Greetings from the Valley of the Sun

greytowhite

Green Belt
Joined
Nov 14, 2012
Messages
160
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61
Location
Phoenix, Arizona
Hi guys I'm Matt or grey, whatever. I live in Phoenix and organize a local practice group for xingyi and bagua. As a kid I started off doing aikido but quit because I was tired of hearing that I wasn't a "good" uke, the art as it was taught didn't enable the smaller kids in my class to throw me or do much of anything - the school even offered to advance me a belt if I stayed. My uncle quickly disabused me of the notion that what I learned was at all effective except for certain locks.

Growing up I fought regularly with gang members, karateka, wing chun players, and other kids learning Escrima. When I got into high school my best friend had multiple 3rd dans in a few styles of karate and we'd spar regularly so that when it came down to it the jocks learned not to love with the couple of nerds talking about computers and metal. I still laugh about the time we both decided to stop a sword sparring match as we were both quite sure that one of us was going to be impaled at the end of the day.

After entering the working world my health went to **** and my mentor in the tobacco industry taught me some Chen taiji. I put in 500+ hours in the course of six months and also learned some wing chun at the time. I was then fortunate enough to meet a fellow who shared some of Xie Peiqi's and Bruce Kumar Frantzis' bagua and Wu taiji with me. While I wasn't physically capable of doing a lot of the bagua he showed me it gave me a very martially grounded view of the art.

I recently started training in Kenny Gong's xingyi and bagua here in Phoenix. My sifu is Lloyd Day and I'm incredibly blessed to have a teacher with such skill who shares so much with us in class. In just two months I have a completely different view of neijin and middle dantien mechanics. What an eye opener!
 

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