Yon Ch'uan Martial Art: Key to the Grace Martial Arts Ministries

Grace Martial Arts, GMA is one of the Lord's ministry tools that powerfully connects with our kid's world, while affirming them with vital Christian family values, NOT eastern religions! The Yon Ch'uan Martial Art self-defense system provides young people and children with the ability to defend themselves very compassionately. In addition to the actual martial arts self-defense techniques, the Yon Ch'uan training provides many effective anti-bullying methods that teach how to stop both physical and verbal bullying before they happen.

The Grace Martial Arts ministry purpose is to utilize Yon Ch'uan Martial Arts as a tool to evangelize and teach students the fundamentals of the Gospel of the Grace of God. The GMA Ministries provides parameters within which a young person or child can operate safely and securely. Most importantly, the student acquires Christ-centered confidence while learning to trust the Lord and His Word to make wise life-style choices.

Yon Ch'uan Principles & Practice

The Way of Gentle Flowing Power

Yon Ch'uan Martial Art is one of the few authentic internal martial art systems which still incorporate specialized psychomotor techniques, as originally taught by the Taoist Monks. It is one of the oldest systematized forms of internal martial arts. Its fluid movements are esthetically beautiful and, seemingly, without beginning or end. Yon Ch'uan emphasizes the use of the internal psychomotor energy as opposed to visible, rigid muscular strength. It is in dramatic contrast to the characteristics of external/HARD martial arts which is NON compassionate. The Yon Ch'uan Martial art system emphasizes the use of minimum muscle resistance, through yielding, emptying, entwining and penetrating as a means of subduing force rather than by meeting force with force.

The source of strength in the Yon Ch'uan Martial Art Internal/SOFT System is derived from a relaxed posture of perfectly balanced, whole body movement linking. When one part of the body moves, the whole body moves in unison. If one part of the body stops, the whole body stops. The whole body linking principles produce the wesome enjoyment of feeling springy energy spiraling through the physical body movements. The health benefits are magnificent! The essential difference between meeting force with external rigid strength, as opposed to employing internal energy is that by resisting force with force one engages the attacker on his/her terms. Conversely, when using SOFT internal energy, one denies both ones attacker's expectations and the object of his/her attack: oneself. Through daily practice, the student acquires startling speed and focused strength with superior ability to apply effortlessly the six principles unique to the Yon Ch'uan System. These basic principles are redirection, evasion, quartering, entrapment, absorption and reflection. These basic principles are able to be applied to both the student's life experiences and self-defense training. The system teaches students to avoid physical force, whenever possible, but when unavoidable, how to utilize the escalation of force to insure personal safety. Students develop realistic confidence!

Three-Zone Defense Philosophies

The Yon Ch'uan 3-Zone defense principles emphatically teach the student in First Zone (physical contact by attacker) not to meet force with force, but rather to yield and overcome aggression through the redirection of force, escapes, restraints and submission holds, evasion, absorption and reflection. In like manner, the Second Zone (within the sphere of the student's physical space) sometimes is the most difficult zone of defense to defend compassionately because of lag-time reaction. The use of an ancient anatomy charting method, which loosely translates as "mid-line quartering," allows the student to maintain control of the attacker's midline while skillfully neutralizing and immobilizing the aggressor with minimal effort and with minimal harm to the aggressor. The same defense principles apply for the Third Zone (not within reachable space of the aggressor's attack). The student learns how to utilize an attacker's strength, redirecting it back onto the attacker. The Yon Ch'uan Three-Zone Defense for young people is astonishingly beneficial when the emphasis of training is placed upon the student's reaching his/her full organic, cognitive and psychomotor potential.

Three Stages of Skill Development

The student should realize that there are three stages of Yon Ch'uan practice. In the First Stage, the mind teaches Conscious Body Reaction, which is extremely slow. This is the stage of learning new Yon Ch'uan movement skills. The teacher shows the student what to do with his/her mind. Then the student tries to grasp the concepts and relays commands to the body that form conscious body posture in relationship to the student's defense need.

The Second Stage is Unconscious Body Reaction which is startlingly quick! Quickness is developed from a relaxed posture, not a tense posture. As with any practice involving the neuro-muscular system, efficiency of body response increases through repetitive use of the nerves and muscles involved. The student relaxes all unnecessary "parts" of the mind and body and FEELS the movement. In this way the student will begin to slowly realize subtleties that he or she missed during stage one. The body, now, is teaching the student's mind through feeling his/her movement patterns. With patient, sensitive, exacting practice, this stage eventually will lead to the Third Stage. The natural harmony of mind intent and muscle memory serves as radar, enabling the student's self-defense movement response to harmonize effortlessly with nature's spherically flowing movement (The way of the windmill, not the bulldozer).

Yon Ch'uan is Doing Your Best

Yon Ch'uan Physical Education is an exciting learning experience. The learning of physical techniques, plus many other valuable life-skills, never stops. The Yon Ch'uan student's emphasis often is on relating a martial principle to a principle that occurs in everyday life. Example: If a work or school assignment is tackled without complete concentration and commitment, the results usually are less than desirable. One of the primary objectives in each class session is to provide the student the opportunity to visualize and realize cognitive skill success while developing skill ability from his/her acceptance, not by performing for it. This attitude helps the student to acquire self-discipline, confidence and many other positive character traits.