“May you live long and prosper.”
— Traditional Jewish blessing, and also Mr. Spock from Star Trek.
Good Day! fellow Wing Chun fanatic —
It’s Rob from WingChunLife.com… and if you’ve ever thought about becoming a wise old kung fu master like I have, living a long and healthy life helps.
In this way you have the time to truly master and perfect your skill.
Luckily, there’s one very simple thing we can do to help get us there. But, I know for some it won’t be easy, so in this issue of Wing Chun Life News I’ve included a few bonus steps you can follow to reach age 100 and beyond…
Before I get into it though, please allow me to do a little housekeeping
If you haven’t stopped by WingChunLife.com for a while, there’ve been a number of new developments:
- First, it has a new look. It’s not the sexiest, but it is new ;-). Drop by and awe at its artistic-ness (or lack thereof).
- Second, the site is now smartphone friendly. You can read, watch a video, and interact with the site on your iPhone, Android phone, Blackberry, iPad, iTouch, Galaxy, desktop, laptop… perhaps your eye glasses, wristwatch, coffee cup, and heck it may even work on your car’s GPS (Warning: Don’t Kung Fu and Drive. Pull over first).
- Third, to get Wing Chun to the masses the site is on all kinds of social media. Facebook, Twitter, G+, YouTube, and Pinterest. Invite your tribe to say “hi” and share your latest kung fu experiences. Search ‘WingChunLife’ or ‘WingChunLifeTV’ on YouTube.You can also reach me directly through email or the contact form on the main site.
- The next new happening is that new videos are getting loaded to the site. These are in addition to the great ones subscribers and visitors like you have shared in the past and are currently on the site. Keep sending cool Wing Chun/martial arts/kung fu related videos!Tell me if there’s anything you’d like to see video-wise. In the meantime, check these out and tell me what you think.
https://wingchunlife.com/sil-lum-tao-form
- Last, last one. One of the purposes for Wing Chun Life is to spread the art. That means people have to learn how to kick butt :-}To make it easier to connect students with sifus, I rebuilt the Wing Chun schools page. I hope it functions as a better tool for both and gets more people training.
- Finally… Not everyone lives near a kwoon, or has the time for scheduled classes, or has the financial resources for formal instruction. The new ‘Video MASTERY’ service helps new (and old) Wing Chun’ers by exposing them to fantastic video lessons from the world’s top sifus. Check out ‘Video MASTERY’ and its massive learning library.
Other plans are in the pipeline and will get rolled out step by step…
One Simple Way to Live to 100…
(So You Have the Time to Master Wing Chun)
One thing that sets grandmasters apart is that they have more years training than the rest of us. They’ve invested the time into training and perfecting their awesomeness.
So it follows that if you could train and perfect your kung fu from now until you reach 100 (or beyond), you could also join the ranks of the radically awesome, too.
In the report “100@100 Survey”, published by US health insurance company UnitedHealthcare, researchers evaluated centenarians (men and women age 100 or more) to learn their “secrets of aging success”.
They wanted to find clues that the rest of us could copy to also enjoy a long and fulfilling life.
One thing that stood out, compared to the non-centenarian comparison group, was that over 70% of the ‘100-Plusers’ got eight hours or more of sleep each night. Only 38% of the comparison group got the same amount of sleep.
It can’t get any simpler than that…
To live long and prosper, sleep more.
Now you know why the wise old grandmasters always look so calm and serene in the kung fu movies. They get enough sleep. But…
What Can You Do if Sleep is a Luxury You Can’t Easily Afford?
Lack of sleep is a common condition for many people around the world. There’s a chance you don’t get enough sleep now. It was a problem for me for a long time.
I recommend you do what you can to get more healthful hours of sleep. It may not be easy at first if you have bad habits, but what I found is I actually get more done in my busy life by sleeping more hours. Not only that, I even allow myself to take naps when needed!
It sounds like a contradiction, doesn’t it? Getting more accomplished by shutting down, turning off, and sleeping for hours at a time. But it works and you should give it a shot.
What helped me break my bad sleeping (or staying awake) habits was simply ‘forcing’ myself to get to bed earlier.
What I used to do was stay up late ‘pretending’ to be busy – watching T.V., a video, or on the computer – until I got my ‘second wind’ and didn’t feel tired anymore, and stayed up even later…
I’d wake up the next morning tired, not fully rested, but didn’t realize how it affected my entire day because that was my normal baseline for years!
So I started shutting down the electronic distractions and sleeping earlier, which allowed me to wake up earlier too.
It took a while, maybe months, to shed off the bad habits. But what I soon realized was that I was mentally clearer and energized with the proper amount of restful sleep.
I had no idea I had been walking around in a mental haze for most of my life. A functional zombie, if you will.
And to boot I got rid of a few minor, but annoying, health issues (like a runny nose for the first few hours after waking up and a couple of others).
Was it coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. Restful sleep is medicine. Get some and live to 100.
In addition to more sleep, below are some other steps to get you to the big ’10-0′
The report also revealed the following:
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- More than 80% of centenarians regularly eat a balanced meal. Eat right and live long.
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- 89% stay socially connected to friends and family everyday. Talk by phone or hang out with your pals (Facebook and Twitter probably don’t count).
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- 67% pray, meditate, or follow some spiritual activity. Get to your house of worship or train Wing Chun in a meditative way. You could even cross-train with Tai Chi, yoga, or Qi Gong (Chi Kung).
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- 51% exercise daily. Train Wing Chun actively and intensely. Make sure to build up a sweat and strengthen the muscles.
Until next time…
Rob
P.S. I’m going to take a quick cat nap after sending this to you ;-\
