What appears below is my initial response

to a meeting I attended yesterday (February 10^th).  

This ‘response’ will undoubtedly grow, change and be tweaked

in the coming weeks

as I sculpture my thoughts through the passage of time

and through a deeper understanding.

 My own fields of expertise and specialization are unique.

Hopefully this will come across by way of what I am saying here.

 What I say here is not, in the slightest, intended to offend.

Whatever your feelings might be after having read what I have to say,

please check out other areas of this site. 

I am sure you will find this useful, helpful and quite fascinating! 

As my time at my pc desk is limited 

I will ongoingly drip-feed my knoweldge into this article… 

Yesterday I attended a meeting where a number of island school teachers met with members of “Oak House” including the ‘resident doctor’. 

The topic of this meeting centred around how to deal with ADHD within schools and although I only caught thirty minutes or so of the meeting (missing both the beginning and the end) I did pick up upon a number of points/issues that re-enforced my knowledge that what I have to offer  - authentic Chinese Martial Arts including Taijiquan (Tai Chi) – is an essential and vital discipline for all school curriculums to take on-board as it ticks a seemingly endless list of boxes that should be every school’s “to do” list.     

I do appreciate that most people do not know what real Chinese Martial Arts/Taijiquan are because the way that these disciplines are generally taught/portrayed here on the island is a far and distant cry from what they truly are! The general perception is one of two extremes – senseless violence or shallow aesthetics. Neither of these perceptions is accurate, healthy or useful.

This  is not what they are this is not what I teach!

Each week I teach my junior Kungfu programme (“Young Dragons”) to approximately 100 youngsters aged from four to fourteen. Not all of these youngsters are ADHD-diagnosed. Some are whilst some have been diagnosed with or have suspected Autism, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia or Asperger’s Syndrome.

I teach either at my martial arts academy in Ryde (“THE MARSTA” located within “St. John’s Annexe”) or at a number of schools namely, “St. Mary’s Primary” in Ryde, “The Priory” in Luccombe and “Barton Primary” in Newport. At these schools I am either teaching within curriculum time or immediately after the school day. At Somerton Middle School in West Cowes I am teaching on a Saturday morning where my students are not limited to being just Somerton Middle School youngsters. At all my classes parents and teachers are invited/encouraged to sit and watch so that they, too, can understand where I am coming from.

What I teach I call “Physical Chinese Medicine” because this is what it is. It is what I have learnt over the past thirty-six years during my lengthy periods living, working, training and researching in China, South-East Asia and the USA.  

The USP of what I teach is that it is a prophylactic (preventative) medicine as well as being a corrective, curative, reparatory and rejuvenative exercise. What I teach is not a sport and never will I ever teach it as such because sport is very much over-rated here in the Western World as its damaging properties continue to go unrecognized. But as the nation is brainwashed into thinking that sport it harmless then nothing is going to change on that front. But I do know its shortcomings and I also know that what I teach is a way to offset these negativities so that balance can be achieved and thus maintained.  

I do not expect you to understand everything I am saying here but by way of the “ancient, classical and traditional martial arts” such topics as holist health, natural therapy, quality of life and longevity are my areas of expertise. As a practitioner, researcher and promoter of these disciplines and knowing what I do about Eastern and Western medicine I need to be working closely with teachers, parents and carers if we are going to radically and drastically change, for the better, and raise the quality of life of ADHD-diagnosed youngsters who seem, today, to have no other alternative but drugs and other such superficial treatment.  

To be continued.