Shkar Sharif - KFZ

04/10/2026

I’ve stripped a few mystical systems back to their basic claims. They aren’t all saying the same thing. And yes, there’s considerably more to each one.

But we’re trying to fit metaphysics into the gap between a cat video and someone showing you their lunch. Some compromises were made. 🙂

02/10/2026

Building a community, a school, a movement is hard. And as it grows, your role has to keep changing.

Running a school with 50 members is completely different to running one with 150, 250 or 500. The things that got you to one stage won’t necessarily get you through the next.

Knowing your discipline and being able to teach it well are the foundation. But they’re not enough. You have to genuinely care about people and about the transformations you’re trying to help create in them.

Because people bring their baggage with them. Students bring the things that get in the way of their own growth. Staff bring their own fears, identities, insecurities and limitations. And, of course, you bring yours too.

So building a school becomes as much about learning how to work with people as it is about teaching the thing you originally opened the school to teach.

There are times when I get tired of it. Properly tired. Times when I think it would be much easier to pack the whole thing in and have a simpler life.

Then someone tells me how much the school has changed their life. And I remember being 20 years old, dreaming about one day having a successful martial arts school of my own.

It’s easy to forget, when you’re dealing with the weight of running something, that you’re sometimes standing inside the thing your younger self was hoping for.

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24/09/2026

There are people who trained with me for three or four months who are now running courses and seminars on the internal arts, teaching others how to harmonise Shen, Yi, Qi and movement.

These are things I’m still trying to get to the bottom of after 25 years of practice.

Clearly, I need to sign up for one of their seminars. 🙂

24/09/2026

We talk a lot about how long it takes to get a black belt, but much less about what you are supposed to do afterwards.

In our school, it means the foundations are in place. You have learnt enough of the system to begin exploring it in much greater depth.

Often that means returning to something you learnt years ago and realising how much you missed. That is usually a useful dent in the ego.

You also begin to notice how much of yourself you bring into your training. Your habits, your temperament, the things you avoid and the things you insist you already understand.

Your teacher can give you the methods and correct your mistakes. But they cannot do that exploration for you.

The aim is to move beyond copying your teacher and embody the principles yourself. That doesn’t mean making things up because you’re bored with the syllabus. It means practising deeply enough that what you have been taught becomes something you genuinely understand.

This is the part that interests me most: what happens when a person spends years working deeply with an art, allowing it to challenge and change them, and what grows out of that relationship.

The black belt gives you a foundation for that work. It doesn’t do the work for you.

22/09/2026

An important video lesson for the traditional Kung Fu people

The strange movements, repeated shapes and system-specific exercises are supposed to reorganise the body—changing how it connects, moves and carries power.

19/09/2026

Apparently owning a martial arts school means you can take time off whenever you want.

Anyway…

Still teaching.

17/09/2026

A child saying “I don’t want to do it” doesn’t always mean something is wrong.

Sometimes it means they’re bored. Sometimes frustrated. Sometimes they’ve hit the point where progress requires effort instead of instant reward.

Of course we should listen to children. But part of parenting is helping them tell the difference between something that genuinely isn’t right for them, and something that has simply become difficult.

Because learning to stay with something when it stops being easy is a skill in itself.

13/09/2026

https://www.shaolintaichi.online/course/the-white-crane-nei-gong-bundle-foundations-the-san-zhan-method/

09/09/2026

When the ego discovers spirituality, it doesn’t necessarily disappear. Sometimes it just finds more interesting things to want.

Manifestation, altered states, spiritual experiences, attainment — where does genuine spiritual practice end and another form of acquisition begin?

New episode of Notes on Practise: When the Ego Discovers Spirituality.

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09/09/2026

New Podcast Episode 🎙️

When the Ego Discovers Spirituality

What happens when spirituality becomes another way of chasing what we want?

Episode 11 of Notes on Practise is out now on YouTube, Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

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