Take a Karate Punch the Right Way
Kung fu ‘Golden Bell’ training is a mystical ability that caused the deaths of a hundred thousand people.
The Golden Bell is when a sheath of energy encases the body and protects that body from injury. During the Boxer Rebellion in China over a hundred thousand people believed that by doing esoteric Kung Fu exercises they could develop this ability, and would be immune to bullets.
Oops.
Regardless of this little mistaken overestimation, the Golden Bell does exist, and in this article we will discuss how it is developed and how it works.
I developed my Golden Bell ability in Karate, specifically one of the original Korean schools, the Kang Duk Won (House for Espousing Virtue). KDW as it is done in modern times will NOT develop this ability. That art has changed and become a simple version of tournament style karate.
In the original style of KDW we trained forms in the Okinawan style, but with a Chinese twist. Byung In-Yoon, a Korean martial artist who was the inspiration behind the Kang Duk Won had studied Karate with Kanken Toyama, who was a classmate of Gichin Funakoshi. Byung In-Yoon’s karate did NOT go through Japan. It retained the original flavor and intensity of the Okinawan masters. Also, Byung In-Yoon, had studied Chinese martial arts.
The main factor in developing the Golden Bell was not a simple exercise. It was something we called ‘Plant and push.’
In most karate styles there is a sharp divide. One either trains in full contact, or one trains with ‘touch’ contact.
With plant and push we were trained to do touch contact, then push. We planted our fists on the partner’s body, then pushed.
The simple theory was that if you did only touch contact you never felt weight resisting your punch. You never felt what it felt like to punch somebody. This creates what the Chinese called ‘paper tigers.’
But slapping the fist on the body, then pushing, caused the body to resist. If you push on muscle, the muscle will resist, and grow stronger.
When you push on the body the muscles aren’t set up to directly resist. They tighten up a little, but then something else happens. The spirit (awareness) pushes energy into the area being pushed on. It creates an energy sheath to protect that area.
After three years of this intense training, of approximately 300 classes (twice a week for three years), after delivering and accepting many thousands of these controlled punches to the various areas of the body, after exploring all the self defense moves in the form in realistic fighting modes, I developed the Golden Bell.
Don’t misunderstand me, this is NOT just being able to take a punch.
When people struck my body I would become aware of myself as not being part of the body: I would be a precise awareness unit floating in the vicinity of my head, and the energy in my body would form, and it didn’t matter how strong a punch I was accepting, the energy created by me, the aware spirit controlling my body, was stronger than the meat muscle and bone of the puncher.
Outside of Karate, and the various other martial arts I studied, the Golden Bell protected me. A couple of years ago, at age 75, I was working with a student. He was showing me a sweep and as I was evading I tripped. As I fell into a porch I felt the Golden Bell rise up through my body and protect me. Though the porch was shaken to the core, i had no bruises or breaks.
This experience of being protected is with me all the time.
Once I was walking down a sidewalk. As I stepped past the corner of a building a kid on a skateboard flew into me at probably 20 MPH. I felt the energy rise up, sheath me, and the kid bounced off. Examining the physics, I should have been knocked to the ground, but it was he who bounced.
As stated earlier, modern methods don’t create the Golden Bell. This is because people don’t use the ‘Plant and Push’ method. It is also because people have translated karate and other arts into boxing, into contests of muscle, into tournaments or whatever, and they have eschewed the development of mind and spirit.
The Golden Bell is still there, however. All you have to do is explore the ‘Plant and Push method, make sure yo0u are using the correct physics of the martial arts, and train with faith.
About the author:
Al Case has over 60 years martial arts experience and was a writer for the martial arts magazines. His website, which presents the correct physics of the martial arts, is Monster Martial Arts (dot) com.
