Breathing for Strength, Vitality, and Performance
For millennia breath control exercises have been the secret weapon of advanced yogis, qigong adepts, master healers, and warrior-monks to forge phenomenal strength, super human body control, and extraordinary vitality. When disciplines such as yoga, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Internal Martial Arts, and Qigong have been successfully used over thousands of years to heal the…
The Yin and Yang of Strength
The art and science of becoming stronger can be broken down into 2 main methods. The Addition of Driving Forces (Yang), and The Subtraction of Restrictive Forces (Yin) When most people train for strength they focus solely on the Yang of Strength – the addition of driving forces. But this will only get you so…
Upgrade Your Breath Book Review
I just finished up my morning practice of breathing exercises so this seems the perfect time to sit down and write about Logan Christopher’s latest book release, Upgrade Your Breath. I have known Logan for several years now and am proud to say that I own almost every one of his programs. Each one is engaging,…
How to Train for Chaos without Making Training Chaotic
The current rage in conditioning training, especially when talking about combat conditioning, is to completely change up the workout for each and every session. This has the advantage of keeping the training fresh and throwing the body into chaos each time so it never knows what hit it. The hardcore advocates of this type of…
The Failure of Yogic Breathing
There are many different systems of breath work out there that focus on relaxed breathing and stress reduction that also talk about how to increase breath control and expand the practitioner’s lung capacity. Unfortunately the majority of these systems fall short due to the fact that they tend to focus the bulk (or all) of their work on…
This Simple Practice RESETS Your Body
Let’s face it. Some days we just need to hit the RESET button. Whether due to stress, an accumulation of injuries, fatigue, or illness we need to find a way to RESET the body in order to allow its own natural healing function to take over. Luckily, there is a very simple process whereby we…
Resolving the Tension Paradox for Martial Artists
In order to truly begin our quest for Integrated Strength, we must first resolve the tension paradox between conventional strength training and internal power… “Don’t use muscle!” “No power!” “Relax!” “Move naturally!”
3 Months to Live
I had a very interesting conversation the other day with an elderly Chinese gentleman. At 74 years young he still works part-time as a medical doctor and is in excellent health. He told me that back in 1982 in China he was diagnosed with a very severe lung problem, which was slowly reducing his breathing…
Breath and Body Coordination
Matching breath to body movement is a key skill in learning how to power movement with the breath. This matching can be as simple as inhaling on an expanding, opening, or lengthening movements and exhaling on contracting or closing movements. Under resistance though we begin to look at the idea of exhaling on effort to…
Mobility, Mobility, Mobility
What is, hands-down, the most effective, efficient, and time saving daily practice you can adopt for greater health and longevity? In one word – Mobility, Mobility, Mobility! I’m sure you are familiar with the phrase, “move it or lose it”, right? But how seriously do you take it? A complete mobility practice moves each joint…
Lost Empire Herbs
