karate kata and qigong

[Anonymous]

When reading Mr. Frantzis’ book “The Power of Internal Martial Arts,” I noticed that he originally trained in karate (among other external martial arts). I too have a long history in karate, Shotokan to be exact. Although I have genuine interest in qigong and the healing aspects of qigong’s exercises, I feel that it would be a waste of my years of karate training to just abandon all the karate katas I learned. Therefore, I am wondering if there is some relationship between karate katas and Oriental medicine, as far as using them to maintain health from an Oriental medical point of view.

[Anonymous]

Hi Danny, great question, and resonates with how I came to follow Bruce’s teachings and begin to share them.

A Shotokan practitioner, I came upon “The Power of Internal Martial Arts and Chi,” studied it, and concluded I should explore more what the book discussed. That led to a seminars with Bruce, further study, developing a tai chi practice, attending an intensive Wu Style Short Form tai chi instructor training, and, most recently, starting a tai chi program at our dojo, Enso, in downtown Chicago.

All this while actively practicing Shotokan. Mainly because I enjoy it and find it useful in several respects.

So one answer to your question is this: If kata practice is useful to you, by all means do it. You might find, like I have, that tai chi and QiQong practice can inform many aspects of karate – body alignments, joint protection (esp. knees), rooting, and, deep relaxation between techniques leading to faster strikes. At the same time, tai chi and QiQong have led me, and my students, in beneficial directions that are different than karate. All of which Bruce’s works explain at a master’s level.

Hope this helps!

[Anonymous]

It would be a waste of your training to not abandon them. I’m not saying abandon karate, but you should get to a point where it’s more beneficial to look at each movement separately in order to get a greater understanding of the biomechanics involved. That’s one reason why qigong is good as it allows you to focus on one particular aspect that is going on internally, in order to refine a movement. In terms of karate you could gain a lot just by pulling up your spine and refining joint rotation. There really is a lot that you can add without fully jumping into chi practices and stuff.

[Anonymous]

hi danny

have you read The Heart of Karate-Do by Shigeru Egami?
id check it out.
egami was the man funakoshi chose to pass on the karate lineage, and he totally changed the movements to be more in keeping with chi development and relaxation. might be a good place to start.

I also noticed that funakoshi wrote about tai chi, bagua, and hsing-I in Kyohan. I think he did this to point out that it might be a place to go to develop your karate, get it back to it’s roots…

I was a karate teacher when I started studying the internal arts, I started with tai chi, which helped enormously with my joint pain and excess tension. the 2 really compliment each other.

at a certain point, I figured out that karate, and in fact most martial arts, are “young people” fighting arts. the training is optimized for a person who has the hormones and body of a teen ager.

but as you age, for men, around 25, our metabolism and hormone function shifts, and this type of training, tearing down your tissue to build it up again, gets less and less functional. most really good karate sensei’s have in one way or another learned how to be smooth and relaxed in their training, otherwise, they end up with massive chronic injuries, which keeps them from fully enjoying the art they love.

all the internal arts are really “old man” arts, designed to function optimally as an aging adult.

anyone getting younger? thought not…

so ultimately, I ended up closing my school and “wasting my years of training” to invest in something that I could grow old with.

my main practice is Bagua Zhang, and I find that pure bagua training can give you skills and a body that you can’t get elsewhere.

I had the chance to get regular classes in BGZ for about 5 years, in addition to periodic study with bruce, and I found the single palm change and circle walk to be WAY more effective than anything in karate. at a point, I just said, why am I not focusing on that? now I do.

for someone who really digs karate, hsing-I training is also excellent. it’s more straight forward, like karate, and very functional. bruce talked about 90 year old hsing-I men kicking his ass and chain smoking cigarettes.

im not saying smoking is cool, but it shows how much health and ass kicking power hsing-I has.

hsing-I is very similar in flavor to karate, and if I had kept up the school, I would have added hsing-I to the program. you can find the 5 element movements everywhere in the katas, very interesting and productive to work on…

as for karate and oriental medicine, it’s my understanding that the taoist arts are much more comprehensive and powerful than chinese medicine. chinese medicine can give you good health, but this stuff goes way beyond simply being healthy.

I also particularly like how BGZ, (at least the BGZ I have been taught) is directly linked to meditation. As a graduate student in sports psychology, I looked for ways to connect the mind and the body, to get the best of both, and to my way of seeing it, BGZ is the mother load for that. very challenging, very rewarding.

hope this helps, and best of training.

OSSU!

[Author]

Posts