Tag: Mind body spirit

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16th Feb News & Updates

We’ve had another exciting week in Inverness. New Qigong classes have been announced and are due to commence at the beginning of next month. We have also planned an exciting seminar workshop to coincide with our scheduled pre-testing at the beginning of March.

Highland School of Qigong

Highland School of Qigong

Springtime is a time for getting out and about and putting all those plans you made over the Winter months into action. It would seem that March is the month where it is all going to happen. Our Spring Qigong Routine is due to be released then. We also have the long awaited return of our public Qigong classes.

Spring Qigong Routine

Spring Qigong Routine

Continuing from our previous Autumn and Winter Qigong routines, we will also be compiling a Spring Routine. This will follow a similar format with everything that you need sent to you, completely FREE, in an email. This will include a warm up, main practice and cool down. Each exercise, within the routine, will have a video of it being performed. It will also contain brief instructions, an explanation of any theory and a list of the main benefits. A workshop will also be held a few weeks after the release of the routine. This will aid you in your practice and help to clarify any questions that might’ve arisen after practicing it for a short time. Any notes from the workshop and general feedback will then be compiled and sent out to everyone, which should aid further practice and development.

All this information will be completely free of charge to anyone who is interested in learning the art of Qigong. To receive this information, you only need to sign up with the form below. Once compiled, we’ll send it all out to you at the email address that you sign up with.

Qigong Classes

Yee's Hung Ga Kung fu Academy, Qigong classes
Qigong Classes

Our public Qigong classes are due to return to our Inverness Academy next month. From the 5th of March 2020 we will hold regular public Qigong classes every Thursday evening at 6.15pm. These classes are open to anyone, of any age, who is interested in learning the art of Qigong.

Classes will be priced at £5 per class. There is also the option to buy a loyalty card for £30. This will grant you a 7th class for free. They will follow a similar format to our previous Qigong classes where we will practice a set routine. A Qigong exercise will then be taught to individual students to practice throughout the week. If you would like to enquire further about these classes, you can email us directly to ask any questions. We will also post updates on our Facebook page:

Highland School of Qigong

If you prefer to learn privately, we still have 1-1 tuition available. These sessions can easily be booked with our online booking system. Just select a day and available timeslot that is suitable for you on our calendar below. Fill out your details and you will then be taken to PayPal. You can securely pay for your session with any debit or credit card at this stage. We currently have availability all day on Monday and Tuesday this week.

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Rent our school

Rent our school

If you have thought about running your own martial arts, yoga, meditation or exercise class but you’re put off by the high charges for renting space out, we have a great solution. Our Academy has a great central location in Inverness. It is available throughout the day all week. We also have Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights available for you to run your classes in private. We can even designate space for your marketing and help get the word out with our social media. It only costs £12 to rent out our school for an hour. If you need more time, speak to us about what you need and we can come up with a fair arrangement. As always, you can email us directly or read more about what we can offer you in our article:

Space Available

Hung Ga Fighting System for Combat Sports

Hung Ga Fighting System for Combat Sports

On the 7th of March we have scheduled pre-tests for our students. These help our students prepare for the rigorous grading procedure which we are quite proud of at Yee’s Hung Ga. We ensure that our students are fully capable for the level that they are testing. Simply attending a grading does not guarantee a pass in the Yee’s Hung Ga system. A student must undergo a number of tests to pass each grading. This ensures that the art of Hung Ga is passed on fully for future generations. It also means that our students are under no disillusions about their strengths and capabilities. The pre-testing stage also helps to settle any anxious feelings that our students might have about the main grading.

On the same day at 1pm, Yee’s Inverness will host a seminar, suitable for anyone, students and non-students, to attend. This seminar will be delivered by Sifu Michael Rose, instructor from Yee’s Hung Ga Peterhead and Vice President of Yee’s Hung Ga Europe. The seminar is all about the Hung Ga fighting system and how it can be used for various combat sports including; MMA, Sanda & Kickboxing. Sifu Rose can also advise on correct stance, positioning, stretching, diet & nutrition in preparation for competing. Boxing and MMA gloves are both suitable for this workshop. A limited supply is available at the school but we recomend that you take your own.

If you’ve ever thought about competing or would like to know more about the training involved, this is your chance to gain the knowledge you need to take it to the next level. The seminar lasts for about 3 hours. It is suitable for both men and women, basically anyone interested in learning. For students of Yee’s Hung Ga it is priced at £30 and non-students £35. Tickets can be pre-booked, to avoid disappointment, here:

Hung Ga Fighting System for Combat Sports Tickets

Facebook event page for seminar

Classes

Current timetable

Our classes continue at our academy in Inverness and at the swimming pool gymnasium in Forres. Anyone wishing to begin their martial arts journey at Yee’s can attend our Tuesday evening beginners class at 7pm in Inverness. Both our classes in Forres are suitable for complete beginners. We have a class at 8pm for adults or 7pm for kids. Anyone is welcome to come along and give it a go.

1-1 Tuition

We have private 1-1 tuition classes available for anyone who would prefer to learn solo. These classes are easy to arrange. Simply select a date and available time slot, fill out your info and then pay securely by PayPal with any credit or debit card.

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Coming soon…

On it’s way…

As well as our Spring Qigong Routine, our Qigong classes commencing, our pre-tests and seminar, regular classes in Inverness and Forres, we will shortly be releasing our notes from our Winter Qigong Routine. The notes give further information about each exercise and about Qigong practice in general. We will soon be announcing further details about another seminar based on Hung Ga techniques. This should take place towards the beginning of April. To keep up to date with announcements, make sure that you sign up to our email alerts below.

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19 Jan 20 News & Updates

This is our final week of preparation before our Chinese new year celebrations begin. Our latest article explains some of the traditions, myths and legends surrounding the two week Spring Festival. We also have new classes beginning in Forres and updated times and info for our regular classes too.

Chinese New Year 2020

Inverness Performance Times

We now have less than a week before the beginning of the Spring Festival, commonly known as Chinese New Year. The two week festival is a busy time for kung fu schools all over the world. Yee’s Hung Ga are no different. We perform traditional lion dance displays and blessings to bring good fortune for people, businesses and organisations. You can find out what plans we have in store, plus learn about myths, legends and a Chinese/Scottish culture fusion called, “Gung Haggis Fa Choi,” plus loads more in our latest article, “Chinese New Year 20 – Year of the Rat.”

You can follow our Chinese New Year Celebration Event to keep up to date with our own celebrations here in Inverness. Our Facebook page, “Yee’s North of Scotland Lion & Dragon Dance Team,” will also give you updates on all of our performances throughout the year.

Classes

Classes begin 7th Feb at Forres Swimming Pool

In the North of Scotland, Yee’s Hung Ga has schools in the Highlands, Aberdeenshire and we are now excited to announce that we will be running classes in Morayshire too. From the 7th of February we will be be running two classes every Friday evening in Forres. There will be one class for kids aged between 8 and 12 at 7-8pm and also a class for ages 12 – adult from 8-9pm. All classes will be held in the boys gymnasium at Forres Swimming Pool. We have a page on this website just for Forres classes and we have also set up a Facebook page to share content. Please feel free to share either or both:

Forres Website Page

Forres Hung Ga Facebook Page

New members are always welcome to attend our classes in Inverness as well as Forres. Tuesday evenings at 7pm are the best classes to start off with. You can find out more information about joining on the, “How Do I Join?” page of this website.

Inverness Timetable

Private tuition classes, for the week commencing 19th-25th January, can be booked and paid for online via this website. We currently have full availability on Monday 19th plus a few other evening timeslots. Use the following calendar to pick a day and see availability.

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Highland School of Qigong

If you wish to book a private tuition slot for Qigong, you can also use the appointment calendar above to arrange a suitable time.

Highland School of Qigong

If you registered to receive our Winter Qigong Routine, this has been sent out. If you would still like to receive it, completely free, or it didn’t arrive in your inbox, you can still sign up to have it sent out to you with the link below:

The Winter Qigong Routine Workshop was also held on the 4th of January. Notes from this workshop will also be compiled and sent out shortly. This should aid practice and give you further information about the philosophy, theory and practice of our routine.

Winter Qigong Routine

We will release our Spring Qigong Routine, mid to late February, so keep an eye out for more information regarding this. If you have signed up for our Winter Qigong Routine, you will automatically be sent the Spring Routine too.

We have set up a Facebook page specifically for all our Qigong information and events. Feel free to ‘like’ this page. Any shares are also appreciated:

Highland School of Qigong

Hung Sale

Our sale continues

Despite all the Hints you dropped over Christmas, you STILL didn’t get the hoody that you really wanted. Don’t stress it! Our sale continues throughout January in our online shop. Pop in to see what bargains we still have available.

Coming Soon…

Coming soon….

We have a lot to look forward to this year and a lot of practice to crack on with. We have already kicked the year off on the right foot with our Winter Qigong Routine Workshop. We are planning to introduce our Spring routine around the middle to late February. Keep an eye out for updates on this exciting, and completely free, qigong routine. If you’ve already signed up to our emails then it will be sent out to you automatically. If not, it’s easy to do, just enter your details below.

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1st Dec News & Updates

We have a new article available for you to read this week. We also have Black Friday deals throughout our Fu-kit store. There are updates to our private tuition and class schedule for this week. There’s also more info on our Chinese New Year celebrations in Inverness and future articles and workshops coming soon.

Horse Stance

If you’ve trained in any martial arts, it is likely that you have come across the horse stance, or a version of it. It is a basic stance used for training. Many who subscribe to modern training methods may question its relevance. The horse stance is good for training the legs but is it not better to do some leg weights or squats instead of spending time sitting in one position? The length of time training this stance, especially in Hung Ga, doesn’t warrant its usage in a fight, so why not spend the time training something which will be more beneficial?

The Horse Stance

Read our insightful article on the horse stance and find out more about this, often misunderstood, training method. Try it for yourself and let us know what you think. Our article has an explanation with a short instructional video. As always, we would love to hear your thoughts in the comments or on our social media channels. You can always email us your thoughts too.

Black Friday/Cyber Monday

Black Friday/Cyber Monday

Our sale has now been extended further still. From t-shirts to accessories and teaware. Now everything is on sale! (Except our uniforms as these are already as low a price as we can get them!) We have dresses, skirts, leggings, shorts, t-shirts, polo shirts, hats, caps, teaware, beanbags, mugs, hoodies and much more! If you are thinking of buying a gift for your training buddies or loved ones who have a passion for Hung Ga, now is the time! We can only keep prices this low for a short time, so best get in there quick. Visit our Fu-kit shop for all sale items.

Classes

You may have noticed that we have made a slight change to our website so it is now more mobile friendly to navigate. All our features are there as normal, just the pages should be a little easier to find on your mobile or tablet device. Let us know what you think.

Current class timetable

We have private 1-1 tuition available all day on Monday 2nd Dec this week. You can book and pay for these by clicking on a day and timeslot on the following calendar.

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Public classes are as per normal. Beginners are welcome to attend on Monday or Tuesday classes at 7pm. There are plenty spaces available in our kids classes for little ones to start too. We have 2 different age groups. 5-8 year olds are on Mondays at 6.15-7pm. We also have a class for 8-13 year olds on Thursday at 6.15-7pm. All are welcome to attend these classes. Sifu Hepple has an Enhanced Disclosure with the PVG Scheme, so you can rest at ease that your little ones are in safe hands. We have a lion dance class on Tuesdays at 6.15-7pm, before our main beginners class at 7pm. Why not come along and try both?

Chinese New Year

Yee’s Hung Ga Lion Heads

The Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, is not too far away. Our students are busy preparing in our Lion Dance class. Lions play an important role in Chinese mythology, and represent joy and happiness. It symbolizes power, wisdom, and superiority. The lion dance is one of the most important traditions in the Spring Festival. They are performed with the accompaniment of percussion instruments such as drums, cymbals, and gongs, synchronised to the lion dance movements and actions. People traditionally used to perform lion dances to bring luck and to get rid of the evil spirits. It is performed nowadays to bring prosperity and good luck, for instance at a shop opening, celebration or wedding. It is also a great way to create a festive atmosphere, bringing happy times and good memories. Kung fu schools have kept the traditional lion dance alive over the years. It is a great way to showcase the strong stances of the students at the individual schools. Lion dance can be quite hard work. It requires considerable strength to carry and animate the lion heads for any length of time. At Yee’s Hung Ga, these traditions have been passed on to our students so that they may carry it on for future generations to enjoy. If you are interested in our Spring Festival displays or would like to contact us regarding a private display or demonstration. You can email us directly or ‘like’ our special Facebook group, Yee’s North Of Scotland Lion & Dragon Dance Team.

Coming Soon

We have a few plans that we are working on at the moment. As mentioned earlier, we are preparing for Spring Festival next year on 25th of January. We also have some exciting workshops and a brand new Winter Qigong Routine that we are also preparing for. To avoid missing out on details of these exciting opportunities, make sure you enter your email below. If you would like to register your interest in any of these workshops, please email us directly.

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The Horse Stance

The Horse stance, feared by some, celebrated by others! What is it, what’s the point? Let’s take a look…

Jackie Chan in Drunken Master

The horse stance (Ma Bu in Chinese), also known as the Four Point Great Stance (Sai Ping Dai Ma). It is not unique to Hung Ga, by any means, however it is of particular importance to practitioners of the Hung style. It is a basic stance for training the foundation. The foundation is the fundamental elements that support the three pillars. The fundamental elements being the strong body, including the bones, muscles ligaments, fascia and tendons. Ma Bu lowers the centre of gravity which helps the practitioner have a stable base. Practicing Ma Bu improves the structure of the body and the body’s alignment. Holding the stance can increase the stamina and determination of the practitioner, far beyond what they ever thought possible. With the correct posture, one can then focus on the breath. Having a regulated slow, deep breathing cycle has many calming benefits. It has been proven to reduce the heart rate and relax the body. With the relaxed, yet stable structure, one can then improve further with the circulation of fluids and the transportation of oxygen to the vital organs and the efficient removal of toxins, improving performance. With regular practice, the body can then heighten its performance further with the circulation of vital energy or Qi. Circulating qi around the body can have a huge benefit to physical, emotional and mental wellbeing, as well as increasing longevity, boosting energy levels and creating a barrier against diseases. This encompasses the three pillars we mentioned earlier. They are the body, the mind and the spirit. The physical body is trained by using the mind to focus and hold the static posture for a period of time. When the mind and body are synchronized in this way, over time, the spirit can elevated to higher levels.

Standing in Ma Bu takes time. It is hard. It is not the kind of practice for someone who is looking for quick results. At Yee’s, students train Ma Bu, it is a requirement for their gradings. As students advance through the system to higher levels, they must have a bigger and bigger foundation. They therefore need to train Ma Bu for longer periods of time. This is not just to pass a test but also to build the three pillars and to protect themselves from harm. This can be the downfall for many students who neglect to train Ma Bu. As students progress through he Hung Ga system, they learn more and more forms and techniques. Training Ma Bu often takes a back seat in favour of the other types of training. It can often be overlooked as it is so simple. Because it is simple, that doesn’t mean that it is easy. In fact it can be very difficult to maintain the stance for a long period of time. This is the nature of kung fu however, hard work and perseverance to achieve results. In today’s fast paced world, there are a select few people who wish to take this path. Most people try to take shortcuts or look for easier methods. For many practitioners the Ma Bu is a love/hate relationship. To succeed, you must enjoy the challenge and you must persevere through hardship.

Gordon Liu as Pai Mei in Kill Bill: Vol. 2

Are you ready to step up to the challenge? Think you can master the Ma Bu? Do you want to rise to the levels of previous kung fu masters throughout history? Good. Let your training begin….

• Stand with your feet together. Hands by your sides.

• Lift your arms up in front of you, palms up, and take a nice deep breath.

• Once you have breathed in, make fists and place them at the chamber (the groove above the hip and below the bottom rib) as you breathe out.

• Pivot on your heels and turn your toes out at an angle, creating a V shape. Pivot on the ball of the feet and turn the heels out. Pivot on the heels again to turn the toes outwards and then once more so that the toes are now pointing forward. Your feet should be fairly wide apart. Roughly the length of your lower leg.

Horse stance feet placement.

• Next, bend the knees and ‘sit’. Push your knees out so that they are above the feet. Keep your back straight and head up, with your fists in the chamber, elbows squeezed towards each other. The thighs should be almost parallel with the ground, at a slight angle. You can use a mirror to check your posture.

• Focus on your breathing. Place your tongue on the roof of your mouth and breathe through the nose. Take long, slow, deep breathes. Aim for 4-5 complete breathes in and out per minute.

• Great job. You’re now in the Ma Bu. You are practising an art which every Hung Ga master before you has also practiced, for centuries.

• Comfortable?

• Time how long you can maintain this stance for, without getting up. Every time you practice, try to beat your best time, even if it’s just a few seconds.

Sifu Hepple demonstrating the Ma Bu

How did you get on? How long did you manage before you had to get up? Let us know in the comments below. Send us an email or give us a tinkle on our social media channels.

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