THE BENEFITS OF COSMOS PALM IN DAILY LIFE
Sifu Matt Fenton broke the bottom brick of two bricks lying one on top of another during a test of Cosmos Palm
Question
If I am not mistaken, I read that Cosmos Palm can be used not only for fighting but also for healing. Nowadays, we are very lucky as many of us won't ever have to engage in a real fight. Also, many of us are not healers. So my questions are:
How can learning Cosmos Palm enhance/enrich our daily lives and the lives of others? In other words, what would the daily applications of Cosmos Palm be when not being a healer or having to fight?
Would you please share with us how Cosmos Palm has benefited you and any "aha" experience that might have happened while using/practicing it?
Santiago
Answer
Cosmos Palm is one of the treasures of all martial arts. Not many martial artists, even masters, have a chance to learn it. Not only it is excellent for combat, damaging opponents without leaving external marks, but it also enhances the results of a healer. I am very sure that my success in healing, especially in overcoming so-called incurable diseases, was much due to my training in Cosmos Palm.
However, as you have rightly said, we are fortunate to live in an age when fighting is rare, and not many of us are healers. Then, is Cosmos Palm useful to us? Certainly. Cosmos Palm enriches every day of our life.
Practicing any internal art will also enrich our daily life. But not many people have a chance to practice a genuine internal art. Even those who have a rare opportunity to practice a genuine internal art may not know how to use their internal art to enrich their life.
As a very rough but generous estimate, less than 0.0001% of people in the world have a chance to learn an internal art. This means 1 person out of 10,000 persons. The estimate is based on the total number of students in our school, which is estimated to be 60,000, and the total population of the world, which is estimated to be 7.4 billion.
Of course, there are also other people outside our school who practice internal arts. But most of them only perform the external forms of the internal arts, and not their essence. An estimate of those who obtain the benefits of internal arts, i.e. those who practice genuine internal arts, and eventually become masters, is 10,000 persons.
But not many of these 10,000 masters consciously apply their internal arts to enrich their daily life. I believe ours is the only school that does so systematically and progressively. Even if we take 70,000 against 7.4 billion, we have less than 0.0001%.
Cosmos Palm is not just an internal art; it is a very high-level internal art. This means the benefits of Cosmos Palm to enrich our daily life are very much higher.
What are the benefits of an internal art that can enrich our daily life? Firstly, an internal art gives good health, vitality and longevity. Those who are sick in the first place, should practice a low-level internal art, like low-level chi kung, to overcome their sickness before attempting more advanced internal arts.
Many people outside our school may be surprised at my statement that low-level chi kung is more effective than a higher-level one to overcome illness, especially so-called incurable diseases. They believe that any chi kung that can overcome cancer or heart problems must be of a very high level. This is no surprise to us when we know that the types of chi kung they are usually exposed to are not genuine chi kung but gentle physical exercise.
Asking a sick person to perform high-level chi kung is like asking him to run a marathon or lift heavy weights. The tremendous amount of energy generated from high-level chi kung will be too much for his physical body to bear.
Besides enabling practitioners to have good health, be full of vitality and have longevity, an internal art also provides spiritual joys, like making them peaceful and happy. The result is intrinsic, i.e. practitioners will naturally be peaceful and happy when they practice internal arts, unless they channel the energy for other purposes, like for combat. Hence, some kungfu masters in the past, despite having a lot of internal force from their internal art training, were agitated and depressed.
Internal art training also gives practitioners a lot of energy and mental clarity, which they can employ to attain peak performance. It is helpful to know that a lot of energy and mental clarity are the ingredients, the skills; practitioners must also have the techniques and philosophies. If a practitioner wants to make his family or work place happier, for example, he must also know what to do and why he does so, besides having a lot of energy to carry out his activities, and mental clarity to see the necessity of what he does. It was probably because of this lack of opportunities to gather the necessary techniques and philosophies that some past internal art masters were not happy.
But today, with the great advantage of the information age, techniques and philosophies can be learned from books, videos or the internet. Skills, like a lot of energy and mental clarity, still need to be learned from a competent teacher.
Besides these benefits that practicing any internal art will give, except that Cosmos Palm being very high-level will give more, what other special benefits that one may get from practicing Cosmos Palm in his daily application when he is not a healer or having to fight?
A special feature of Cosmos Palm is to channel energy to other persons, even through obstacles in between, to affect their energy flow. You may not be a professional healer, but you can use this ability to help other people. If a child falls and hurts himself, you can channel your energy to help him to relieve him of swelling, bruise and blood blockage. If an adult is depressed, you can channel your energy to help his energy flow to relieve him of his depression.
Many students told me that their chi flowed better when they attended a course with me. I believe this had to do with my training of the Cosmos Palm.
I haven’t investigated into this, but I believe that those with Cosmos Palm training not only have better chi flow themselves, but also can influence others to have better chi flow, which will bring good health, vitality and longevity. This benefit is intrinsic. In other words, those with Cosmos Palm need not do anything special. By their presence, other people will also have better chi flow.
Will the Cosmos Palm practitioners be depleted of energy? No. As they are relaxed, another benefit of practicing any internal art, they will be recharged instantly from the Cosmos.
Cosmos Palm as well as other internal arts have benefitted me tremendously. I really cannot remember the last time I was sick. I am full of vitality, even after a trans-continental flight. As I am now way past 60, I can claim to have longevity. These are the unspoken, but sure, benefits of Cosmos Palm.
Here is a story which I seldom tell to other people. One night I returned home to find a fish dead, or appeared to be dead, in a fish pond. I channeled chi to it. Then I left the fish pond and did not think much of it. Some time later I found the same fish swimming happily in the pond! It was an aha experience.
Another aha experience was when I broke a sugar cane supported on two eggs without breaking the eggs. Still another aha experience was later when I broke the bottom of two bricks, one on top of the other, without breaking the top brick
I gave a demonstration of breaking a sugar cane supported on two eggs without breaking the eggs at the University of Science, Penang, Malaysia. An office-bearer of the kungfu club that invited me for the demonstration, asked his adviser, a physics professor, how he would explain that in science. I remember the professor saying that according to science, that was impossible.
An old photo showing Grandmaster Wong breaking a sugar-cane supported on two eggs without breaking the eggs
This question and answer are reproduced from the thread 10 Questions on Cosmos Palm in the Shaolin Wahnam Discussion Forum.
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