Fcrcle

You’ve heard the expression “Feng Schwei." Translated, it means "Wind Water." It has to do with the energy of a position, and how that energy relates to your own personal energy. In his writings, Carlos Castenada referred to power places, where you could go to recharge or to be energized and renewed. Whatever you call it, when you are in harmony with your environment, it’s like having the river moving with you...things happen, and you hardly have to move. When you are out of harmony, everything becomes work, and the objective becomes unattainable.

In the Iron Crane School, Feng Schwei was the litmus test which proved your skills were progressing as planned. The typical student underwent exposure to the components of Feng Schwei in the form of Cycle Drills, during progressive stages of his/her training. You began by learning to defend against multiple hand attacks, once hands were mastered, you worked on knives, then kicks, then weapons (such as the middle stick), the long Bo and finally the sword.

The culmination of these drills in an integrated free form self defense Kata where you face off against four attackers. After the bow of respect, they then initiate:

4 Hand Strikes
4 Knife Attacks
4 Kicking Attacks
4 Middle Stick Attacks
4 Bo Attacks, and
4 Sword Attacks

Your job is to improvise convincing defenses and responses to all of the incoming attacks, and to emerge victorious. The form, as you might expect, will exhaust and humble you. By the time your are a Black Belt, it will be second nature. At first, the pattern follows the outline of the Cycle Drills. As you progress, the incoming attacks can be anything, and from any direction. This is not for the faint of heart!

This is another set of clips recently discovered in our archives. They were shot on a primitive camera many years ago and the digitized quality is poor. The original film is gone, this is all we have. I believe they still have value for what they preserve. I ask for your friendly understanding on this.

These clips are entirely improvised on the spot, shot as they occurred, with no editing or re-shoots.

We begin with Wesley Farrison doing the first cycle against attackers who are throwing nothing but hand strikes. Next, we have Chris Entus demonstrating improvised responses to random knife attacks. I follow with a demonstration of responses to stick attacks, and then with a demonstration of the full form.

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