So there you are, sitting at home, looking through web sites, watching television, drinking tea and eating junk food, wondering why you don’t feel to good, why you have energy to do the things you want to………
Category Archives for MAC Academies
A Little History of the Martial Arts Part 7
Welcome to part 7 of our short series on the history of some of the arts that are taught at Martial Art Concepts. We will continue to look at the expansive and deep art of Kali/Escrima.
The number one priority is weapons even if it is empty hands being taught. Please let me illustrate this point with a short story.
A Little history of the Martial Arts part 6
In part 5 we looked at some of the Arts from South East Asia and in particular the art of Kali/Escrima from the Philippines. We will continue our look at this most effective and deep art in part 6 and explore some of the symbols associated with this art.
A Little History of the Martial Arts part 5
Welcome back to our ongoing journey through the history of the martial arts. In part 4 we finished of looking at some of the early Chinese arts and its development, and like all the arts how they were heavily tied in to the religion and spirituality of the times and still are.
In part 5, I thought we would start to take a look at some of the South East Asian martial arts.
There are a huge variety of arts from this area from the Philippines to India, all having one thing in common they were born out of adversity…
5 Steps to Becoming A World Class Martial Artist
For most of my life I used to labour under the illusion that I could get better at things and improve my life by not doing anything in the way of work to accomplish this.
I had it in my head that if I wanted something then it would eventually just fall into my lap, like magic, or a gift from heaven.
The universe would simply say: “I know how you sort of wanted this Steve, and just because you kind of want this, I’m going to give you it. So there you go, it’s yours, free of charge, just because you thought half-heartedly about wanting it. ”
A Little History of the Martial Arts – Part 4
Welcome to part 4 of our history series.
The Chinese Martial arts developed at three places; the Buddhist Shaolin temple, the Taoist Wu Tang monastery, and the village arts of the peasants themselves. According to legend an Indian prince, the son of a Brahman king in southern India, renounced all his riches and titles and adopted the mantle of a wandering monk.
His intention was to master the Buddhist doctrine of Mahayana which involved searching into one’s own being to discover freedom and enlightenment. This is the core teaching of every religion both in the east and the west, when you get past the outer teachings. Meditation was an essential and only ingredient of this search. Originally meditation is used to control the mind and focus its force upon one point.
A Little History of the Martial Arts part 3
Welcome to part 3 of our short skim over the history of martial arts we will continue to look at how the arts were inspired by the spiritual practices of their day and still are. In part 2 we took a short look at Zen, However for this part we will start with Taoism, which is the life force of all the Chinese martial arts.
T o the Taoist everything in life has its opposite, which unites in harmony to become the cosmos. The symbol of these two opposing forces flowing into one another in a continuous state of change is the yin and yang, the positive and negative aspect of the known universe. Neither can exist without the other.
These two inseparable forces (seen in the symbol of a black fish with a white eye and white fish with a black eye on a circular diagram) represent the true roots of all Taoist philosophy. But consider this, the same philosophy is found in western mystery traditions and alchemy where the yang is represented as the sun and the yin the moon the two having an influence on the third force or the earth.
Continue reading →
A little History of the Martial Arts – Part 2
At the end of part one, we were starting to look at the three main religions of China and how they had an influence on the eastern martial arts.
China’s indigenous religion of Taoism (pronounced Dow-ism) followed the concept of yielding or non-action. Its aim is to achieve a mind at peace without anger or happiness at its extremes, a mind without worry. Taoism proposes that all things in the universe exist perfectly in a state of harmony; the concept of uniting apparent opposites in a constant flow is the essence of the religion.
Buddhism arrived in China from India (remember this is the home of some of the first religious writings, the Vedic hymns, etc and yoga and tantric practices)
A Little History of the Martial Arts – Part 1
Welcome to the first of a series of posts – in which we’ll be exploring the history of martial arts from the first historical records dealing with fighting skills through to martial arts today.
The first historical records dealing with codified Unarmed fighting skills are ancient Egyptian in origin and represent a crude type of temple boxing there are hieroglyphics showing royal guards that look like they have their hands wrapped and are engaged in boxing.
7 WAYS MARTIAL ARTS HAS CHANGED IN THE PAST 30 YEARS – PART 6
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This is the last of my ramblings on how I think martial arts has changed in the past 30 years or as long as I can remember!
I would like to stress these are just opinions and thoughts as I sat thinking how to share some of my thoughts on how to make the blog interesting. I hoped some of the content would allow people reading to engage a little more with how I think and how the people in MAC think, I’ve had some really positive feedback on my thoughts and it seems to have stimulated other people to remember and compare some of their memories too.