The entire image in the logo can be seen as the evolution of my endeavors toward achievement that have come together into the formation of this program. The central image is of the Chinese ideogram for Qi, which has the multiple meanings of the life force, internal energy that flows inside the body in specific channels and an external energy, which is viewed as one of the building blocks of the cosmos that connects all matter, energy, mind and spirit. It is also manifested as the breath as it comes out of your body on a cold day looking like steam.
My direct experience of Qi can be summed up as follows. When I was first teaching kung fu in an unheated gym during the cold months in Florence in the 1980s, I noticed that after our traditional basic training sets used for our opening, which included low horse and bow and arrow stance drills, strenuous, stepping, blocking and punching, there was a column of steam that would rise from the heads of each student when we paused and stood upright for our stretching exercises.
It was that image that drove me to wanting to more clearly and thoroughly comprehend what it was that I and my students were losing to the cosmos each lesson. After doing some research, I modified our ending postures to include a collection posture with our hands clasped over our lower Tan Tien, the area just below the navel.
The students and I immediately stopped losing our Qi to the atmosphere and began to maintain it during and after our lessons. We would not get cold any longer immediately after working out and our levels of energy were increased significantly. This was very evident when moving on from doing nothing to conserve our Qi to doing something about it that was constructive, regenerative and conservative.
Later, my research brought some slow-moving Tao Yin sets, known as the Eight Pieces of Brocade and the Five animals of Hua Tuo, together with external massage along the meridians into my lessons. These were the extent of the internal practice I performed and taught for about ten to fifteen years together with Hung Gar Kung Fu. Later in the mid 1990s I included classes in Yang Tai Chi Chuan I was learning from a direct lineage holder master from whom I began studying purely through imitation.
Though I truly believed I was doing real Qi Kung, since at the kung fu school where I trained for over ten years and in the kung fu lessons I taught for the next twenty-five years, we worked on a more external form of Qi Kung training which uses the breath and dynamic resistance movements to pack and condense the Qi in the internal and external fascia.
This training enabled my body to take power punches to the abdomen and finger spears to the throat without damage. It was not until I had practiced Yang Tai Chi Chuan under Master Ding for about a year that I realized that everything I had done up until 2007 when I met him and began studying his methods, was merely preparation for real internal practice and Qi Kung training, which had been my original intention and objective all along. That is why the Chinese ideogram for Qi is central to our logo.