Category Archives: internal martial art

Before You…and Karate…Was Born

Posted on February 16, 2016 | Leave a comment

Find the Zen of Karate…and the Zen of You

It’s hot here in LA,
and you can really sweat those toxins out.
The best way to sweat?
Work out!

I was driving down the street the other day,
and I saw all sorts of martial arts studios.
MMA, Muay Thai, Boxing,
Karate, Kung fu, Kenpo,
Judo, Aikido, Taekwondo,
and on and on and on.

When I began,
in 1967,
which is near 50 years ago,
there was judo,
which was taught in a few places,
and there was Karate.
Interestingly,
Karate was undergoing a boom.
This was just before Bruce Lee,
and the Tracy Brothers had breathed fire into marketing,
and Karate schools were opening every where.

I began Kenpo,
went every day,
became an instructor,
and so on,
and I had a lot of questions,
and nowhere to get the answers.
The only magazine was Black Belt,
and they sort of circled the arts,
talking about,
but never delving in.

And there weren’t many books.
There was the outlandish Super Karate Made Easy,
Ed Parker had a book out,
Robert Smith wrote his book on
Shaolin Temple boxing.
But these books were either techniques books,
or they talked in mysteries,
and there was no way to understand what the heck
the martial arts were all about.

Then I came across a book called
Zen Flesh, Zen Bones.
I had left kenpo by then,
and was in the Kang Duk Won,
and this book was a Godsend.

Not a book about technique,
not a dissertation of mental tricks,
rather questions and tales
that made you blink,
and look for the real you.

One of my favorites was the old question,
‘Who were you before you were born.’

Now you might be wondering,
how can an art built of physical routines
answer that question?

The answer to that wonderment
lies in the simple fact
that we were not distracted.
Karate was not infected by boxing,
throws weren’t an active part.
And so on.

On the surface,
looking back,
reading these words as I write them,
I can understand
why people might wonder,
how can you call that an art?
How can you think of that stripped down sapling
as a wondrous forest of spirit?

Easy.
We weren’t distracted,
and we practiced those few techniques we knew
until we could make them work.

Enlightenment is when you do one thing
without distraction,
until you see the truth of that one thing.

You have heard people like Bruce Lee say,
in the end,
a punch is just a punch,
a kick is just a kick.

But,
here’s the bad news,
if you haven’t found that out
through doing a simple kick,
or punch,
without distraction,
for tens of thousands of times,
then the truth of the statement evades you.

You know about water,
but you’ve never been wet.

That is why,
except for a few logical changes,
and the nudging of matrixing,
the karate I do now,
is virtually the same
as the karate I did way back when.

Pinan one through pinan five,
the iron horse,
a few others,
I do them almost the same as I learned them.
And,
here’s the interesting thing,
the way I learned them was only a couple of generations
removed from the way they were taught before Funakoshi.

I go into modern schools
and I don’t see what I learned.
I see forms infected by boxing,
distracted by MMA,
slanted by tournaments and kick boxing.
I see techniques discarded because people can’t make them work.
I see people fighting,
instead of painstakingly being taught the drills that lead to…not fighting,
to scientifically assessing an opponent and shredding him without waste.

Most of all,
I don’t see the calm of mind,
the calm that comes not from knowing about lots of arts,
but from knowing one thing well.
And, in these modern times,
if people do know one thing well,
it has been slanted by ‘reality fighting,’
by the desire to beat up your fellow man,
not to calm yourself,
and find the truth of yourself.

Not to find out who you were before you were born.

Here’s the art that I was taught,
unchanged except for a few logical tweaks,
and the ‘de-slanting’ of matrixing.

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/temple-karate/

Hope you enjoy getting back to the ‘zen’ of it all.

Have a great work out!
Al

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/temple-karate/

http://www.amazon.com/Matrixing-Tong-Bei-Internal-Gung/dp/1507869290/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423678613&sr=8-1&keywords=tong+bei

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Posted in aikido, chi power, internal martial art, karate, taekwondo, zen

Moving the Body Faster than the Eye Can See

Posted on February 7, 2016 | Leave a comment

Newsletter 796
Sleight of Hand in the Martial Arts

Good morning!
It’s a balmy day out here in LA,
absolutely perfect for working out.
You just let the wind push you into the next move.

Hey,
here’s something interesting,
did you know that people don’t know how to use their bodies?
They do sports,
various gimmicks,
and they catch the ball cool,
but they are using the body at about 1/100 of its potential.
True.

And,
interesting enough,
I am not talking about instances of high adrenaline
as being the optimum.

In fact,
you should be using less energy
to create more effect.

Here’s the neutronic low down,very simple,
on this phenomenon.

If you study math,
the very first thing you learn to do is measure the universe.
After a couple of years of working with this fact,
which is used because it is undeniable,
you can’t argue with a ruler,
you learn to think in abstracts.
You learn to follow formula,
and you leave the necessity for measuring.

So,
two specific stages,
measure the universe,
follow formula.
The devising of new formula is considered the higher,
most creative mathematics.
That is what every professor shoots for.

Okay,
understanding this,
let’s discuss how it parallels the martial arts.

The beginner is taught to measure himself.
How fast he can run from point A to point B,
how much he can lift,
and so on.
This is the first stage,
the measurement stage,
the stage where you measure yourself in universal terms.

But you are not the universe,
you are awareness,
and to realize your true potential you have to find
the abstracts of motion.

Here is a very simple example of an abstract of motion.

The magician holds up the deck of cards,
you choose a card,
insert it back into the deck,
and the magician,
even though he doesn’t know what card it is,
pulls it out.
Whoa!
As Po would say.

But the magician has only used sleight of hand.
He has trained his hands to make a motion
that escapes the eye.
He doesn’t measure himself,
he grades himself according to how many people he can fool.

Can Joe Blow do this mystical faster than the eye can see motion?
With practice.
But here’s the point:
What if you trained your whole body to move
faster than the eye can see.
There are ways,
you know.
Here’s one.
Practice walking the circle out of Pa Kua for a few years,
until you feel the ‘lightening’ in your legs.
When somebody punches,
you move your hand in one direction,
and step down and under in the other direction.
It will be as if you disappeared.

I first heard of this disappearing act
when my instructor was being checked out by a high ranking Korean stylist.
The Korean did a series of stretches,
then,
noting that Bob was just standing and sipping a drink,
asked when Bob would be ready (for a proposed freestyle match).
Bob put his drink down and faced the Korean.
“I’m ready.”
The Korean jumped into the air with a perfect spinning kick.
When he came down Bob was nowhere to be seen.
In fact,
when the Korean turned his back Bob just walked behind him,
in conjunction with the spin.
The Korean was shocked to find Bob behind him.

I was not as fast as Bob,
I have a bigger body,
but I found that by moving my hand in one direction,
and my body in the other,
just as I described earlier,
that people would follow my hand and lose sight of me.

This is simple stuff,
but it takes immense practice.
And it takes a dedication to graduating from the simple measurement of self
into the abstract of measuring the other person.

It takes concentration,
focus of mind.

And,
in my case,
in addition to all the karate I did,
it took decades of Tai Chi and Pa Kua
to understand the enrages involved.

But,
with matrixing,
it doesn’t take that long.
It takes intense effort,
but if you understand what you are trying to do
before you do it,
then you can cut the time down by MUCH.

Mind you,
the path is different for everybody,
because everybody is different,
bodies are different,
and the mind and spirit is definitely different.
But,
if you understand what I have said here,
and are willing to dedicate yourself to the work,
then you can go beyond the measurement of the universe.
You can go into these things that,
before matrixing,
were considered mystical
and reserved for special people.

There is no reason why,
with understanding the matrixing concepts,
and a little hard work,
you can’t be special.
There is no reason why you can’t use your body
to its full 100% potential.

Here’s the Pa Kua page for any who wish
to choose that as a part of their journey.

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/butterfly-pa-kua-chang/

Have a great work out!
Al

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/butterfly-pa-kua-chang/

http://www.amazon.com/Matrixing-Tong-Bei-Internal-Gung/dp/1507869290/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423678613&sr=8-1&keywords=tong+bei

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Posted in aikido, internal martial art, pa kua chang, shaolin, taekwondo

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Tai Chi Chuan vs Karate

Posted on February 4, 2016 | Leave a comment

Major Difference between Karate and Tai Chi Chuan

One of my work out partners,
way back in the Kang Duk Won,
decided he was going to do Tai Chi Chuan.
He figured it would be easy,
because of his karate conditioning.
He threw his back out so badly
it took him two years to recover.

Soft, flowing Tai Chi Chuan,
and it was too tough for a young karate guy.
What’s wrong with that picture, eh?

What is wrong is simple,
when Bruce, my friend,
did Tai Chi he thought he could just do a karate kick slowly.
But karate is fast and explosive,
the leg is out and back,
in Tai Chi the muscles have to strain to keep the leg up.
And I mean a whole sequence of muscles.
Bruce’s muscles,
though karate powerful,
couldn’t support the leg for an extended period of time,
and the result of his attempting to do such a thing
disrupted the muscles
all the way back to the spine..

Now isn’t that interesting,
tai chi chuan has more ‘weight lifting’
in its moves.
Karate has the fast explosion,
and the muscle tightening (focus)
builds the muscles.
But those muscles are built
at the beginning and end of the move.
In Tai Chi the muscles must support the weight,
throughout the move,
for a long(er) period of time.

A simple difference,
but it leads to an important concept.

Karate is explosive energy.
Tai Chi is suspended energy.

The difference manifests in movements,
in timing,
in focus of concentration,
in emptiness,
in energy.

Now we could actually analyze these differences
from different points of view.
But what I’ve said here is probably the best point to start.

Not speed,
not sensitivity,
though those are important,
but defining how energy is actually used.
Because how energy is used
defines the other terms.
This concept is core.

This is not to discourage you from trying,
but to caution you,
and help you make the transition.

If you do your karate forms slowly,
and round out the edges of your motion,
you can get Tai Chi power.
Just take it easy when you begin.

If you do your Tai Chi forms fast,
you can find Karate power,
and pretty easily.
But you do have to adapt to a different mind set.

Explosive and slow
two sides to a coin,
two sides to the martial arts.
And there are many more sides that these concepts can lead to.

Here’s the link to the Five Army Tai Chi Chuan course.

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

Have a great work out!
Al

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

http://www.amazon.com/Matrixing-Tong-Bei-Internal-Gung/dp/1507869290/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423678613&sr=8-1&keywords=tong+bei

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Posted in bagua zhang, chi power, external martial art, internal martial art, kenpo, kung fu, martial arts, taekwondo, tai chi chuan

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Martial Arts Legends Made Real

Posted on January 19, 2016 | Leave a comment

Newsletter 793
The Truth of the Old Martial Arts Legends

Man,
this is an absolutely perfect day.
Absolutely perfect.
You know what makes it perfect?
I just worked out.
If you ever want to make NOW better,
just work out.
The more you work out,
the better NOW is.

I remember hearing old stories,
old legends from China,
and so on.

The fellow who practiced jumping out of a one foot hole.
Then, the second year, a two foot hole.
Three years a three foot hole.
After ten years he was jumping ten feet up.
Could jump on and off roofs.
And twenty years…

Then there was a the fellow who lifted a calf on his shoulders.
Did it every day.
When the calf grew into a bull, his strength was prodigious.

And so on.

Interesting stories.
Sort of like comic books.
Keeps the young kids interested.

But there is truth to those old legends.
The truth is different, however.

You do a form for a couple of years,
you train your body to move quick and fast,
any direction,
any combination of techniques.
Then,
without really understanding what is happening,
you move into the realm of the mind.
Maybe ten or twenty years.
Your thought process becomes quicker,
faster,
more intuitive.
Then,
without really understanding it,
you move into the realm of the spirit.
You stop looking at your body,
for you understand it.
You start looking at the attack,
and you aren’t a sequence of nerves and twitches and muscles and stuff,
you just go to where you are supposed to go,
without the muscular fanfare,
without the mental thinkingness.
Your body just moves through space without effort.

The thing is…
you make this happen not by measuring yourself,
but by dedicating yourself.
Not by thinking about it,
but by just doing it,
spending the years,
doing the forms over and over,
until the body gets tired of working,
until the mind gets tired of thinking about it,
until the spirit takes over and just does it.

Think about it like this:
You are digging a hole,
you are digging into the earth,
but that is just a vehicle to make strong the body.
You dig and you dig,
the body gets tired,
but you know you are getting close,
you have to keep digging,
so you steel your mind,
and you make your body keep digging.
And when the mind gets tired,
you know you are closer than ever
and all that keeps you going is your spirit.
You ignored the protests of body and mind
and you keep digging,
and,
at last,
you reach it.
It seeps out of the bottom of the hole,
seeps into your feet,
up your legs,
invigorates your body, mind and spirit.
You have found gold.
Not the gross gold that is shiny rock,
but the pure gold of refined spirit.
The gold that makes you immortal,
that makes you a pure and ever shining spirit.

Others,
unless they have done the digging,
cannot see it.
But what others know doesn’t matter.
What matters is what you know.
And you know the truth of you.

This is the truth behind the legends.
Superhuman deeds are possible,
but they are not what you think.
They are not comic book,
they are real,
but they are not normally visible,
and they are not what people usually expect.

But,
regardless,
you won’t really understand this
unless you start working out,
and don’t stop.
Work out until you are an old man.
Until the body is tired,
but you are not.
Until you realize the flesh is frail,
but the spirit is not.
That is the only proof I can offer.

Here’s the course for the week.

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/temple-karate/

These are the ways I do the forms.

Have a great work out!
Al

http://www.amazon.com/Matrixing-Tong-Bei-Internal-Gung/dp/1507869290/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423678613&sr=8-1&keywords=tong+bei

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Posted in chi power, internal martial art, pa kua chang, wing chun

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Congrats to a New Martial Arts Master instructor!

Posted on December 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

How Master Instructor Knowledge in the Martial Arts Transcends Time and Language

Good morning!
Fantastic morning,
actually,
for I not only get to work out,
but there is
A NEW MASTER INSTRUCTOR!

Congrats to
Garib De Kwaadsteniet

Hello Master Al

My name is Garib, I am a Bujinkan Taijutsu instructor from Amsterdam, as well as studying Matrixing thru the master Instructor course, and the Monkey boxing system with my Master Instructor, Will Sess. A lot of the finer points that you mention in the course, were subject in passing in my old system, without being explained the reason behind them, whereas just thru your solid and clear and concise explanations, the reason /concept or theory behind them became immediately obvious and a lot of the random data, as collected thru the various techniques, started to fall into place and made sense from a pragmatic point of view. What I have learned from matrixing is to look at every conceivable angle, to look for the universal truth/reality in any given motion, be it passive (evasive) or active (advance/attack/counter). By that i mean if it is a balanced, body natural motion which contains all the elements of the basic basics…in alignment. Technique over strength, mobility over forced movement, softness over hardness, working with the whole body (Taijutsu),… this way, just a minimum effort, is enough for maximum protective efficiency. Those are the elements i have taken from the master Instructor lessons, which makes my approach to movement now a whole lot more scientific based, than the randomly collected heap of techniques i was taught before. In other words, Matrixing is the art of getting to the heart of the matter, in a much shorter time than it would take with the traditional or common way of Instruction. I compare the matrix method to a compass, not only because of the directions (angles) but also because it gives me a starting point, a reference from where i can easily spot and connect the energy lines, in harmony with my opponents motions and intentions…
Thank you very much for this really compact and comprehensive block of Instruction on how to execute and transmit movement and energy, in alignment and under pressure, as well as making the theory behind them clear.
Sincerely,
Garib De Kwaadsteniet

Thank you Garib,
and well done!
Your win is a very concise and excellent summation
of matrixing.

Garib was assisted by Master Instructor Will Sess,
and I believe he is non-English speaking,
which makes this win all the sweeter.
It proves that matrixing goes beyond language,
that it is a concise set of scientific principles
that transcend speech.

It is the way the universe works.

So thank you again,
Garib,
well done for your hard work,
and thanks to your instructor
Will Sess.

Okay guys and gals,
wouldn’t becoming a Master Instructor be
the greatest HanaKwanMass present
you could ever give yourself?

Simply go here…

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/4-master-instructor-course/

Do the course and submit your win,
and you have made it,
you have gotten that knowledge,
that martial artists from around the world,
and throughout time,
have wished to get…
You have gotten the ultimate knowledge of the martial arts
you have gotten the knowledge
that is on The Master Instructor Course!

Have a great work out
and
HanaKwanMass!

Al

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/4-master-instructor-course/

http://www.amazon.com/Matrixing-Tong-Bei-Internal-Gung/dp/1507869290/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423678613&sr=8-1&keywords=tong+bei

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Posted in chi power, internal martial art, kung fu, martial arts, taekwondo, wing chun

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It is Possible to Learn Aikido in a Couple of Hours

Posted on November 10, 2014 | Leave a comment

Learn Aikido by Going to the Concept

People think I’m scamming them when they read this learn Aikido at home in 2 hours thing, but let me tell you exactly what I’m doing.

First, I don’t teach you a thousand aiki techniques in a couple of hours, I teach you the One Concept behind it all.

aikidoNo, I am not talking about ‘harmony.’ That’s a concept, but it’s a philosophy.

I teach the actual physical ‘One Thing’ that people are doing when they do this incredible martial art.

I show you how to do this one thing not by dry classroom talk, but by teaching four guys and letting you watch. During the course of one 90 minute video you will see these four guys learn. You will see them progress from move to move. You will see them going, ‘Oh! That works!” And then moving on to more and more moves. Intuitively, naturally.

That’s the power of The One Concept.

Now, the dry classroom stuff comes in the form of one simple learn aikido PDF. It’s about 40 pages, and it tells you how to break down the body, how to do the one thing to every part of the body. And it has illustrations detailing exactly what has been done.

The end result is that these four guys know enough aikido to practice on their own, to plug into any other martial art that happen to know.
<p style=”text-align:center;”>

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Furthermore, and most important, it is workable in combat. It is EXTREMELY easy to apply this One Concept.

Whether you’re into the martial arts or not, I want you to remember this simple datum: if it is easy to understand, and easy to apply, it will be easy to learn, easy to use, and HARD to forget.

That is simple truth. It is behind Matrix Aikido and all the other martial arts courses I teach; it is a truth of this world.

Okay, hope to see you on the video, and have a great work out,

Al

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Posted in aikido, chi power, internal martial art, martial arts

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Using the body as one unit in karate and other martial arts

Posted on September 3, 2014 | Leave a comment

Newsletter 706
Ligaments and how I figured out CBM

Good morning from Monkeyland!
Anther perfect day for working out!
What?
Working out seven days after surgery?
How can that be?
You simply use visualization,
do your forms in your mind,
and you still get 80% of the benefit!

And, the surgery…
The exact procedure involved a four inch slit in my shoulder
and some very delicate handiwork.
Two screws to hold the shoulder bone down,
a coil around the bones to help keep everything in place,
and a brand new ligament.

My new ligament is VERY happy to have joined my body.
Instead of the fade to black of death
which usually happens to the parts of a cadaver,
it is now part of CBM machine,
where every muscle and cell is expected to
contribute to the work of the whole organism.
Not one muscle doing everything,
but all muscles doing something.

this was the original concept of CBM depressed, incidentally.
I don’t think I’ve talked about this before, So let me explain right now.
The original concept of Coordinated body motion was
One muscle doesn’t do all the work,
All muscles do a little work.
One arm doesn’t do all the work,
all the parts of the body do a little work

This thought was a drastic departure from how I was being trained.
I was being trained to use force, even in the kang duk won.
Eventually, as you get older, you get tired of doing all the work
And you start looking for easier ways to get the work done.
But this doesn’t lead to CBM.
It leads to chi power, it leads to better martial arts,
but inefficiently.
And it doesn’t lead to coordinated body motion.
And, to tell you the truth, I was going outside my art,
And I was coming across concepts where people talked about
Using the body as one unit.
But what I couldn’t find was a way to describe this method
Of using the body is one unit,
And still be true to the concept
Of one muscle doesn’t do all the work.

So I thunk it up in my head,
Move the hand at the same speed you move the foot.
Then, instead of stepping forward and punching
I was stepping forward while punching.
And the whole ‘use the body is one unit’ thing resolved,
And coordinated body motion was born.
Yeah, just thunk it up.
Figured it out.
Made it up.
But it worked.

And I got into all sorts of computations
The weight of the leg over the arc of the foot times the speed of the kick,
The muscle of the arm Times the speed of the fist from point a to point B,
The mass of the hips rotated between the distance of the legs times the speed of…
And so on and so on.
But I gave up the computations because the world is simple
And it has to be solved simple, And kept simple, if it is going to work.
So you can take my description of CBM, and you can run with it.
You can use it and tweak your art, And fix your forms,
And make your techniques work.
Not complex.
It’s simple.

So I explain this to my ligament and it was happy,
But I didn’t have to explain it,
I just had to use CBM,
To walk with the body as one unit,
and the ligament loved it.
And the whole body Loved it.
The body Loves to work,
But the body love to work simple more.

Anyway, that is the story of CBM,
Done right, keep it simple,
And your art becomes simple,
And everything changes.

oinkey Doggie
If you want to see what goes on after CBM,
If you want to check into the real truth of such things as
Correct body alignment,
Perfect body structure,
How to make any technique perfect,
And so on,
Check out this page…

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/4-master-instructor-course/

Now have yourself a great workout,
And I’ll talk to you later.
Al

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Posted in aikido, chi power, internal martial art, karate, kenpo, kung fu, martial arts, shaolin

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How to Do a Shoulder Roll the Right Way

Posted on August 11, 2014 | Leave a comment

Aikido Rolling Done the Right Way

I was following a martial arts forum the other day, and the subject was ‘Aikido Rolling.’
Call it Aikido, but these same rolls are found in Karate, kenpo, even the kicking art of Taekwondo.

aikido rolling technique

Learn to fall, grasshopper!


 
The forum in question was attempting to solicit advice on how to teach these particular martial arts moves.
And, there was good advice, and some bad advice.
I learned how to roll, forward and backward, and break fall, and other sorts of these moves, in Kenpo Karate.
It wasn’t done much, actually presented as a technique, and not given any serious drilling.
When I began Kang Duk Won we did no rolls or breakfalls. The message was clear: don’t go to the ground. And, to those who disagree with such advice, if you learn to ground your weight properly, you cannot be taken to the ground.
But, that fact aside, it is useful to learn to do shoulder rolls aikido style. You learn to appreciate what another body might do, and there may come a time when a roll is the best defense.
I am reminded, in this latter point, of the time I was in Oakland and witnessed a motorcycle accident. The motorcyclist was cut off, struck the other car, and the rider catapulted through the air and did a perfect shoulder roll to a standing position.
So, that said, there is one theory you must understand and implement no matter what the method being used to teach you. And, there is one superior method for teaching how to roll.
The theory is this: a perfect circle has no corner. Whenever you roll and hear a sound, or feel a pain, that is an example of a corner. You must do the roll again, looking for the source of that sound or pain, and smooth it out until the roll becomes true.
For instance, the you hear the foot flop at the end of the move. Figure out how not to flop the foot.
Or, you get a sore head after rolling, so look for the point at which your head is hitting something.
Those are the corners, figure out how to smooth them out.
As for the one method, you simple give a person a basketball, show him how to wrap his body around it, then tell him to roll the ball.
You will be surprised at how easy this device, this real visualization works. people doing it suddenly have an example of a circle to adhere to. I use to curve a coat hanger in a circle and hand it to people. And you can use other things.
And that is the secret, and that’s all there is, to ‘aikido rolling’ in the martial arts.

There is a great course which shows you how to do Aikido quickly and effortlessly. it is called Matrix Aikido, and it is available at monsterMartialArts.com.

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Posted in aikido, chi power, internal martial art, kung fu, martial arts, ninja, pa kua chang

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The Problem with Bruce Lee

Posted on July 13, 2014 | Leave a comment

The Mistake of the Little Dragon

I remember when Bruce Lee Died. It was a shock that went through the soul. Here was an icon,the best martial artist in the world, in perfect physical condition…dead.

How? Why? What happened?

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Interestingly, one of the first theories I heard as to the cause of his death came from a friend who was studying Tai Chi Chuan. The one word summation was: balance. And, the one sentence explanation was Bruce Lee was lacking balance.

I tucked this opinion away, collected facts, but it was literally decades before I matured enough as a martial artist to understand, and to accept, this opinion over the facts.

Let me say, before I continue, that I like facts. It could be said that only fools deal in opinions, and in most cases, this would be correct.

The person offering this opinion, however, was basing his opinion not on the facts of Bruce’s death, but upon the facts of the martial arts. It wasn’t until I was firmly matrixed in my approach to the martial arts that I understood this.

One of the facts that I continuously came across was that Bruce had an allergic reaction to marijuana, which was in tea he had drunk.

This is interesting, I have never read a study on this, is there marijuana in Chinese tea?

Another fact I came across is that Bruce had, again, an allergic reaction, this time to aspirin. But I think that the aspirin was given to him after he complained of a headache. And, I know it’s possible, but I just don’t hear of a lot of people, or any people, dying of allergic reactions to aspirin. Doesn’t mean it’s not possible, but…hmmm.

And, the third of these ‘facts,’ Bruce had a reduced fat content in his body. Now this is dangerous. And this could result in death. And this has much more substantiation in fact than the previous two theories.

Mind you, in saying this I realize that it is still opinion, and the only real fact we have is that we will never know. But this one fact, considered in light of the theory of ‘balance,’ really resonates with me. What was Bruce Lee doing that would result in a loss of balance, and which could possibly result in death? For the answer to that let’s consider how the martial arts are accumulated.

In matrixing one isolates the specific arts, and simplifies them to workable levels, and does not mix martial arts. In matrixing one studies the smaller pieces of the individual martial arts until they (eventually) blend into a larger and comprehensive whole.

Bruce, on the other hand, was doing a hybrid of the martial arts; he was doing, for one specific example, Wing Chun and Boxing.

I know, there was a lot more, he had 26 different arts at one count.

But consider the differences between just those two martial arts. Wing Chun controls the centerline and works on straight punches. Boxing moves laterally and has roundish punches.

Yes, a simplification, but bear with, for there are different concepts of chi power here.

In boxing, there is no focus on chi power, everything has to do with muscles.
In Wing Chun, hoever, the focus is on chi power, and there is major emphasis on generating energy from the tan tien.

Could this mix of martial training, taken to the extremes that Bruce took them, result in an imbalance in the body? Could this have resulted in Bruce’s death?

Unfortunately, as with the other theories, there is no proof, and likely never will be, and we all never know. But it is something to consider.

The mix of the martial arts you study is definitely worth considering. Not because of the risk of death (Bruce was a singular and extreme case), but because mixing the various martial arts, and especially without simplifying them through the matrixing process, causes confusion, and results in a slower learned and less effective martial arts.

In closing, the point of this article has been to ask, not to state definitively, and that in an attempt to understand Bruce Lee. It is only through understanding, not through mindless worshipping, that we are going to reap the true benefits of this incredible person’s martial arts and existence.

Take the first step in learning how to Matrix with Matrix Karate. For information that might be more specific to the theories presented in this article examine The Master Instructor Course. Both courses are available at MonsterMartialArts.com

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Achieving the supernatural in kung fu

Posted on June 29, 2014 | 1 comment

How to Have Supernatural Powers in the Martial Arts…

Supernatural in kung fu, refers to such things as reading minds, intuition, seeing when things are going to happen before they happen, And so on.

The reason people have such trouble in gaming this high level of martial arts is because of a basic misunderstanding of who and what they are.

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Great book to start developing your kung fu super powers! Click on the cover!

The body is an envelope for the spirit.

The mind is just a bunch of memory.

The spirit is the source of all supernatural ability in the martial arts.

The misunderstanding comes when people attribute their abilities to mental powers.

Memory has no powers, memory obscures he human being, which obscures a being’s natural power. Natural ability, what a human being can do once memories are put aside is actually what we call supernatural kung fu.

Thus to say Power comes from mental abilities is completely the opposite of what they should be thinking.

Think of it this way, A person trains his body and this creates discipline in the soul. In effect it bypasses the mind, which is to say the memories, which come between a person and his true power and ability.

Understanding this one must apply this to the martial arts.

One memorizes movements, Which creates a short-term memory. One practices the movements until the memory disappears and intuition remains. The bonus is at the long-term memory tends to disappear to, Or at least to get out-of-the-way of the martial artist.

So you memorize to give up memory and what is left is the awareness, the Spirit, the human being, the ‘I am.’

When you give up memory, your own abilities come to the fore. These abilities, Based in such things as intuition, actually frighten normal people. That is why so many people give up the martial arts at the brown belt level, for that is the level at which a person breaks through to intuition.

Unfortunately, most systems no longer bring a person to the edge of intuition, or push him through to intuition.

This is why I created matrixing. It makes the martial arts faster, it makes the jump to intuition easier.

Instead of spending years trying to figure out the confusion created by a laborious memorization procedure, the student learns logical moves, builds up no internal resistance to the memorization procedure, and slides smoothly into intuition.

Check out monstermartialarts.com, and especially matrix karate. Even if you have done martial arts for years, even if you know dozens of martial arts systems, once you experience the logic of matrixing, all those systems Will start to make sense and come together in a manner which you didn’t envision.

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