The style of training I do is Chinese internal martial arts.
They’re comprised of Bagua, Xingyi and Tai Chi.
It varies from other styles of martial arts because what we’re doing is cultivating
from the inside outwards, that’s why they’re called the internal arts.
In China, they also have what would be called external arts.
These will be more forceful arts, arts where it would be more strenuous, a lot of open
body, very hard sorts of postures.
In the internal arts we concave our chest and we look to cultivate an environment for
our internal organs, and we maintain this posture throughout the practise, to induce
healing and from there we strengthen our organs and from strengthening our organs, it strengthens
the exterior, which are the muscles and tendons.
Nathan, how long have you been doing this?
I started when I was ten years old now.
So it’s about 23, almost 24 years.
When somebody stars training in the internal arts, if they are taught correctly, they will
begin to feel the results immediately.
From first practise, you probably find a very strong feeling of unity with your body and
also just peace of mind and a lot of energy.
Some of the benefits we find, actually they are very well known for lowering Type II diseases,
such as diabetes, arthritis, just in general health.
It’s very soft on the system and your organs and this is how we begin to strengthen the
outside by strengthening the inside first.
This stage I train mainly in my yard, which is in a National Park in Australia.