 Ian, who is top left of my zoom picture, so people know where my eyes are going. And we've got AJ down at the bottom surrounded by every weapon that's ever been forged in Asia and a few other countries. Brothers, it's so great to meet you and to have a chat about areas that I find fascinating for our friends at home. So AJ has served, AJ's been in the thick of it in the Middle East, like many of our guests. Ian runs the Kung Fu retreat. Yeah, that's right. We'll get all the details of that in a second, Ian. But over there in the land of the Smiles, beautiful Thailand, one of my favorite places on Earth, I think I'm fortunate to have dropped in there about four times now. Yeah. That's why my nose is pretty crooked. Be careful on a night out in Pat Pong. Do not take on a bouncer. That's what I'm saying. Oh, it's the story behind it. And we're not just here to talk about the incredible martial arts, but also the journey from trauma, the journey, the journey from in what I call two enlightenment. And I suggest anybody hops on it because for me it's just been the most special thing in my life. Just realized I haven't got my headphones on. So I'll whack them on, put a bit of head protection on so I don't get a dink in my head for the rest of the day. Can you hear me? Okay. Yeah. Who said Marines can't do technology? So, yeah, let's get into it. Fascinating. Ian, what's your journey been like and how did you end up in Asia? That's such a long story that it's... Okay, AJ, over to you. No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Continue. I started off being a very ordinary kid in Sutton on the south edge of London. Used to... I like to fight. You know, I used to fight with gangs. I've always been quite clever and I did well at school and I got to university. And when I got to university, they had a kung fu club. And then that was 1981, you know, back in the 70s, there weren't martial arts clubs all over the place. I used to box, I did Western boxing. Went to university, had the opportunity to do kung fu. Did it. And was invited to guard it with demonstration competition in Singapore. Singapore in 1987, somewhere I never expected to go. And it kind of took off from there. Was offered the... Even before I went to Singapore, it was kind of offered, would you like to train as a kung fu teacher? You know, I never thought of it before. And it's like of all the things that I could do that sounded a lot more exciting. You know, there's not the kind of career that's suggested to you when you're at school. It was like, well, I've got a chance here. I've got a chance to do something more than most people do. I've got a chance to do something that ordinary people don't do. And yeah, I took it and I never looked back. And I'm in my 41st year of doing kung fu now. And you know, since I kind of decided I wanted to be a kung fu teacher, I've never wanted to do anything else. And I've always said to people, if I won a lottery today, I'd still be up at 4.30 tomorrow, getting ready to train. I have no desire to change, to do something different. It's been a great journey and a very interesting one. You just summed up there enlightenment in its perfect form. Yeah. You've done, you create the life that you just want to get out of bed in a morning to do. AJ, I was asking you, wasn't I, about your military? Was it your military experience? Yeah. I joined, kind of like right out of high school, 18 years old. And joined up, joined in the Army National Guard. So we left, we left for basic training, came back. And as soon as we got back, we deployed. We deployed the first one or third field artillery brigade. I was a signal support system specialist to start with all kinds of communications. We were slotted as military police. So we ended up working in a few different areas at this strategic debriefing center, which is when I first learned about military intelligence. And then after that, we did a few other things in country that had to deal with the detainee operations. Most of our missions was on base because we dealt with the prisoners, like sort of inside. This second deployment after, you know, rubbing shoulders with the MI fields, MI community. I did the human intelligence. And then right after that training, we deployed again. And it was all like, all those operations were, you know, MI associated. It was a military, excuse me, military intelligence team or something like this, right? And we just did missions all throughout Southern Baghdad, just doing different things, pretty, pretty random things actually. Well, yeah. This sounds like... Oh, and one of the, I did the DOD contracting thing out in Germany for a little while. Working on an MI base out there. Military intel slash NSA base. We're just doing security over there though. Something that just comes straight to my mind then was Abu Ghraib. Was that something, can you explain how that like affected you when you were there or what relation was that operation to yours? It wasn't. So that is the same exact field. What happened that actually greatly affected, like when something like that happens, it just greatly affects every other group that's in that field. That Abu Ghraib thing that they was kind of dehumanizing the detainees and taking all these like weird pictures, that really made what we did very strict. Like we, it changed from care, custody and control. When the Abu Ghraib have, we changed our policy from care, custody and control with dignity and respect, right? Because that's how we want to treat detainees, regardless if they're POWs or regardless if they've killed American soldiers, which most of them have. You still have to have that kind of dignity and respect. Yeah, and they really made everything pretty strict. And also too, working in detainee operations. I could see how Abu Ghraib could have happened. That's another thing of psychology of human beings. And when you take people, you put them directly over somebody else. It does affect their minds. But yeah, it was interesting. Yeah, we saw that sort of stuff with the, you know, like the scientific prison experiments and stuff back in the in a 70 or 70s. I can't even remember, but it's kind of what's it? They divided a group of people in half, 30 were prisoners and 30 were the governors or that, you know, what we call screws. Prison officers, I apologize. And within no time at all, they adopted this role of like, I'm going to laud it over you, Sunshine. And I'm going to make your life miserable. And there was the other one. That was the Stanford Prison Experiment. And then the other one were the electric shocks where they said, they sat them in a room sealed off from the person that they were electric shock in and they were told, right, this, this person's really bad. Hit him with an electric shock. Really? Yeah, he is. It's for, you know, it's for the best of your country. Okay. And then they hit this, they hit it and it got work progressively worse. So yes. And I think one thing that that highlights AJ to people that haven't been in conflict is the reality of conflict. It's not nice. This stuff, stuff, this stuff's always going to go on. There's going to be crimes against humanity. There's going to be crimes against Geneva Convention. It's what happens when you get a load of young testosterone, fuel people. Yeah. Tell them that that's the bad guy and then let them lose. So you're AJ your background. I'm always quite, you know, fascinated in social psychology. Especially when it, when it relates to trauma, which as we, we discussed earlier, I've had a, yeah, I had a fair bit in my childhood, which as I said, ended me up working for a Hong Kong triad gang off my head. And, and, and, you know, it was a, it was a big comeback from there, you know, I had to start working things out. Did you, did you have a stable upbringing, AJ? No, man. No, that's probably half the reason why I joined the military. Now I did, it was, I did the whole gang scene and, and, and group homes and foster homes and things like that. And, you know, by the time I was 18, it was just like, okay, I, you even, you know, they're having that kind of like background. I mean, I need to make a decision that's going to either drastically change or just keep doing some of the things that I'm doing, which is, you know, almost nothing. I guess this is the, maybe the kind of person that goes into the military, right? I guess, especially in the beginning. So I was like, yeah, I'll just, I'm going to take a great gamble and I'm just going to join the military. Like, a lot of people do. So as soon as I went to basic, we just, we, I came home and then we just deployed and that's, that's how it's been in America and in the West for a while of everyone that's been deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq and these other places. You've just been constantly at, at war. And cause you've got the gun thing in America, which we don't have here. And I guess mixed guns and gangs, it all gets quite nasty. Oh yeah, man. I mean, we'll still have the nice crimes, but the gun crimes, yeah, everybody has one. Everybody has one. It was interesting that a lot of, so when the hunters joined the military, this is what we've seen is when hunters and gang members joined the military, the gun was actually pretty good taking order and, and not doing what the drill sergeant said or what the commander said and the hunters were like phenomenal shooters. Yeah. Yeah. And the martial art guys, like they were, they were obviously pretty good. Everyone had that little thing that they could add to the, to the group order. But yeah, the hunters, great shooters, gang members, they could take a lot of shit and there was a few other ones that I met when I was there. And the martial artists were just good at overall physical fitness and hand to hand technique too. Yeah. And Ian, you said South London, that already roughness comes into my mind. Do you know, do you know Bromley? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was Bromley. Yeah. Yeah. I was born in, born in Bromley. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm down and seven, sex and seven. I tell you what, mate, I was really young when I lived there. Don't, don't remember an awful, I remember like there was a place called Petswood and Orpington and this sort of stuff. And yeah, but I'll mention it because recently I've been watching a lot of like films on the craze. Yeah. And also the Essex Boys murders. So the kind of drug scene there when back in the, the ravey days and, and yeah, it's quite full on in that, that part of England. Yeah. Yeah. Did you, did you have any experience of that sort of thing? Did you, was your childhood. Oh, absolutely. Challenging. Yeah. I had a very good upbringing. Yeah. I had a very stable background. But I'm just one of, I was just one of those kids who I needed to to get stuck in. I needed to have a fight, you know. So we're brought up in an area where, yeah, it's, it's all about, okay, it's all about being a hard man, you know, South London. It's, you've got to be hard. Yeah. It's life is about being a hard and you work your way up a stack and you start off at school and you fight and you, you're fighting to be the hardest in your class. It's fine to be top dog in your class. So, you know, you want to get on top and then as you get older, it's being top dog in the local kind of area. The, the iris that you weigh up the stack and it gets tougher and tougher and people getting knocked down, knocked down. And I'm fortunately the logical progression is that you will end up in prison. And then you're in with a lot of really hard guys and you want to survive in there, you got to get tougher and tougher. You know, a lot of the people that I grew up with went down that room. You know, there's one of the guys, you see, he writes books, the name in books, a few kind words and a loaded gun is one of them. And he was one of the guys that I used to knock about with in my teens. And when he wrote his big selling book, you know, he was 50 years old, he spent more than half of his life in prison. For me Kung Fu was the way to get off that path because it was still it was still about fighting. It was still about challenging yourself. It's about finding your boundaries, testing your limits. But you're not on that downhill path where you're going to end up spending longer and longer in prison. And, you know, the way of Kung Fu is that you have the family, the master is the head of the family and then you have the older brothers and you have this structure and the old guys, they've been there, they've done it and they've learned their lessons and they're passing on their lessons to you, the young guy. And often in the West, you don't have that structure. So you've got young kids running their own show, running their own gang and there's no body saying, well, you know, you're going in the wrong direction here. And that's the difference in the Kung Fu family. Yeah, you have. What about your parents, what about your teachers, obviously, they're saying, well, you're going in the wrong direction, you're doing the wrong thing, but as a tough teenager, are you going to listen to them? Do you listen to them? Why would you listen to the Kung Fu master when you don't listen to your parents? Because, you know, in a world where it's all about being tough, this guy is full of the top. This guy's been there and done it and therefore you have kind of respect. And some parents make a good job at Sundown. A lot of people in school teachers and social services they don't conduct themselves in a way that gains respect for them. That's why young people aren't listening to them. They haven't tested their own boundaries. They haven't proved themselves. They haven't developed their own bodies, their own minds. And, you know, you've got a 13 year old saying that, you know, I'm more street wise than you, I'm tougher than you. What am I going to listen to you? Yeah. That same youngster faced with somebody who has really been there and done it. He says, you know what, maybe I'll listen to this guy. Yeah. You reminded me then a bit about Confuciusness. Which I learned a lot about and awful a lot about in Hong Kong and for our friends at home one of the principles of Confucius was so it's like boss looks after workers in return workers respect the boss teacher looks after the students in return students respect the teacher father looks after the family in return family respect and you really see this in action if you get under the skin in Hong Kong. So my first, I think was like my second day working in this club I mentioned the one of the triads said to me, so where do you live? And I said, I just got this flat top floor apartment is empty. I've got no money for furniture so I'm sleeping on the floor. The triad boss just went like that took me over to the till opened it took out a water cache and just went I'm like how do I pay back but it's just the way just the way I think we probably all could learn from that over here but I'd say in gosh my generation what my parents taught me most of it was a load of crap it was all etiquette from bygone era it was nothing about questioning questioning it was all about accepting this is the prime minister this is the MPs they love you they will do the best for you and I'm not going to obviously knock parents but some things I got say from my dad were really good he was a real extrovert so we'd be going on our summer holiday down to Cornwall get to way bridges get to way bridges always a bloody queue of cars over the bridge a tail back a mile long my dad would go he'd just drive onto the pavement overtake everybody and then folks I'm not saying this is good behaviour my dad he didn't fuck around it's like right let's get these idiots out of the way he just drove all the way down the pavement and things like that really helped me but a lot of it I've had to work out myself can you relate to that absolutely it's interesting as a young martial artist the teacher always gets respect martial arts teacher always gets respect and then you realise that actually well you don't necessarily get respect every time a new person comes into your class every time you meet someone new you have to win their respect and no title means you're going to get respected by everybody the only way that you're going to be respected is by earning that respect so every day you wake up and it's a new challenge to earn people's respect you can we see this all the time particularly with politicians you can spend 30 years building up respect and you make one mistake and it's all gone your dad won your respect dad had been a fighter pilot in World War II he flew Spitfires and Hurricanes and I thought he was great because he had all that behind him and he was very quiet there because all of that all of what he had in his system he got it out of his system he's nearly been killed so many times seeing all of his friends killed and crippled we grow up expecting World War III was on its way because there'd been World War I and World War II and we were expecting World War III and it never came we were almost brought up to be ready for it but yeah it's a good lesson for parents one you don't automatically get respected to earn respect and you've got to try to get into your children's heads and try to get it I've got three the two younger ones still challenged yeah I guess it's I guess it's a funny old system I'm actually a youth worker that's what my degree is in and I've got a bit miffed with it all in the end it's just basically you're like pacifying young people for the fact that what they look forward to in their life is to go into a factory or to go to a call centre you know and then you've got a lot of young people who because they've had no support at home through the fractured family unit they can't they can't apply themselves to education so university is not an option for them and then of course they see people driving by in bloody BMWs and Mercedes and flashy watches and they're selling drugs and stuff well what are you going to choose society tells you that's what you've got to aspire to to be a man and you can see how this disenfranchisement and gang violence sort of all comes in yeah finally we're having a conversation around about this at breakfast today and you have in your terms you have the kind of people who found at least some degree of enlightenment and you have those that haven't and those that haven't are the majority it would be great if the world was run by enlightened people but because the majority of people don't understand the enlightened people they wouldn't vote for them so they vote for the people who were appealing to the lowest level of the pyramid yeah and all the time that system continues we're not going to make that big leap we're not going to make that big progress and you know so you say well what do we do what do we do about it our perspective on that is that you work on yourself and try to elevate yourself don't start off by trying to work on other people first of all work on yourself fix yourself fix your own problems and then try to be an example for other people to follow yeah you won't change the world but if you influence 10 people to do the same thing and each of them those 10 people influences another 10 things start to really multiply and before too long it's spreading so I was just going to say you guys are breaking up quite a lot are you a long way from the wi-fi thingy me jig I was sat right next to it okay yeah we'll keep going because I think it's legible your audio is flicking out a bit but I think people can still still get what we're saying so yeah you're right in saying that it's like the story of Jesus he didn't try to change the world he just picked 12 people but he made sure he made sure they were receptive that was the main thing that he wasn't talking on deaf ears even though they didn't understand him after time and they'd say he summed it up really nicely you know don't try to remove the log out of your your neighbours eye until you no sorry don't remove the from your neighbours eye until you got the log out I think yeah something along those lines yeah and also his disciples said to him something like Jesus why don't you just like tell us tell us what his enlightenment just stop talking in all these riddles and he said I'm giving you the milk not ready for the meat and I think they're profound words so people at home yes the milk is the scriptures the meat is understanding the scriptures not just reading it like it's a story but the esoteric knowledge they're in and having come to this at like 50 years old I'm finding it all finding it fascinating yeah I'm really fascinating so how did you guys get together how did you come to be in the land of the smiles training in the martial arts well I mean I visited here I say I visited Thailand in like 2016 and I was just on this vacation and I was in like one of the main cities close to us called Chiang Mai beautiful city I was visiting and I saw like a bunch of pamphlets or whatever to go to to go to Pai so I was looking at one of these pamphlets and it said oh there's caves there's waterfalls there's great scenic mountain views and I like at the bottom I said kung fu and I was like what is a kung fu thing I'm like well of course there'd be kung fu thing up in this mountain town somewhere and I'm like wow that sounds sounds badass but I didn't have time to go because I was with somebody else I was like alright maybe next time so once I was finishing up my contract with the over in Germany with the DOB I was like well I'll spend one month at this kung fu place kung fu retreat and then I'll just keep going keep traveling and keep and I was here I feel like it was like I was supposed to be a month and I kept like extending it I think about three months and and I was like yeah this is this is fucking dope man like it was like to train martial arts love it to be in the mountains I love it the town where we live in but also here everything wasn't about I think isn't exactly about fighting right I know how to fight and I'm fighting my whole life training guns, hands, everything but I like the fact that I was working on that also but then all the other the wisdom like you just said this confucianism just a bit of Buddhism some Taoism and then the whole Chi energy this thing which is separate from the kung fu we added into the training I was like yeah this is like exactly where I need to be I couldn't have planned to come here kind of thing like I you can't plan to have an experience like that you just have to experience it and then do what you will with it so I'm just going to stay and hopefully this feeling that I was getting here the idea was at least with this project hammer thing I'm working with Master Ian to get it out to more veterans so they can have this kind of piece this kind of piece of mine this pathway to enlightenment and there's other pathways but this one I think is really good yeah so now we're here working on this working with the students here trying to elevate them to work through their demons and then obviously they're not all military sometimes we get bets from different countries here but with the project hammer stuff we want to just focus on veterans and veterans with this kind of combat stress depression, anxiety and definitely some parts of automatic stress that stuff can look good for yeah so once we find our love beads in town and achievable we'll stay and work it out it's fascinating I just want to dive in on the enlightenment bit but what we've got to remember is it's esoteric knowledge for a reason isn't it it's something you have to aspire to want to want to discover and of course as Ian said 99% of people don't so I'm on the podcast sorry folks I don't wish to sound condescending I'm just saying it how it is I'm kind of sat here thinking how do we how do we put that in terms that people could understand or take something away from so let me ask you AJ what's the kind of I mean if I give an example of one thing on the pathway that I would say is fundamental to grasp and for me would be gratitude I'm grateful for the you know even when it's the toughest toughest toughest I'm like God is that like the worst you can do because I'm still here and I'm still loving this life and I'm so lucky that I'm here and many of my comrades obviously are not I think my two of my best friends drank themselves to death and one of them drowned on LSD on our holiday so every day for me I'm living for them and I think gratitude it's where it is a fundamental starting point because if you're not grateful then I think you're playing a victim role so over to you guys let me say anything that you feel like I mean we could talk about diet is obviously another one getting rid of the birth certificate identity yeah what I suggest is if you want to point people in the right direction don't tell them what to do I'll tell them what to do because if I tell you what to do then you immediately go on the defensive I do this why should I do that actually I'm not listening I'll do what I want to do don't you tell me what to do that's a human mind working instead if you try to leave by example people look at you tell you what that guy's pretty salty there's someone who's getting it about right maybe I want a piece of that I like that idea I want a piece of that and that's what we mean by leading by example work on yourself don't try and force stuff on other people look at yourself first and do you think getting our vibration right is important there the energy that we're giving off totally people will recognise that even the people that think the idea of a vibration is a complete load of woo-woo they will recognise it they won't write the terms that you use but they'll see this person's pretty salty this person's got something it's really interesting we're really in the self-defence world the person who's got the vibration just right almost never needs to defend himself there's other people who've got that vibration that it's just confrontational they're always going to need to defend themselves yes, as a podcast host that's something that we I have to try to manage because on the one hand I've got a lot of people out there they love this show they love what they get from it I tried to do a motivational video every morning when I go for my jog around the block and I am acutely aware that some people this day will be considering taking their own life or they'll just have a really challenging day in front of them and you know my aim there is just to drop in a little bit of light drop something in there for them to go, do you know what Chris Frule loves me that's a bloody good way to start the day I'm not unloved this life isn't as bad as I think it is he's pointing out some good and then of course I suppose you've got to avoid saying being dictatorial and it's a balance but I guess people have just got to look at your results haven't they? I ran 20,000 miles non-stop bar sleeping at the side of the road you know the length of the UK most fun thing I ever did no hardship in there whatsoever well I did fracture my leg half way down the country and that that was something I had to overcome but I did just the sheer beauty of being in Scotland and putting my backpack on and just beautiful coastline just me and I'm free and I love life I love it and my dream something I dreamt of doing like 5 it's coming true and it's like what's not to love in that scenario and what's difficult about it everyone can put one leg in front of the other and get a flight to Scotland everybody might not have to go the speed I went some people go a lot faster and yeah getting that balance right so guys give us an example because just talking to AJ you can tell you're a humble guy I love Americans Americans anyway because I think I've just had such great experiences with my brothers and sisters over the pond over the years and travelling and meeting US Marines and stuff but AJ you're not a big brash loud American obviously you're clearly on that journey what's it like guys when someone rocks up where you are and they're not on the journey can we say and let's just say that ego ego has led them to a fight school in Thailand and they're there to break shit is this a you know familiar occurrence absolutely every every martial art boxing gym I've ever been to it is that but here we try to specifically work on that which I'll get which is why I like this place but yeah sometimes we get it but it's I don't want to say it's because you know like I was saying when you grow up fighting you really you know it through and through and you can add martial arts on top of that and fighting competition fighting and coaching so these kinds of people you do recognize them and sometimes I can even see myself like this which I think is important but with the ego stuff it's well first for my thing when I'm teaching it's like well why are you here why did you come what is the thing that you want to achieve and then whatever that is I try to get them there at least get that as much as possible and working on themselves as they get there right and a lot of the times from what I've seen it it'll be them standing in front of their own goals like it's this there and you can as an instructor you can help them to like them through it and as a martial arts instructor it's like okay you have the ego but I also do I also know how to fight also like I'm not gonna let it get too out of hand but I will if your beast comes out I can recognize it if your demon comes out while you're training I can recognize it and I can deal with it but the idea is for them to deal with that while it's out there and it's going crazy it's like this is where you this is when you actually get that down and then realize why it happened what happened and how to stop it from happening again and with this Chi energy and it's Chi work like actually lowering your Chi which is like kind of lowering your energy from your head down to your stomach area lower Tantin is what we call it here when you do that you breathe that engages your parasympathetic nervous system and it brings it back down from the fight or flight to to where it's supposed to be like normal like a normal human being right it basically when that demon comes out from the student whoever they are you can try to use Kung Fu techniques the whole setup to bring that back down and the more and more that happens the more and more I've seen they're able to handle their stuff and some have complete which is it happens there once like a mind shift between where they are and where they're trying to be and it happens I've seen it it's happened for me here where it's like oh my whole brain is oh I don't even have to be I don't have to be a dick I don't have to be an asshole and I know why I'm being an asshole then it's like now you're on the path to actual growth this is the kind of person that needs to go back to their home, to their families and everyone sees it changing like oh my god this is so much better than how you were this is the kind of growth I think that makes this place worth it makes this training worth it makes Kung Fu worth it yes and I've been saying Ian it's master Ian isn't it you no for me as a student yeah no my apologies I meet a lot of people I always think respect where respect is due is the place to come from have you had any calamities then have you had some guys come over and they just want to bruise it out and before you know it they're sort of packing their bags and they're all upset and they didn't quite make that connection it's our job to make sure that that doesn't happen so if you got somebody that's very kind of okay they're really wound up they've got a lot of anger they've got a lot of aggression then okay it's our job to fix that and a lot of people are used to they've got a shelf they've got to make their point and they're expecting that we're going to do the same we're going to kind of square up to them actually I'm a bigger man and you know you're not a bigger man, no actually I'm a bigger man and you but that's not a way to come through the way you've come through is to conduct yourself for dignity and humility so you know if someone comes and says yeah I'm a big man and say well yeah you are I respect that you see you know yeah you've been there you've done it etc and you don't have to you don't have to prove you're more than me you don't have to you don't have to show off because yeah I've got respect for you and I can see where you're being and I can see what you can do so we're not going to kind of rise up to that level because that just ends in a fight that ends in a fight we are very solid solidly grounded in our level yeah we will gradually bring you down to that level and in the beginning you might think you're not what I came for I came here to learn how to crack heads but in the end it's like well this was a really great experience the guy who the hardest case I've ever had to deal with became in the end one of our strongest supporters and strongest allies even though he was starting to go for a bit and that's your real victory is to win someone over and create a friend that's when you really got it right you beat people up you make enemies sooner or later the whole thing crashes it all comes falling down you win people over and you make friends you make allies and you continue to ascend you continue to rise I was just going to say am I right in thinking eternal energy the force that flows through all living things and am I doing the right thing then because when my son has a wobble I say calm calm calm universe and I want him to feel that huge thing that we're a part of that western culture in general isolates us from it tells us where this birth certificate identity you're called Chris and you've got to make your hair look cool and you've got to drive this flashy car and you've got to get to this standard in school and don't let anyone say anything and all these mental barriers that are put on us and I just want him to realise everything's cool all the time and you just got to and that's even before we get into like chakras and you know the deeper levels of understanding of this am I sort of in the right area with him? yeah it's all a bit complex interestingly you're actually touching on some of the quite deep teachings of the Buddha about universal conscience and about what in Buddhism is called absence of self realising we're all part of the same thing that we're all connected that's quite kind of deep Buddhist teaching yeah Chi is your energy yeah when your Chi rises and goes yeah that's when you're you see it rising up in the void and when it sinks you're cool the really interesting thing here is that it's there in English language here if you your Chi becomes heated then it rises like steam to your head yeah if you call your Chi then it'll condense and fall right down to your abdomen yeah and in our language we talk about people being the hotheaded fired up yeah wound up heaty yeah psyched up everything's about heating up and then you've got cool down calm down chill out everything's about cooling down yeah and that absolutely sums up your Chi heating your Chi, cooling your Chi yeah fired up what's fired that's your Chi cool down what's cool that's your Chi you understand it when you take away all the complex terminology we've had in our language for generations and loads of people who don't know the first thing about Chi use that language even in Thai culture our Thai language to calm down is Jai Yen cool heart yeah if you want someone to calm down it's cool heart cool your heart Jai Yen Jai Yen this is that subject this is something I find fascinating and for people who haven't been in the East most likely will have no idea of and this is the I'm going to say Asian but I'm thinking predominantly Hong Kong Chinese and Thai is this this issue of face and it's incredible friends at home for example everything's about respect in these cultures and I'll give you an example there was a situation in Hong Kong where a delivery boy carrying coffee rocks up to a tailor shop I mean went up in the lift knocked on the door the tailor answered the door and he said here's your coffee that's 20 bucks and the tailor just looked and went I didn't order coffee and the young man starts to get flustered and embarrassed he's like no no you you did and my understanding is the tailor should have just gone oh yeah yeah that's right I did and save this guy's face what happened instead was the guy broke into his office that night with a razor blade and slashed every single one of the gentlemen's suits for all his customers' suits and it's such a you know a strange concept to explain but we all have it to a degree one other example we're at a pizzeria after a business evening in Hong Kong one of the chaps he said this joke that I just thought was hilarious he said you know this business he said I think I'm addicted to this business because every time I try and go away it just pulls me back and for some reason the way I thought it was hilarious I laughed out loud like we would in England and later that evening my business partner Vance pulled me to one side and he said of course we don't do that here he think you're laughing at him I'm like no no no no that was so funny and of course I'd made this guy lose face and moving across to your neck of the woods I was at the full moon party once and they'd set this bar up on the beaches they do made of crates covered with a tablecloth or whatever and I think a lot of that stuff is kind of can we say organized crime kind of in there running the show so you got these young guns and in Thailand they know how to fight from like 3 years old or something don't they they all can hold their own and anyway this drunken westerner I'm thinking he's English thought it would be funny to jump into the middle of this bar and like pretend to you know serve the drinks of course they didn't get it that he's just a drunken westerner being a twat to them it was the ultimate like hey you're coming into our place of work trying to make us looks and they turned on the guy and they battered him and when I stepped forward to go and I was just going to go and just grab him and say sorry sorry sorry and drag him out and my brother just went no leave it alone Chris and he lived in Thailand many years so I left it alone but I'm fascinated what you guys take on because you've come from a part of the world where westerns have been run over and shot for what I'm guessing was making people lose face do you have any kind of experience of this? yeah yeah I mean it in this kind of realm out here in Thailand it's definitely exactly the story that you said it's something it just happens out here right it's not a constant thing but it definitely happens and when it comes to face it's actually really advantageous for you to give them their face and that actually could de-escalate the entire situation just by giving face even if you do mess up you can just do that exactly we said we're worried about losing that and if there is a problem it's definitely alright well what needs to be done here is somebody needs to leave or whatever and it's just you know it's the same when we teach in the students right if you can talk and I've learned this during the military police stuff is de-escalating a situation and a lot of that is figuring out what somebody wants what the other person wants is it face is it respect is it space it is a thing and it's also it's a crazy thing once you realize that and you can take your ego down it's actually really easy to deal with um yeah just doing the human intelligence also really kind of helped me with setting my ego back to get what I want out of another person here comes who we can work on like presence and energy we work on it through this way but yeah if you know that it's a culture like this where everybody wants to save face um if you can set your ego aside which is always growth when you can do that then you can have a situation come out the way you wanted to come out instead of you losing control yeah um how oh just lost our video for a second just asking you to start the video again fellas don't know if you can hear me in the meantime I will tell a joke folks so there was this guy I've got a feeling this one's like overheating as well now Chris it is about 37 degrees here uh okay um we'll maybe have to wrap up then and um it's been a fascinating chat yeah I'm really sorry there's also okay one more time yeah sorry folks at home so you probably guessed it's very hot in Thailand and this affects electronics and we're getting some overheating problems I think we maybe wrap up on this one but we'll go for it again at any time because this is just so fascinating it's so kind of you gentlemen to um to give us your time this is something we've got to consider um master Ian how is Kung Fu received in Thailand um Thailand obviously being the home of um of Thai boxing oh I think we've got another freeze oh yeah I think can you hear us? yeah I hear that did you hear did you just hear me yeah yeah I got it uh there's an interesting one because obviously uh it's perceived as foreign yeah and Thai's are Thai's are brought up to think that Thailand is great and if it's not Thai it's second best yeah that's a bit like that's a bit like growing up in Cornwall right um so we have to keep a slightly low profile yeah and we have to you know in Thailand if you're going to put your Kung Fu schools flags up you've got to make sure you put the Thai flag and the flag of the king above your flags because if you don't your problem with the police yeah um and then that you've there'll always be the problem of okay if you look at us we're not Chinese yeah well that can you be a Kung Fu teacher not Chinese so we've got a double problem that we're doing Kung Fu in Thailand and we're not Chinese uh well you've just got to be extra good at it because in Kung Fu if you haven't got Chinese face you've got to be three times as good as someone has that's the truth uh in Thailand well there's not many Kung Fu schools so at least we stand out yeah do you ever um have like a mixed martial arts thing going going on maybe the you know the Mu Tai guy comes and tries his hand or am I am I getting to um John Claw Van Dam film now uh we get lots of people who've done lots of martial arts you know people from just about every martial art but if you come to our school then you know we'd do our best to teach you Kung Fu and this is what I say to everybody you know if you come here um you've got a great opportunity to learn Kung Fu but if what you really want to learn is Mu Tai then you're wasting your time here because you might not go well on the Mu Tai teams Master Ian you've never come across a chat called Winston Ellis by any chance my rings a bell yeah it's really funny he came on the podcast Winston hello Winston if you ever get to see this we're absolutely lovely gentlemen um I think Afro Caribbean heritage I think I would say and um it it's really funny he's been in lots of films he's been in all the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise franchise you know series um he plays one of the the ghost men that comes up from the the sea excuse my bad description um he's also been in the latest Bond film and I also noticed he was in the film um Rise of the Foot Soldier because I watched it watched it the other day and then I saw his name in the credits he must have been much younger but um the crazy thing was he is a complete stranger never met me and yet when we started talking about Hong Kong we knew all the same people and um through the martial arts scene not not that I've been involved but they tend to end up as doorman in in Hong Kong so I just wondered if uh if you might have crossed paths okay my kung fu is from Singapore not Hong Kong so I tend to know the Singapore guys are not Hong Kong guys I know guys who would know him yeah I know I know quite a number of the Hong Kong guys but he's not one of my kind of circle do you get to Singapore often not as often as I used to uh I used to go there once or twice a year it's changed beyond recognition I'm afraid it's not somewhere I really want to go nowadays uh used to be a great place it's a different country now just like Hong Kong massively commercialized sadly my teacher died in 2019 there's a few of the old guys left over there but they're frightened they're dying off that's a big shame there's not really a young generation coming up to replace them so kung fu is a dying off there's still people doing it but it's the popularity has decreased massively it's still much stronger in Malaysia than it is in Singapore so I'll turn the guy down to Malaysia and see the Malaysia guys do you have any thoughts on the Shaolin monks when they travel the world doing their expedition does that cause there's a lot of controversy in the kung fu world the controversy is centered around the fact that number one they're not doing old style kung fu they're doing the kind of modern show kung fu and number two you've got this kind of dilemma because they're not really monks but on the show they're kind of dressed as monks and acting as monks now if you see a kung fu film then of course the actor in the film is just acting the path we don't have any problem with that but there's this it upsets a lot of people that the guy who goes on stage dressed as a monk and acting as a monk when the show's over puts on a baseball cap and heads down the park and people don't seem to understand that the two of the world they're doing a show so it upsets a lot of people it is what it is it's very one dimension as well isn't it it's all about the ego it's about kicking high and backflips and beating up ten guys and it's kind of missing the whole spiritual journey yeah but that is still the stuff that grabs people's attention and obviously well not obviously but I've kind of dealt with this I've seen that these monks have been on the same kind of stages there and at the same shows, same performances there was a guy in the UK who used to handle all their contracts so he was the kind of promoter and he would hire them in and he would get the venues and ultimately it's all a business you know they get paid to come over and it's a great opportunity for those guys you've got the guy the promoter in the UK it's a business for him he's making money I mean in all fans too, they are very good at what they do and they're often young lads from villages out in the middle of the sticks who would perhaps never have had a chance to travel very far from their village and suddenly badly they're going all over the world so it's a great opportunity for these guys yeah it's complex Ian what do your students do Master Ian sorry what do they do in the evenings do people go for beers or are people kind of strict regime on their diets what are they eating when they're over there do they stay at the centre or do they get accommodation locally they stay here and we feed them very healthy food based on kind of homegrown organic vegetables and we try I try to discourage them from going and ruining ruining it all in the evenings but it's for a lot of people it's a holiday it's a kind of food holiday so you get some people that take it very seriously they come over here they eat the carnival organic vegetables they go a bit early and you get other people that come over here a little bit of organic vegetable go down the town and get a burger and head from the bar it's not a present and we're not monks and we're not expecting our students to be monks so my advice is you to get the best value of your time here embrace it live as cleanly and as healthily as you can and then maybe when you've done your time here take a little bit of time to chill out somewhere else in Thailand ruin all the good work you've done you know it doesn't make a lot of sense to me to not to get the best out of your time here but some people are takes a long time to learn and AJ what are your plans for the future do you intend to master this art and then teach others well you're obviously teaching others now yeah on my way to master it yeah teaching which is also teaching is has its own things what like produces challenges and where I need to work on myself right but yeah I'm going to take this all the way as far as it goes my non-profit project hammer is to help military veterans with their demons and in order to help them yeah I'm going to have to be in a way that to be a senior kind of teacher I have my own gym or work as long as I need to in order to help these guys and because where we are situated and where we're located in the training and setup the staff the workers the teachers it's best to stay here for a while to get project hammer where I really want it to be so just to clarify so obviously it's mastery in school but you've got a deal going on here where you can do the veterans thing at the school yeah yeah yeah it's a separate non-profit that works in conjunction with NAMI so if I was a traumatized veteran I'd be heading straight to you just the lovely aura you guys are giving off is it just sounds I don't know a paradise in a storm if you know what I mean when we've all been through a lot of stuff how do these service personnel get funding or how can they well so that's because it's kind of a new thing so we do need for this is a non-profit we do need funding in order to get veterans to come to pay for the lodging training transportation things like that now as far as what it needs for a veteran to actually qualify for that not too much an honorable discharge from that service because we are teaching them pretty dangerous stuff so it's yeah I know you've seen it to where when some people are released from service and it's probably best they don't wear anything else dangerous for the rest of their lives I've seen this and this is kung fu so it is we do have a lot of dangerous techniques so I would like for those vets to serve honorably which is most guys I know and then have a what is it from that doctor like a medical sort of yeah a medical thing from that doctor I have this anxiety caused from my military service and then Project Hamlet the way I want Project Hamlet to work is for us to pay for those guys to come here and this have a whole month of training so it's working on themselves and then after that they'll take it wherever they want to take it can you take people with physical disability or physical challenges I should say yeah I mean I wouldn't say no good have you thought of contacting in the UK we have a lot of veterans organizations and charities for example there's one called help for heroes which get an awful lot of funding well they obviously haven't this last two years for reasons we won't go into but also the British Legion which is our premier sort of veterans organization I'm just wondering if you could get funding from these folks to get some of our guys and girls over there yeah that would be amazing and Project Hamlet too actually the first person I've ever met from the UK was I met him in Iraq it was him and his unit that was a big thing for me because I actually saw like the first time I met Europeans was in Iraq and Project Hamlet is for anyone who served with like I'm American but anyone who served with American armed forces whether that be from UK, Romania anyone who was allies with the funding would be for them also so yeah it would be great to get any kind of help we could from any other organization and do these individuals need any level of skills in the martial arts or can they just walk in from a non-martial art background no we don't need any kind of experience to be more specific and this doesn't have much to do with experience but coming with an empty cup is pretty important if you do that you'll leave head in a good place in a much better place yeah exactly so gentlemen what I'd love you to do is if you can put all your links in an email to me just any link that you want to promote so people can get in contact with you or they can talk about funding all the stuff just to get some folks to you because I would imagine for friends listening that these guys are well set up to welcome you welcome you in meet you where you are at your level no don't worry about getting beaten up or anything there's clearly a lot more there's a lot deeper stuff going on here it's just wonderful you're not going to set upon them on the first day with all those spears behind you it's a very constructive role I've got to say at the moment we don't have funding available for people people need to be self funded we're working on it but we're not people that are used to using charities we're kung fu teachers we need a bit of help on that but with that for a VIO there's a lot we can do for people yeah yes and so anybody listening we do a lot of sort of veteran stuff on this show if there's anybody out there that can help in this area please get in contact you can email me through my website because helping someone through trauma or through a challenging time or just to develop self confidence it's a very small cost compared to what they're then going to go out in the big wide world and create and produce and take this positive spirit with them and we need that we need that the world is a tough place to be at times for veterans the last 20 years have just been bordering on criminal can we say and we need to support these wonderful men and women so if there's anybody out there that thinks you can do the maths and help us out here that would be great if you can buy my ticket I'll give you a shout out on the podcast nice gentlemen what can I say is there anything else you'd like to add something I might not have covered sorry you mentioned the early about this gratitude I think you did something with your son you said calming down realizing everything is cool something they try to get across to in basic training don't panic once you don't panic your training can come through when you're present you take everything objectively I'm doing this I'm doing that you don't judge anything they actually like to just judge but the other thing you're talking about is being gratitude from being present from presence you can get gratitude I do think that is everything and even during in the middle of training instead of having this gratitude here the view here is exceptional and it's very easy to have that gratifying feeling the great food the views and everything like this but that is a huge thing to be gracious to the training to the instructors I definitely wholeheartedly agree that kind of gratitude feeling is what keeps you grounded and keeps you on the path Yes what would our friends that are no longer with us they'd love to be sat here having this chat now their lives were cut short and yet here we are we have this beautiful day well it's probably evening where you are we just have this incredible world and it really is something to get to a place where you can just sit your sun on your face even if it's behind a cloud and you can just be and you want for nothing you need nothing you just love being in that moment as a sort of techie podcaster type person who's had to learn a lot of stuff about microphones and all I'd encourage you to focus on your social media get a if you haven't already get a podcast up and running because you guys can create an awful lot in that area and get your message out there and it's a lovely fun place to be I mean look at my day it's a dream for me talk about presence and gratitude so I got this one the other day Naughty Chris the traffic warden well my ego kicked in and I've just been watching all these Essex Boy movies where the C-U-N-T word is every third bloody and he pulls up so he pulled up and he's like your back wheels on the line and I went are you a copper? he's just some civilian guy in a van with a thing on the roof it's great to recognise that's my ego coming out you know I let the situation get the better of me I wasn't present anyway I thought he drove off and I knew he was going to come back I thought okay I'll test myself here and I bothered about a 30 quid parking ticket in this beautiful universe is it going to affect my, no it's not so I went and picked my son up I walked down to pick my son up when I came back there we go but it's been bugging me a little bit especially because my admin is not always good you get 14 days to half the cost of it if you pay it and it's been there for quite a few days my point is during this conversation I haven't thought about this once I've been completely present so present I feel that half of me is in Thailand and I'm extremely grateful gentlemen you know you might not have realised this but you're making my dream come true and so I'm eternally grateful you ought to drop in here sometime Chris next time you're in Thailand look yourself absolutely yes that's a that's a given I might just run away from it all I'll be there I'll be there tomorrow night yes so just stay on the line fella so I can thank you properly when I hit the record button but for the purposes of the tape massive massive thank you master Ian and AJ oh yes yes you've gone blank I'll keep talking and to everybody at home big love to you all please look after yourselves please go out there we go we're back friends please go out and seize the day and just remember tough times don't last tough people do and it's a bright future out there for us all thank you thanks a lot Chris