Lift Hands Volume 20 December 2021 - The Multi-Award Winning Martial Arts Magazine

volume 20

The Eye of Destruction Self Protection in a World Spinning Out of Control Part One Chaos and Order: The Union of Opposites

December 2021

Tracking Mode: Training Methods From The Erle Montaigue System Tai Chi Chuan, Making the Intangible Tangible

Memories of Tomsk

20 Questions:

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illiam ‘Bill Superfoot’ Wallace

Editor Nasser Butt

perception realization activation action

Lift Hands

The Internal Arts Magazine Volume 20 December 2021

Editor

Nasser Butt

L’orso Solitario

Published by L’orso Solitario Books, Leicester, United Kingdom Lift Hands The Internal Arts Magazine Volume 20 December 2021 Editor Nasser Butt Copyright © by Nasser Butt, 2021 & Fa-jing Ch’uan Internal Chinese Boxing Schools Nasser Butt asserts the moral right to be identified as the editor & owner of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the editor.

Waiver of Liability: The publisher assumes no liability for the use or misuse of information contained within this book. By purchasing or electronically downloading this publication, the reader hereby, waives any and all claims he or she may have now or in the future against Nasser Butt and Fa-Jing Ch’uan Internal Chinese Boxing Schools or its affiliates.

The points of view represented here are solely those of the authors’ concerned. You do not have to subscribe to them if you do not wish. Nor is their inclusion here necessarily an endorsement by Fa-jing Ch’uan Internal Chinese Boxing School or its affiliates.

Cover Photo: Bill ‘Superfoot’ Wallace; Photo Credit: Nasser Butt. Copyright©Nasser Butt 2021 Cover Design © Nasser Butt, 2021 Back Design: Copyright © Nasser Butt 2021

lift hands

December 2021

Celebrating 5 Years of the Multi-Award Winning Internal Martial Arts Magazine

contents

Editor’s Note

Page 10

The House of Mouse The Art of Amy Faulkner

Page 12

The Eye of Destruction: Self-protection in a World Spinning Out of Control Part One Dr Gregory T. Lawton

Page 15

Memories of Tomsk — Siberia Katherine Loukopoulos

Page 32

Looking Back at the 12 Deadly Katas Peter Jones

Page 45

Chaos and Order: The Union of Opposites Ramakrishna Pillay

Page 34

20 Questions with Bill ‘Superfoot’ Wallace

Page 51

The Medicine of Words Dr Gregory T. Lawton

Page 64

Old Warriors and the Nature of Things Colin Power

Page 66

Tracking Mode: Training Methods from the Erle Montaigue System Nasser Butt

Page 71

The Gatherings Gavin Richardson

Page 77

Tai Chi Chuan, Making the Intangible Tangible Piercing Eagle Feather [John Aldred]

Page 85

Bill ‘Superfoot’ Wallace Neil Kirkland

Page 91

In Memoriam

Page 98

Peasant Talk

Page 109

Useful Contacts

Page 117

The Art of Louiseneige Be

Page 118

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English Edition Link Italian Edition Link

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ees

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

editor’s Note

Nasser Butt

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elcome to Volume 20 of Lift Hands Magazine!

What an amazing landmark as we celebrate the fifth anniversary of Lift Hands Magazine with an ever growing number of readers across the world — currently standing at 25,000 and counting!

I never imagined in my wildest dreams when I started this project in 2016 that we’d have so much success in such a short space of time from winning awards to publishing critically acclaimed articles by a host of some of the most talented martial artists from around the globe.

My heartfelt Thank you to you all!

This would have been impossible without all the support I have received in the past 5 years with a special mention to [alphabetically]: Tony Bailey, Louiseneige Be, Amy Faulkner, Peter Jones, Neil Kirkland, Dr Gregory Lawton, Katherine Loukopoulos Sensei, Alan Ludmer, Gavin Mulholland, Ramakrishna Pillay and Colin Power for contributing regularly to the magazine, and helping in many other ways too!

My Thank you also to those who wish to remain anonymous and to all those who have contributed to help keep the magazine free through their generous donations throughout the years.

Let us not forget the lights we have lost too! They live on in our hearts and in the arts themselves.

The last couple of years have been difficult and yet despite the difficulties and challenges of Covid, we have marched on, making this milestone even more impressive.

We have a bumper-packed issue to celebrate and I’d like to welcome Piercing Eagle Feather [John Aldred] to our list of contributors.

I hope that you all have a safe and peaceful Christmas, Holidays, Solstice — wherever you are and whatever your beliefs — and a happy, healthy and prosperous 2022!

Here’s to the next 5 years!

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Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Korea Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lithuania Macedonia Madagascar Malaysia Malta Mauritania Mexico Moldova

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South Africa Spain Sri Lanka Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Tanzania Thailand Tunisia Turkey Ukraine UAE United Kingdom USA Uruguay Venezuela Vietnam Zimbabwe

The 10,000 Fighting Methods

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Introduction

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verywhere you look in the world there are indications that people are frightened and angry. Intolerance, hate, and rage are spreading through cities like a wildfire and violence stands at the highest levels in history. Whether at work, at a mall, driving in traffic, walking down the street, in our schools, in our churches or spiritual gatherings, violence is a frequent and growing threat.

Emotions are rising to a very high intensity and some people are increasingly unbalanced, triggered by common social interactions, and all too ready to argue, scream, yell, threaten, fight and to respond to even the slightest disagreement or provocation with verbal or forceful aggression, violence, and/or predatory violence.

Concepts like tolerance, understanding, common courtesy, loving kindness, and caring for our human family have been exchanged for selfish and self-centered ego-based behaviors where the only thing that matters is our own opinion, beliefs, and/or meeting our own personal needs.

The question is, in a climate of mounting unrest and social upheaval how can we keep ourselves and our families safe? In this article I suggest that an awareness of the nature of aggression, forceful aggression, violence, and predatory violence and preparedness against these four threats are your best defense and protection for yourself and your family.

In the material in this article concerning self-defense questions may be raised regarding self-defense and the law.

I am not an attorney, and this information should not be construed as legal advice. If you need legal advice, seek out and consult with an attorney. Physical self-defense skills are intended to be used only as a last resort and only to the degree that is necessary to preserve your safety or life. The best form of self-defense is avoidance.

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The training techniques in this article pertaining to weapons are intended to teach you what to expect if you are attacked by a person who is attempting to use a weapon against you and is not intended to promote your use of weapons, such as a knife, in an illegal manner.

None of the comments in this article are intended to denigrate any martial art style, system, or teacher. Frankly, I have studied many martial arts myself and I respect the many kinds of knowledge and experience that they represent.

In the information to follow I use two terms, self-defense and self-protection. I do not use these words interchangeably. My definition of self-defense is the use of whatever means is necessary to protect oneself from physical or emotional harm or injury. I define self-protection as a larger arena that includes everything needed to provide an environment of protection around oneself, family, and home and this includes security systems, weapons, and all the basic necessities needed to sustain life.

I highly recommend that the reader of this article reviews my previous three-part series entitled “The Medical Implications of Combat Tai Chi Chuan Techniques, Investigating Blunt Force Trauma” which is on the medical consequences of combat Tai Chi Chuan and which contains very practical and direct physical attacks to the most vulnerable areas of the human body.

Please note that there can be serious legal repercussions to defending yourself and inflicting injury to another person or by causing their death. Legal issues may present as criminal charges and/or civil lawsuits. It has often been stated that, “The first fight is for your life, and the second fight is for the rest of your life”. ***************

Growing Interest in Learning Self-Defense and Self-Protection Skills During my martial arts career I have never known a time when there has been so much interest in self-defense and self-protection. I am seeing unprecedented levels of interest in all levels of training from self-defense to home defense, to weapons training, survival training, and preparedness and self-reliance. It is vitally important that the martial art and self-defense skills that you learn are effective. A teacher who is not teaching reality-based techniques that help you to understand the difference between aggression, forceful aggression, violence, and predatory violence and that are effective against a dangerous violent or violent predatory attack is doing a great disservice to his or her students.

Much of what is taught in traditional martial art schools is not effective for several reasons. One reason being that students are often not taught how to identify aggressive posturing and separate it from a potentially lifethreatening violent attack and are often only provided with one response to a perceived threat, a physical one, that may dangerously escalate events that the student could and should have easily walked away from. On the opposite side of the threat equation, students are often not taught how to identify a real threat to their safety or life when facing a violent aggressor or violent predator and may therefore misread and underestimate a serious lifethreatening situation.

Another reason that martial arts students may be unprepared for serious physical threat is that real hand to hand combat skills have been removed from many martial arts or are taught in ineffective and unrealistic ways. Many instructors from the self-defense community have observed this and have commented on it, few of them, however, have been in the Asian martial arts long enough to have observed what transpired to cause their “dilution” over the past six or more decades.

Yet another reason that some martial arts training in self-defense is not effective is a common concept in selfdefense that a person can only defend themselves after they have been attacked. Many self-defense skills are designed to respond to an attack and not to initiate or preempt an attack before the assailant can deliver their first strike. The first person in an encounter to deliver an effective strike, one that causes the autonomic nervous system to shutdown or that destroys the integrity of a joint, generally prevails.

I have seen a shift from the brutal combat skills I was taught in the late 1950s and early 1960s to “black belt mills” and contemporary sports martial arts. The Judo that I learned in the early 1960s was taught by Judoka who learned Judo at the Kodokan Judo Institute in Japan in the 1940s and 1950s while serving in the military.

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At that time Judo included strikes to various parts of the body including strikes to the temple, neck, solar plexus, and the groin. One of the basic principles of Judo during this time, and prior, was to “strike to grapple and grapple to strike”. Strikes were used to set up throws and grappling techniques were often used to set up a strike.

As Judo evolved as a sport, the striking techniques were removed and became fouls. Additionally, the instructors that I trained with knew how to execute a grappling technique or throw to either destroy a joint or to use gravity to knock an opponent unconscious and/or to injure the parts of their body that impacted with the ground. During this period the difference between sport Judo and combat Judo was not much.

What happened between the early years of the entry of the Asian martial arts into Western culture and later years?

The arts were “watered down” and diluted by succeeding generations of poorly trained instructors more focused on sales and legal liability than on teaching the traditional combat aspects of the martial arts. This resulted in two divisions of martial arts training, training for the sport-minded public and training for the military.

Between the martial arts for public consumption, the traditional martial arts, and military combat and hand to hand training, there is presently a disconnect, but this has not always been the case. If you go back in time six or more decades martial arts training was military training. At the point that this stopped being true civilian martial arts became less effective in preparing students for violent encounters against predator’s intent on maiming, raping, or killing them.

My path into the martial arts first came through the military lineage. My first traditional martial art instructor in Kosho Ryu Kenpo had been an Army Ranger instructor and my first Judo instructor had served in the military during the Korean War and then became a police officer. Both instructors spent time training at the Kodokan. My martial arts training during the 1960s was with instructors trained in Japan and Korea, continued while I served in the military, and then through martial arts schools where the combat techniques were traded for sports competition, black belts, and trophies. I certainly recognized the difference between true traditional martial arts and the evolution of modern martial sports. In every school and training program that I participated in I had to tone down my sparring and fighting techniques.

During the 1970s through most of the 1990s I was aware of the difference between these two systems of training and the loss of effective combat techniques and training in most martial arts schools. If your training has not prepared you for violent encounters in the street from sociopathic or psychopathic predators or felons, you have not actually trained in the martial arts.

Mary’s Story Allow me to tell you the story of “Mary”. Mary’s story is true, but I have changed her name to protect her confidentiality. Mary’s story is what would give me the motivation to start a school that would provide not only training in the martial arts and self-defense to men and women, but also professional career training in allied health care and the healing arts.

When I met Mary I was the vice president of a large medical psychology treatment center. One day at the office I was approached by one of the Ph.D. psychologists on staff at the firm and was asked by him to consult with one of his patients, Mary and her husband, but because of my busy schedule I was reluctant to do so.

After repeated urgent requests from this doctor I gave in and agreed to meet with Mary and her husband. All that I was told as to why I was meeting with this couple was that they had suffered family trauma and had an interest in self-defense training.

During this period in my career, I was not conducting public martial art classes, but I was training select students, usually law enforcement officers, in tactical hand to hand combat skills. My usual students were police officers who had been in highly stressful situations where they had found themselves rolling around on the ground and fighting for their lives. They had discovered that the training that they had received in law enforcement training programs had not prepared them for life and death fights on the city streets.

When the day came for me to meet with Mary and her husband the couple was well dressed, and Mary was quietly polite and obviously nervous. After introductions and some small talk, I asked Mary how I could be of assistance to her. I have never forgotten her answer because her response to me was, “I need you to teach me how to kill.”

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Once I recovered from my initial surprise, I asked Mary why she wanted to learn how to kill, and she shared her heartbreaking and tragic story with me.

Please keep in mind as your read this story that there are three kinds of students that an ethical and competent teacher will never accept as students, and certainly someone who announces that they want to learn how to kill falls into one of those categories. The three categories of students that a good teacher will not accept include the sexually perverse, the violent predator, and students who lack the ability to learn and to remember the information that is taught to them.

Mary began to explain her story to me in halting and painful words, punctuated by tears. The woman, her husband, and her then 11-year-old daughter had been in their home when two men broke in and assaulted her husband and raped her at knife point while using threats against her 11-year-old daughter to make her comply with their demands. Over a period of several hours, she was repeatedly raped by both men in front of her husband and her daughter.

Prior to meeting Mary, I had always used my training to help people in need of training and to help to empower those who had been physically and mentally harmed by violent assaults. Mary’s story and plight so moved me that I began what was later to become an over 40-year mission to assist anyone that needed training. Obviously, I accepted her as a student, and I began to train her in the martial arts and self-defense.

The most important attributes needed to address and cope with the personal and social challenges ahead of us are physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional strength. As we see today, during daily increasing tests and difficulties, the greatest threats to our peace of mind and security are stress, hate, rage, fear, anxiety, addiction, depression, and mental illness.

Why Learn Self-Defense?

Rarely am I asked why a person needs to learn self-defense by a victim of childhood abuse, physical assault, sexual assault, or a violent crime. Some students will resist training in avoidance or situational awareness claiming that if they must practice these habits or alter their daily lives in any way that that in and of itself is a form of “assault”. I learned long ago that you cannot change a person’s opinion, you can only attempt to change their point of view or perspective, and so I do not try to change opinions, I attempt to lead by example.

We must be aware that violent attacks do happen, and we can learn how to avoid them or to defend ourselves against them.

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I might suggest, however, that if you could see the world from the point of view of someone who is a survivor of childhood abuse, incest, rape, and violent assault you might at least admit that some of the skill sets that are taught in a self-defense program have merit. If you do not personally want to learn self-defense skills, which are mostly mental, then please do not discourage or hinder the sincere efforts of someone who does want to learn these skills and abilities.

If you drive a car, you probably use avoidance, observation, and situational awareness skills every time you get behind the wheel of a car. Most good drivers drive defensively, and I hope that you are a good driver because I might be next to you on the highway. Defensive drivers are situationally aware. They know where their vehicle is on the road and watch the traffic in front and beyond the cars that they are following, they watch the traffic in their rear-view mirror approaching them from behind, especially at stop signs and at red lights, they monitor traffic in their side mirrors, and they watch their blind spots on both sides of their vehicle. Good drivers develop a sixth sense and know in advance when another driver might quickly change lanes or veer into their lane.

This driving comparison is an analogy for learning the key elements of self-defense which are avoidance, observation, and situational awareness. You learned these skills to get a driver’s license and to be able to drive to work. Perhaps you will now learn to adapt these same skills to protect yourself and your loved ones? Bad things can happen to good people, but they don’t have to.

The most recent violent attack and rape that I became personally aware of involved a young female runner out running in a lonely, wooded area in the dark early morning hours wearing ear buds and listening to music. She was grabbed from behind, taken to the ground, and assaulted.

No one deserves to be mugged, robbed, beaten, or raped. While we may be unprepared for an assault or have made poor choices regarding the situations, we place ourselves into, it is the assailant who is responsible for the violence. It is the decision of the assailant to harm another person that is the cause of the assault. We on the other hand must be aware that violent attacks do happen, and we can learn how to avoid them or to defend ourselves against them. We do not have to be victims.

Everyone Has the Capacity to Defend Themselves You were born with the capability of becoming a human weapon. Everyone has the right to protect themselves.

Even the smallest creatures on earth have been given the ability to protect themselves. I have personally observed a mouse fight back against a cat.

From the evolutionary characteristics of environmental camouflage to chemical protectants and poisons, to horn and hoof, and teeth and claws, all creatures have evolved the ability to protect themselves and to defend their young. Human beings lacking a thick hide, fur, horns, hooves, sharp tearing teeth, and long ripping claws have developed hand, foot, knee, and elbow fighting skills and they have invented basic self-protection weapons including knives, sticks, and guns as a way of magnifying their ability to inflict damage against other humans.

Each human is unique in terms of personality and the innate or acquired qualities that they possess. While we all possess various attributes one of those attributes is the ability to inflict harm to another through violence.

Violence should not be viewed in a negative light but rather as a quality or action that is relative to a particular set of circumstances. In the circumstance of an attack, violence is the correct response, it is likely the only correct response.

Violence for the purpose of rape, injury, or murder is condemned by society, and rightly so, but violence used for personal protection and as a survival tool is a fundamental right of all human beings.

Everyone Has the Legal and Moral Right to Defend Themselves Self-defense and protection skills are very important for individuals, families, and communities. Every individual has the right to defend themselves mentally and physically, from abuse and assault. Abuse and assault may include mental and emotional, as well as physical aspects.

These physical aspects include assault and battery and sexual assault. Family members have the responsibility to watch out for and to protect each other. Parents, of course, have the duty to protect their children from harm.

Older children in a family have the responsibility to protect the younger children in their family. Communities

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have the responsibility and the duty to provide security and protection for its citizens. Individual citizens have the duty to assist their neighbours.

Many of the students that I teach who have been victims of a violent attack were in compromising circumstances and they state that the attack “Came out of nowhere,” in hindsight it did not.

You may be surprised to learn that ninety percent of self-defense is simply awareness and avoidance. The other ten percent is composed of five percent communication skills and five percent self-defense skills.

No one wants to be involved in conflict or violence, no one wants to be injured or killed, or to have a loved one or a friend injured or killed. We all want to live and to enjoy life in peace. However, as is evident from the daily news coverage, bad things happen to good people. Those that do not believe this, are living in a bubble and are not in touch with reality. Our first objective should be to minimize threats in our lives, but when you are faced with the worst day of your life you need to be able to flip the switch and destroy your attackers with total commitment to their destruction.

The First Rule of Self-Defense is the Avoidance of Trouble and Conflict As a child growing up, I was known as the neighbourhood defender. I would fight for and defend the small or “weaker” kids against larger kids and bullies. That characteristic has continued in my life as a fierce sense of personal fairness and social justice. Once I began to study and to train in the martial arts, I started to teach others how to defend themselves. My primary objective is to teach average people how to avoid conflict, or should conflict confront them how to neutralize a threat non-violently, or if violence or an assault should be eminent, how to protect themselves and hopefully to stop the violent attack and to remain safe and unhurt.

The best form of self-defense is to ensure that you have prepared for an attack before it happens and that means that you do not take unnecessary risks with your personal safety. Learn to avoid the areas, places, and people in your life that might increase your risk of being attacked.

Some people think that teaching self-defense is about practicing and teaching violence and nothing could be further from the truth. Self-defense is primarily about avoiding violence whenever possible but if violence comes into your life self-defense training may save your life or the life of a loved one. People who have learned coping mechanisms and how to remain in control of themselves are far less likely to become enraged or driven by fear.

People that react to provocation from the emotions of fear and rage are more likely to overreact to minor provocations, to harm, or kill others. The safest people I know are the most dangerous people I know.

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The first and most important lessons taught and learned in self-defense are the avoidance of risk, threat, and violence. Avoidance is mainly gained through observation, situational awareness, and threat assessment. We teach students to get their heads out of their phone and media and their eyes and mind on the environment around them. By practicing avoidance through situational awareness and assessment, we help people avoid having to use physical self-defense skills. We do not encourage people to be violent, we encourage and empower them to avoid violence.

The training that I provide is intended to be used by good, decent, well-intentioned people who want to use this knowledge to preserve peace and security in their lives. As an author and a teacher of the martial arts and selfdefense classes I do not promote or condone violence and I do recommend the avoidance of violence and harm to another human being whenever possible.

When we employ violence against another human being our intent is the destruction of our assailant. To have reached this point in an encounter we must have exhausted our ability to deescalate, placate, grovel, avoid, escape, or evade a violent or predatory attack that has put us in fear for our lives, or the lives of our loved ones.

A self-defense program is not a vaccine that makes you immune to being victimized. If a self-defense program helps you to avoid and/or effectively deal with threatening situations or an actual attack, then it has served its purpose well. There is no one size fits all and the ability to defend oneself using specific skills or tools is dependent on gender, size, age, and a person’s mental attitude and physical condition.

Situational Awareness and Threat Assessment Is Not Paranoia Recent events in the media have awakened many people to the need to be prepared for crisis and the need for personal and family protection. This has motivated many people to purchase firearms, pepper spray, tasers, and other forms of self-protection. I do not support or recommend this course of action unless it is preceded or accompanied by competent self-defense and mental preparedness training. By mental preparedness I mean training in the psychology and sociology of aggression and violence.

What we do not need are more and more people driving around town with weapons in their cars but with almost no mental or psychological training in how to deal with aggression or violence. As recent events in the news have shown us, even highly trained police officers can make tragic mistakes while under stress, how much more so for the untrained citizen.

Preemptive attacks or counterattacks must be surgical and catastrophic.

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Current social conditions related to the pandemic, economic decline, unemployment, homelessness, immigration, drug addiction, and racism are obviously increasing individual stress, fear, and anxiety, as well as causing a decline in mental health, increasing drug and alcohol abuse, and escalating suicides especially among our youth.

Daily we are hearing about and witnessing terrible acts of violence.

Situational awareness and the ability to assess threats is not paranoia or “living a life in fear," instead these skills provide a sense of self-empowerment and security. The individual who is trained in the mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical aspects of self-defense is less likely to be provoked by argument or social aggression into a situation where physical violence may result in harming someone, the taking of a life, losing one’s own life, or losing your freedom due to incarceration.

I teach my students five levels of threat assessment, and I suggest that human to human conflicts may follow five stages: 1. Assertiveness – Healthy assertiveness is the personal expression of confident and affirming behavior. We may disagree with someone, but that disagreement does not necessarily to lead to aggressive behavior.

2. Aggression – Aggression is a demonstration of the beginning stages of physical and psychologic threat, bullying, and intimidation. Aggression is a domineering pursuit of one’s opinion, aims, interests and/or needs.

3. Forceful Aggression – Forceful aggression is a psychological manifestation of hostile behavior or attitudes toward another person or persons, and it represents a readiness to attack, or it may become an actual physical attack that does not have the intent to cause serious harm, injury, or death.

4. Violence - Violence is the intent to inflict direct physical and psychological harm to another person through behavior that results in injury or death.

5. Predatory Violence - Predatory violence is a form of violence that is inflicted on a person by someone who is psychologically developed by circumstance, conditioning, and/or mental illness. Predators include individuals with aberrant behavior patterns, career criminals, sociopaths, and psychopaths.

Violence is a form of lethal behavior with the intent to cause grievous bodily harm or death. Both the violent and the predatory violent personality are types of the aggressive personality. Together they form a continuum of behaviors that develop over time and through life experience, trauma, and behavioural conditioning. This conditioning develops through an initiation process whereby a role model or dominating person in their lives introduces them to violence.

In plain English, many violent and predatory violent persons were abused as children and then introduced to violence against others by a family member, peer, or gang. When faced with this kind of violent encounter there is no reasoning or talking your way out of the situation. Your choice is to be injured, killed, or raped, or to stop the assailant.

It was for these types of violent assailants, and war, that the traditional martial arts were originally developed. It was foolish for certain instructors to change these arts into point contests and sporting events. If you have studied the traditional martial arts and you are not capable of stopping a violent attack, you have been wasting your time, and worst you have put yourself, and possibly others, at risk.

Self-defense Against a Violent Assailant Requires a Total Commitment to Inflict Catastrophic Injury Perhaps you have watched one of the documentary films on the National Geographic cable network. If so, perhaps you have seen coverage of a predator like a lion taking down their prey. You may have observed the lion and how they selected their prey, then stalked an animal in the herd, and finally their total and complete commitment to taking down and killing the animal that they chose. You may have understood the intensity of the act of hunting, stalking, and killing. Violence in the street is no different and all violence is the same.

This is the total commitment required in attacking or launching a preemptive attack against a violent predator. If you do not do it to them, they will do it to you. Which one of you do you want to be the victim, you, or the assailant? The one committing the violence first is the one that prevails during an attack. Defensive wounds are found on victims.

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Successful self-defense against a violent attack or violent predator requires intent, pin-point focus, and total commitment to your attack. You must want to inflict an injury to your opponent. Regardless of where a target on your opponent has appeared you have to attack that area of their body with intent, pin-point focus, and total commitment. In other words, you must want to strike an area of their body and then do it with enough force to cause serious injury that shuts down the autonomic nervous system, destroys a joint, or breaks a bone.

The eye is a primary target and serious eye injuries will instantly shutdown the autonomic nervous system. For more information regarding eye attacks visit my previously cited articles.

When attacking the eye insert a finger or the thumb into the eye socket until you can’t go any further.

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In our self-defense training classes we practice initiating and launching highly intense, mentally committed physical attacks to the most vulnerable areas of the human body. I have previously written articles for a threepart series published in Lift Hands magazine entitled “The Medical Implications of Combat Tai Chi Chuan Techniques, Investigating Blunt Force Trauma” which includes information on the medical consequences of attacks to the eyes, throat, groin and easily broken bones of the human body. I invite you to refer to those articles as they explain the concept of inflicting maximum damage to the human frame. However, these attacks cannot be effective unless they are delivered with ferocious intensity, like the lion example given above.

In our self-defense classes I teach beginning students three main areas of Chin Na Fa attacks: the eyes, the throat, and the groin. In later classes I add the collarbone and the foot. For most students these five areas are sufficient and about all of the information they can potentially execute under stress and fear. For advanced students we begin to investigate the entire toolbox of Chin Na techniques.

Are the Traditional Martial Arts Ineffective Against Violent Predator Assailants?

There is a lot of criticism of traditional martial arts as regards their effectiveness against violent attacks. Some of this criticism is justified. Much of the criticism is directed at the traditional martial arts by leaders in the selfdefense industry and some of it comes from sports martial artists from the mixed martial arts profession.

My question is do the critics understand that what they are criticizing is not actually traditional but a diluted modernized version of an original martial art? As a point of fact, these same critics have “cherry-picked” the very techniques that modern martial arts have eliminated and are using them to promote their classes and sell their books.

With a point of view that spans almost seventy years in the martial arts I am aware of how the so called traditional martial arts were modified and how the most brutal and effective techniques based upon Chin Na techniques were removed in favor of safer and more sports-oriented methods and techniques.

It seems odd to me that the same critics from the self-defense industry, although using and teaching Chin Na techniques such as those that “seal the breath” (crushing the throat) or cause unconsciousness through the autonomic nervous system (brachial stun), are apparently ignorant of the origin of these techniques in true traditional martial arts.

In my article entitled “The Medical Implications of Combat Tai Chi Chuan Techniques, Investigating Blunt Force Trauma, Part 2," also published in Lift Hands, you will find the following statement and quote.

“Liu Jin Sheng is the co-author of the book Chin Na Fa which was written in collaboration with Zhao Jiang. The first edition of the book was issued in July of 1936 as a manual for the Police Academy of Zhejiang province.

Liu Jin Sheng stated, "...if you are in command of this technique, you can sway the destiny of the enemy. You can kill your enemy, cause unbearable pain, tear his muscles and sinews, break his bones or make him unconscious for some time and completely disable him to resist. Even a woman or a physically weak man who mastered this technique can curb a strong enemy. This technique demands deftness and skill, not brute force. It is necessary to train oneself daily to make the body flexible and nimble, but "hardness" must be hidden inside this "softness."” (1)

Shaolin Chin Na Fa: Art of Seizing and Grappling by Liu Jin Sheng

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One of the easiest areas of the human body to access and damage, especially in an attacker that grabs on to you is the throat. When striking soft targets like the throat drive your hand all the way through the neck until you hit bone.

Contemporary approaches to “reality self-defense” are not offering anything new, they have just repackaged traditional Chin Na Fa but failed to give its originators, teachers, and authors of books on the subject any credit.

If your traditional martial art has been stripped of its Chin Na Fa roots then I agree with the critics, it is most likely ineffective in addressing violent encounters. But if your martial art utilizes, trains, and drills on Chin Na techniques then you should be well prepared to handle the most violent of encounters. You fight how you train.

One of the easiest bones on the upper body to break is the collarbone. My students practice using a downward hammer fist to this bone or the inferior aspect of the palm from the Tai Chi Chuan posture “High Pat on Horse”.

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Violence – Unexpected and Sudden Violence in its various forms can appear in the life of anyone, and when it does it usually does so unexpectedly and suddenly. No one is immune to violence. The best way to avoid violence in your life is to be aware and to be prepared.

I have found that in general people who have not experienced violence in their lives have little interest in learning how to avoid it or deal with it. But people who have suffered from, and survived, violence are eager to learn selfdefense.

Unfortunately, many who are either fearful of potential violence in their lives or who have been the victims of violence or abuse run to the nearest gun store to purchase a weapon. It would be far better if they learned the mental, emotional, and spiritual abilities needed to avoid or defuse aggression and violence when possible. When it is not possible to avoid violence, those with self-defense training will be better able to handle those situations.

Above your shoulders you have a head with a brain in it that is the most advanced processing computer ever created. Your conscious and unconscious brain are capable of processing 11 million pieces of information a second. If you train your body and mind correctly you can take in critical information, reach a decision, and act in microseconds. In our training classes we train to deliver crippling attacks against an aggressor in one second or less. When you have determined that you are facing a threat to your life the time for hesitation has passed, it is time to act. (2)

Assume the Worst, Train for the Worst In reality-based martial art self-defense training we train for the worst possible scenarios, and we know that if we are prepared for the worst-case scenario, we can always modulate and down-regulate the intensity of our attack as specific circumstances allow. We can do the same thing in the street, but we need to possess the capability to deliver an attack to an assailant that is destructive and that completely incapacitates the assailant.

Many of the practices and techniques of the martial arts are too complex to be effective in life threatening attacks when the brain and body are under extreme stress and fear. Effective self-defense techniques must be simple and reduced to as few movements as possible.

Keep your techniques simple, but destructive. An effective technique to the groin will shut down the autonomic nervous system, drop an assailant instantly, and may result in vomiting and unconsciousness.

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When using the knee to attack the groin, drive the knee into the genitals as if you are trying to push your knee out the other side of the assailant’s body. One of my instructors used this technique on an attacker in a bus station restroom and broke the assailant’s pelvis in two locations. That is how it’s done correctly!

Many modern martial artists and self-defense instructors have not figured out how to separate the beauty of the art from the brutality of effective fighting and they confuse the two. I may practice the violin, but I will not use a violin in place of a knife in a fight. I know the difference between techniques that stop an assailant in a heartbeat and those techniques that will not be effective and will likely get me injured or killed. Rather than attempt a wrist-lock on a chemically altered drug addict attacking me with a knife, I will opt for deflecting the knife and crushing their throat. Assume the worst possible scenario and train for the worst possible circumstances.

Conclusion It is my hope that by writing this article you will take steps to safeguard yourself and your family. It is also my hope that you will realize that the greatest self-defense weapon that you have is your mind, but that you must prepare it through spiritual, mental, and emotional training and conditioning. You must remain aware and prepared. In conclusion I would also state that in presenting my experience, observations, and opinions in this article, and other similar ones that I have written, that I have no conflict of interest. I do not charge for teaching martial arts or self-defense and the books and materials that I have written are free to the public.

References: 1. Shaolin Chin Na Fa: Art of Seizing and Grappling, by Liu Jin Sheng, Shan Wu, Shanghai, China, 1936 (Copyright Andrew Timofeevich 2005).

2. Information Processing Speed in Clinical Populations (Studies on Neuropsychology, Neurology and Cognition) 1st Edition by John DeLuca (Editor), Jessica H. Kalmar (Editor), July 24, 2015, Routledge, 27 Church Road, East Sussex, BN3 2FA, UK

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Photography Credit and Assistance: Many thanks to the gifted and talented photographer Abass Ali for his excellent images and to Sifu John Aldred and Mohamed Jabateh who assisted this effort as “attackers” and “defenders”. Sifu John Aldred is a highly trained and skilled martial artist who has trained with me and beside me for over two decades. Both Abass Ali and Mohamed Jabateh are talented and dedicated martial artists who have trained with me for the past nine years.

I must mention that we have a very good time staging and taking these photographs with lots of unusable photos because we are laughing so much that we can’t keep a “threatening face”.

Authors Note: The “gun” used in the first photograph in this article, and that is modelled by MJ Jabateh, not a firearm. It is a Bryna non-lethal self-protection weapon that launches hard rubber balls and balls that contain pepper spray. It effectively stops assailants without taking a life.

About the author: Gregory T. Lawton, D.C., D.N., D.Ac. is a chiropractor, naprapath, and acupuncturist. He is the founder of the Blue Heron Academy of Healing Arts and Sciences where he teaches biomedicine, medical manual therapy, and Asian medicine. Dr. Lawton is nationally board certified in radiology, physiotherapy, manual medicine, and acupuncture. He was the vice president of the Physical and Athletic Rehabilitation Center which provided physical therapy for professional athletes, Olympians, and victims of closed head and spinal cord injuries.

Since the early 1960s Dr. Gregory T. Lawton has studied and trained in Asian religion, philosophy, and martial arts such as Aikido, Jujitsu, Kenpo/kempo, and Tai Chi Chuan. Dr. Lawton served in the U.S. Army between 1965 and 1968 achieving the rank of Sergeant E-5.

Dr. Lawton’s most noted Asian martial art instructor was Professor Huo Chi-Kwang who was a student of Yang Shao Hou.

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“A

picture is worth a thousand words”. If you look at this picture surely you will see the joy I felt while I stood before the Tomsk Seminar participants.

Our Training Hall My joy was not because I was able to visit Tomsk in order to teach a Kobudo seminar. My joy stemmed from being able to fulfil a long time ago childhood dream which was to engage in training with Russian athletes.

Born in Greece, raised in the Greek tradition, schooled with enough classical history and philosophy and trained by strict Okinawa teachers, I spent most of my youth in search of athletic excellence. Rumours had it that Russian athletes were great; Olympic results confirmed it. Therefore, I wanted to learn about the Russian training methods which shaped their athletes into finely tuned turbo machines.

Due to the world’s political differences the many roads to Russia were blocked and my dream remained just a dream. Then, Perestroika took place, and the clouds cleared my path to Russia. You can understand, therefore, it was not just another training trip, but the training trip of my dreams.

When I arrived in Tomsk I came to face innocent looking youth, eager to learn youth, bright eyed youth. I wondered if I really had something to share with those young people. I sweated and trained daily with each person. I told them stories of great teachers who lived on Okinawa, and planted seeds in their hearts of future trips in order to study there because Okinawa was the Mecca of Karate and Kobudo.

In a few days I shared my entire training life with the participants. And, although the interpreters translated our words, it only served for technical understanding. Our sweat, our smiles, our repetitions, our effort, and our difficulties at the training camp bonded us in spite of our language handicap.

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There were always moments of laughter.

To my right is sponsor Leonid Schepkin Sensei who now lives in Moscow, and to my left is a happy participant.

Last Row Left: Valery Kusiy from Odessa, Ukraine, who succeeded in becoming the Director of Goju Ryu Karate Do and Ryu Kobudo, as well as, the chief promoter and most successful of traditional tournament events.

Last Row Right: Vladimir Sitnik Sensei (in spite of geographical and language difficulties) developed Goju Ryu Karate Do in the Sverdlovsk Region. Sitnik Sensei is no longer with us, but forever lives in our hearts.

(Passed away on September 8, 2009)

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What is there to say? That I met great students? That we created wonderful friendships? That for a few days we were able to cultivate the Okinawa martial arts dream into a reality? That the Okinawa teachers were real? That martial arts training and philosophy bridged the gap between the ‘ordinary’ and the ‘great’? That the training, no matter how difficult, brought excitement and gave meaning to our existence?

There was always time to discuss fine technical points.

Left: Vladimir Sitnik Sensei from Sverdlovsk Region. Right: Alexander (Sasha) Gendrikson Sensei from Kaliningrad. Sasha developed into a successful promoter, propagator and instructor of Okinawa Goju Ryu throughout Russia.

For me it was simple: I was given the opportunity to sweat together with Russian people who loved and practiced the same things that I also loved. I went to Tomsk in order to find out what was it that contributed to Russian athletic prowess. When I left I was certain that there were no secret routes to success; except, endless hours of repetitions, determination, dedication, excellent teachers and coaches, and the single minded drive to do better each time.

Nothing was left to speculation; every technical detail was discussed.

I wish all the members well, continued growth, and one day to once again share hours of sweating and training together. For martial artists it is the greatest avenue to lasting friendships.

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The Participants

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The Training Schedule

Kostantin or Kostya Deryahin of Pasha Dolgachov Ukraine

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Special Mention: Mr. Evgeny Gubin

On Monday, August 9, right after lunch, I was walking and talking with many students while holding all of my equipment and training gear. My slipper caught on one of the steps. I fell, and sustained a knee injury. Against my wishes, I was dragged to the Emergency Room and Mr. Evgeny Gubin accompanied me in the Ambulance in route to the Hospital.

Seeing a Russian Emergency Hospital Room was quite an experience! The examination and X-Rays were conducted immediately; the doctors were super! The scenery, however, was something out of a murder movie scene. Dried blood on sheets and pillow cases, and some dried blood were still on walls. Medical machines were solid steel just like the two Ambulance nurses who dragged me out of the gymnasium. I remember bending over to Mr. Evgeny and telling him that I wanted “my mother”. Mr. Evgeny smiled and replied: “Don’t worry Katherine; I am your mother and your father”. Then he consoled me and told me that the doctors were very good.

Although the Orthopedic doctors insisted that I stay off my feet for the next two weeks, I knew that students were waiting, and the show had to go on. I agreed with the doctors, and Mr. Evgeny took me back to the Gymnasium Hall where we continued training for the next three hours and learned Sakugawa no Kun Sho**, and Nunchaku Bunkai***.

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From that day on, Mr. Evgeny was there to offer assistance and continuous encouragement. For the rest of my stay at Tomsk I hobbled, limped, instructed, and we concluded our Seminar with a Grand Finale of a Demonstration.

Parents, friends, and guests had been invited, and we did our best to show off all that we had learned.

The demonstration also featured added attractions: A Rifle Kata was performed by an old time practitioner Mr. Vladimir Chugunov from Moscow. Members of the Air Force Club offered a memorable choreographed fighting exhibition. And in true Russian tradition I was given bouquet of flowers and gifts.

The curtain fell, and the party began!

*Ryu Kyu Kobudo – Traditional martial arts weaponry from the Ryu Kyu Islands located south of Japan. Okinawa is the largest of the Ryu Kyu chain of islands. **Sakugawa no Kun Sho – The Bo Kata of the person named Sakugawa. Kata is a series of prearranged defensive and offensive moves arranged in a specific pattern. All the martial arts techniques are preserved in the Kata. ***Bunkai – Bunkai is the actual explanation and fighting applications demonstrated in each Karate and Kobudo Kata.

Katherine Loukopoulos Bubishi Team Austria 19 December 2021 Editor’s Note: This article was originally written and included in a book authored by Slava Rogozin. It appeared in Russian [see below] in 2014.

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s I have covered all 12 deadly katas some time ago in a basic way, there is more to them than what we see when we first start to learn them!

We learn one kata at a time until we have learned all twelve, but like everything we learn in this internal martial art there's always more to learn. For example, we learn about the points we strike not just for self defence but also for healing as well. This is why I love these katas. I think, with everything we learn within these katas, you wouldn't need to learn another martial art because it has everything you need in a martial and healing art.

When you look at, let's take for example the first kata "Snake Hands,” it doesn't look like much but when you learn it right, what a set of moves!

Learning the points alone takes time but what a set of points your striking! Gall Bladder 24 [Gb24], Stomach 15/16 [St15 & 16], Stomach 9 [St9], also Governor Vessel 26 [Gv26]. All these are great points and can be very dangerous. When learning, you must learn what each one does — both the martial and the healing aspects as I have mentioned already. The points are important to learn, also keeping with what your learning, you must always move from the centre as per the Taiji teachings of the Yangs — this is true of both the Old Yang and Yang Chengfu’s forms.

Figure 1

Figure 2

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Figure 3

Whilst teaching the Snake Hands kata during one of my weekend workshop, we spent an entire day just learning how to move from the centre, and how important it was when putting it together with everything that makes up the move snake hands. It was one of the most rewarding workshops I have ever done, especially when my students turned around and said that they couldn't believe where the time had gone! By the end of the day they were starting to understand how important moving from the centre is. As for the history of the 12 Deadly Katas — there is uncertainty. Erle, my teacher, believed that the 12 Katas came first, then the movements of Taiji being a later refinement.

Over the last few years, as we all know, Covid-19 has affected everyone all around the world, including all the martial arts schools that had to close for safety reasons.

I hope where ever you are around the world, you are returning back to some normality with your classes and your students are coming back and enjoying classes like they haven't been away.

As it is coming up to my teacher and good friend’s passing in January [it be 11 years], I can't believe where the time has gone. Erle may not be with us in person, but he will always remain in my thoughts, my art and my teachings. Your ‘bum steers’ are the best I have learnt, and so glad that I have learnt them, so I can pass them on to students seeking the “good oil” — those who want to learn all those brilliant movements that you taught and mastered throughout your Taiji life.

Thank you my friend for your guidance and your words of wisdom for over 30 years.

I would like to wish all the readers of Life Hands a Happy Christmas and I hope 2022 will be a good one for everyone, Happy New Year!

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“The way to win in battle is to know the rhythms of particular opponents and use beats that your opponents do not expect, providing formless rhythms from rhythms of wisdom.”

Miyamoto Musashi “As the water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it, so a wise man adapts himself to circumstances.”

Confucius “My opponent dictates how they get hit”

Nasser Butt

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ny traditional martial art worth their salt have forms, solo ‘patterns’ or kata, and training methods, two person drills that we practice to test our form using the resistance of a second person. There are some in the martial arts world that say that forms are useless, and that all we need are training methods. After all you are only going to be fighting people, what's the use of a movement without a specific technique? If you can’t use it in a fight, then what's the use of the movement?

With the increase in popularity of sport based martial arts, the traditional forms are seen to be more and more useless by the majority of modern practitioners, unless the technique can be adapted immediately. I remember when I thought the same during my early years of martial arts. Every sparring session and competition I went to was constantly fuelled by the need to have, ‘a tool for every situation,’ and in some respects it worked, as long as I was faster and or stronger.

It was only after I came out of sport oriented, weight class-controlled matches that I realised that in the area of self-defence, I was more than likely to be outmatched in both strength and speed or at least one or the other. I felt the only way to even the odds would be to know more and more techniques to cover every eventuality. I would play out scenarios in my head always saying if this happened I would respond in this way. With this came fear, fear of trying to predict the opponents next move and when learning weapons, it was even worse. After all, even a foot and a half long piece of wood could cut your head open or kill you if well placed. Every class I went to left me trying to clear my body of the stress of controlled situations.

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This was about the time where I started my journey in Tai Chi and the original Yang Lu Chan form. This form was unique in that it was termed an “abstract” form. Abstract forms change the emphasis of our movement from externally oriented i.e. do this in response to this, to an internally oriented focus. Importance is based on how to carry out a movement measured to your own body and how to achieve the movement in the most efficient manner.

As Nasser always says, “If you don’t know where your own body is in space and time, good luck knowing where your opponent is.”

Regardless of what an opponent throws at you. Your arms can only move so high or low and that is dependent on the length of your arms and not your opponents. Our legs are only able to take us as far as they can step which dictates where you can go to avoid an incoming attack. I’m not saying that this isn’t how all forms and kata should have been taught, but it was the first time that measuring my movements against myself had been stressed in such a pragmatic manner.

This eventually led to the term of “rhythm” during fighting. It’s a term so important that Miyamoto Musashi deigned to include it in his seminal martial treatise, “The Book of Five Rings.” How does this apply to abstract forms? If we look at the definition of rhythm it is the “a regular, repeated pattern of sounds or movements” as per Merriam and Webster. Everything in life, be it a piece of music, to a conversation, when people start and stop speaking, to a physical confrontation has a rhythm. Every person has their own rhythm, some are slow and deliberate whilst others are quick and uneven. So, in terms of movement how do we discover our own physical rhythm? The most obvious physical way would be dancing but how would this apply with regard to martial movement?

It’s a simple but arduous process of working out what the optimal way is of moving for your body. When I say this, I am talking about the length of your limbs to your torso and the way the fascia connect to the bones dictate the unique way you move and the unique alignment that force is transmitted through your body. The prerequisite for this is to have abstract forms which teach you the way of moving that is best for you. For example, in the Tai Chi posture P’eng or ‘Ward Off’ the classical posture requires the left wrist to be on the centre line of the body, the left elbow over the left knee, and the left forearm to be slanted upwards to ensure that the force rides over the left arm which deflects the energy up and away from the centre. These points of reference are subject to your own body shape. Of course this isn’t just based on hours of practice, but the emphasis on movements first being measured within oneself before we measure the outer world. Only now do we really start to know our own rhythms, where our body likes to transmit force and along which lines.

I found that once I had started to know my own rhythm, I could do away with collecting a dictionary of technique, instead I was starting to simply react to what an opponent threw at me in the best way I could at that point in time.

This isn’t to say that you miraculously stop making mistakes, that still happened (happens) many times as I improved my understanding of my own body, but what was gone was the severe stress associated with confrontation and the amount of time that it took to come down from that uncomfortable buzz.

We all know people who have no rhythm, they can’t hold a beat, always out of time with a piece of music. It’s as if they are trying to dictate their own rhythm on a situation that already has one. The only way to follow a rhythm is to surrender to it. Only then can you blend your own rhythm to the original one.

This is the same principle as in a confrontation. If know how I move in space and time and where my power sits in relation to myself, then and only then can I really read the rhythm of my attacker. Only then can I, as Confucius says, become like water and “shape myself to the vessel that contains it” and become wise and “adapt myself to the situation.”

The great thing is that the concept of an abstract form is just that, a concept. It’s nothing that can’t be laid over any existing forms. All it requires is to look within before adapting movements to the outside world.

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All Photography: Nasser Butt, Copyright © NasserButt 2021, unless stated otherwise.

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t’s not often you get to meet one of the true legends of the martial arts and get to spend some time with them as well as ask them a few questions — but where do you begin?

Well, let’s start with a brief background history1…

William Louis Wallace — aka Bill “Superfoot” Wallace — was born in Portland, Indiana, USA, on December 1, 1945.

He began his training in high school as a wrestler before moving onto Judo in 1963 whilst serving in the US military. It was during this period when he picked up a serious injury to his right knee which caused him to discontinue his Judo training and take up Shorin-ryu Karate under the tutelage of Michael Gneck.

Bill began his successful fighting career on the point fighting circuit before switching to full-contact competition.

Photography: Christine Batcheler

Due to his knee injury, Bill used his right leg as his base and focused on kicking with his left leg, earning him the moniker of “Superfoot” [more about this later] — his left leg kicks were clocked at speeds in excess of 60mph!

A pioneer of the nascent kickboxing scene, alongside his friend Joe Lewis and others, Bill, under the coaching guidance of veteran fighter Jim ‘Ronin’ Harrison won 23 consecutive professional bouts between 1974-1980, including 13 knockouts during which he became the Professional Karate Association [PKA] middleweight World Full-Contact Karate Champion and the Middleweight Kickboxing Champion for six years, before retiring with a perfect 23-0-0 record.

Bill was both a friend and personal trainer of ‘The King’ — Elvis Presley, as well as the legendary John Belushi.

Sadly, it was he who discovered the body of his dead friend Belushi from a drug overdose at the Chateau Marmont, on Sunset Boulevard, in Hollywood, California.

Bill holds a bachelor's degree in physical education and a master’s degree in kinesiology. He has appeared in several movies including those with his friends Chuck Norris and Jackie Chan. A Blackbelt Magazine Hall of Fame recipient, he holds the rank of 10th dan black belt Soke and manages an organisation of Karate schools under his “Superfoot” System. At the age of 75, Bill is still actively teaching seminars around the world and has authored several books.

I first had the honour of meeting Bill Wallace briefly during The Martial Arts Show Live held at the NEC in Birmingham, UK in 2012. Unfortunately, we both happened to be teaching on the mats at the same time so I was unable to watch him, although we did manage a quick chat.

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So, when my dear friend Neil Kirkland told me that Bill Wallace was returning to the UK to give a seminar in Cambridge as a patron of Adaptive Martial Arts UK & Ireland in October 2021, I jumped at the chance of accepting my invitation and finally getting to see the man at work!

I will not say much about the seminar itself as there is a report on the event in this issue of Lift Hands by Neil Kirkland. I will, however, say that it was a master class and a privilege to not only have witnessed it but to have had the opportunity to capture many photographic moments, as well as getting to interview the great man for our 20 Questions slot.

Almost a decade since I last saw him, he didn’t look any different physically. He still moved powerfully and fluidly, defying the years, and he still had that infectious grin and a schoolboy glint in his eyes. When he taught, he taught with no airs and graces. He was simply “Bill” to every one from the young to the old. He taught with humour and passion, and forthrightness from his reservoir of experience and skill accumulated over the decades.

His humility and humbleness are a lesson to the ‘peacocks’ of modern martial arts. When Bill Wallace speaks, listen — you won’t get to hear or see a better teacher.

Photography: Christine Batcheler

LH: 20 Questions with the “Superfoot” himself! Welcome to Lift Hands Bill Wallace. We have 20 fun questions for you, different from the usual stuff — Let’s see how quick you are!

BSW: Ok… LH: If you could have personally witnessed anything, what would you want to have seen?

BSW: The crucifixion of Jesus Christ! I would have stopped it!

LH: Interesting! What would you do if you were invisible for a day?

BSW: Have a blast! I’d have such a good time [he says with a big grin and mischief in his eyes]!

LH: As a child, what did you wish to become when you grew up?

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This page and following page: Demonstrating with friend and student Ken Herrera

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BSW: A grown up! Just like every child — I want to be like you dad!

LH: What is your greatest strength or weakness?

BSW: Strength… Psychologically, I don’t think that there is anybody who can beat me! Weakness is… I don’t think that anybody can beat me! So, if I don’t think that they can beat me — maybe they can, I just don’t think they can!

LH: Excellent! What is your favorite memory of any one of your grandparents?

BSW: Eating Limburger cheese! Do you know what Limburger cheese is?

LH: No! BSW: Limburger cheese smells like you haven’t washed your feet in 3 months! That’s exactly what it smells like and my grandfather would sit in the living room with a big hunk of it and cut of a piece, put salt on it and… chomp, chomp, chomp! We had to leave the room!

LH: [Laughing] Wow, that’s different! How do you want to be remembered?

BSW: That I’m a good guy!

LH: What have you always wanted and did you ever get it?

BSW: I wanted to be happy and I’m happy!

LH: Do you know your heritage?

BSW: Yes! Freedom!

LH: Freedom?

BSW: Yep! I was up in Scotland in 2006 for the 700 anniversary of William Wallace’s death and I talked to the clan leader. I talked to him about my grandparents and my great grandparents, he said that there was a very good possibility that I am related to William Wallace! My middle name is Louis, just like his was!

Photography: Christine Batcheler

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LH: Wow! That’s some serious heritage! Are you still learning who you are?

BSW: Yes, always! It’s a never-ending battle! Today is different then yesterday! After lunch is different to right now!

LH: What, if anything, are you afraid of and why?

BSW: Suffocation! I’ll take a shower and water will be flowing over my head and I’ll be going — breathes as if hyperventilating — rather than just relax! Punch me, kick me, shoot me, whatever you want but don’t [places hand over mouth] suffocate me!

LH: What is the most memorable class you have ever taken?

BSW: At a class in college and I remember this… for teaching a class! Teach your students something that they know, then teach them something that they don’t know! If you teach them two things which they know, they’ll get bored. If you teach them two things that they don’t know — they’re lost. This way they’ll want to come back tomorrow to learn what they don’t know!

LH: That’s some philosophy! Amazing! What book has influenced you the most?

BSW: I would imagine the Bible!

LH: What ridiculous thing has someone tricked you into doing or believing?

BSW: Wow, that’s hard! I’m basically a non-believer in everything, you’ve got to prove it to me! I would imagine, erm… like your Covid thing — I’m a Republican and an American, and I believe that there is Covid, but the funny thing is that nobody has died of flu over there! In the last two years nobody has died from the flu, everything is Covid! Up until the last two years, we had 100,000 people die of flu every year, now nobody!

LH: Funnily enough, the same has happened here! Who or what has been the greatest influence in your life?

BSW: My parents! My dad and my mother were behind me all the way. My dad was an athlete, he’d say, “C’mon, I’ll take you!” My parents never said, “No!” LH: They backed you all the way?

BSW: All the way, yep! Except when I started winning more trophies, then my mum says, “Don’t bring anymore trophies home, I’ve got to dust them!” — [Bill smiles at the memory] LH: What is the craziest thing one of your teachers has done or made you do?

BSW: [Thinks briefly]… Sit in the corner!

LH: Really?

BSW: Yeah! I was 18 when I started, I was a wrestler in high school and I remember wrestling — I was a good wrestler — and I was playing around and the coach said, “Stop!” And I wouldn’t stop, I didn’t hear him. He said, “What you doing?” I looked around, said sorry. He said, “Get over there in the corner!” [Pulls a face…] I got in the corner — thankfully no dunce hat! [Laughs and walks away to face the corner as he remembers doing] LH: When did you screw everything up, but no one ever found out it was you?

BSW: Let me count the times! How long you got? [Laughs] A bunch of times! I didn’t blame anyone, just said it wasn’t me! How often can you say, it wasn’t me? I didn’t care. I didn’t do it! [Pulls a face with a big grin — see photo next page] LH: If someone made a movie of your life would it be a drama, a comedy, a romantic-comedy, action film or science fiction?

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Photography: Christine Batcheler

BSW: Toss up between a sci-fi and a comedy!

LH: If you could select one person from history and ask them one question — who would you select and what would the question be?

BSW: Jesus Christ — The question would be, is there a God? Because, I believe there is, you believe there is, whatever name we call God by… I’d just like to be sure! The funny thing is that there are a lot of people out there that aren’t atheists, but they don’t really believe… and my dad died of oesophageal cancer, he was going in for the operation and for the first time he says, “God, help me!” Only time I ever heard him say that in fifty something years! I’m like, oh shit! So, if I knew there was — I’d be saying I’m with you 100%!

LH: I’ve got to ask this one…. How did you get your “Superfoot” moniker?

60 Photography: Christine Batcheler

BSW: That was PKA President, Don Quine, who came up with that name after watching me knock out an opponent in the late 70s. The kick was so fast that nobody knew what happened! Later, he was at a Laker’s game and there was a sign there, “Super foot long hotdogs” — and that’s where he got the idea from! I, personally, wanted to be called, “Superfoot Long!” [smiles mischievously].

LH: [Laughing hysterically at his previous reply] How would you describe your art in ten words or less?

BSW: Having fun and taking advantage of somebody’s mistakes!

LH: Brilliant! Thank you sir! It’s been a pleasure and an honour speaking with you and for the record… you were fast! It took you 6 minutes and 56 seconds to answer all the questions. I believe it’s been the quickest time!

Photography: Christine Batcheler

BSW: Thank you guys! It’s been my pleasure! — [Turns to camera] It’s all a lie… don’t believe a word of it!

[Grins!]

1. Most of the historical background information taken from wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Bill_Wallace_(martial_artist)] and The Star System [http://www.starsystemkickboxing.net/Pages/ BillWallace.aspx] My thanks to the beautiful Christine Batcheler for help recording the interview. All images copyrighted © Nasser Butt 2021.

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The Medicine of Words Dr Gregory T. Lawton

About the authorKindly reprinted with permission from:

Dr. Gregory T. Lawton is an author of many books, most of them in the area of health science, but also in the genre of Asian martial arts, philosophy, poetry, and prose. Dr. Lawton is a passionate award winning artist and photographer who finds his artistic and creative inspiration in nature, and who frequently attributes the source of his images and writing to the 19th century Persian Prophet, Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of the Baha’i Faith, and the 13th century Persian poet and Sufi Mystic Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī. Dr. Lawton has been a member of the Baha’i Faith since 1970 and embraces the Faith’s principles related to the promotion of world unity and peace.

The Medicine of Words, Copyright 2021 Dr. Gregory T. Lawton 2040 Raybrook Street, SE Suite 104 Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546 616-285-9999

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Lift Hands would like to thank Katherine Loukopoulos Sensei for providing this exclusive book free of charge to our readers. To get your download link please visit and join our group page on FaceBook: Lift Hands: The Internal Arts Magazine

Everybody’s Free (to wear sunscreen) Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97 Wear sunscreen If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it A long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists Whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable Than my own meandering experience, I will dispense this advice now (Artist: Baz Luhrmann ,Voice actor Lee Perry, Songwriters: Nigel Andrew Swanston / Tim Cox)

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e often talk about the “Old Warrior” and attribute a little respect by saying they have one good punch left in them so you should give them the distance they deserve. Is this really true or just wishful thinking…is it a given that when the need arises we still have what it takes to get out of a tight spot. Surviving conflict has so many variables and a good amount of luck.

This article is not going to be about old man fighting techniques or the secret old man punch. It is going to start with a story of a very interesting man that I came across in my travels. Then I will tell you about my ever changing approach to my training as I turn 56.

I believe that we can challenge “Time” and be useful well into our twilight years but you have to pay the price. The price may include a hard look at your diet and alcohol consumption along with an intelligent approach to physical training. In the end none of us get out alive but we can have a good crack at walking a path of our own choosing.

Let’s start the story of an “Old Warrior” that I happened to met by chance…a man we will call Bob. I met Bob during a podiatry home visit to his wife. There he was in his late 70’s sitting cross-legged on the couch, spine erect just relaxing as you do. His wife was running late so we had some time to sit and have a chat. Coming into the house I had passed a few photos on the wall, a younger man in military attire and another of an older man with Mount Everest in the background so I asked Bob to explain the photos. He said his wife was always late so we would have time. He then preceded to tell me the short version of his life…

He had grown up rough in the Yorkshire countryside (if I remember correctly) with no parents to speak of from an early age he would sleep in barns and get in trouble more than not.

This led him to the military when he was of age and later selection to the British SAS, the first photo was taken in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). At this point he told me that he was not going to tell me any stories about his time in the SAS… not like the young ones these days that where breaking the rules and writing books, he was old school. Anyway he must have been good at his job because he was later brought to Australia to improve the training of the Australian SAS … he served in both the British and Australian SAS, not too shabby.

So at this time you would probably be correct in assuming he must have been a bit of a Badass in his day. So I asked him what he did when he got out of the military. His answer was a bit vague as if he never really got “out” of the military but he did add that he took up marathon running and guiding trekkers to the base camp of Mount Everest. That explained the second photo on the wall.

Bob sat cross-legged on the couch all the time he told his story as if he was a young man in his prime and I was more than impressed with the quiet humble nature of the man…a man you probably wouldn’t want to mess with but still happy to sit down and have a cup of tea with.

Bob slowly lent forward and said, “Well that is all in the past, my body knows it and now I do to”.

He continued by saying that he had a recent altercation with a much younger neighbour the other day that reminded him of the fact. The argument had nearly come to blows but instead he used his training to deescalate rather than inflame the situation.He said that he was still a warrior at heart but comes a time when you realise that the flesh is not able to listen, not able to respond in the way it once was able to. He was happy that it had not come to blows and his old training had meant he had not done anything stupid out of fear. His final remarks as his wife rushed through the door…

Spend your time wisely and you can be a warrior for longer than you have any right to…in the end though you must accept the nature of things.

As the sunscreen song above preempts…what follows is my advice based on experience. Food for thought and not to be taken as the only way or even the correct way. I make so many mistakes in nearly everything that I do and my answers are always open for revision.

Get to know the floor…

I have always been a person that is happy to lay on the hard floor and roll around , etc. I thought most people sat on the floor or at least could do an easy bum to ankle squat if the ground was wet…it appears that not many people sit on the floor anymore. I have found that with another birthday about to pass that sitting cross legged has become more difficult. I put this down to working from home and spending more time at the computer as many of us have been forced to recently. Being able to get to the floor and gracefully get back up again is a strength and technique thing. As a warrior…work on your get up routine, you may need it one day.

Look after your knees and hips…

Many people turn to surgery when the knees and hips give trouble or a quick fix cortisone injection or orthobiologics injection. They may all have a place but often the much harder physical therapy treatment proves to be more successful. It is better to be stronger in a functional way than just stronger. I have found that sitting at the desk in front of my patient or computer is not great for my hips and was effecting my mobility. Like most of us I have to work a number of hours a day to pay the bills, if the balance between work and play was better my hips would most likely be happier. I needed to find some short intense exercises that I could do to compensate for my extended time in a sitting position (Hip flexed). I needed to extend my hips more and I found most health professionals when consulted only recommended stretching.

I tried all sorts of stretching that helped a little but not a lot. In my work as a podiatrist I mainly work with middle aged to mature people and most problems are strength related issues…you just have to figure out which group of muscles are weak then you make them stronger. It is relatively easy to strengthen a muscle but you have to be careful that you give the other structures like tendons and ligaments time to adapt to the new strength. It turned out for me the bum muscles (Gluteals) were under-utilised and could use a bit more exercise.

For me it would be better time spent strengthening my gluteus maximus, biceps femoris, semitendinosus and semimembranosus (hip extensors) than stretching my rectus femoris, iliacus, psoas, sartorius (hip flexors). You may need some help from an appropriately qualified professional to guide you through the process and find out what is best for you.

For me I found that doing a Hindu push-up (a Dand) was a good starting point, concentrating on contracting the gluts and hamstrings during the appropriate time. No equipment required just getting into the habit of doing them. Then I progressed to using the Kettlebell Swing to increase the load to the gluts because I could control the load applied in stages. I started with a 12kg Kettlebell (KB) to learn the technique and acquire the skill

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using a small load for my body size. As my body adapted over time I have progressed to a 16kg then a 20kg KB. The Kettlebells are easier for me to integrate into my work day because I have them in my podiatry practice. I have a personal preference to swinging weights rather than pushing weights because it challenges my stability but you could also use a bar hip thrust technique if you have access to the equipment. It is not the type of exercise that matters…what matters is that it achieves the desired outcome.

For my knees I realised that everything is related and some hip flexors are also knee extensors…I was just getting weaker in general. I then added in a modification of the Hindu Squat (a Baithak) done horizontal to the floor as a reduced load option (source:Tim Anderson - Original Strength). I also do other exercises such as goblet squats with a KB and Bulgarian split squats with a KB and swing steel clubs of various weights. I don’t have a squat rack because I prefer more functional exercises including loaded one sided exercises (contralateral and ipsilateral) as it is more aligned with my martial training. I also love holding single postures as an isometric exercise and a qigong all rolled into one… you can explore your art and understanding through basic postures.

If you have pain seek advise and spend some time on body maintenance…you may be able to claw back some time through targeted exercise.

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Slow down and be a beginner…

The nervous system would love you to give it a bit more time to process the information and work out the kinks. You will find out if you really have balance, stability and understanding of the movement. Not much more to say…go back to the beginning and start again in basic form done slowly. I spend most of my time not learning new things but trying to understand what I thought I knew…I’m really nothing special or gifted. Lucky for me most people think they are “really, really good” and are constantly looking to learn new things.

Stress your body…correctly Some people say that you should do something scary each day to know that you are still alive.

There may be something useful in that saying. If we do something that creates a fear response, fight or flight, the neurotransmitters - Adrenaline and Noradrenaline will be involved and this will have a cascade effect on hormones such as testosterone.

Potentially a very useful response for slowing the ageing process.

As we age our body changes and much of that has to do with the complex dance of our body’s hormones. Much of the work of Dr. Duncan French is to do with hormones and resistance training in elite athletes. He currently works at the UFC performance institute and works with elite fighters. Looking at his research and listening to some interviews he discusses the variable hormonal response to training between each fighter and the ability to increase testosterone levels through resistance training.

It appears that it is beneficial to our testosterone levels (important for both males and females) if we physically stress our bodies a few times a week. This would be a training session that was enough of a physical stressor to create the need for a hormonal response. This level of training would be very different for the weekend warrior versus the elite athlete however we can assume that ‘relative’ stress would create some hormonal changes for the better. His work also seems to imply that if there is some emotional or fear stressor (I’m dreading this workout it’s really going to hurt later or shit…that guy looks more like a mountain, what if he snaps me in two) this may also provide added benefit to increase hormones such as testosterone.

These type of training sessions look a little more high intensity than the average sessions…less rest between and less chit chat and mainly involving resistance training rather than aerobic/endurance training however aerobic/ endurance activity could also be used as a stressor. The stressor would need to be changed from time to time to reduce the adaptation process of the body. It is the load to the system rather than the specific exercise that matters and if it spiked the fear response all the better. You need to be “present” mind and body at these sessions or you will get hurt. Your new skills orientated sessions would need to be a separate session to reduce injury risk.

Other than external medication (Anabolic steroids, testosterone supplementation etc) I don’t know any other means of changing your hormonal levels other than physical exertion. I haven’t come across any research that suggests that there is an easy way to maintain muscle mass and hormonal balance into advancing age. It would be interesting to know if this physical stress response works in the over 40 year old or not. The upside is that this training approach does not seem to increase cortisol levels. Elevated cortisol levels can be related to chronic disease and are already too high for many people leading a modern western life. Cortisol is another of those fight or flight hormones that is useful in suitable spikes but not if chronically elevated. This gives you room to play around with the intensity of your training sessions for hormonal benefit.

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Mindfulness practices All traditional martial arts have deeply engrained mindfulness practices interwoven within their system. Many of us still struggle with being present…keep working on it. Some say that most arts start with the physical because it is the easiest place to start. Some expressions of martial arts have had the martial suppressed… to separate the physical (or sudden violence) from the mindful aspects. I believe that the physical is the required reality check for the mindful aspects…each as important as the other. We can not be completely in balance…all important processes and functions would cease. We are in transition from one state to the next, never reaching a full state. Neither should we seek to suppress emotions. It is better to know that you are still able to function in an emotional state…not holding on or being defined by that thought. Movement whilst afraid rather than trying not to be afraid and still move.

Do interesting stuff…

It does need mentioning that you need to be interested in the things that you do. If your training no longer interests you maybe it is time to move on…no shame in saying that. You may be highly graded in your art but only turn up for the respect from other players. It happens…maybe it is time to go or maybe it is time to become a beginner again, your choice.

Most traditional arts have much more to them than you are currently aware of… Your present art may also be a doorway to a totally different art…possibly not a martial one. You should ask yourself the question “what did I like doing as a kid” it is often the thing you should still be doing as an adult.

Do you believe in magic?

My primary martial art is Taijiquan and it has been shrouded by the mystical and magical to such an extent that many people no longer call it a martial art. Many people do not practice it as a martial art and this has become a movement exercise/therapy…this has value although not in the martial sense. I value all expressions of my art but please don’t try and put some lipstick on it and call it something else…be proud of the art that you practice without dressing it up. I practice a martial version of Taijiquan and rely on the physical training methods not the transference of Qi to deal with sudden violence. The magic of my art already exists in the physical methods with no need for additional makeup. Do I practice Qigong as part of my art…yes I do. Qigong is not separate from physical work and I shouldn’t have to tell you that but it seems I do. I find simple Qigong and isolated postures held as a Qigong extremely beneficial…it is very physical and you should give it a try.

Finally, remember to wear sunscreen, you are free to make that choice.

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Photography & Design by Nasser Butt Copyright©2021

T

he ‘Erle Montaigue System’ as it came to be known, is primarily composed of: 1.

2.

3.

Old Yang Style Taijiquan Baguazhang Wudang Quan

These were the main arts he practiced and added to these, to a lesser extent, were training methods from Xingyi as well as an eclectic mix of training methods which he had gleaned during his travels from meeting some of the great exponents of the martial arts around the world. Unlike many modern martial artists, he hadn’t randomly ‘mixed’ techniques from various martial arts — his ‘system’ was firmly rooted in the neijia and the Classics! I use the term ‘system’ purely to distinguish Erle’s teaching from the modern health-oriented teachings! Erle, himself, publicly stated that he “stood on the shoulders of giants” — those great teachers of the past who had woven the original silk threads of these devastating fighting arts themselves.

The Tracking Mode Training Methods are simply gems from within the old training methods of the Yangs — primarily preserved by the line of Yang Shao-hou — as well as Baguazhang and Xingyi, and of course the source itself, Wudang Quan.

There are many of these methods [including forms] and most people familiar with Erle’s ‘system’ will know of at least some of them, but not necessarily in the context of ‘tracking’ — in other words, most folk would have learned a training method without fully realising the why and majority would not even know or be aware of the term ‘tracking’. Of course, this was not down to poor teaching or lack of information — it was simply down to students themselves not training progressively and/or not studying the subject matter with due diligence! Erle would, himself, go on to lament shortly before he died that he felt like he was “casting pearls before swine,”1 such was his disappointment with the majority of his students.

It is not my intention here to go through each and every tracking method [there are far too many to count], rather my intention is to make the practitioners aware of the subject matter and its importance, and provide context — a context which should be understood alongside Mapping2. Further, as is the case with most training methods — they are multi-dimensional. In other words, they are teaching a whole variety of concepts involving body mechanics and movement with tracking being just one of the elements. This is the first time since Erle’s passing that this information is being highlighted in the public domain! Of course, Erle, himself, mentioned this both explicitly and implicitly throughout his entire teachings, however, since many of the training methods are now either being wrongfully discarded or being misunderstood and changed, and in some cases not even being trained at all — it is high time the subject was raised to preserve the “good oil,” as per the stated intention of The Guild and those of us whom Erle deemed his personal students!

Before continuing, let me state that Tracking Training is not limited to the neijia — other martial arts have them too and yet here too they are equally misunderstood, and with more and more martial artists no longer training ‘classically,’ especially with the rise of MMA, these training methods are being lost to future generations.

So, what do we mean by Tracking Mode Training?

All martial arts consist of two fighting methods — the ‘big man’s’ and the ‘small man’s’ fighting method3.

Further, all martial arts are based on two fundamental concepts — the straight line and the curve — elementary geometry. All fighting stratagems — regardless of style — are born out of these simple facts.

Again, regardless of methodology, some essential truths must be observed: • • • • •

Never step backwards… our intent must remain forwards.

We never fight the peripheral attacking weapon/empty hand, we must always fight the whole body.

Never meet force on force, always move at a slight angle to the attack as you move in.

Never use two steps in fighting. Your defence is your attack!

Never look at the attacking portion. All animals survive using their peripheral vision.

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Take a look at the images on the right and you will see all the above points being observed without reservation. Animals are and always have been the most natural ‘fighters’ on this planet and it is no surprise that many martial arts were born from observing nature.

Tracking mode training literally develops the skills to fight the body as a whole regardless of the attacking portion. Not only that, but the training also develops our rooting skills and the ability to strike from anywhere with timing, co-ordination and power whilst instantly seeing the lines of attack, and cutting the opponent’s power as near to the source as possible at the onset of the attack.

The primary methodology, as always, is developed through our training of Da Shou [Striking/Joining Hands] training methods, however, as I have already stated, virtually the entire repertoire of training methods within the ‘System’ incorporate tracking mode training at its core.

Through peripheral vision, we observe the body as a whole unit. No person can attack you, whether it is a kick a punch, or a weapon without moving or adjusting their body first. Strike the instant any part of their body moves!

I will use the very simple training method for teaching a beginner how to develop a right, left, right fa-jing ‘shake’ of the waist to illustrate below.

All images take from Adobe Stock, Royalty Free. Images by Cheryl Ramalho, Mikhail Semenov, Hedrus, Nature Guy, and Vaclav.

This method is a basic drill and most who have trained in Erle’s ‘system’ should at some point in their training have covered this.

In Photo 1, my partner [Amy Faulkner] raises her right palm [this method is usually done wearing a striking mitt on the right or left hand — depending on the side we start on — however, it can be practiced on a palm for beginners since they would not have much power in their strikes].

Photo 1

My waist instantly loads slightly to the right causing my hands to rise [Photo 2] and then turns rapidly to the left [Photo 3 overleaf] and back to the right [Photos 4 & 5 overleaf].

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Photo 2

The shake of the waist to the left and right causes my right hand to strike my partner’s right palm with a snap punch and, as I ground into my right foot, my left palm strikes their left shoulder.

As I have stated above, most people would have learned this drill to develop the basic ‘shake’ of fajing and most likely have left it at that once their ego felt that they were hitting the mitt on the their partner’s right palm with sufficient power and in doing so they would have failed to see the proverbial wood for the trees!

Photo 3

Photo 4

This drill is also one of the basic tracking methods — not just to develop the fajing shake!

Whilst most folk assumed that touching their partner’s left shoulder was simply to show that they had turned their waist enough and correctly in the opposing direction whilst striking on the right side — they would fail to understand this at the tracking level.

Note, in all of the images my eyes never look at the striking portions represented here by Amy’s right and left arms. I use my peripheral vision to see her whole body as I attack her right side [palm] tracking her body’s positioning. The strike with my left palm to her left shoulder is an indicator that I have tracked her correctly and cut the source of her power on the left side [shoulder] to prevent her following up with a left strike! Note, also, my final structure in Photo 5 — my body is holding its alignments as per the Classics!

In the images above, the drill is being done from a static position. It is far easier to show this from this perspective using still photography. Once the basic shake has been ‘mastered,’ the drill advances to the next level.

Photo 5

Your partner would now raise the mitt from a neutral position [i.e. with their hands starting by their sides] and instantly follow up with a strike with a left. The practitioner would strike the right side and attack the left, using the fajing shake — the aim would be to see how far the attacker would be able to raise their arm before their power is checked. Obviously, as the skill of the practitioner improved, their partner’s arm would barely have left their side before they were checked.

The next or third level of the same drill would be now where there would be no mitt. Your ‘attacker’ would wear safety body armour and head gear — as soon as they move, you’d adjust your body accordingly and strike multiple times!

Students need to be aware that this is a training method only — not a technique! Its function is to teach you concepts and principles — nothing more, nothing less and that there are many of these methods.

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The swivelling [Photos 6, 7 & 8] and stepping components of the Small San-sau4 not only teach the students the fundamentals of the 13 Dynamics — the alphabet of Taijiquan — they are also a master tutor tracking mode training method teaching us how to fight the body as whole and never the peripherals.

Of course, this information is distilled and refined throughout our training eventually being seen in Photo 6 everything we do culminating at the highest levels of our Da Shou practice and ultimately the Pauchui! However, a word of warning… students who dismiss training methods as ‘old’ or irrelevant, or are told they need not practice them since Erle was no longer practicing them in his later years, will always fall short and fail! Erle achieved the heights he did through practicing these drills to the nth degree, not through bypassing or avoiding these training methods! If you want to learn how to read and write you must begin with the alphabet, it is that simple!

Photo 7

As I stated at the start of this article — this is merely meant to be a brief introduction and an insight into this topic. Hopefully, it will give the student some food for thought — and I don’t only mean Taiji students or those who trained in Erle’s ‘system’. This should be a cause for reflection for all practitioners regardless of what you call your style. Katas, forms, training methods are multi-layered much like an onion — as you peel back one layer, another reveals itself!

As we approach the 11th anniversary of Erle’s passing, this is a gift of the “good oil” to all out there.

My thanks to Amy Faulkner for appearing in these photos with me.

Photo 8 [Photography David Garcia] It took much courage for her to do so and those who know her, will understand what I mean. I am very proud of her to say the least! My thanks also to Maggie Cooper for taking the photos and David Garcia for the archival photo of myself and my partner in crime — Elliot Morris — who has always stood by me come rain or shine.

Notes: 1. I have covered this in detail in my books, The 12 Secret Rings of The Yang Family and Whose Line Is It Anyway? Both books are available from Peecho and details can be found in this publication.

2. See Lift Hands Volume 17 September 2019 for a brief article on Mapping.

3. It is not my intention to go into the details of the two methods. Suffice to say that they exist and most teachers who discard parts of or change forms and/or training methods as being ineffective fail to understand that the method they are discarding may not be suited to their body shape, size or physical ability, but is useful to another! Regardless, both methods must be understood by all practitioners. See Lift Hands Volume 17, March 2021 — Baguazhang: The Art of Dong ‘The Fugitive’ for a brief description of the two methods.

4. The role of Tracking Training Methods in the Small San-sau is covered in my forthcoming book — Unlocking The Small San-Shou and DVD of the same title.

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M

y fellow Martial Artists, I would like to take the opportunity, if I may, to tell you all about a martial arts event we have here in the UK 4 times a year. They are known simply as The Gatherings.

The Gathering of the Masters started years ago at two different locations and under two different sets of instructors.

Let’s start with Neil Kirkland, and his Adaptive Martial Arts UK & Ireland group.

Around 2010, Neil started holding seminars with his good friend Sensei “Mad Robbie Woodard” in Welwyn Garden City (By London) and at his own dojos in Cambridge.

The plan was simple, get some instructors together to teach inclusive seminars for all abilities and share some knowledge. As with everything, it started off small and between Neil and Robbie the number of participants started to grow.

More instructors were invited to share their knowledge as the seminars grew in size and popularity.

As the Welwyn Garden City venue being used was a function room in a bar, it made sense that after the training and a shower, and some fresh clean clothes, all would meet back up at the venue for a sit down meal and some singing and dancing with a few drinks at the bar.

Further north we were doing exactly the same thing at Tony Pillage’s dojo over in Coventry.

About every 2 months, gangs of us would turn up and just train together, with a different instructor on the mat every hour or so.

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No politics, no egos, and no agendas apart from sharing knowledge and spending some time with your mates.

Classes would typically start with a good warm up followed by an hour of boxing training with the ‘Bomber’ Errol Graham, then a pressure point session with Rustle Stutely, before a session on old school Ju-Jitsu with ‘The General’ — Sensei Tony Bailey.

We would cover all kinds of stuff from Ninjutsu to Western boxing and everything in between!

Then later in the evening, we would all get together for a drink or 6, a session of war stories and piss taking, general banter and bonding with fellow instructors from all over the UK. Slowly, these classes were opened up to the general public, but at the start they were for the instructors and top students only. This was our selfish time to take the teachers hat off and just be a sponge for the day. To absorb as much as we could and have good laugh while we did it.

It was years later at the British Martial Arts Awards that I first met Neil Kirkland. While sharing a pint he said that not a lot of people wanted to go down and train with his guys as they all have different needs and some people found it difficult to adapt their system to suit the guys who needed a bit more help.

I volunteered there and then and within a couple of months I was down in Cambridge working with his guys and making a whole new set of friends. The class went unbelievably well and over the course of the day about 40 or students went through the first part of my “Be your own Bodyguard” program.

Due to the success of the sessions, we decided to open it up and do it again later in the year but this time we would push it as an open seminar and invite other instructors along to help share their knowledge and skills with a new set or students and colleagues.

The Gatherings were starting to grow.

One of the main differences we have with these get togethers is the way we spend the profits or more to point the way we don’t spend them.

Right from the very beginning we all agreed that there would be no profit kept by any one of us! If there were hall hire fees etc, they should be covered but everything else we raise, we give away.

The money has been used for various causes from cancer treatment, helping maintain transport for the members of Adaptive Martial Arts UK & Ireland, as well as paying towards a holiday for one of our young men after major open-heart surgery… and the list goes on!

As well as the special guest instructors we have a team of regulars — people who give their time and knowledge for free to help make these events what they are. These guys are not the little fella teaching at the end of the street, these are the best instructors in their particular fields.

Sensei Ken Culshaw Kenny started his training in 1967 under Sensei John and Soke James Blundell. He also trained with Professor Robert Clark at the Lowlands and Stanley house Liverpool. He formed Welham Martial Arts in 1996. When it comes to Ju-Jitsu Kenny is the man to go to.

Steve Tappin Escrima Concepts: In 1965 he began his journey in martial arts with his family and their friends, who ran their own Boxing and Catch Wrestling gyms in Islington, he also attended a few clubs in the East End intermittently for years. He also wrestled and boxed in secondary school. He continued this training for many years, mainly with family and his own friends. He learnt many street techniques from some men who fought in WW2 and Korea during his teenage years. Around 1972 he joined a Karate Club in Holborn ran by Sensei Charles Mack.

He often regretted not staying longer there. In 1976/7 He went to Grandmaster Brian Jones’s London Clubs, where he was introduced to unarmed full contact free-sparring and Escrima. This started him on his journey to learn all he could about weapons to unarmed transition in Escrima. In 1978 he continued his journey concerning an assortment of medieval and ancient weapons, including training with shields and companion weapons.

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This eventually brought him in contact with his mentor and trusted friend John Waller, his son, Jonathan Waller and some of John’s interpretation team of the Royal Armouries (Leeds). He first met John Waller in the Tower of London. They founded The European Historical Combat Guild (‘The Guild’). Steve has been an international instructor since the early 90s travelling the world training, teaching and giving demonstrations on Escrima and The Guild’s teaching for a large Martial Art Organisation. Steve, previously worked the doors and other security work, on and off for 15 years. In 2003 Steve concentrated on only teaching Escrima Concepts, and now has clubs in Western Europe where he teaches with his son Wayne Tappin, often aided by his instructors.

Shihan Keith Priestly The greatest thing about Keith (apart from the fact that he is one of the top-shelf martial artists and instructors in the land) is his humbleness and his humour — a trait of his Yorkshire roots, no doubt!

There is probably no honour or championship that Keith has not already won or had bestowed upon him! Yet, none of these are of any importance to him nor does he go around listing them or displaying them like some proud peacock. He is what can only be described as a ‘true salt of the earth’ type, who has taken his own martial arts journey to another level and now I believe, is helping others to achieve the same.

As a martial artist, there is no doubt that, he is 'old school' — tough as nails and dedicated to teaching the arts realistically and traditionally. This is shown in the fact that for the past several years Keith has been leading and taking a team of his up and coming students to train, study and fight in Japan - where they themselves have achieved many honours in their own right! His dojo in Bradford, Yorkshire - Fight Club 1 - is a testimony to his teachings by the calibre of martial artists and students it is producing.

Keith’s journey into the arts started many, many years ago — with Judo. His teacher, Mr Rodwell, was a Judoka. He joined a school — Bradford Shotokan Karate Club — run by Brian Nicholson, who had just come back from Japan, his standard was very high and demanding. Keith was soon into the fighting side of it, and began competing .Titles soon followed. When his instructor retired, he told him to take over the dojo.

After a few years of teaching, he delved into other forms of the arts. Kendo was his next venture but, after 4 years the instructor closed the club. So, he looked into another - Kickboxing. He met Bob Sykes at a local tournament, fought him, lost, but knew thats where he was going. His club turned into a kickboxing school, which became very successful and toured Europe. It was in Italy, where he met Sosai Kimura, a Kyokushin instructor from Japan. He asked Keith if he would go to Japan to train with him? Japan was always a dream, it became a reality and now he leads the England and Euro team — taking a team every year to Japan.

Peter Holmes Peter started training 1978 in Judo and Kung fu. Then went on to Tang Su Do with Master Mark Adlington, he is now a Karate-jitsu 6th Dan with the Dragon Society .

Sensei Robbie Woodard Robbie started his martial arts journey in 1965 studying Judo. He moved into Karate in the early 70s with Sensei Charles Mack and Steve Tappin then under the guidance of Sensei Enoida down in London studying Shotokan Karate. He was awarded his 9th Dan by the late and great Master Brian Jones.

Sensei Tony Bailey (The General) Tony has been studying Martial Arts, mainly Japanese Arts for 41 years so far. He diversified with a little Chinese Kung Fu for a couple of years, but has mainly stuck to the Japanese arts, as they were his earliest experiences and suited him .

He has Black Belts in several systems and teaching grades in a few, but he mainly sticks to teaching the Ju Jutsu syllabus he founded in 1994 called Mizu Ryu Ju Jitsu!

It’s not just the martial arts in which Tony has classical training! He is also a professional Classical and Flamenco guitar performer and teacher!

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Tony is a complete martial artist. Not only is he thoroughly versed in the combative arts — he is also highly skilled in the healing arts, holding a Master & Teachers Degree in Usui Reiki! He is also a Coach Ambassador for Fighting For Autism - something very close to his heart.

Sensei Neil Kirkland Neil started Shotokan in 1979, then went and trained Kick Boxing and Karate with Pat O’Keefe through the 80s He met Robbie when he went to run a pub in Welwyn in the late 90s. Neil moved to Cambridge and started Wing Chun, which is where he met the late Grandmaster Brian Jones.

Nasser Butt Nasser Butt is an award winning martial artist and author.

He has been studying and practicing Chinese Martial Arts for over 35 years — comprising of Wing Chun, Taijiquan, Baguazhang and Wudang Boxing!

Nasser trained directly with Erle Montaigue from 1999 until Erle’s passing in 2011 and was his North England Representative. Erle had officially ranked Nasser to the level of 5th Degree and considered him as one of his handful of “real students,” and “most highly trained instructors in the UK,” as well as a personal friend, whom he allowed to document and film his teachings.

He is regularly invited to give seminars around the world and is also the founder and editor of the multi-award winning online martial arts magazine, Lift Hands, with a readership of over 25K in 105 countries around the world.

Nasser has been teaching martial arts for two decades and is the founder and Chief Instructor of Fa-jing Ch’uan Internal Chinese Boxing School based in Leicester, where he teaches Erle’s ‘System’ or as he likes to call it — “Move to Survive” — with students attending regular classes and seminars from across the UK, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the USA. In 2020, along with his friend Peter Jones — Chief Instructor of Foundations and the highest ranked UK Instructor and personal friend of Erle Montaigue — they formed The Guild of Internal Martial & Healing Arts dedicated to the authentic teachings of Erle Montaigue and the Neijia.

And there is myself, Gavin Richardson, I only started my training in 1984 so just under 40 years in the dojo!

I'm the new kid on the block. My background has been traditional karate for over 20 years (Shotokan).

I was the first person in the UK to be graded to black belt at GKR Karate. I've done about 18 years functional Jeet Kune Do with Mo Teague and about the last two years doing our Tai Chi with Nasser Butt.

At each Gathering, we will have a different set of instructors with us. People have been kind enough to travel from all over the country to work with our students. Right up from the top of Scotland to the bottom of Cornwall and everywhere in between. The format has now been pretty much established although the venue changes for every event.

For most of us, the Gathering starts the night before as we like to travel down the day before and book into the hotel where we can eat, drink and catch up with each other. Otherwise, it’s an early start and a drive across the country to the venue. Training usually starts around 09.30 and we all do an hour on the mats. With about a 30minute break for some lunch. There is no real timetable to speak of, we just take turns at the front.

We usually knock off and bow out around 6.00pm. Sometimes we’ll just keep going, it all depends on the vibe and energy levels. Then it’s back to the hotels for a shower and some fresh clothes. Before meeting up for a nice meal and a well-earned drink…or two.

The evening will then consist of loads of laughing and general piss-taking while we relate old stories or discuss who did what wrong during the day (an ongoing source of amusement is reminding Lord Keith Priestley about his ooooopp moment, an involuntary sound he made when The General Tony Bailey gave him a love cuddle once), or listening to the tales Mad Robbie tells and trying to figure out why he isn’t in a padded cell!

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Training itself is tailored to the students, we generally have a good mix of newer guys and seasoned black belts from all kinds of styles and systems, so everyone in the room gets well looked after. Also, because we keep the numbers to about 50 or so, by the time we all go home we all know each other’s names.

You can learn all kinds at our Gatherings, from unarmed combat work under Steve Tappin and his Escrima Concepts group to pressure point work from our very own master of pain, Pete (Pedro) Holmes.

Full Contact karate is looked after by Sensei Keith Priestley, while the legend that is Sensei Ken Culshaw shares his Ju-Jitsu knowledge with us. Nasser Butt is the goto man for all things Tai Chi and Neil Kirkland will put us through our paces while showing us how a lot of what we do has been adapted for people with special needs.

One of my strong points is that I seem to be able to blend different systems into another new combination. So, lots of my classes will involve pulling 3 or 4 completely different moves or combinations from the others and putting them together into another way of doing things with my own added flavour of nastiness and pain infliction.

With working the doors and spending time as a body guard all over the place I've built up a good repertoire of principles and techniques that work well when faced with real danger. So I have a variety of subjects I can call upon to deliver a good and challenging class.

One of the most important people backstage is our very own Christine Batcheler who generally organises all of our hotels and admin for the day.

Last, but most definitely not least, is the star of every get together we have, young Carl (Carlos) Clements. A young man who has overcome adversity we cannot begin to imagine, but is always smiling and ready to give you a great big man hug.

Moving forward, we are planning to hold 4 Gatherings a year. Top, Middle, Bottom and side of the country.

For 2022 we kick off the New-Year at Neil’s place down in Cambridge on the 15 January. Then later in the year we will head to Leicester, to Nasser’s dojo, then onto Basingstoke with Tony Bailey before finishing the year towards the end of November back at Welwyn Garden City with big Robbie.

New instructors are always welcome and if you have something to share get in touch. If you would like to be part of any of the Gatherings coming up in 2022 just drop me an email at gavin@pbagroup.com or find me on facebook. For some unknown reason I have officially been made the unofficial face of the gatherings. So keep an eye out for videos and posts announcing new dates and venues across the UK. Our goal moving forward is simple, share some knowledge, bring good people together and raise a few quid for different charities along the way.

I really can’t tell you how much fun we have at these get togethers, or how important it is to meet up with old friends, especially with the way the world has been lately with lock downs and restrictions all over the place.

Too many people think training in the martial arts is about going to a class and getting sweaty for an hour or two then going home again. That’s only a part of the story! Real understanding comes from sitting and talking to the people who have been there and done it before. Listening to the old school relive past experiences and absorbing their wisdom.

I learnt years ago that people who talk, repeat what they know, people who listen learn… so although I can talk the leg off a donkey at these times I like to just sit back with a drink and absorb as much as I can. Plus if its Robbie telling one of his tales you won’t get a word in anyway, and even if you could you be laughing to much to talk!

To give you an idea of what we get up to, try to imagine a room with some of the most experienced and wellknown instructors in the country, people with an average of 40-50 years’ worth of martial arts experience each in a big circle with a beer in hand singing “Itsy bitsy teeny weenie yellow polka dot bikini” at the top of our combined voices… with Christmas hats on.

The Gatherings — THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!

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he best way to progress and improve in Tai Chi Chuan is to attend to the basics, and one of the most fundamental basics in Tai Chi is attention to correct posture when practicing your form. Correct body alignment is how we transform the intangible elements of Tai Chi to a tangible expression of the main principles of Tai Chi Chuan.

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Maintain mind intent and purity of motive Keep your eyes open, inquisitive, and relaxed Practice profound relaxation (Sung) Be soft like water Sink your weight and root like a tree Breathe naturally, lightly through the nose, and rest the tongue on the roof of the mouth Have a straight but limber and flexible spine (A string lightly pulling at Baihui – Du Mai 20) Maintain a weight separated stance (Not double weighted) Turn from the waist (Millstone grinding) Use correct and adept hand positions and applications Move with centeredness with focus on the movement and sensation of energy throughout the body Apply slow deliberate movements Maintain a continuous flow of movement without interruption Express silk reeling movement from the feet and throughout the body Lead with the mind, be mindful and mindless.

Be aware and connected to the environment around you Swim gently through the air around you Be amazed and open to the possibilities and experiences that present themselves to you

When a practitioner of Tai Chi manifests proper posture they begin to feel comfortable and relaxed when practicing or executing the Tai Chi postures and that comfort and relaxation leads to inner harmony and unity within all the elements that comprise Tai Chi Chuan.

Tai Chi Chuan is commonly translated to mean “Grand Ultimate Boxing”. This description of Tai Chi Chuan invites the Tai Chi practitioner to the highest expression of “the best boxing art”. To achieve the “Grand Ultimate” you must practice Tai Chi with diligent attention to each posture to manifest the basic principles of Tai Chi through each posture in a Tai Chi form. If you are looking to understand why Tai Chi Chuan is considered by many experts in the field as one of the best martial arts, then you need to participate and practice a form of Tai Chi Chuan that will help foster this ability within yourself.

When a Tai Chi practitioner gets to the point in their practice where they know a traditional long form, they can begin to experience the sensation of “ebb and flow," or what some might call the “sensation of chi” within their body and through their limbs. Once you begin to experience this sensation, then a reasonable question might come up regarding “Why am I feeling this sensation? Why am I experiencing these sensations, what are they, and what do they mean?”

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Photo Credit: Abbas Ali

There are times when words are inadequate to explain higher concepts or experiences, and this may be one of those times. This is the intangible nature of Tai Chi Chuan as an internal martial art. The truth of “why” may be found in the “chaining” of each posture through one continuous flow of movement and the correct alignment of the body’s mechanics throughout the movements and the transitions between them.

Tai Chi has been described as “meditation in motion” and perhaps in nature we can find perfect analogies that help us to understand the intangible elements of Tai Chi that carry a greater significance than words.

Consider the art of meditation which is a perfect compliment to Tai Chi. I am not suggesting the forms of meditation where you fold yourself into a pretzel and struggle to breathe. In the most profound forms of meditation there is no need for tortuous postures, music, or complicated breath practices. True meditation is observation. Observation of yourself and observation of the world around you! Picture yourself sitting comfortably and watching what you see in front of you. You might be sitting on the ocean shore watching the waves or standing by a waterfall and gazing into the ever-falling flow of the water.

I spent many of my younger years hiking through the dense forests of Northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. On occasion I would come upon a gemlike hidden waterfall. At such times I would sit and quietly observe the beauty of the natural phenomenon around me and contemplate the ageless flow of the water. On such occasions I would follow the flow of the river and search for a “still point," a place where the roiling waters slow and calm, and here, like a moth to a flame, I would lose myself within its depths.

There can be a comfort and a sense of awe watching the continuous flow of a river rapids or the onward rushing of a falling waterfall. The roar of the water drowns out all other sounds which allows your attention to focus intently on the sound and movement of the water. Once again lost in the sound of the water we may search for a still point within the chaos of the moving water.

In the “still point” we may discover that this is a perfect analogy to the flow that we find in a Tai Chi form. Just like the futility of trying to capture the river’s current in a snapshot or trying to understand all the nuances of an individual posture of Tai Chi Chuan can leave you confused, it is in focusing on the still point, where all other

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phenomena are comprehended and they find their place in the order of things, naturally. The waterfalls flow moves through the still point like a flash of lightning through the sky. It moves through this still point again and again. There is always something new in the still point to be learned. The moving water of a river as I observe it, is always refreshed, and renewed. Just as a Tai Chi practitioner come to understand the intangible and to be renewed each time, they return to their Tai Chi form.

We might consider that the expression of Yin in a Tai Chi form is the still point and the sequential postures of the form are the expression of Yang. An analogy that relates to our water example is the still point which is Yin and the roiling water which is Yang. Like an alarm clock waking you up from a night’s sleep both of these two forces, Yin and Yang are trying to gain your attention and return me to the present moment, the now. The alarm clock is like a clap of thunder, and I awaken to a calm alertness and the present moment.

How does a beginner or an experienced practitioner of Tai Chi Chuan develop martial ability? Knowledge comes from constant practice of the tangible elements of Tai Chi and through correct practice of the postures the basic principles of Tai Chi manifest naturally. True ability comes from practice without thinking about each posture, each hand position, or each step of the form. If you are thinking your way, posture by posture, through the form, you will never achieve the intangible.

Single Whip with Elbow Dislocation: This technique involves an ulnar bone strike to the side of the neck and throat combined with grabbing the wrist and twisting the forearm (split) while rotating the ribcage to create a fulcrum upon which to dislocate the elbow. Not seen in the photo is the thigh and knee pushing to destroy the balance of the victim in this photograph. Credit: John Aldred and Adam Conley

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Double Dragon Palms to Throat and Solar Plexus: In this technique John demonstrates a strike and grab to the throat (Tigers Mouth) while executing a vertical Tai Chi Punch to the solar plexus. Not seen in this photograph is John has stepped on his opponents foot to limit his movement and to upset his balance.

Credit: John Aldred and Adam Conley That is the trickiness of Tai Chi Chuan, you must be alert and present in the given moment. To act accordingly, you also have to be calm and mentally collected. To act justly, you must have practiced consistently in order for the brain and the muscles to remember what can be done in the most efficient manner possible. All these things one can learn from taking the time to consistently practice Tai Chi Chuan with correct posture and with attention to the basic principles. No matter how long we have practiced Tai Chi Chuan, if we do not attend to this, the basics, we will not progress.

Once a practitioner of Tai Chi Chuan can comprehend and manifest this phenomenon, they can begin to gather the strings of the intangible elements of Tai Chi into a more concrete tangible experience. This tangibility lies within the efficient mechanics of the body itself. Together with patience, perseverance, and consistency in the practice of Tai Chi, this method allows for the natural manifestation of martial ability to be expressed in the Tai Chi practitioner. The practitioner is left renewed and refreshed and they can progress in their martial ability and state of being. Nothing can compare to what the tangible and intangible elements of Tai Chi Chuan has to offer, except for the gentle art of watching water flow. In this manner can the expression “Grand Ultimate Boxing” be comprehended.

I would like to thank Nasser Butt, Dr. Gregory Lawton, and all other editors and contributors of this international magazine Lift Hands, for inviting my contribution and expertise with regards to Yang Shao Hou style Tai Chi Chuan.

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Fishes in Eight to Shoulder Dislocation and Takedown: In this technique John demonstrates Fishes in Eight as grabs his opponent wrist and snakes his opposite hand inside the opponent’s arm and twists and rotates the opponents arm backwards to dislocate the shoulder and drop the opponent on the ground. Not seen in this photograph is John’s foot placed on top of the opponent’s right foot. Credit: John Aldred and Adam Conley

About the Author, Piercing Eagle Feather (John Aldred) B.S., C.M.T., CHHP, Blue Heron Academy Head Martial Arts Instructor Piercing Eagle Feather (John Aldred) has been researching and practicing the healing and fitness arts for nearly 35 years and has been studying martial arts over 25 years ago. He began studying the fundamentals of Judo and Hapkido while attending college. After graduating with his Bachelor of Science degree in Health and Fitness, Prevention and Rehabilitation he found his niche practicing and studying the internal styles of Tai Chi Chuan, Pakua Chang, Hsing Yi Chuan, and Lok Hap Baat Faat Liuhebafaquan.

John Aldred is an Anishnabe, which means Original Person (people). He is a proud member of The Lake Superior Band of Ojibway Indians. He is a certified enrolled member of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community L’Anse Reservation. Many Native Americans adhere to a clan system for developing a sense of personal responsibility and cooperation within the tribe itself.

John expanded and advanced his repertoire in the healing arts by obtaining certifications in holistic health, herbal medicine, acupuncture/acupressure, medical massage and advanced manual therapies through the Blue Heron Academy of Healing Arts and Sciences. He received his black belt in Kosho-Ryu-Kenpo-Jujitsu under 9th Dan, Yudansha Taigu, Dr. Gregory T. Lawton, Certified Rank Examiner of the USMAA. Under the same tutelage, he has earned his 6th degree black sash in Old Style Yang Tai-Chi-Chuan and has been promoted to the rank of Red Sash Rank Examiner. John is the chief instructor in Old Style Yang Tai Chi Chuan in the tradition and method of Yang Shao Hou and is an Ambassador of the Blue Heron Academy of Healing Arts and Sciences.

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n the West the golden era of the martial arts was the 70s and 80s in my opinion. Bruce Lee had exploded on to our screens then sadly passed, Chuck Norris was fighting wars on every frontier and new clubs were opening in every church hall and scout hut. One man though was blazing his own trail, Bill Wallace, who fought and beat everyone put in front of him, did some acting and realised Hollywood wasn’t for him, but also continued to teach and pass on his amazing skills (including Elvis as one of his students). He also retired from his professional kickboxing career with an unblemished record of 23-0 which was no mean feat.

Before getting into Karate, Superfoot also trained in Judo & Folk-style wrestling, he was forced to discontinue his Judo because of an injury he suffered to his right knee during practice.He then began to study Shorin Ryu Karate, while serving in the U.S. Air Force. After entering the point fighting tournament scene and achieving success there, he switched to full-contact competition. He focused on his left leg because of the Judo-related injury to his right knee, using the right leg primarily as a base, hence the nickname ‘Superfoot’ rather than ‘Superfeet’!

So as a child and a teenager in that era ‘Superfoot’ was a legend to me and they say never meet your heroes as they may disappoint, but I did just that 10 or so years ago and he didn’t let me down!

So fast forward to Sunday 17 October 2021, I’m like a child excitedly waiting for Santa because Bill is coming to Cambridge again for the first time in 4 years and he’s the first seminar we’d hosted since that horrible virus started doing the rounds.

Now I have One rule when it comes to seminars and that they must be completely inclusive as that is what Adaptive Martial Arts UK & Ireland is all about, promoting the inclusion of people with all types of disability into martial arts. Bill has done several seminars for us and is always the consummate professional who makes everyone welcome and caters for all the abilities in the room.

The room on this chilly Sunday morning was packed! With people from as far away as Wales having made the journey down. There was a variety of styles and of course a vast spectrum of abilities. As soon as Bill entered the atmosphere was electric, everyone was there for one reason and he didn’t disappoint. There was one other bonus, this morning Ken Herrera joined Bill for the seminar. Ken is another amazing martial artist who is one of very few men to have graded to Black belt under Bill, Chuck Norris and the late Joe Lewis. He’s also been a great friend and supporter to Adaptive Martial Arts UK & Ireland over the years, so it was the icing on the cake to have him there as well.

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Neil Kirkland, Bill Wallace and Ken Herrera with the ‘Red Pandas’ — Adaptive Martial Arts UK & Ireland All seminar images in this article appear courtesy of Nasser Butt

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What people often forget about Bill is that not only is he a phenomenal kicker, they’ve put a speed radar on his left leg and clocked it at over 60MPH! But his hand speed and skill is amazing too.

So after a warm up and the obligatory ‘Superfoot’ stretching session, everyone starts nice and simply with a jab and a cross. Add a hook to that combo, nice and relaxed, jab, cross, hook………then BAM! There it is the ‘Superfoot’ sidekick! Set up perfectly and timed exactly. You can see in that moment why Bill was so successful as a kickboxer.

Bill got everyone paired up and working, while him and Ken went round seeing what everyone was doing and tweaking techniques or in some cases adapting the drill to suit the students abilities. They had time for everyone and fielded a barrage of questions, some instructors could learn from these two martial arts greats how to engage with a large group of relative strangers as we’ve all been to seminars and courses where unless you were a favourite or obviously super talented you will pretty much be ignored for the duration.

As the seminar progressed Bill showed how the timing and set up work for this on the surface basic combination, but as the layers and subtleties were explained, it didn’t matter what level you were at from white belt to high ranking Dan grade everyone learned something. I think that’s the secret of a great seminar, that everyone goes home with something, they’ve had questions answered and they feel like they got some quality one to one tuition so it was personal too.

So if that’s the secret of a great seminar then Bill Wallace with the help of Ken Herrera was a Masterclass and I for one can’t wait to welcome them back again.

From a martial arts point of view Bill is iconic and if as a student you get the chance to train with him, do it! If as a school you get a chance to host a seminar with him, do it!

From a personal point of view, Bill has supported Adaptive Martial Arts UK & Ireland from the beginning and when that other famous martial artist, Carl has had some health issues, Bill has always been one of the first to send a message of support and I know that means a lot.

I guess in summary, what I want to say is that Bill ‘Superfoot’ Wallace is still my hero and he’s never disappointed.

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Reverend Anthony Sean Bedlam Pillage 1961 - 2018

Scott ‘The Devil’ Caldwell 1973 - 2018

Alexander M. Krych

1957 - 2014 Chief Instructor of the Erle Montaigue System North America Pictured here with the legendary Fu Shu-yun - his teacher before meeting and continuing his training under Erle.

Erle Montaigue 1949 - 2011

The Oldest Established School of The Erle Montaigue System In The UK

Ammanford Scouts Hall Monday 7.30 - 9.15pm Wednesday 7.00 - 9.00pm Sunday Full Day (Monthly)

Peter Jones Chief Instructor Taiji Pa-Kua Internal Fighting Arts

taijipakua@gmail.com

Gaku Shi Juku Kendo Kai www.leicesterkendo.com

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n order to understand the skill of rolling and sealing and the role it plays in the combative elements of Yang style Taijiquan, we must first clarify and familiarise ourselves with a few terms — especially rolling, since it is a term used to describe many concepts.

Rolling1 This is when a large circle changes to a small circle. We use the spiral from the large circle to the small. An example of rolling is single whip, which can be used to devastating effect in any direction, and where each part — the fingers, knuckles and wrist — articulates turning downward like a wheel. It also develops the skill of understanding how to allow impactive forces to move around the joints instead of through them, thereby avoiding injury — especially to the wrist or hand.

Releasing Energy2 This is the converse of rolling where the small circle changes to the large circle and we use the outward spiral of the change.

Reeling/Drawing of Silk — Ch'an Ssu Chin3 Reeling silk is a critical component of Yang Taijiquan — especially in the advanced methods. Everything in Taiji is performed in spirals, either in a slow or in an explosive manner akin to the way that silk has to be drawn from a cocoon so as not to break the thread. The correct, or rather full name, of Fa-jing is FaJing Ch'an Ssu Chin — Explosive Energy Silk Reeling, where we throw out explosive energy and then bring it back.

This consists of two components: Outward Reeling/Drawing Inward Reeling/Drawing

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In outward drawing of silk the energy revolves towards the outside and up. It is an attacking energy used to force your opponent’s energy.

Inward reeling of silk is the counterpart and therefore, revolves towards the inside and down. It is a defensive drawing or reeling of the silk and is used to drain your opponent’s energy.

During the sequence of ‘Seize The Sparrow’s Tail,’ for example, the type of drawing we learn consists of large, small, outward and inward in a revolving direction.

In Yang Taijiquan we have 8 very specific training methods with which to gain this skill. These methods start relatively simple and become more intricate as we proceed!

Thunder [aka Rolling Thunder]4 According to Chang Yiu-chun: “It is one of the Houses of Yang where we learn about the Thunder. When you use the backs of your arms, it will make the whole body aligned and balanced and also give one much great power in attack, it is like something rolling over and over until the fighting is finished. When the arms roll over, it makes the body as the Universe which is constantly changing and moving forward. This was the 2nd House.”

The ‘Rolling Thunder’ Form is an advancement upon the Silk Reeling Form.

The natural result of the spiral movements of energy cause the arms to roll over even more so, so that we end up using the backs of the arms, producing powerful attacks whilst utilizing the whole body! The attacks roll endlessly, the body “moving like the great river” — like waves crashing onto the rocks.

As the body expands and contracts and rolls, the sinews, the muscles and the tendons as well as the blood are strengthened for both health and combat.

In The Taiji Boxing Manual of Gu Ruzhang5, circa 1936, we are given a distinct Solo Set Checklist5 which includes the following in Stages 2 and 3 respectively:

Erle demonstrating Rolling Thunder circa 2004 and inset 2007 — Image Copyright©Nasser Butt

Wielding – Are you rotating like reeling silk? / Or are your hands moving straight and not attacking with rotations?

Smoothness – Are you reeling silk both inward and outward? / Or are your rotations not round?

It should be blatantly obvious to the reader that the skill of rolling, in all it guises, is vital in Yang style Taijiquan, specifically combative Taiji as it was transmitted through the line of Yang Shao-hou going back all the way to founder Yang Lu-ch’an, himself.

So, what do we mean by rolling and sealing?

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According to Yang Ban-hou — the only other Yang other than Lu-ch’an himself, to have attained the title “Yang the Unmatchable" — in his book Explaining Taiji Principles6 [Taiji Fa Shuo; circa 1875], we are told: Controlling his vessels, seizing his channels, capturing his sinews, and sealing his acupoints — these four skills are to be worked toward after you are able to measure down from the level of a foot to the level of an inch, then to a tenth of an inch, then to the width of a hair. When his vessels are controlled, his blood will not circulate. When his channels are seized, his energy will not move. When his sinews are captured, his body will have no control. When his acupoints are sealed, he will lose consciousness.

By controlling certain vessels, he will seem half dead. By seizing certain channels, he will seem fully dead. By capturing certain sinews, his power will be cut off. By sealing the lethal acupoints, he will not survive. Basically, if he is without energy, blood, or spirit, how will he have any control over his body?

However, even if you have ability in the skills of control, seize, capture, and seal, these particular effects will not work without specific instruction in them.

To understand the theory of vessels, channels, sinews, and acupoints, it is necessary to be clear about which techniques will save or kill. To understand the techniques that will save or kill, it is necessary to be clear about the acupoints for life and death. In the acupoint art, how could you go without knowing them [seeing as not knowing them might result in killing someone by mistake]? To know how to activate the life and death acupoints, it is necessary to be clear about the technique of sealing. Sealing is what determines both life and death.

So, rolling and sealing are linked to how we strike the acupoints7 in the Yang system. Having said that it is critical to realise that rolling also plays a vital role in the skills of controlling, seizing, and capturing as well!

However, in this article we will only be dealing with rolling in reference to the skill of sealing at a very basic level!

In Taijiquan we never strike straight8 into a point or any target as a matter of fact. We always strike at angle in order to negate any force on force. This is the internal way. When it comes to striking acupoints9 this concept becomes even more critical. It is not just that the point must be struck at an angle, it must also be struck in the correct direction10!

Many martial artists [not all] currently practicing acupoint strikes usually add this to their art, as opposed to the art having this built into its forms, training methods and dynamics from the start. The skill is inherent in Taijiquan11 and is taught [in abstract… just like animals learn instinctively] from the start.

The term “rolling” must be understood from two perspectives: 1. Rolling the acupoint 2. Rolling the attacking component [body, hand, leg, weapon etc] whilst striking the target in question.

The Chinese term diǎnxué, means to hit a pressure point, where diǎn equates to meaning point / dot / drop and xué refers to cave / cavity / hole / acupuncture point.

Acupoints sit in hollows12 or depressions, hence the usage of the term xué in their description. This is illustrated via the simple diagram below: cave/cavity/hollow

Acupoint Diagram 1

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It is not in the remit of the present writing to go into a detailed analysis of how acupuncture points are situated at their locations! Suffice to remind the reader that the locations are not ‘fixed in stone’ per se — the point itself can shift slightly13 of its own accord, which is why experienced acupuncturists needle through ‘feel’ as opposed to sticking the needle exactly according to where the textbook tells them! This information is necessary to understand what we mean by rolling the acupoint!

Rolling the acupoint simply means displacing the point by striking at it from an angle, from either above, below or side and causing it to shift out of its natural position [‘house’]. This is shown in Diagram 2 for an angled linear strike from below shifting the acupoint slightly upwards:

Angled linear strike

Diagram 2

However, as we have already noted above, acupoints are not permanently fixed in one spot [see Diagram 3] — so an angled linear strike may not necessarily work or even hit the mark, since in combat we would not have the time or luxury to workout where exactly the acupoints rests, as opposed to a TCM doctor working with a static patient on a bed!

Possible random positions of acupoint

Diagram 3

This is where our skill of rolling the attacking component while striking the target comes into play!

Through reeling silk, having the ability to attack with rotations both inwards and outwards in any direction, rolling forward like thunder, we can, not only, overcome the problem of where an acupoint may be ‘sitting,’ but we can also generate devastating shearing forces in multiple directions across the entire surface of the target, and ensure our displacement happens [Diagram 4]!

Rolling/Reeling Strike Diagram 4

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We have, in very basic terms, covered aspects of rolling, so what about sealing?

Trauma [swelling] occurs at the point of impact of the strike. It is this swelling which prevents the acupoint from returning back to its original position, thus ‘sealing’ or blocking the pathway of the nerve or meridian leading to pain, injury, knockout or death [Diagram 5]. Depending upon the target and the severity of the strike, the effect can be immediate or delayed.14

Trauma indicated by red causes ‘seal’ preventing the acupoint from returning to original position.

Diagram 515

Below are a simple set of illustrations of a rolling strike with an example. Please DO NOT attempt such a strike as it is dangerous and shown for illustrative purposes only!

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There are many, many training methods — apart from the Taiji form — [and tools] which teach us the skill of rolling and sealing from the Wudang Hand Weapons to the Stepping Methods, the 12 Deadly Katas, and Reeling Silk Methods to name just a few. The primary skill is obtained within Da Shao or ‘Striking Hands’.

The Small San Shao itself is a master teacher of rolling and sealing when it is taught correctly, and within them all Rolling Thunder — the second house of Yang, where we use the backs of our arms to strike much akin to a gorilla!

Of course, it should not require genius to work out that both heaven [upper] and earth [lower] must work in totally harmony and balance with the “six arteries” as per Gu Ruzhang: ‘The “six arteries” are the six unions: mind united with intent, intent united with energy, energy united with power, hand united with foot, elbow united with knee, and shoulder united with hip [the “arteries” being the imaginary conduits by which they unite].’

This is exactly what these training methods are designed to do! To give us the precise dynamics and natural innate body mechanics with which to roll and reel intuitively and reflexively!

My thanks to Kin for appearing in these photos with me.

Author’s Note: Abridged version of chapter on Rolling & Sealing, taken from the forthcoming book, Unlocking The Small San-Shao, Copyright©Nasser Butt 2021 This is the first time that information about rolling and sealing has been publicly explained and advanced [albeit in a simplified manner] in the context of The House of Thunder, Reeling Silk, and various training methods and its connections to Dim-mak within the Erle Montaigue System and Old Yang Style Taiji!

Although Erle explained very extensively throughout his teachings, as well as alluded to ‘other’ stuff, he also stated very clearly: “However, even I have held back on some areas such as 'Rolling Thunder' Form! This form is taught to students in the 2nd House.”

Above: A rolling and sealing strike from the Wudang Hammer Below: Rolling Thunder from the Wudang Stepping Methods

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1. For details read the series of articles The Energies of Taijiquan by Nasser Butt, which appeared in Lift Hands Volumes 13, 14, 15 & 16 respectively.

2. Ibid 3. Ibid 4. Butt, Nasser — The 12 Secret Rings of theYang Family, published April 2020. Also, see Lift Hands Volume 2 February 2017: The 12 Secret Rings of the Yang Family Part One: Form/Rolling Thunder 5. Ibid 6. Brennan Translation [https:// brennantranslation.wordpress.com] 7. Butt, Nasser — see article Dim Mak & Taijiquan; Peasant Talk; Lift Hands Magazine, Volume 17 March 2021 8. Even when we appear to be striking ‘straight’ in Taijiquan, there is still an element of a curve as per the Classic — “Within curving, seek to be straightening”.

9. Montaigue, Erle/Simpson, Wally — The Encyclopedia of Dim-Mak: The Main Meridians; Paladin Press, 1997 10. I’ll mention Times here purely as a reference to direction and angle mentioned in the main text. It is accepted that each of the main meridians are more active at specific times of the day [see table below]. So, when an acupoint is struck during its ‘active time’ — the effect of the strike is more adverse. However, any acupoint when struck correctly will be damaging at any time! It would be an absurd concept to try to work out the time in the heat of the battle and striking along the specific active meridian… that would deservedly invite defeat! The rules are to attack the nearest target, regardless of what that target may be and is the reminder given to us by Wang T’sung-yeuh in his treatise Great Pole Boxing: The Theory… “Its root is to discard self and follow men: Many mistakenly discard the near and seek afar. This is known as being out by a hair’s breadth And going wrong by a thousand miles. Students cannot but carefully distinguish.” — In other words, he lays it out in a most simple manner in that the most basic of ideas is to forget your own plans [assumptions/preemptions] and simply respond to what your opponent is doing! Don’t second guess or get ahead of yourself! Often folk make the mistake of ignoring what is right there in front of them by focusing on something which has nothing to do with their immediate circumstances [in other words — they fail to

Meridian

Time Active

Yin/Yang Organ

Gallbladder

11pm — 1am

Yang

Liver

1am — 3am

Yin

Lung

3am — 5am

Yin

Colon [Large Intestine]

5am — 7am

Yang

Stomach

7am — 9am

Yang

Spleen

9am — 11am

Yin

Heart

11am —1pm

Yin

Small Intestine

1pm — 3pm

Yang

Bladder

3pm — 5pm

Yang

Kidney

5pm — 7pm

Yin

Pericardium

7pm — 9pm

Yin

Triple Heater

9pm — 11pm

Yang

live and act in the present], thereby missing by an inch and loosing by a mile!

11. See note 7 above!

12. This sometimes gives rise to the term ‘Hunting in Shadows’ — in reference to the mouth of a cave sitting in a shadow as well as attacking using peripheral vision, where the peripheral vision can see the shadows caused by depressions more effectively then sharp focus in combat!

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13. Again, it is not in the remit of this article to fully explain the science or theory behind this — it would take far too much specialist detail! That an acupoint’s position can vary slightly from day to day for a variety of reasons is an accepted fact in acupuncture theory and practice.

14. By using the term ‘delayed,’ I do not mean any magical or mystical death strike as per the movies! It simply means that a blow, for example to the head or temple, can cause a slow swelling or internal bleed which may take some time to take effect, especially if medical attention has not been sought immediately or is unavailable! An example would be a strike to the side of the skull just above the tip of the pinna [ear] — if struck correctly, this may cause an immediate knockout and internally burst the blood-vessels, which may bleed slowly and the resultant swelling lead to death later.

15. Diagrams 1—5. Copyright©Nasser Butt, drawn from personal training notes with Erle Montaigue on Rolling, House of Thunder, Wudang Hand Weapons and Stepping Methods.

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