Karate

Paperback

This book teaches readers the essential principles and techniques of tai chi while showing you how to use tai chi as an effective mindfulness technique to reduce stress, increase focus, and improve your state of mind. With more than 60 illustrations to help you understand and master essential tai chi moves, this handy, portable package makes my pocket tai chi a perfect companion for practicing tai chi in your own backyard and beyond. In this book, you will:Learn about the rich art and history behind tai chi. Uncover the philosophy and benefits of tai chi. Discover several different tai chi styles and who introduced these styles to the world. Find out the differences between tai chi and qigong. Realize the importance of meditation and breathing in tai chi. Learn the various movements and stances used in tai chi. Discover the 24-move tai chi sequence. This book is a must have if you are unfamiliar with tai chi! Further it opens up to a whole different way of beliefs. An ancient philosophy from the far east, proving that slow movements will make you quick, that control of your breath controls, gives you better control of your movements, finding your inner chi promotes your strength, health and spirits!

Shortlisted for the WilliamSaroyan International Prize for WritingA physical and philosophical mediation on why we are drawn to fight each other for sport, what happens to our bodies and brains when we do, and what it all meansAnyone with guts or madness in him can get hit by someone who knows how; it takes a different kind of madness, a more persistent kind, to stick around long enough to be one of the people who does the knowing.Josh Rosenblatt was thirty-three years old when he first realized he wanted to fight. A lifelong pacifist with a philosopher’s hatred of violence and a dandy’s aversion to exercise, he drank to excess, smoked passionately, ate indifferently, and mocked physical activity that didn’t involve nudity. But deep down inside there was always some part of him that was attracted to the idea of fighting. So, after studying Muay Thai, Krav Maga, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and boxing, he decided, at age forty, that it was finally time to fight his first—and only—mixed martial arts match: all in the name of experience and transcending ancient fears.An insightful and moving rumination on the nature of fighting, Why We Fight takes us on his journey from the bleachers to the ring. Using his own training as an opportunity to understand how the sport illuminates basic human impulses, Rosenblatt weaves together cultural history, criticism, biology, and anthropology to understand what happens to the human body and mind when under attack, and to explore why he, a self-described “cowardly boy from the suburbs,” discovered so much meaning in putting his body, and others’, at risk.From the psychology of fear to the physiology of pain, from Ukrainian shtetls to Brooklyn boxing gyms, from Lord Byron to George Plimpton, Why We Fight is a fierce inquiry into the abiding appeal of our most conflicted and controversial fixation, interwoven with a firsthand account of what happens when a mild-mannered intellectual decides to step into the ring for his first real showdown.