Mar­tial Arts are exten­sive sys­tems of cod­i­fied prac­tices and tra­di­tions of com­bat, prac­ticed for a vari­ety of rea­sons, includ­ing self-defense, com­pe­ti­tion, phys­i­cal health and fit­ness, as well as men­tal and spir­i­tual development.

Bal­ance & Har­mony. Yin and Yang.

The term Mar­tial Arts today has become heav­ily asso­ci­ated with the fight­ing arts of east­ern Asia, but was orig­i­nally used in regard to the com­bat sys­tems of Europe as early as the 1550s and an Eng­lish fenc­ing man­ual of 1639 used it in ref­er­ence specif­i­cally to the “Sci­ence and Art” of sword­play. The term is ulti­mately derived from Latin, mar­tial arts being the “Arts of Mars,” the Roman god of war.

Some Mar­tial Arts are con­sid­ered “tra­di­tional” and tied to an eth­nic, cul­tural or reli­gious back­ground, while oth­ers are mod­ern sys­tems devel­oped either by a founder, or by an association.

Acupunc­ture Merid­ian Man

Many mar­tial arts, espe­cially those from Asia, also teach side dis­ci­plines which per­tain to med­i­c­i­nal prac­tices. This is par­tic­u­larly preva­lent in tra­di­tional Chi­nese mar­tial arts which may teach bone-setting, quigong, acupunc­ture, acu­pres­sure and other aspects of tra­di­tional Chi­nese medicine.

The beau­ti­ful Med­i­ta­tion in Motion through Kung Fu and Tai Ch

By focus­ing on breath and relax­ation, Mar­tial Arts induces self-conscience and calm­ness, which ben­e­fits the daily life of the prac­ti­tioner as these con­cepts are incor­po­rated. Mar­tial Arts helps to improve the phys­i­o­log­i­cal sys­tems and to ben­e­fit the human being in dif­fer­ent lev­els: the phys­i­cal, the psy­cho­log­i­cal and the spiritual.

“There are no supe­rior Mar­tial Arts, there are Supe­rior Mar­tial Artists. This applies to a vari­ety of areas and dis­ci­plines. Use these sys­tems as a frame­work as all sys­tems are arti­fi­cial; lim­ited cre­ations of man that intend to teach fol­low­ers the best way.”

(Zen­hal­ing is highly influ­enced by over­all Prin­ci­ples taught in Jeet Kuen Do)

Jeet Kune Do (截拳道; also “Jeet Kun Do”, “JKD,” or “Jeet Kuen Do”) is a hybrid mar­tial arts sys­tem and life phi­los­o­phy founded by mar­tial artist Bruce Lee with direct, non clas­si­cal and straight­for­ward move­ments. Due to the way his style works they believe in min­i­mal move­ment with max­i­mum effect and extreme speed. The sys­tem works on the use of dif­fer­ent ‘tools’ for dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions. These sit­u­a­tions are bro­ken down into ranges (Kick­ing, Punch­ing, Trap­ping and Grap­pling), with tech­niques flow­ing smoothly between them. It is referred to as a “style with­out style”. Unlike more tra­di­tional mar­tial arts, Jeet Kune Do is not fixed or pat­terned, and is a phi­los­o­phy with guid­ing thoughts. It was named for the con­cept of inter­cep­tion, or attack­ing your oppo­nent while he is about to attack. How­ever, the name Jeet Kune Do was often said by Bruce Lee to be just a name. He him­self often referred to it as “The art of express­ing the human body” in his writ­ings and in inter­views. Through his stud­ies Bruce came to believe that styles had become too rigid, and unre­al­is­tic. He called mar­tial art com­pe­ti­tions of the day “Dry land swim­ming”. He believed that com­bat was spon­ta­neous, and that a mar­tial artist can­not pre­dict it, only react to it, and that a good mar­tial artist should “Be like water” and move flu­idly with­out hesitation.

Mauy Thai as fea­tured on Human Weapon

This is a Funny Clip that proves that Mar­tial Arts is for Any­one and Everyone!