Shaolin Kung Fu and your Health
When the student comes in for their first trial class, I sit down with the student, do a short interview and ask some simple health questions. Many students DO come in to improve on their health, which is an EXCELLENT reason to practice and learn the Shaolin Kung Fu. As I explain to each student, each individual is the most important person in their life. Thus they have the responsibility to themselves to improve on themselves as much as they can, be that through exercise, diet and even meditation.
As we grow older, we start to suffer due to the accumulated bad things we’ve done with our diets and lack of exercise. Sometimes this hits us in our middle to late 30’s and others start to feel it in the 40’s and even the 50’s. But the eventuality of it coming to roost is inescapable, unless we have made some very good decisions along the way and stayed faithful to those behaviors. One of the biggest benefits you will get from Shaolin Kung Fu is superb health.
When you come in we will give you a traditional chinese health analysis (not mandatory). We will find out where you sit in regards to flexibility, energy levels, stamina, body strength, and discuss (if you want) any mental stress issues that are bothering you. We will keep this analysis for you in our system so that we can go back over it in a few months, when you hit your 1 year anniversary we will review it again to see what gains you have made in all these categories. It is all about SELF IMPROVEMENT.
Things to look for in improved health while learning Shaolinquan –
Improved ability to focus better (work, school, life)
Flexibility (which helps improve circulation and healing)
Strength and conditioning – while the Shaolinquan is not known for its aerobic workout, it is challenging and the degree of difficulty in movements increases as the student trains longer.
Energy levels increased – In order to do this we will also have to discuss diets, but we have great success rates.
Self Defense – Hopefully we will never have to use self defense in our lifetime, but the self defense aspect is inherent in our Shaolinquan and after 2 years of training, kids and adults alike should be able to defend themselves quite competently. Of course as you train you will improve on these skills as you go.
Internal health – qi (energy) flows within us all, however if your diet is poor and or you are sedentary at work chances are your internal health is not that vibrant. The Shaolinquan is designed to bring that qi out and make it more vibrant and robust and flow through the internal organs to help you get healthy and stay healthy.
Mental health – so many students come in these days that are carrying a lot of stress and negativity around with them. With the society and pace of living many of us live at, that is not hard to understand. But here we train in order to alleviate that stress and put our hearts and minds at ease and try to learn what is important in our lives. We do this through the practice of Chan. Chan is the Chinese word Zen which means meditation. But we use the Chan as a form of moving meditation in our kung fu movements with intense concentration on ourselves, our bodies and the movements themselves. We do not sit around and go hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.