invalidates all his years of training.

But, when somebody actually does matrix their martial art, and this works for Aikido and Kenpo and ALL other martial arts systems, then they find that I am not invalidating all they have done…I am making it count! I am organizing their data, making it more accessible, and that means their martial art is sharper, quicker, more intuitive…and so much more!

So how do I convince the doubter?

Try these facts on for size.

Take two pigeons and put them together for 6 weeks and they will mate for life.

6 weeks, and you cam MAKE a pea brain MAKE a life altering decision. Doesn’t even matter if Mrs. Pigeon is ugly.

Now this is a stupid fact, but it tends to open the door to facts more pertinent to you and the Martial Arts.

The US army takes a common, garden variety man or woman…and MAKES them into a soldier in three months. Another three months and we’re talking about a high tech soldier, able to use a computer, or some other complicated device, right in the middle of a firefight!

That’s a good fact. It speaks highly of dedicated, factual training.

Here’s another one: there are ads on TV that claim you can MAKE your body into a lean, mean muscle machine in three months. Three months and you no longer have a beer barrel, but, instead, have a six pack!

So the point here is this: if you are smarter than a pigeon, then you can change your mind and change your body in three months.

Or, in other words,

You can learn a martial art in a matter of months!

You don’t even have to believe! You just have to get a martial arts course and do it!

So now we come down to choice.

Do you want to sit around and tweet one liners…or do you want to join a brotherhood that has lasted for thousands of years…the brotherhood of the Martial Artist!

Do you want to be sweet meat for that home invader? That mugger? That guy who wants to take your girlfriend?

Do you want to watch Bruce Lee movies and think, ‘How cool!’ Or do you want to BE like Bruce Lee?

Okay. Nuff said. I hope I’ve changed your mind, gotten you to get up off the coach, inspired you to do something that will give your life value forever!

So take a look at this http://monstermartialarts.com site, check out the courses, and decide what you want to do.

Remember, the only person stopping you from being more than you…is you.

This has been a page about how to learn a martial art, and how you can learn them in a matter of a few months.

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Posted in aikido, karate, kenpo, kung fu, martial arts, pa kua chang, taekwondo, tai chi chuan, Uncategorized

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Teaching Martial Artists and the Inertia of Ignorance

Posted on May 18, 2013 | Leave a comment

The only thing that stops you from learning is…you

I should say the odd thing about teaching people, not just teaching martial artists. But the fact is…people refuse to accept information.

Let’s say you’re teaching Karate to some fellow. You can say something like ‘twisting the wrist on impact is dangerous. The joint is unstable and you are adding weight to it.’

teaching martial arts

Can you overcome ‘Inertia of ignorance’ and actually learn Martial Arts?


Now, this is a big thing, so many systems use the twisting wrist to teach newbies. But, they don’t teach the newbies why, or how to transition the technique to a more stable punch.

You see, the wrist is unstable, but it teaches people how to focus. Once they learn how to focus their strikes, they need to learn how to snap a vertical punch, or some other variation. But when you tell them that, they go into protest mode.

They shake their head, and continue doing what they are doing, and it is as if you never spoke.

It’s not the martial arts, it’s deeper, it goes to the person’s ability to listen, to actually process information.

That is, incidentally, why the martial arts are so important. Somebody disagrees, and you can show them on the mat. You can make them listen.

But, that doesn’t cure the person of not listening. Even somebody who has studied the martial arts for years has this problem. Here is the EXACT thing they think when you tell them something.

‘Oh, we have that in our system.’

They don’t say it, they just get this smug look on their face. But the truth is this: yes, they had it in their system, every system has everything, if you look far enough, BUT…they were not aware of it before you said it.

This problem, incidentally, I have given a name…‘The Inertia of Ignorance.’

Simply, people hang on to their ignorance. They protect it; they are not willing to admit it because, darn it, they think it will make them look stupid!

But holding on to your ignorance is what is stupid. If you don’t admit your were ignorant of something, then you can’t learn: your protection of your image as somebody who knows something stops you from learning something.

Do you understand?

Now, go ahead and read Monster Martial Arts. Hopefully, what you have read here has removed you from that attitude, and opened your skull to the input of new information. Because, I guarantee…the stuff you read on Monster, this Matrixing concept, has never been seen before. It is brand new material, not done by Bruce Lee, nor written down in Ninja scrolls, not anything.

Brand New, and that makes it very difficult for people who are more concerned with their image of worldliness than their desire to learn martial arts.

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Posted in aikido, karate, kenpo, kung fu, martial arts, ninja, pa kua chang, taekwondo, tai chi chuan

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