Who am I and how I got to Shaolin Cat Boxing?

My name is Shao.  I was born in a village in Moldova, North-East Romania, and ever since I know myself I loved to climb trees and play with sticks and bows in the forest.  Every summer we also used to build tents out of small trees.  

At age 8, my parents decided to send me to the city to study in better schools. Being very skinny and also coming from the countryside brought me a lot of troubles with my school mates and with other people around the neighbourhoods I was living in. Unlike other kids, I didn’t have a big brother or a cousin to call in case of emergency. Actually, my big brother used to hit me as well. 

So then, at age 9 I started to practice martial arts and fell in love with them ever since. First time, I practiced Kwan Qi Do. I loved the black suits and all the weapons that were displayed during trainings. Also, there were lots of kids around my age there so I had a great opportunity to make new friends – only this time we had more in common than just our school. 

Unfortunately, I had to change schools quite often because my host families couldn’t keep me for very long periods of time.  This way, I lost contact with the gym where I was training. 

A bit later, when I was about  11 years old, I went to practice rugby with some school mates, hoping that this would make me stronger.  I really loved rugby, except that I was way too weak for those trainings and the body conditioning exercises that were practiced there didn’t help me to get fit enough to actually enjoy the game. 

Soon after I turned 13, I found a Shotokan Karate Club where the trainings were led by a riot police officer. Although this martial art style was non-contact, the trainings were quite harsh. Sometimes, we also used to train at the riot police headquarters which was an immense joy for us since we had the chance to kick the military sand bags and some of the soldiers were always cleaning the gym for us.  I got into some quarrels in school and in the neighbourhood and I noticed that my training was not good enough for what happens in a real combat situation. 

Happily,  a friend of mine from Shotokan had another friend who practiced Vietnamese martial arts – Vovinam Viet Vo Dao and, after I fought with him, I was accepted to train with them during the weekends in the local parks.  We exchanged lots of techniques there and I got to learn from them how to use the nunchucks , which helped me escape and protect myself when I was attacked by multiple opponents in my neighbourhood (a football team, to be more precise). 

Together, we started to study Ninjutsu and Jeet Kune Do and we planned to bring more training partners into our club, preferably from different martial arts so we can exchange more skills.

As I wasn’t satisfied with my sparring performance, I decided to go to a Full Contact Isshinryu Karate Club. This was the first time I actually became a bit more confident when having to defend myself in real combat situations.  This style was way more realistic, although it wasn’t as fancy as all the martial arts movies we were watching.  Here I also got the chance to practice Kobudo and play with some traditional Okinawian weapons.

In the meantime, we gathered lots of other practitioners, from different kung fu styles, aikido, boxing, to train and spar with during the weekends. 

Soon, we discovered a Shaolin Club in our city and after I saw one traditional form I totally fell in love with the style.  The form was the very first that was teached there: Wu Bu Quan – or five stances boxing. As far as I know, this form was created so people can practice the five fundamental stances from Shaolin, which would enable them to build a strong body conditioning and to go to more advanced forms and techniques. 

Although I didn’t want to leave the Karate Club, I had to choose between the two, so I chose Shaolin.

I trained there for two or three years, until our master couldn’t manage the club anymore due to lack of students. After our master left, me and my friends continued to train together in the park, or in different other gyms and exchange more knowledge with different other practitioners from different styles – boxing, kickboxing, muay thai, kung fu, capoeira. 

But, after I discovered Parkour, I left the martial arts trainings for a while and got really crazy about climbing buildings and doing flips. This got me lots of injuries, because although I was quite fit from the martial arts training, at that time I didn’t develop a sustainable way of training, so many times I used to skip the warming up and stretching was only practiced when I was too lazy to do anything else.  For about 6 years – during my Bachelors and Master’s Degree studies (Political Sciences & Political Philosophy at the Al. I. Cuza Univesity from Iasi), I practiced Parkour & FreeRunning. 

Before finishing my University studies, I started practicing Capoeira, since I felt very attracted to the anthropology researches about the South American Indians and got very passionate about what was going on in that part of the world. Capoeira was really fun and I totally fell in love with playing in the roda. Finally, I was discovering a way to spar against people without knocking each other out. Although it is sometimes perceived as more of a dance than a martial art, capoeira has very practical techniques and it teaches you a very important lesson which you don’t always learn at the traditional martial arts schools and that is to move according with your opponent. During the traditional oriental martial arts classes, we would practice a single technique hundreds of times until we would get bored of it, but when in a fight we wouldn’t know how to set up that technique and use it. In Capoeira, you have to use your spontaneity more often and know the weak and strong points of your body a bit more.

About that time, after I finished University and left Romania together with my girlfriend in order to go and live in Amsterdam for the next 4 years,  I decided that I have to continue practicing martial arts for the rest of my life, as a main activity and I started to hope that one day, I may be able to share all this with as many people as possible.

 Although I was crazy about martial arts ever since I was a kid, my parents soon forbade me to train as they didn’t like the idea of me having such a strong passion, since this may hinder my school studies.  What they didn’t notice was that ever since I started practicing martial arts I had better grades at school and my body was getting stronger. I was generally happier, more satisfied about myself and  started to have more friends. Living in the city and being from the countryside no longer made me a paria, it made me special and blessed. Since at the countryside I was having just the right environment and tools to practice traditional trainings and lots of my training partners used to envy me for that. 

 Also, my general knowledge had expanded, since with each martial art style I was encountering I was also learning more about the geography and history of the home region of that martial art.

Unfortunately, I got a very bad ankle injury while doing a side flip – which was aggravated by an elevator crash - and soon afterwards I was so unlucky as to get some confusing skin irritations which  led me to anti-inflammatory pills and incorrectly subscribed antibiotics. For the next 2 years I did all sorts of medical research  and followed lots of pill based treatments and even got into a failed laser surgery for haemorrhoids during a trip to Romania.  I had the feeling that I was getting more and more sick with each visit I pay to the doctor.  

So then, I turned from vegetarian to vegan, to get rid of all the toxic foods and only use clean food. It was only then that I started to notice more the link between what I was eating and how I was feeling and how much energy I had. 

Also, I had to quit Capoeira, because I was in such a weak condition that watching the games in the roda only made me more frustrated.  I was so inpatient to get better as I was just getting more skilful at playing in the roda. Capoeira didn’t have any training for somebody like me – injured, stressed, sick.

Then I started to remember about Shaolin. I remembered there were some exercises, called Qigong, which I never had the patience to do as a teenager, although they seemed pretty cool back then.  These exercises are supposed to help you recover from injuries and sicknesses and maintain your internal balance while healthy, as well as strengthen your nervous and immune systems in order to prevent illnesses. 

Slowly I started doing some Qigong every morning and every evening and got more curious about it. I was very interested to see if it actually works or if it is just a myth, or if it only works for the Shaolin monks as they may keep the secrets for themselves and only show empty movements to the rest of the world.  Many people regard Qigong as being superstitious and they think that the benefits only come as a placebo effect. So, since I was so disappointed with the modern medicine I was very eager to test it. I also learned some Dao Yin Qigong  and other forms of qigong, but later on I sticked to Shaolin Qigong and Tai Chi. 

Then, I saw that there are actually a series of scientific researches performed on qigong practitioners that prove the medical benefits of this kind of training and that in China you can actually find a proper institute where such ancient medical practices are studied and tested, so they can be used in order to complete the conventional medicine. 

I was recommended by my Shaolin teacher at that time to go and try Chinese Acupuncture so I can heal my inflamed liver, the haemorrhoids, the urinary infections and my injured ankle. At that point I was still very inpatient and desperate to recover, scared that I may end up being crippled and dependent on pills for the rest of my life. I can honestly say that the treatment I received there saved my life! There, I was also recommended to start meditating so I can calm down my highly irritated nervous system. Although I was very curious about meditation ever since I was practicing Karate, I was sceptical about trying it at that time, while the haemorrhoids were causing me so much pain that I couldn’t even sit to drink a cup of tea. My acupuncturist friend told me to use a classical meditation stance and I felt quite comfortable with it, regardless of the haemorrhoidal pain. I also noticed that some pain I had in my wrists was gone... Then I became more confident about it and started practicing it on a daily basis.  Breathing slowly helps your heart to calm down and rest. Sometimes, you can even hear your heartbeat. Your blood flows more peacefully so your veins can benefit from this. You oxygenate your lungs, your brain and all your cells in your body. All your body is at rest and it can enter a recovery process. It can acknowledge what is going wrong and it has time to repair itself, since the rest of the day we use our bodies and at night we don’t always get a good sleep, because of physical conditions – pain in the body,  heat, mosquitoes, etc., or because of psychological conditions – stress, traumas, nightmares, noise, etc.  Your body reacts to all this, and your reactions damage your nervous system. During meditation, you observe your reactions but you don’t support them, so they cannot harm you. You also become aware of more and more of your thoughts, how you distort your memories, your likes and dislikes, your hypocrisies, your thinking process, your reactions. You start to know yourself better. Therefore you can understand yourself and feel at peace easier generally, and also when getting in trouble.  For me, meditation is more of a medical practice than of a spiritual one. I know nothing about spirituality... of course, I read some books, watched some documentaries, talked to some wise people. But this is all second hand knowledge. I haven’t discovered anything spiritual on my own.

Around that time, I also quit using all the medication that the doctors recommended me.  Slowly slowly I got better and I was more and more able to practice Shaolin Qigong and even Shaolin Kung Fu. 

It was then when I learned, on my own, how important it is to warm up and stretch before every training. Slowly, I have found more confidence in myself and developed my own training rhythm. 

I was also recommended by my acupuncturist friend to practice Tai Chi in order to enhance my health recovery.  Again, I was a bit sceptical about Tai Chi, since I was used to more full contact martial arts. But, there was something at that training that helped my ankle injury a lot. When you move fast,  most of the movement is performed by your muscles and your joints just start and end the movement, which puts a lot of pressure on them. Also, many sports and modern physiotherapy practices don’t have such complex knowledge about the link between breath and movement. Breathing with the movement helps you stay more focused and puts all your body into the movement. It also creates an internal effect that can influence the flow of blood and energy.  Moving slowly allows your joints to “learn” how to move so they can align themselves anatomically correct. 

After I left Amsterdam, my health was almost completely recovered but since I wasn’t fortunate enough to arrive to a stable material situation, it deteriorated a bit. Here in Romania I have nowhere to go to receive acupuncture treatment and I only use conventional medicine very very rarely or not at all (for example, buying an anti-fungus cream to clean a skin infection).  My only treatment consists of martial arts training, meditation, vegan food and self-massage and happily I can declare that my health continues its recovery. 

I have learned since a teenager that traditional martial arts training is not enough for real combat situations, so I chose to also learn boxing and continue the Parkour training. I love boxing not just for its highly practical use, but especially for its simplicity. And although so simple, it is not simple at all to actually put it into practice. A sparring fight is different from a real fight. Some people may be very good at sparring, but they might not be so good at fighting. The mind sets are different. When you spar you know that the risks are limited, when you fight the risks are unlimited. This is why it is very important to know yourself, know your capacities, know your fears and learn some more advanced fighting techniques. Because, just to defend yourself is not very difficult. In an extreme situation, while feeling threatened, almost anybody can defend himself, but the attacker may get crippled or even die. And that doesn’t resonate at all to a peaceful loving mindset.  So, when you learn traditional martial arts, you have the opportunity to learn advanced techniques so you can easily deflect the attacks and stop your opponent, without inflicting too much damage. He may even get a chance to realize what he’s doing and stop by himself. This is a level I haven’t yet reached and this is what I call true martial arts!

At this point, I would love to continue my training and sharpen my skills, learn more, inspire myself and others and share what I already practice with as many people as possible, since I have seen on my own what a great therapeutic  tool the consistent martial arts training represents.

Wish you peace!

What is Shaolin Cat Boxing?

Shaolin Cat Boxing is a training method which mixes self-defense techniques, body conditioning exercises, parkour, recovery movements & meditation. Inspired by Cats & Crows!

Dragons are no longer among us, and sadly tigers may leave us too... And that's because of us, by the way. Ancient people found their inspiration in observing these mysterious animals, I found mine in observing cats. A cat may not be as strong as a tiger due to its reduced size, but everything else besides size that makes a tiger to be a tiger is there in a cat as well. A tiger is just a bigger cat! 

Cats can be loving, nurturing, peaceful, inspiring and they can be aggressive, decisive, fearless, brave, almost sadistic some would say. Although, I don't share this point of view. I see no cruelty in a cat traumatizing a mouse - that's her job! On the other hand - our job is not to traumatize tigers or other animals... We are in an even more decadent situation - we, as a species, don't even know our job! We always seek for it, for a purpose, for truth, for peace, for wealth, for health, for something - cats seem to be beyond all this, they just go along with whatever happens to them and never hurry anywhere. They very rarely complain about anything... And to get back to the cat and mouse story - there are cats and dogs stories too, cats and bears stories, cats and alligator stories. They don't always pick up the weak to bully... Not to mention that the mouse has his own training too. He's not necessarily weaker than the cat.

Now, I don't want to scare everybody and make you think that I regard them as Gods or something, but they are, without doubt, teachers, masters, friends!
They know how to run and climb, they know how to fight, they know how to recover from injuries and sicknesses on their own, they know how to love, they know how to enjoy life! This is what inspired me to combine the training this way!

SHAOLIN KUNG FU remains the basis of this training since this is the martial art I have practiced the most and it is the one that I have found to be the most useful for me. Shaolin Kung Fu itself was developed this way - by absorbing and combining whatever was found to be useful in other martial arts, at other people, at other beings. The basics of this martial art can create a strong physical foundation that can allow us to experience further. Unlike cats, we didn't play all day long ever since we were small kids, running and fighting. We had to go to school, we had to do other things - mainly, things that others wanted us to do.

So we first have to regain our bodies, and for this we have to regain our minds.  Shaolin Kung Fu and SHAOLIN QIGONG can help with this. If we go straight to Calisthenics we will jump a few steps... Although Calisthenics are as old as the human body, we no longer know a "correct" way to train - anatomically speaking. Shaolin has been successfully tested for more than 1500 years so we can trust it for the beginning. Later on we may develop our own martial arts, but the traditional martial arts have to be respected too! Shaolin can help us to correct our posture and the alignment of our joints, while slowly building up internal health. So we soon can learn just how much to push ourselves so we can go the distance. We don't just want to train to look good this summer...

TAIJI is another important component that can be used both for recovery purposes - physical or psychological, internal or external, and also for self-defense. I haven't studied it as intensively as I have studied Shaolin, but I had the occasion to learn some traditional Yang and Chen Taiji forms and they proved to be of great physioterapeutic help at that time and so I got motivated to keep practicing it and study it further.

BOXING is very simple and easy to learn. Being so simple it is very practical and as far as the self-defense techniques go, it shares a lot of principles with Taiji and Shaolin. It also enables us to decipher the hidden applications embedded in the traditional forms, since we make better connection between regular, "modern, fighting stances and traditional stances, between our way to throw a punch and the ancient way to throw a punch. We all know we are not going to fight using low stances, super flying kicks and fancy techniques. Simple is best!

And most of the time, if we are to talk about self defense, we are not ready. That is actually the problem! We are taken by surprise, we are outnumbered, overwhelmed, and physically we are not even warmed up. Adrenaline kicks in and helps with that a bit, but the blood still didn't have time to travel through all the joints properly. Yes, it does that all the time - traveling through our bodies -  but not intensively enough as to prepare us for a fight because that's not why our blood flows in the first place. So, how are we going to do crazy twists and throw high kicks in a street fight without messing up our tendons? Unlike our hips, our arms are warmed up most of the time and are more flexible since we use them more often in our modern life style. As a self-defense tool boxing proves to be highly efficient. Many people think of boxing only in terms of boxing in the ring, but boxing means more than that. It can involve elbow techniques too - like the 52 Blocks Fighting System; and if we are to think about KickBoxing, Thai Boxing or Muay Thai then it involves pretty much all our body.

Also, if we are to refer to the more simple and classical Western Boxing, then sparring that way is really fun! Boxing is very logical, it is not about who is stronger but about who is smarter. Each movement asks for another movement and every time you do a mistake you get hit. It's that simple! If you want to solve a math problem, you may spend hours until you find out you were wrong. In Boxing, you find this out almost instantly! Some of the best things to learn is that you better get out of the way of the circular hits instead of trying to block them since they have more power and you better put yourself in a position from where you can throw hits but you can't get hit. Slipping a punch requires more focus than blocking it. You only block it when you have no other option left. This also gives you the opportunity to counter punch faster or even simultaneously.

PARKOUR is there to teach us how to move, how to make intelligent use of the environment so we can reach a certain destination fast and easy. It is a very beautiful and enjoyable way to train and it trains all your body. And from a self-defense perspective, it is a must know when it comes to street fights. Because most of the time you are either attacked by a bigger guy, or by more guys at once. There are no weight categories on the street, no rules, no referees, no rings, no protection gears. That's why it is best to avoid a direct confrontation on the street - so if you are to run then at least do it nicely and be confident about it! This way you can even trap the ones who chase you or beat them one by one, or you can simply go home and relax.

For body conditioning I have chosen to train without weights, so I do CALISTHENICS or STREET WORKOUT. I consider that my own body mass is a heavy enough weight so I don't need to attach anything else on top of it. Sometimes I use small weights around my ankles and wrists so I can punch and kick faster, but bigger weights would develop a bigger muscle mass and that may just not be necessary. There are tones of different kinds of push ups, squats, chin ups, pull ups, there is running, there is swimming, there is biking, there is carry water and chop wood. There are so many beautiful activities that we can enjoy and that can help us get stronger that lifting weights seems way too boring. I don't want to offend those who do lift weights, it's their choice and if they enjoy it then it's all great, but it depends on what you want to get from your training. Do you want fast, flexible, strong and resistant muscles or do you want muscle mass? Because for a muscle to be fast, flexible, strong and resistant it doesn't necessarily have to be big.

Another very important aspect of Shaolin Cat Boxing is TRAINING OUTDOORS! I can even go that far as to propose a research and test a group of people who do the same training in a gym and another group of people who do the same training in a park or in a forest. I bet that there will be better results for the group training under some trees! We need oxygen first of all! I believe that training outdoors also has a very positive effect on our immune system and on our resistance to cardio workout but that could only be shown in a research like the one I suggest.

Of course, in the meantime we invented air conditioning and gyms too have oxygen, but why not train next to the source if you can? Gyms are great for when there is a blizzard outside, when it rains for weeks in a row, when it snows for weeks in a row, when it's really cold and windy. But that happens only 20-30 % of the time, the rest of the time we should be outside.

This way we become a bit more aware of the fact that we are scared of our own environment, we have destroyed our own environment and we no longer feel comfortable in it. This is a mystery if we are to think of us as a species in comparison to other species on this planet... we alienated ourselves.

To help with all this training, a VEGAN DIET should also be adopted. Quitting animal products and processed foods, as well as alcohol and cigarettes, will have a tremendous impact on boosting your health! You can do this research on your own, I am not going to tell you what to eat and what not to eat and we can train together even if you eat meat and I eat beans, but I ate both of them and I can personally say that I have more energy ever since I eat vegan food. All the nutrients you get from meat, you can get them from fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and cereals! Without the fat, without the growth hormones and antibiotics, and without cholesterol! At the same time, you also stop participating in the top pollutant factor that destroys echo-systems, extincts wild life species, poisons water and air and enslaves and tortures thousands and thousands of farm animals every single second world wide. It is not necessary and it is obviously not nice to treat animals the way we do now!

MEDITATION is to be practiced individually. I don't do group meditations because I am not a meditation master but I have tasted some benefits of it and I do recommend it with all my heart to anybody willing to try it! It is a great medical tool that can help improve your recovery rate, calm down your inner agitation and it offers you a wonderful way to discover more about yourself. It is not a religious ritual, so you can practice it regardless of your own religious beliefs.

This is, briefly, what I mean by SHAOLIN CAT BOXING. It is not a new martial art, it is no discovery, it is just another combination of different types of training, an ever changing combination that served me very well so far and which I really hope to prove to be able to serve as many other people as possible!

Here is a 20 min. long video showing the steps through which I go at one of my most common type of training:

-meditation
-warming up
-running
-shadowboxing
-some basic forms
-stretching
-the 5 basic kicks, 5 basic stances and some calisthenics
-qigong
-forms
-mabu stance