April 15, 2024
When does the student become the master? The Roshi watched me carefully. He smiled sadly. “He wanted you to follow after him, Connor.” My mouth was dry with the shock of acknowledgment. “I’m not sure I can.” 8 Min Read.
November 27, 2023
With the Abbot of Shaolin Temple visit to California in November 2023, Staff Writer Gene Ching ruminates over the distinctions between some Shaolin styles of Kung Fu practiced around the world and the curriculum propounded at the original Shaolin Temple of China today
September 18, 2023
And there it was. It’s not only my injuries that wake me in the night. In the vulnerability of the dark, I wonder if the point of Yamashita’s art is not about skill or technique but simply about pursuing an unshakeable willingness to surrender the self in the pursuit of something higher.
August 14, 2023
The following is an excerpt from John Donohue's upcoming martial arts thriller, Keppan: The Blood Oath, coming to YMAA Publication Center in September 2023. This is the sixth installment of Donohue's gripping martial arts thriller series about martial artist Connor Burke. Fusing the way of the pen and the way of the sword, Donohue has trained in the martial disciplines of aikido, iaido, judo, karatedo, kendo, and taiji. He has dan (black belt) ranks in both karatedo and kendo. A nationally known expert on the culture and practice of the martial arts, Donohue infuses his thrillers with genuine cultural and martial aspects that every reader will enjoy.
July 31, 2023
In the wake of Michelle Lin & Quentin Lopes chat with Gene Ching about their new "Barehand vs Staff Sequence", Staff Writer Gene Ching explores the legacy of two-person training sequences in the Chinese martial arts.
There are countless kung fu forms across innumerable schools and lineages, but sometimes different schools share the same form. While reviewing the Shaolin Long Fist Kung Fu Complete Collection, YMAA Staff Writer Gene Ching discovered some overlapping forms between his Northern Shaolin tradition and YMAA’s curriculum and discusses the shared roots and divergences.
The staggering success of Netflix's Cobra Kai has brought renewed attention to the martial arts, especially karate. Anyone who bore witness to when The Karate Kid premiered in 1984 can recall the impact it had on the global popularization of martial arts. The film attracted a massive influx of new students and a tremendous boon to awareness, as well as to the economy. Cobra Kai has improved how the martial arts are depicted in the show with subtle clarifications that only the most discerning martial artists might appreciate.
Martial arts history happens when karate is introduced at the Tokyo Olympics. Among the 33 overall different sports this year, karate is part of a special group of martial-based Olympic sports. This includes archery, boxing, fencing, judo, modern pentathlon, shooting, taekwondo, and wrestling (some also include the track and field event of javelin, and the winter sport of biathlon.) Despite their global impact, most Olympic games are of Western origin. The outstanding Non-Western games are the martial arts: judo, taekwondo, and now karate. The Olympic karate events will begin on August 4th and run until August 8th, 2021.
YMAA proudly presents Krav Maga Fundamental Strategies, the fourth book in David Kahn’s popular Krav Maga series.
Needle Through Brick is a documentary that poses these questions by taking an intimate look at some surviving traditional Kung Fu and Tai Chi masters of Malaysian Borneo, particularly Sarawak and Sibu. There’s a large Chinese population here, a diaspora of masters who fled the Japanese occupation and the communists. Needle Through Brick presents insightful interviews of Borneo’s unique elder masters as the precious disciplines that they have dedicated their lives to face extinction.
The following is an excerpt from John Donohue's latest martial arts thriller, Enzan The Far Mountain. Chie Miyazaki is a wild, spoiled, pampered child of a cadet line of the Imperial House of Japan. When she disappears in the United States accompanied by a slick Korean boyfriend who may be taking orders from Pyongyang, it sets alarms off in Japan's security apparatus as well in the U.S. intelligence.
It’s not unusual for martial artists to talk solemnly about “the Way” and how the life lessons that have been created through training spill over into the rest of our lives.
This is the fourth book in the Connor Burke martial arts thriller series. Burke lives in Brooklyn, New York where his warrior-teacher Yamashita has his dojo. But the story begins in the unforgiving landscape of the American Southwest. A notorious best-selling author Elliot Westmann is killed.
One of the most important aspects of martial arts training (and the thing that first attracted me to the activity) is the linkage between things of the body and things of the spirit. There’s a lot to be said for the physical aspects of training—and if most people are anything like me, it’s almost addictive.
The nuns at the Druk Gawa Khilwa Nunnery in Nepal train kung fu each day in the early morning. A few years ago, several Vietnamese nuns were asked to visit the nunnery in Nepal to teach Kung Fu there. Another Drukpa nunnery in northern India has expressed interest, and the Vietnamese nuns will go there to teach as well.
Many people wonder why martial arts are practiced by religions like Buddhism and Daoism that teach about compassion and humility. The idea of a warrior monk seems contradictory because in people’s minds the martial arts are linked with violence.