May 6, 2024
Slow, Deep breathing stimulates the main nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system called the vagus nerve, which in turn releases hormones and neurotransmitters that slow your heart rate, lower your blood pressure and generally brings your body into balance.
5 Min Read
March 11, 2024
Two opposing sides must exist at the same time, the harder the thing, the more brittle. All that is needed is to find the universal physical properties, then one can find the easy way to crack it. 12 Min. Read
March 4, 2024
These new techniques, footwork, steps, mindsets, strategies, tactics, and positions used in today’s sports-karate’s kumite illustrate best the discipline’s far-reaching separation from karate-jutsu’s kata: there is no kata anymore in sports-karate’s kumite.
7 Min. Read
February 19, 2024
Advanced level karateka understand concepts, including all their hidden options, and realize all the big pictures in combat where these concepts may be applied, whereas beginners narrowly see a technique to be used for only one specific application.
9 Min. Read
February 12, 2024
Every instance of conflict is a proclamation, a resolute warning to the opponent that they have clearly crossed a line. 5 Min. Read.
The Chinese year 4715 begins on January 28, 2017. According to the Chinese zodiac it will be the Year of the Rooster (雞年 - "rooster year"; pinyin: jīnián). The Chinese calendar is lunisolar (not purely lunar). Months begin with the new moon (when it is darkest.) New Year's Day usually falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice.
For thousands of years, celebrating the New Year in China is always the biggest event of the whole year. During the lunar New Year celebration, every family makes the best food, wears their best clothes, and shoes, and keeps up their best spirit and mood. Family and friends get together to enjoy eating, laughing, chatting, and friendship. Another very important element of the celebration: fire crackers.
If you put on a football helmet right now and smacked yourself in the head with your hands, you might notice you can hit yourself pretty hard before you start to feel pain. You could even grab a stapler or a coffee mug and hit yourself with that. If you are like me, smacking yourself in the head is the first thing you do when you put a helmet on, just to test it out.
Studying an Asian martial art can be a daunting task for a non-Asian student. Not only do you have to learn the physical postures and how to move from one to the other, you also strive to master the seemingly endless number of techniques. As well, the cultural milieu in which the martial art developed is often confusing. Many times the task you undertake is compared to climbing a mountain, and for good reason.
Moving taiji qigong includes both stationary and walking exercises. The following discusses the first of three stationary sets with exercises. The first one, which I call the “primary set,” is generally used for taijiquan beginners. I call the second set the “coiling set,” since it emphasizes coiling movements. The third set is the “rocking set.”
The days leading up to biggest Chinese holiday are palpable with excitement. Traditionally, Chinese New Year is marked with feasts, new clothes, red envelopes, performances, games, and lighting firecrackers late into the night. The two-week long celebration is the time to visit loved ones, welcome the spring, and wish for luck and prosperity in the New Year.
The traditional Chinese art of Nèi-gōng is the key to developing more qì (energy) and maximizing your circulation. Continual practice of Nèigōng is a process of internal alchemy resulting in a refinement and transmutation of the "Three Treasures" or Sān Bǎo (三寶).
Perhaps it was always Funakoshi's destiny to shed light on a part of Okinawan culture that had for centuries remained hidden from the gaze of the general population. He shone like a bright star in a dark sky and pointed the way forward for the many millions around the world who would take up the challenge of learning.
Regulating breathing means to regulate your breath until it is calm, smooth, and peaceful. Only when you have reached this point will you be able to make the breathing deep, slender, long, and soft, which is required for successful qigong practice.
I once asked a Japanese friend of mine, who had flown down from the mainland to Okinawa to meet me, if she was enjoying her visit to this part of Japan. Her reply surprised me at the time, as she confessed it was like visiting a different country. The food in particular was very different from the type of dishes she ate on a daily basis with her family in Osaka.
Acupuncture is the art of stimulating points in the body to improve circulation and remove blockages, either as a general tonic or to promote the healing of specific ailments.
In order to achieve a strong energetic system, we must fine-tune each of the five building blocks until fine-tuning is not necessary.
For many practitioners, the phrase “martial arts” doesn’t do a particularly good job of encompassing the complexity of the systems we study. There is also a certain oxymoronic tension between things martial and things arty and serious trainees often prefer to emphasize the physical efficacy of these systems.
In the early part of the twentieth century, when Okinawan karate teachers were first asked to provide names for their karate by the Butokukai in Japan, they struggled to come up with a name that did justice to the martial art they practiced.
As with all other forms of martial qigong, taiji qigong can be categorized into both yin and yang practices. The yin side of taiji qigong contains exercises that emphasize calmness without movement, and the yang side of taiji qigong has exercises that are more physically active.
Ramel Rones was accepted by Dr. Yang as a disciple in 1983 due to his exceptional learning capability and humble dedication to the training. After years of gold award-winning martial arts demonstrations and competitions across the United States and China, Ramel now works as a Scientific Consultant of Mind/Body Therapies at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and at Harvard and Tufts Medical Schools in Boston, Mass.
Most non-Chinese people (Westerners) call the Spring Festival 'Chinese New Year.' The 2014 Chinese Spring Festival falls on January 31 continuing through February 6. According to the Chinese zodiac it is the Year of the Wooded Horse. In Chinese Five Element theory, Horse is in the Fire group, which is the strongest fire animal in twelve zodiacs.
If you are a qigong beginner, I recommend that you do not start this training on your own. Nei dan qigong is hard to understand and experience, especially for qigong beginners. If you do not understand the training theory and practice incorrectly, you may injure yourself. Wai dan standing meditation is generally much safer.
Meditation Techniques at YMAA Retreat Center - Part 2
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December 15, 2013
Two hard, consecutive chimes signal the start of the second segment. In this segment, we use a breathing technique called embryonic breathing. Embryonic breathing gets its name because it is based on the actions of pre-birth breathing. An embryo absorbs nutrients from its mother with a pumping action of the abdomen, connected via the umbilical cord. We mimic this method with reverse abdominal breathing, alongside movement with the perineum and lower back.
For a disciple at the YMAA Retreat Center, every morning begins the same way. Before dawn, we quietly rise from our beds and make our way outside, filing one by one into our little gazebo, which overlooks the mountains. Each disciple grabs a mat or a cushion and faces one of two directions: Either east, toward the rising sun, or toward the center of the bagua diagram emblazoned on the floor.