This Interview was conducted around 2oo1

In all old mystical systems there is the hidden art of “direct transmission”.  This is often alluded to – but in most cases never revealed. Many modern so called “masters” often deride it as “hocus pocus” but on investigation never studied under a genuine master or if they did, didn’t stay long enough or possess the necessary talents to receive the “family” transmissions.

The thing is, you only have to look a some masters to see that they possess that certain kind of “magic”, not only in their Martial Arts movements but in everything they do.  They are happy, contented, sociable and incredibly powerful and fluid in everything they do.  Invariably they never boast of having received the transmissions, those that boast and advertise, invariably haven’t.  The Kung Fu world means that the students have to search and work it out for themselves. 

The Martial arts are littered with clues, the Japanese call it “Jikiden”, the Iaido style that I studied is called “Muso Jikiden Ryu” meaning “visionary style of direct transmission”.  So the idea was not unfamiliar to me, in western magic you undergo  “initiation” with rituals and symbols with a high priest or priestess where you “yield” to their manipulations so that they can increase your links to the higher power or energy.

I came into contact with “Chap Sau” in my lessons with Jim Uglow in the UK and Ma Lee Yang in Hong Kong.  My experience really was quite profound, Jim would manipulate my hands to “soften” my elbows get my shoulders to “sit” on my lats, and “settle” my back, hips and legs until I found the energy line from hands to feet.  He would “fiddle” until everything came alive.

So I figured who better to talk to on your behalf to try and get the best idea of how it worked……….

This article was written in the year 2000…

Those of you that know me know that I have little love or respect for the oriental and occidental meglomaniacal Martial Art Mastersîthat litter our arts.  Those that charge extortionate fees for ìdiscipleshipsî and advertise with cheap fairground tricks and treat other human beings as chattels and bulls eye targets will get short shrift from me whatever their rank, title or nationality.  We all bleed.  So it takes someone special to get me into an aeroplane for fourteen hours to take me to a place I hate.

This time it was Virgin Atlantic.  Iíd already flown British Airways and Cathay Pacific, so this time it had to be Virgin and in my estimation they are the best because of their interior decor, food and in flight entertainment (when it works!).

A fourteen hour flight and shuttle bus ride later we are ensconced in our hotel and overcoming jet lag.  I won’t bore you all with the travel and tourist details because I hate Hong Kong, it’s hot, crowded and humid.  A shoppers and clubber’s paradise, both pastimes that I abhor, for me the attraction was Ma Lee Yang, the head of Yang Family Tai Chi.  I was there to train and had little energy or enthusiasm for anything else.

Ma Lee is opening the family vaults, for the sake of posterity she is teaching properly and methodically the proper Classical Yang Family Tai Chi.  There are allegedly nineteen million Yang style practitioners in the world and of all that I had seen, no one does it like it like Ma Lee. 

*Note – I did this interview with Jim Uglow at the end of 1999 and it was published in January 2000….

Jim Uglow is one of a rare breed.  I have often likened finding a “real” Martial Artist to that of finding a diamond on a beach of pebbles.  Jim is a diamond, coming from the East End of London he could be accurately described as a “diamond geezer”……

In his twenty odd years in the Martial Arts he has never stopped learning, never stopped getting closer and closer to the “source”, both in Hung Gar Kung Fu and Yang style Taiji.  He travels to Hong Kong a minimum of three times a year to train with the Hung family for one part of the day and the Yang family for the second part.  He has extensive “blood line” training in both arts, you can’t get any better than that!

Although my main art had been Karate, I had trained in Taiji since the ’70′s and thought that I had seen it all until the day I walked into Jim’s Kwoon in Woodford Green.  It is like walking into China, with the official notifications from both Hung and Yang Families on the wall, the extensive official shrine consecrated by Kung Fu/Feng Shui masters Yap Chen Hoi and Yap Leong and with the Lion Dance costumes and the array of weapons, you know you are in a serious Kung Fu Kwoon.