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The study of Kung Fu goes far beyond the art of fighting. It is a lifelong journey of learning and discovery... It is a way to discover one’s true nature and potential... Only through repeated questioning and observation can we truly begin to learn...

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Check out this week's Kung Fu In A Minute video!

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Check out this week’s Kung Fu In A Minute!  Please take a moment to subscribe to my Vimeo channel!

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Check out this week’s KUNG FU IN A MINUTE!  Training videos available on my Vimeo On Demand page.

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Check out this week’s KUNG FU IN A MINUTE video, and please subscribe to the KUNG FU IN A MINUTE YouTube or Vimeo channel!

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Check out this week’s Kung Fu In A Minute: 連環炮搥 Continuous Cannon Punch, or more commonly known as uppercut punch.  Subscribe to the Kung Fu In A Minute Vimeo channel to see our weekly one-minute training videos.  Classical Kung Fu technique, practical application!

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Check out this week’s Kung Fu In A Minute!!!  PLEASE head over to my Vimeo page and subscribe if you haven’t already.  I’m trying to get at least 100 subscribers this month.  Thanks so much for your help!

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Check out this week’s Kung Fu In A Minute video and please help us out by subscribing to our Vimeo channel!!!

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Check out this week’s master class from Kung Fu In A Minute and Sifu Paul Koh 地炮龍: Descending Dragon!  Download the video and let us know what you think!

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Self AWARENESS... A Work In Progress

As I’m sitting here in my empty training hall, I, by chance, came across a story that a friend of mine posted in one of the Facebook groups about a horrific home invasion that happened over the weekend.  As I read the story, I realized to myself how deeply unaware we are as individuals passing through our daily lives, oblivious to all the evil that surrounds us.  We don’t have to look to bygone days for lawlessness, evil and people that commit such heinous crimes as murder, rape and theft.  These criminals and evil people surround us daily; we’re just not aware of it.  Unfortunately, this evil abounds and surrounds us continually.  It’s running rampant in our modern day society.  

The awareness that we carry with us on a daily basis is something that we all need to focus on.  We get lulled into a false sense of security going through our daily lives in our daily routine.  We are oblivious to the fact that these individuals and crimes exist all around us and are happening all the time.  We desensitize ourselves and make ourselves unaware, basically falling asleep.  We need to concentrate on our own awareness of our surroundings, the people around us and how we perceive and see things.  I’m not saying that you need to become paranoid, but at the same time you have to wake up and understand the world is not a beautiful place that is populated by rainbows and unicorns.  Rather, it’s a stark landscape mostly populated by individuals that don’t have your best intention at heart.  In truth, human beings are just animals, and without some form of civilized social code cannot coexist with one another.  Unfortunately, in the convenience of our modern society, our edge has become dulled by everything that is around us.  I’m not saying that we should do away with the convenient modern society that we have, only to be aware that there are people out there who have been pushed to a societal level where committing heinous crimes seems plausible and reasonable, turning human beings into less than animals, but really monsters.  We see bad things happening every day but yet turn a blind eye and think, well it’s happening somewhere else to someone else, out of sight out of mind.  We all need to heighten our sensitivity to protect ourselves and our families and make sure, to the best of our ability, that something like this doesn’t happen to us.

This, first and foremost, can start with training in the martial arts to make ourselves aware primarily of ourselves and our surroundings.  The understanding and awareness of the self is paramount to one’s own self-preservation and protection.  Martial art training is a mirror of how you live your life.  If you train in the martial arts and follow the codes and ethics that we adhere to, this should have a profoundly positive impact on your life and the people within your life.  The martial art training that we receive should help to heighten our personal awareness as well as the awareness of our surroundings, the people around us and the energy in the area that we’re in.  This should all serve to help us understand and feel what’s up.  I’m not saying that it’s going to stop everything horrible from happening, but it should raise the level of your understanding of what’s going on around you, rather than just going with the flow as most people do.  I see many people just taking things in stride; another sunny, beautiful day in the neighborhood.  It may be, but you can’t fall asleep on the A train, watching your Netflix, playing your Candy Crush, and browsing through Instagram.  I’m not preaching gloom-and-doom; I’m just saying all of us need to wake up and make sure that we know how to spot something that may be going on. 

Awareness is an intangible understanding that one must develop on their own in order for them to understand themselves better.  Awareness can be looked upon as both internal and external awareness.  These two dual aspects of awareness are what we should strive to derive from our daily training.  Many people pick up training in Kung Fu or the martial arts and just simply go through the actions without thinking and feeling from within and without.  That is to say, they just go through the martial calisthenics without trying to tap into a deeper understanding of what’s going on around them as well as within them at the same time, what energies are being used and moved and required.  One must understand the intention, the attitude and the spatial awareness in order to apply and utilize these movements.  All these aspects must be taken into account, and form a special type of awareness that everyday people don’t have.  The race car driver understands the confines of his surroundings.  As he goes around the track at high speeds, he feels and is aware of the machine that he is within and becomes one with it.  He’s aware of the road, the tires, and the pressure within the engine.  All these things are the same for Kung Fu.

As one goes through their training regimen in Kung Fu and slowly begins to reawaken themselves through the stretching, breathing, stances, punches, kicks, matching up with their partners, going through their weapon and empty hand sets, one cannot help but build a better respect for oneself, their own mind and body and personal awareness of space and time.  Slowly, you also begin to read other individuals.  Become a student of human nature and watch people’s reactions, body language, gestures and start picking up on the energy so to speak.  As we had stated in the previous blog, learn to discern what is evil or bad energy as opposed to good energy, and put yourself in the proper position to be able to eradicate and deal with such.

I spent some time the other day striking on the sandbag as we normally do, and was striving to become more aware of every fiber of my body being used to make that one strike with one action, one breath, one thought, honing a higher level of awareness.  In order to attain this awareness, everything has to slow down.  Most people, when they come in, they just want to jump right into it and begin training and ascend to a god-like status in the martial arts.  Everyone does this, but it’s a misconception.  Hopefully, as you start training, you will see that it requires you to actually slow everything down that you do, including your thought process, in order to become more aware of every little facet of every little motion and action that you’re doing.  Coming back to the sandbag, I straightened the sandbag, watching my own stance, the way I initiated the power of the energy, the breath, trying to focus and make everything synchronized and work together, and I took a step back to realize that this is also the training for awareness that can be seen in a larger grander scheme or in a small minute detail.

The awareness developed through training is a heightened sense.  In one way, it can be summarized as a sixth sense, giving you understanding of what is around you at that moment in time. Awareness not only gives us understanding of the physical aspects of space, time and speed, but also that of different types of energies.  It allows you to know where to put yourself and how to situate yourself.  This is an active pursuit that you have to be actively striving towards, to attain that next level of awareness.  You’re not going to get it just because you participate in class; you have to be actively seeking the awareness.  That comes back down to the individual’s approach.  As I was watching my class last night, I could see who was actively thinking, feeling and striving to understand, as opposed to those that were purely doing the exercise aspect and not clicking with themselves. 

As I’m looking for images for this blog, I’m searching the Internet and I come upon an image that is eerily what I was telling my class last night.  You have to be the captain of your own mind.  Many of us don’t understand this, or, at worst case, our captain is asleep at the wheel. Everything must be guided from your own mind.  Therefore, your mind must be clear, clean and pristine to the point of almost being empty. The self-awareness that everyone should strive for will first come when we do, as we said, a spring cleaning, a spring cleaning of the mind in order to be able to understand better ourselves and the surroundings that we are in.  You have to be ready, willing and able to partake of all aspects of your training in order to gain that awareness.  This is where most students fail themselves because they are incapable of understanding that aspect of it. There is no magic that is going to happen unless you fully engage.  If you don’t do that you’re missing the point.

Training every day raises our level of awareness of ourselves which ultimately raises our awareness of everything that goes on around us, keeping us safer and more secure and allowing us to understand ourselves better.

-Sifu Paul Koh 高寶羅

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If you like this week’s video on 地炮龍: Descending Dragon please check out these master classes with in-depth instruction and slow demonstration of the technique!  Learn martial arts online through KUNG FU IN A MINUTE!

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Check out this week’s technique, 地炮龍: Descending Dragon.  Please take a moment to subscribe to our Vimeo page!

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Check out this week’s technique: 拼命拳: Fight For Your Life

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Check out one of our latest videos on YouTube!  Phoenix Eye Strike... classical Kung Fu, practical application with Sifu Paul Koh!  Please subscribe to our YouTube channel and Instagram channel at @kungfuinaminute to receive all our updates!

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OVERNIGHT SUCCESS... 20 YEARS IN THE MAKING

OVERNIGHT SUCCESS... 20 YEARS IN THE MAKING

台上一分鐘 台下十年功 “For one minute on stage, you need ten years work under the stage.” -Old Chinese Saying

I’m an old guy, so my taste in music is not contemporary. I like old school classic rock, progressive hard rock, that kind of stuff. You think about those bands, and you know their songs; maybe you have their greatest hits album. But you only recognize them for the high point in their career. For example, do you know how long AC/DC has been around? They’re not an overnight success, but the Iron Man movie catapulted them to another level. They’ve actually been around since 1973, but no one knew them back then. They probably had to play dive bars and outdoor festivals and every nasty little gig they could get. They did it because they loved playing rock and roll. It took a good 20 years or more for them to get noticed. You’ve seen this time and time again.

Take the example of a Broadway actor. These guys have been working at their craft since their youth, doing small plays, Shakespeare in the Park if they were lucky, doing every little acting gig that they could, until they broke the ice. Then, all of a sudden, you’re successful, and everybody maligns you and says, “Look at that guy, look at that girl, they’re an overnight success. They must have known someone, paid someone, or slept with someone, to get somewhere.” You’ve been working so hard, but no one took notice of you until you got that one big chance that catapulted you into the spotlight of mainstream society. The people on the other side of the coin think that you just popped up out of nowhere. To them, you’re an “overnight success.” Many of us, myself included, have looked at a singer, an actor, another martial artist, and said, “Where’d this guy come from? All of a sudden they’re all over the place. They must’ve ‘did’ something to get there.” And the truth of the matter is, they did DO something to get there. What did they do? They did their hard work; they sacrificed. They put so much time, effort, blood, sweat and tears into their craft for countless years until finally someone took notice. Then we, as the greater public, look at them and go, “Come on, you just crawled out of the woodwork because you have friends in high places.” That’s not really the case. The truth of the matter is, those individuals have probably been working at it for at least a decade or two in order to make it. Very few just make it right off the bat. With that being said, we shouldn’t be quick to judge or dismiss the so-called overnight success because there is no such thing as an overnight success. None of us will become an overnight success, and this is what we need to remember. Just because you don’t see the decades of work someone has put into their craft doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Another good analogy is Chinese cooking. Did you ever wonder why you’re able to go to a Chinese restaurant, be it a sit-down restaurant here in Chinatown or a take-out joint, and literally get your food in five to fifteen minutes? It’s all about the preparation. This really speaks to Kung Fu, because you work, you practice; you practice, you work; you work out, you refine. You do the same movement again and again, and you do the same form for years on end. Many times, you question yourself and ask why? Why am I knocking my brains out to do a repetition of this thing thousands of times? You don’t understand, you get frustrated, until that one moment when you actually need it and you’re able to apply it. Then you understand why it’s so important to be prepared. That goes back to the analogy of your Chinese takeout food. Why can they can crank it out in 10 minutes? All the preparation has been done; everything has been diced and chopped. Everything is ready to go so that when the order comes in, they can put it together and it’s done. It’s not fast food; it’s the nature of how they cook. This is also the nature of your martial arts. You have to be prepared. Prepared for what? Prepared for anything. If you don’t practice like this, when you go to utilize it, it’s not there because you haven’t done the preparation. That’s the same for any actor, singer, dancer or martial artist. Anyone who’s involved in an art that requires a skill needs to put in that time and do the preparation on a regular basis or the skill will not be there when you need it.

There’s an old Chinese saying that says, 台上一分鐘 台下十年功 “For one minute on stage, you need ten years work under the stage.” My teacher, Grandmaster Tak Wah Eng, trained under a famous Kung Fu opera star and master, Lueh Gwok Cheun, and you may not know his name. But he was one of the top martial art coaches for Shaw Brothers Productions during the sixties and seventies, and trained many of your favorite stars, including Cheng Pei Pei, Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao and Chen Koontai and many more. He was very fond of telling my teacher that statement again and again. He travelled the entire world performing Peking Opera and training stars to perform martial arts in countless movies. It’s the gravity of the statement that shocks me. One minute is equal to ten years. So how many years do you need to be able to actually perform, to be able to do to what’s deemed as up to par? You need decades and decades. According to this statement, thirty years is three minutes. Maybe it’s not that extreme, but it’s pretty close. You really have to be dedicated and devoted to your craft in order to attain that height of performance. That just boggles my mind. When someone says you’re just an overnight success, we have to take a step back and think about what this old master is saying through his decades of experience teaching and performing live shows. I think his saying that statement over and over again is just amazing. That sums it up. One minute is equal to ten years worth of work, so we better start working. The clock is ticking.

This comes back to the overnight success. Just because now you’re a so called “overnight success” doesn’t even mean that you’ve really made it. You still have to keep “making it” all the time. That means you still have to keep putting in the work, you still have to keep putting in the time. You’re only as good as the very last thing that you did. Just because people think you’ve made it doesn’t mean you’ve made it, either. You have to go back every day and start preparing again; it’s a continual process. AC/DC still has to go in for a sound check; they still have to rehearse; they still have to practice. The successful Broadway actor still has to go to class. It has to be real every day; otherwise it’s not real at all. Otherwise it’s just a fluke, an “overnight success”. You have to prove yourself on a daily basis. That’s the hard part that everybody has to deal with. Can you make it happen? That’s up to you.

Relating this back to our martial art training, no matter how good a system we pick, no matter how good our teacher is, no matter how amazing we think we are, we need to remember that there’s no such thing as overnight success for any of us. Nothing can replace hard work, dedication and loads of time.

-Sifu Paul Koh

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Learn Kung Fu: Classic Technique, Practical Application vol. 2

Part two of our series focusing on form and function, practical application of traditional Kung Fu techniques.  Check it out!!!