North Star Martial Arts
In depth discussions of internal martial arts, theatricality, and Daoist ritual emptiness. Original martial arts ideas and Daoist education with a sense of humor and intelligence.
Books: TAI CHI, BAGUAZHANG AND THE GOLDEN ELIXIR, Internal Martial Arts Before the Boxer Uprising. By Scott Park Phillips. Paper ($30.00), Digital ($9.99)
Possible Origins, A Cultural History of Chinese Martial Arts, Theater and Religion, (2016) By Scott Park Phillips. Paper ($18.95), Digital ($9.99)
Watch Video: A Cultural History of Tai Chi
New Eastover Workshop, in Eastern Massachusetts, Italy, and France are in the works.
Daodejing Online - Learn Daoist Meditation through studying Daoism’s most sacred text Laozi’s Daodejing. You can join from anywhere in the world, $50. Email me if you are interesting in joining!
Damn Gurl! Ronda Rousey Exceeds Expectations! MORE Insanity.
MMA is about getting the audience to watch you dominate and be dominated. Get them to feel your rage and pain.
WWE is about WINNING! The goal is to please your opponent and to respond spontaneously to make the audience love you or hate you more. It is about feeling the audience!
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DENVER
https://www.facebook.com/zhangsanfengfestival/
This is an amazing project with some great images and essays of the late 19th Century in Shanghai. Visualizing Cultures MIT
Read MoreI am teaching a new workshop this Friday 5-7 PM in Berkeley, California at Soja Martial Arts.
How I developed this new material
In that last few years I figured out how the Daoist meditation practice called the Golden Elixir (jindan) is connected to Internal Martial Arts. The golden elixir practice develops something called the Immortal Egg. This egg is a real thing. It is a re-ordering of perception-action. In simple terms, it is a different (some would say primal) way of initiating movement. The result of working with this idea/practice has profoundly changed my martial arts.
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I want invite readers of my blog to join my Daodejing class online. It has been going for eight months now. It is a great class, and getting better. Students joyfully commit to an hour of meditation a day and class meets for two hours once a month. Get more details here: Daodejing Online
I am teaching three workshops in Berkeley, California. They are both at Soja Martial Arts (click the workshops button)
The first on Friday night is all the Neigong stuff I've invented in the last two years.
The second is a kids workshop--followed by a workshop for adults about teaching kids. The idea is that you can come watch me teach and then we will workshop the workshop! (see below)
Read MoreI had been thinking about this issue in my spare time, and lo and behold someone else has written about it. Two Types of Mathematics.
I belong to the spatial-visual-magic school. Not the logic school. Martial arts, especially internal martial arts, is a branch of mathematics. It is a type of thinking. I may have to put this on my business card.
I am doing a lot of work on my next book. A lot of it is about polishing. One of the reasons I have a blog is so that I can put out ideas which are unpolished. Here are some rough ones. Enjoy.
When you perform improv theater in front of an audience that wants you to get better, the audience can see when you listen to your inner critic. The audience will give you instant "we love you," signals, or "we are going to eat you" predatory feed-back—or dead silence. Read Rory Miller's post on killing the inner sensei.
Read MoreYou can blow it up and look at the fine details at the source.
A place to train and learn about traditional Chinese martial arts, which are a form of religious theater combined with martial skills.
