From the editor, Hans Menck:

My last update was about a year ago from the Shaolin temple region in the Song mountains in China. Due to lack of time, internet connections and the loss of my laptop, my updates for the busy year gone by had to wait till now.  My current update is for the period from March ’09 till Jan ‘10 and covers my training and journey in Japan, China and France,  my return to South Africa  and the birth of Freedom School.

This is also my last personal update, from now on the weblog will be mainly for Freedom School activities!

This update covers the following:

Aikido training in Japan

Backpacking in Kyoto mountains and Iwama training

Second shaolin gongfu training at the Wugulun school

Backpacking in the Song and Wudang Mountains

Swimming dragon sword in Changsha

Bagua Zhang training in Beijing

Aikido with Christian Tissier in France

Japan is one of the most interesting, beautiful and inspirational places that I have had the pleasure of visiting. I don’t like judging one place over another, but Japan is special and it has a special place in my heart. It has been my dream to go there since I was a child.

Sakura

By luck I had chosen a good time to come to Japan- springtime! Not to cold, not to hot, and just right to see Japan’s spectacular sakura (cherry blossom) explosion, which moves like a pink wave over the land, from south to north. The bare black branches of the cherry trees are completely covered with dense pink flowers and people come out to admire them in the parks and on the river sides. The flowers bud, blossom for about 2 weeks, and then fall like pink snow.

The sakura time is very special, not just because of the awesome beauty of the cherry blossoms, but also because of their special significance in Japanese warrior philosophy and culture. The sakura are a symbol of the beauty and transience of life. The fearless flowering and inevitable death of these flowers inspired the Samurai warriors of old to “flower” in fearless battle and service to their masters, and to accept death as inevitable and part of the cycle of life.

For me the sakura marked and unfolding and understanding of the meaning of heart and its place in my life’s path. This process really started earlier in China, where training of the heart was the main focus of the Wugulun School of Shaolin Gongfu. I guess the months of slow, meditative practise and vegetarian diet had an effect on me after all! Before the shaolin training I had only concentrated on the training of mind and body, and the training of the heart had never really occurred to me. I will devote some articles to the meaning of heart on this site. But for now I would like to explain very briefly that the heart is the link between mind and body, the seat of emotion, connection with the world, connection with other beings and the divine (if you believe in such a concept), the seat of wisdom intention, and the seat of love. In short, the heart is a very powerful and significant component of human nature. The realisation that I can train my heart and that I can understand and follow it has become central to what I do.

Aikido

I decided to focus my training in Japan on aikido and on arrival I headed straight to the Aikikai Honbu Dojo (world aikido headquarters in Shinjuku, Tokyo). I had no idea where the school was, so when I got off the train in Shinjuku I just started walking down a random street with my backpack, gaping at this technological wonderland with its strange and colourful inhabitants. Ten minutes out of the station someone greeted me from across a street: “Hans!” It was Bodo Roedel, a fellow student of Christian Tissier and teacher of aikido in Cologne, Germany, who had spotted me. Small world… I booked into the same hotel where he stayed together with Wilko Vriesman from the Amsterdam aikikai and another one of his students. The next morning they showed me the dojo location and we had our first training under the head of the aikikai, Doshu Moriteru Ueshiba, grandson of aikido founder, Morihei Ueshiba. So my landing in Japan had been very soft and a true pleasure. Many other visitors had not been so lucky. It’s a confusing place and very few people speak English and even fewer people would know where the aikido headquarters are located.

Hans Menck training with Sensei Kawaiji (7th dan) in Tokyo:

I moved into a small 5-tatami room about five minute’s walk from the dojo. During my first two weeks I did every single senior class at the aikikai (about 5 hours per day). After that I started taking it a bit easier to avoid burnout and injuries. I also started alternating aikido practise with solo gongfu training in the local park. I also taught taiji (tai chi) to one senior aikidoka that I met at the aikikai. The taiji classes helped him with his health and understanding of martial arts, and it helped me to structure the varying styles and exercises of taiji that I had learned before.

The training at the aikikai was great. I really enjoyed training under all the teachers there and it was interesting to experience each teacher’s unique style. My favourite teacher was Osawa Sensei and I made a point of going to every one of his classes, even his beginner’s classes. Osawa sensei looks like a traditional zen monk with his shaven head and upright bearing. His footwork is very deft and agile and is very similar to the footwork style of my French aikido teacher, Christian Tissier. When Osawa sensei moves he keeps his chin tucked, straightening his spine all the way to the crown of his head. His legs are bent and his body slightly crouched so his whole body seems compressed like a spring, and he moves about with the agility of some small darting animal. Another stand-out feature of Osawa sensei is his big smile. His classes were basic and he preferred simple and pure technique over fancy, complicated moves.

In the aikikai the teachers only take selected students into the middle for ukemi (demonstration of techniques to the class). The selected students are usually their closer students or senior students, or students with very good falling skill. In the 3 months that I spent in the aikikai I was not called to the middle once, which was a disappointment for me, because this is the only way to “feel the technique” of the teacher, to experience the things that eyes cannot see. On my very last day at the aikikai, Osawa Sensei called me up for my one and only ukemi! This is a great honor and extra special because he did not know I was leaving that day! I appreciate the experience even though I cannot remember it. I just remember doing what was necessary and it was over in a flash. Great!

I am very grateful to the Doshu and all the teaching staff at the aikikai for upholding such a great level of training and spirit. They were all very generous people.

One other highlights at the Aikikai was a movie evening where students were invited to watch old movies of O-Sensei (the founder) and have a drink of sake. I like sake, especially when it’s hot. Another time there was a special shinto ceremony and aikido demonstration at the aiki shrine in Iwama, the rural town where O-Sensei built his own dojo. There were many people and the day ended as a big picnic with Japanese lunch packs provided by the Aikikai. Goodl memories.

I also met a friend at the aikikai with whom I went on some awesome adventures. We backpacked together through Kyoto and spent about a week in the surrounding mountains. We swam in icy rivers, camped in a makeshift tent or under temple bells and had an adventure which is too difficult and long to write about. Awesome. Japan’s nature is stunning.

We also took a week to train at the Iwama dojo under leadership of Isoyama Shihan and to backpack in the mountains around Iwama. We looked for tengu (mountain goblins) but didn’t find any. Another special experience was doing cold water purification training under a waterfall that O-Sensei built and where he used to train regularly. It was very intense training.  

When we arrived at the Iwama dojo with heavy backpacks and walking sticks, there was a film team busy making a TV program about the aikido. They were interested in what we were doing and we were included in the program as two aikido travellers!

On my first night at the dojo I was given a sleeping area on the tatami of the dojo. I was alone in the dojo, which was very special, because it is like sleeping in a museum of aikido! There was a weapons rack on one wall with a strange looking boken (wooden sword)  right at the top. Curious, I took it and trained with it. It made a very nice sound as it cut the air. The next morning I asked an uchi-deshi what that boken was. He said: “That is O-Sensei’s boken, don’t touch it!”

Master Su Dong Chen

In Japan I was very honoured to meet a legend in internal martial arts, master Su Dong Chen. Master Su is from Taiwan, but very at home in Japan, where he has built up an international reputation as a fighter who has taken more than a hundred challenges successfully. In Japan challenge fights are very serious and usually happen behind closed doors. Master Su bears the scars of his encounters on his body. His arms look like he had put them in a meat shredder at some point in the past.

My lasting impression of master Su, after feeling some of his technique, is that his punches feel like rocks hitting you and his fingers feel like needles piercing into pressure points.

Master Su is an example of a life dedicated to martial arts. In the conversations we had his absolute passion for his subject was clear. Master Su was trained in the arts of Taiji, Xing Yi and Bagua Zhang, but in his personal training he has dissected his learning and stripped it down to the essentials. Master Su’s teaching is high level, the lessons come thick and fast. He motivates his senior students to think for themselves and to create their own theories and understanding. His personal dissection of internal martial arts is called Essence of Evolution. It is high level stuff, I would say like a doctorate level course in martial arts. I wish I had more time to train with master Su Dong Chen and perhaps to comprehend his thought processes a bit better. His words have challenged me and I will not forget him. I am very grateful.

 Shaolin Chan Wu Yi - My friend, Laura, from Japan joined me in China for the next round of martial adventures. We spent the first week training at the Wugulun School. I learned the first part of an internal Shaolin Ghun form (long staff) and Laura learned how to stand still for long periods of time, and some Wudang sword moves (there was a guest teacher from Wudang at the school).

After the training period we took some time to walk around the Song mountains for a few days. As you could have guessed, the Song mountains are stunningly beautiful and one of China’s 5 sacred mountains. We found strange mountain hermits, a cave and many classic temples. One very exciting place high up in the mountain is the Chan Wu Yi centre which is being built by Master Shi Dejian, training brother of my teacher, Wu Nanfang. The centre is similar in purpose to the original shaolin temple. It is not built for tourism, but for the pursuit of Chan (Zen), Wu (martial arts) and Yi (shaolin medicine). I hope to return there some day with some students, perhaps.

Wudang - Next up we took a train down to the Wudang mountain and spent a week exploring this dragon-back natural wonderland. Wudang is a Taoist mountain and the birth place of taiji quan. I cannot describe the beauty of this place. All I can say is go and see if that is your cup of tea! We did not train at any of the Wudang schools but the martial atmosphere of the area was very strong. We met a mountain hermit called the Bee Taoist and I got stung by three of his bees. We met an Australian reiki expert, Scott, who explained to us why the world will end in 2012. The theory was complicated and involves two stellar systems colliding (or something). It is predicted by the Mayan calendar, and they were correct the last time round….

One highlight in Wudang was sleeping in the ruins of the Temple of the Eight Immortals and weeding the garden the next day. Wudang is special.

Swimming Dragon Sword – After the Wudang adventure we took the train to Changsha where we were received graciously by my friends Daisy Wu and Mr Zhu. We spent the days in Changsha park in a sword lesson crash course. I learned the Swimming Dragon “Riding the Wind” sword form. My teacher was Master Zhu Ming, training brother of Li Yong Liang, my Melbourne swimming dragon master.

A week is not enough to learn even the exterior shell of this graceful form, but we tried. Unfortunately we did not meet Master Yu Anren this time round. My sincere thanks to my friends and teachers in Changsha!!!

Beijing – the final destination in China was Beijing, training in the park with Master Han Yanwu, my teacher of bagua, xing yi, and praying mantis gongfu. Master han was in top form and he took very special care of me. In his teaching he was stressing an energy which is new to me and very difficult to manifest- fali- explosive power. This skill involves generating power from the dantien (body centre) and bringing it to the extremities in very explosive bursts. There is a very difficult spiral motion created inside the body. That is all I will say about it. In short I realise that my skill level is very basic compared to Master Han’s. Master Han took good care of me and we had many great meals and beers in restaurants around the park area. Master Han is a great teacher!

Hans Menck yoga on a Hong Kong beach:

Hong Kong – Before setting off to France I had one last stop over in Hong Kong and stayed over at the home of my friend, Philippe Couture. Philippe had been a great support throughout my China missions. He helped me out of trouble when my wallet got stolen in Japan and I got stuck in China without money… Philippe also spent two days with me on Lantau Island to film footage for Freedom Style Martial Yoga and Stick Fighting DVD’s. He is a professional film maker and his camera work is very good! I will finish editing on the DVD’s and present them in the Merchandise section when I find the time. Thank you, Philippe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Psacal throws Hans (kote geishi)

I was once again privileged to study aikido under Christian Tissier Sensei in his Paris dojo, the Cercle Tissier, and in his training seminars in the South of France (2 weeks) and Belgium (1 week). Sensei Tisssier took good care of me and once again he stressed that I should consolidate my basic techniques in the time that I study with him. He often gave me advice on technical details of techniques and the things he says always make allot of sense! The training was very valuable and enjoyable. I prepared for my second dan examination and Tissier Sensei awarded me with the grade when I left France.

I spent some weeks living in the Paris dojo and sleeping on the tatami like I had done for ten months in 2002. It was a nostalgic time for me. I like the simple dojo life. I spent much time with a Russian friend, Vladimir, with whom I shared the dojo space in 2002 and now. We have created our own French-english-animal-sound hybrid language with which we communicate quite effectively. We had a good time with our amigo, Marco, from Chile who also lived in the dojo. Our daily ritual was breakfast coffee at McDonalds…. In the last week we were also joined by my very good Czech friend Thomas who came to spend his month’s vacation in Paris. I miss all my good friends in Paris and I hope they will come to visit me here in South Africa soon!!

Working on FREEDOM SCHOOL, busy busy busy

Song Shan as seen from the Wugulun school

As I sit on the tatami floor of my little room in the Shinjuku suburb of Tokyo, the mountains of the Dengfeng region of China seem like another world, very far away. But the experiences I had there are still fresh in my mind.

For the past 2 months I studied the basics of Shaolin Xin Yi Ba at the Wugulun school situated at the foot of the majestic Song mountain, just a few bus stops away from the Shaolin Temple. The training was very basic, perhaps the most basic that I have ever encountered. I am naturally in a hurry to learn and to make progress, so I found this basic training very frustrating at times, but looking back at the results and the changes in myself I must admit that the training was extremely useful and rewarding. I did not learn many things, but the things I did learn were of high quality. Over a two month period I trained an average of six hours a day and the training consisted out of three things: standing meditation (Zhuang Gong), stepping practise (Bu Fa) and Form training (Taolu). I learned two very short and basic forms that strongly resembled taiji forms, but with more focus on the dantian (body centre) leading all motions and a kind of compression and expansion of the dantien. Xin Yi Ba is most certainly an internal martial art, and this disproves the popular misconception that the shaolin martial arts are all external.

Master Wu Nanfang

I had the pleasure of teaching my friend, "Louis" some moves at the Wugulun School of Shaolin Gongfu. Louis is very tenacious and a quick learner! See for yourself:

 

Hans and Kie: whip chain and sabre

I stayed over at my friend Kie’s place. Kie Brooks is a Tai Chi instructor and also a fellow student of Silat Suffian Bela Diri (SSBD).  We trained some SSBD together and he introduced me to some local kungfu masters. One of them is a practitioner of Fu style baguazhang and I look forward to seeing a bit of this style in the future! We did some hiking in the Hong Kong mountains and we used the opportunity to take some pictures for Kie’s up and coming book on the whip chain. Kie likes the traditional heavy whip chain, whereas I am more used to the light modern version. Both types have their pros and cons: light chains are easier to conceal and they move faster, but the heavy ones have much more momentum. Kie has the biggest collection of kungfu movies that I have ever seen!

Philippe in his office

To see what Kie and Phillipe are up to, check out their websites:
www.documen.tv
www.taigik.com