I found this video from one of the people I follow on Twitter.

As anyone who knows me or has read much of what I write, I do not fall for this Qi power nonsense anymore, but was once steeped in the garbage.

I posted the link on Facebook without listening to the sound. This is not something I normally do, but was so flabbergasted by what I saw that I forgot that I didn’t have the sound on when I viewed it. Short story on that is that anytime I am given a youtube link I keep the sound off if anyone is around, and in this case, as I have been catching up on all of the youtube links I have been sent today, and my four year old was with me for nearly all of them, sound off seemed most appropriate because of the nature of youtube.

While the attacks on the fake masters presented in the video are spot on, I have to take issue with the seeming condemnation of all martial arts. When the narrator asks the question “Are the students being taught martial art or being taught to submit?” it is a fair enough question provided it is being asked of the students in the film. But later still, the narrator makes note of how from day one martial arts students are taught to refer to the instructor by strange titles such as master, sifu or sensei. And this is an intentional part of the mental conditioning.

The terms Sifu and Sensei are common terms. In Chinese, Sifu refers to any male teacher. Sensei is usually given the translation of “one who has gone before”, and with my very limited Japanese I am not fit to argue, but the characters for Sensei are the same as are used in Chinese for “Mister”.

I for one, and many of the instructors that I work with and associate with do not ever make our students refer to us as master, because of all of the baggage that such a term carries.

So my recommendation for the above film is simple, watch it with the sound off, or make a mental note that the narrator is making a condemnation of the so-called masters in the video.

It does not take a lot of critical thinking skill to see that the demonstrations are all staged and as fake as the Whitney Houston/Kevin Costner kiss in The Bodyguard. I do wish that the students in the film could see how stupid they look.

We all wish the super powers were real, but please live in the real world…