I recently had a new patient in who said the only time she had seen acupuncture was in the Kung Fu Panda movie.  I’m surprised it didn’t put her off from coming!  I’ve uploaded a few funny acupuncture videos to the website so I thought it would be fun to include this one too:

If you are new to acupuncture I would like to explain that this isn’t exactly how we do it!  We generally use less needles and are nice to our patients!  If you want to read a bit more about acupuncture in general then please follow this link to my acupuncture page.

I think that like many others my initial interest in Chinese culture came from watching the kung fu series on tv and old kung fu movies.  I’ve never done any Shaolin kung fu but have practiced some of the Chinese internal martial arts – mostly taiji quan but also a bit of xing yi and da cheng chuan.

The Chinese internal arts are based on Taoist principles and are characterized by a focus on relaxation and meditation.  Like some other martial arts, such as judo, they use the opponents energy against themselves.  The three major internal ‘gong fu’ are Taiji quan (Tai Chi – based on the energies of yin and yang), xingyi  quan (form intent boxing – based on the 5 elements), and bagua quan (8 energies boxing – based on the 8 gua of the Yi Jing).  Shaolin kung fu, a so called external martial art, is associated with Buddhism.  Kung fu (or gong fu) literally means trained skill and is a term that can be applied to any skillful endeavor.