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Action Figure punches remix from Alex C on Vimeo.

It’s interesting that Rickson does pranayama exercises (yoga’s version of qigong) as a part of his routine. Breath of Fire and Nauli Kriya, specifically.

“Could this be the knockout punch?”

Back in 1980 my friends and I built a shack in the deep coast range mountains out of Coos Bay Oregon… We noticed that it took a full week for our minds, our bodies, our beings to settle into life in the forest. We were hunting and gathering food, there was constant danger of injury, being charged by elk, drowning, and a brush with Bigfoot.

We became like the animals. We smelled like the animals. We felt the heat in the summer and the driving rain in the winter. We didn’t see a television for six months at a time.

Every now-and-then we’d take the truck to the University of Oregon in Eugene where we visited the girls and restocked our pot supplies. As we entered the city we’d literally feel the electrical energy. Power lines, noise, Yuppie assholes.

Before, our minds had been quiet and open to absorb every bit of information you need to live and hunt in the woods. What we felt is that as we entered the city we had to put up a mental wall, to shield us from the overload of stimulation. Most people go through their entire life in that condition and know nothing different. Later, when we returned to our shack in the woods it took another few days to decompress.

…

Short of living like Thoreau at Walden Pond, we can quiet our minds with introspective, internal martial arts. We can live in the moment, setting aside concerns of past and future… training the mind [is the] way to free it:
Yi (mind intent) leads Chi (energy), resulting in Jing (action).

— Dojo Rat

A classic fight scene with the courtly smallsword versus the highland broadsword.
But seriously Mr Aristo, don’t just stand there looking shocked – draw your blade through his fingers and then stab him in the face. This clip version has some weird startrek vulcan music overdubbing.

according to the totally inaccurate counter at the bottom of the page.
[i've been slacking around here recently & need to work on my blog fu]
Thanks!

Mr. Nigel Sutton visits a Malaysian qigong school:

Next Master Kang asked if I would like to have a go and the larger of the two educators smiled myopically at me as his teacher insisted that i could hit him anywhere on his abdomen with any kind of strike. “Any kind of strike?” I queried. The master nodded. I decided that the man was fair game so I gently placed my loosely-clenched fist on his solar-plexus and simultaneously sinking and contracting my muscles delivered a taiji punch. This kind of punch directs all its force inwards, as little energy is lost at the initial contact because it is so soft. Very difficult to apply in a fighting situation, as a demonstration “trick” it is quite impressive. As the fist travels such a small distance and the effects are often spectacular, with the “victim” either flying backwards or sinking to his knees, vomiting or any combination of the above.

In this case my target’s qigong training must have stood him in good stead for he neither fell over nor threw up. He did, however, turn a nice shade of green and surreptitiously kneaded the spot where I had hit him. Master Kang, meanwhile became quite agitated. “No, no you can hit him any way you like but not like that!” So saying he pushed target number one away and beckoned over another of his students.

Master Kang looked up at me as if to say where did you learn to do that; he should have known as during the introductions he had been told that I had been studying the Chinese martial arts for some years.

http://www.zhong-ding.com/qigong.htm