People are suffering. Stress is the suspect. Everything bad is stress. Stress makes everything bad. Many avoid stress whenever possible, resign themselves to what they can't avoid, and seek relief whenever possible. It is as if they believe more in the power of stress than they do in the power or energy. People relate to stress like it is the bogeyman of a horror movie and it is out to get them. Given the absence of energy management in the current models of stress management, they are not wrong, and for most people, it plays out like a horror story.
I dislike horror movies. I do not enjoy victimization as entertainment. In a horror movie 15 victims run and scatter and the bad guy monster picks them off one by one.
I love a good martial arts movie. Empowered sheroes and heroes square off against monsters and villains. Integrity versus corruption. They don't run from the conflict, they strategize and focus their power to win. With power, adversity and conflict can become an exciting adventure. Without power, adversity and conflict are frightening and torturous. The classic movie The Seven Samurai is a great example of this.
If you take an energized, inspired, and empowered martial artist, (someone who has energy and inspiration and believes in themselves and their training) and place them in a horror movie, it is now an action adventure movie. If the victims in the horror movie had energy and power, they could unify their energy and strategize their efforts, and many could survive. In real life empowered, inspired, energized people are the indomitable catalysts who are our greatest hope for the future. Given the current reality, I believe we need more of them.
Hans Selye, the endocrinologist who first observed the pattern of what he named stress, said on page 6 in his book Stress In Health and Disease that stress was a matter of "energy utilization" and that stress begins to do harm when a person runs out of what he called "adaptive energy". In spite of its critical importance, energy is not mentioned again in the 1500 pages that follow, but for an anecdotal study about moxibustion. Neither western science nor Hans Selye were familiar with the energy practices of Chinese Martial Arts. Selye could measure the damage and the physical hormonal responses and so he focused his research accordingly.
Further complicating matters is the tendency of people to misunderstand and misinterpret his work. Selye himself said in a speech to a group of English physicians, some 25 years after he first published his article on stress in 1936, "Everyone knows what stress is, but no one really knows."
The absence of energy awareness combined with the seemingly natural urge to avoid the discomfort of stress resulted in the development and use of stress avoidance as the primary method of stress management. In the absence of reliable energy source strategies, this makes logical sense. Unfortunately, this strategy fails to empower people and serves to deepen a sense of resentment toward everything regarded as "stressful". Which again makes sense given that no one has been given a charger for their body, mind, and spirit let alone instruction on the energy they need to be dynamic and healthy.
It is why "15 things to lessen the stress in your life" relieves stress, but NEVER resolves the problem of stress. This is a Conservation-mode strategy and like the energy saving mode on a cell phone it does not resolve the need for energy. It only serves to delay the inevitable shutdown. The only effective solution is to connect the phone to the energy source via the charger and recharge the battery.
"Qi" is Mandarin for what Hans Selye called "adaptive energy". The purpose of our style of Chinese Martial Arts is to train this energy and its complement of energy to nurture dynamic health and power for ALL of life's situations. The purpose of Energy Fitness Training is to provide energy health strategies for application in everyday life and for extraordinary demands and circumstances.
After my inguinal hernia surgery, in October of 2017, my Shifu, Grand Master Tian Min Wang taught me what Yi and Qi are and how they work together to heal and build power. During my recovery, I concurrently studied Qi with Shifu while reading Stress in Health and Disease by Hans Selye. As I read and trained while I recovered, it became abundantly clear that the Qi I was training was very similar to the adaptation energy Selye spoke about. With this knowledge and experience, I developed the bridge concept of A.E.Q.—Adaptive Energy/Qi. (A.E.Q. Energy for short.) to connect these two culturally distinct yet similar concepts into one unified concept. I also developed the A.E.Q. Energy scale for measuring and tracking A.E.Q. Energy and connecting it to its effect on behavior and personality. The added clarity of these additions have served to evolve the Energy Fitness Training System and to empower our students with a more effective and efficient ability to manage the energy that manages stress, health, dynamic learning, and conflict. It was designed to applicable in all setting and unconditionally in all circumstances independent of demands or "stressors".
I am a Shifu, a Master of Chinese Martial Arts. I am the founder, and director of The Fire Mountain School of Energy Fitness Training and Chinese Martial Arts. I am the highest ranking American in Shen Shing Wu Chan Kung Fu, a Chinese Martial Arts system developed by Grand Master Wang Tian Min a lineage holder of many Chinese martial arts and a doctor of Chinese medicine. I have invested 30 years of my life as a student to obtain a level of mastery that could make the benefits accessible to all people.
The Energy Fitness Training system that I engineered is grounded in decades of Chinese martial arts training, gathering observations, and exploring how training energy before exerting effort effects performance and behavior. These patterns are then tested and explored repeatedly through direct experience. If they keep their integrity throughout the entire spectrum of human nature, they are accepted and the system adapts accordingly. If they do not hold up under the demands of real life application, they are either modified or discarded. This is the standard of this system: Either it works throughout human nature in its environment or it is not included. If we wish to be empowered, dynamic, adaptable, resilient, and innovative, we need a system that is as well.