Mental Kung Fu!
Mental Kung Fu?
As you may or may not know, I have a great love for oriental philosophy, culture and the martial arts. This has been an interest of mine for as long as I can remember. I don’t know why or when it started, but I remember watching Monkey back in the early 80s and loving that. I’m not sure if I can credit that with being the moment I embraced oriental culture though!
I took my first Kung Fu class at around the age of 14 (the reason I know I was about this age is that I remember soaking my sore feet in the sink watching Moonlighting on the TV in the kitchen and a quick Wikipedia check dates that to around 1986).
I remember our Kung Fu teacher, or Sifu as they are officially called, getting us doing all sorts of crazy things in the local village hall where we trained, and I remember wondering what the things we were doing had to do with Kung Fu. To me Kung Fu was all about fighting- punching, kicking blocking- being like Bruce Lee in short. We did our fair share of that, but we also did some more esoteric things like climbing up the beams that held up the roof of the village hall and traversing the ceiling supports. All things that I’m sure would be banned under health and safety regulations today!
Eventually, like many kids do with hobbies, I got bored (or maybe scared!) and stopped the Kung Fu lessons but I was hooked on the idea of Kung Fu. Later on, at University, I joined the Karate Club studying Shotokan Karate for a while. Then later in life, I switched to Tai Chi which I loved. When my Wife and I moved just before having our first child, I stopped the Tai Chi as there were no local clubs in the area and so my martial arts practice stopped for a while. Quite a long while in fact as we moved in 2000 but it wasn’t until 2015 that I started up again, strangely, back to square one almost, studying Wing Chun Kung Fu.
Wing Chun is a very simple but effective form of Kung Fu- it isn’t flashy, it doesn’t involve high spinning kicks, back flips or any of the moves you see in the movies. It is practical but effective. Simple but not simple and that is the philosophy that has followed me into my Hypnotherapy practice.
I started out on my Hypnotherapy journey when I visited a Hypnotherapist and was amazed at the results. This eventually lead me to take an introductory course in 2005 and then a diploma straight afterwards. Since then, I have attended many other trainings both in the real world and online and through reading and studying, have developed a passion for helping people and developed my own style of therapy.
It was only recently that I realised that what I do in the therapy room is similar to what I’m taught in Kung Fu.
Now, I don’t claim to be, or ever think I will be, the next Bruce Lee- I’m no Kung Fu expert, but I do know what the essence of Kung Fu is and a quick Google will back me up, I’m sure!
The official Chinese definition of Kung Fu is not about the fighting, it’s not about kicking, punching and breaking blocks of wood with your bare hands (although that is quite cool!). The official definition is funnily enough more akin to what my old Sifu had me doing when I was climbing the rafters of the village hall- Kung Fu is defined in Chinese as the two characters:
Kung in Chinese means “Skilful work, training or endeavour”
Fu in Chinese means “Time spent”
Therefore Kung Fu could be translated as “Time spent in skilful work and training”.
Now, this definition is great because it fits in with what I do in my therapy sessions- My main purpose is to help people change, but also to help them to help themselves to change. I want to give my clients the tools to make the changes they want and to maintain them. It doesn’t matter if that is for weight loss, anxiety issues, phobias or anything else. My main purpose is to give them what I call Mental Kung Fu! That is, I want them to spend their time with me learning skilful work and training for THEIR mind! And it often goes further than what my clients see me for- The tools I teach can be applied to all sorts of life situations- the possibilities are only limited by your imagination!
So Mental Kung Fu- “Time spent on skilful work training the mind”
If that sounds like what you need, please click on the link below for details about session pricing and about how to book your free Mental Kung Fu Goal Setting Session!
Thanks (Hsie Hsie 谢谢)
Lee
