Dr. Yuen is a well-known martial arts author and has appeared frequently on the cover of martial arts magazines. He was the technical advisor on the original television how, Kung Fu and brought authentic kung fu to international television. The star of the show, David Carradine, became a student and disciple of Dr. Yuen. Carradine tells how the character of Kwai Chang Caine was based in part on Dr. Yuen. Carradine wanted the character to have the qualities he saw in his teacher.
Dr. Yuen's master, the preeminent Tsou Chu Kai, acknowledged as the foremost T'ai Chi Praying Mantis Master in the world, was also a doctor of Chinese medicine, acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine. Dr. Yuen is well known for his mastery of Shaolin King Fu. Dr. Yuen is a world-renowned grandmaster in both T'ai Mantis and Seven Star Praying Mantis. He has also mastered t'ai chi chuan, pa kua and qigong.
Dr. Yuen founded ShaolinWest International in Canoga Park, California in the Los Angeles area. The classes in the martial and healing arts have proven to be the most advanced and state of the art techniques offered anywhere. While the martial arts community focuses on teaching defense of the self, Shaolin West teaches self-expertise and mastery.
by Guy Spiro
I don't want to repeat tradition, I want to reach tradition at a whole new level so that we get fitness quickly and we get healing quickly, too.
Guy Spiro: Dr. Yuen, in the early '70s several of my friends and I got together in my apartment and watched Kung Fu religiously every week. Most of them were really there to watch the fight scenes, but I was always very impressed with the teachings and the spirituality. It was right, it was correct. I would go so far as to say I've never seen anything on TV before or since that was as correct as that was, and I always wondered who was behind that, who got all that stuff right. So when I found out that I had the opportunity to talk with you, I was very excited.
I've always believed that mass consciousness has a great deal to do with how the world is, and that utilization of the mass media in the way that you accomplished with Kung Fu was a great accomplishment. You got concepts out into the mass mind in a way that had never been done before.
KY: That was a very interesting time. It changed how a lot of people look at themselves.
GS: Did you study with real Shaolins?
KY: I studied the Shaolin system of martial arts for over forty years.
GS: You were trained by people who actually lived in the monasteries?
KY: I was trained by people who came from that lineage of Shaolin. My instructor actually learned from the monks themselves.
GS: But there are no temples any more like they had in the show?
KY: There are a couple, actually. A few people, grounds care monks, live there to take care of the places. It's not for the martial arts anymore. Tourists from all over the world go there to visit.
GS: So you're second generation from the monastery.
KY: When I was growing up you couldn't get into China anymore, let alone into the monastery. They hadn't practiced the martial arts there for fifty-some years. They still have Shaolin monks but they practice the martial arts outside of the monastery in a town very close by.
KY: I was doing that as far as the physical law and the philosophy and the healing part of it were concerned. The attempt was to actually establish a Shaolin monastery outside of China. I was going to have David Carradine, the star of Kung Fu, involved with that, but he just got too busy doing his movies.
GS: So that's not functioning like you had hoped?
KY: We're going to do it again. We've finally got everything together. I'm going to go back to China to do Chinese energetic medicine and upgrade what they do in China, have people bring it to the 21st century. We don't have to bring everything from China. We can go back to them and show them the new integrating technique that we got from here.
GS: How has it changed as you've translated it from modern times?
KY: We get quicker results now. We have more knowledge of physiology, anatomy, biochemistry, quantum physics, so we can make things happen a lot quicker and don't have to spend as much time going through the process of training.
GS: What brought about the knowledge to be able to do it quicker?
KY: All the disciplines I just mentioned. I'm not such a tool of tradition; I always like to improve what tradition has taught us. I pretty much bring it to a level where healing is so much quicker. We can get people out of pain on the spot. We can get someone more flexible and stronger just by making the correction on the nervous system. With the knowledge of the nervous system, we can work a lot faster.
GS: You've gotten a better sense of where things really are..
KY: I don't want to repeat tradition, I want to reach tradition at a whole new level so that we get fitness quickly and we get healing quickly, too. We make things happen a lot faster. There's no reason why we should do the same techniques that go back two thousand years. Everything's going to seem pretty much the same but how we get there is going to be different.
GS: What are you doing now?
KY: I do a lot of demonstrations and presentations to show people that I can make them recover from their injuries very quickly, get rid of all their pains and also get them out of serious disease.
GS: That's a claim that a lot of people have made and gotten in trouble for.
KY: I know, but it's not like I don't have a license as a healthcare professional. I'm also a Doctor of Chiropractic, so I have a license to actually work on people. I don't make claims, I just have people come in who have a pain, low back pain, shoulder pain, whatever injury they have, and I work on them in front of the audience. After I work on them for two minutes, they have no pain.
GS: I've been around long enough to know that these things certainly can work. You are, probably to put it crudely, gathering enough chi and directing it to the right place?
KY: To put it in the right place is most important. The chi is already there. If you get someone who has sufficient chi you do it right away. If you know what to do with that chi, that really separates you from other [practitioners]. A lot of people can give you a lot of chi but instead of [someone] directing it where it's needed the most, the chi has its own intelligence to go where it's supposed to go.
GS: So that's what would make what you're doing different from what some other people are doing.
KY: Actually analyzing, diagnosing what's going on and making an energy correction right away. That's why we are capable of giving a presentation and challenging the audience [to work on] whatever pain they feel. We're just doing pain as a demonstration but we work on other serious illness, too. But we get rid of pain better than anyone. Or allergies, such as someone who has a sinus problem or common cold; we could make them recover from that.
GS: Are you teaching other people to do this now?
KY: Yes, I've taught a lot of people because I don't want to be the only person who's doing it.
GS: So, Dr. Yuen, how are you able to teach people?
KY: If you have like a roadmap to follow, you will be able to pinpoint it. You find the energy of least resistance and then you change that.
GS: So you're providing more or less maps where people can feel the energy . . . and if it's out of balance, then that's where you put it. How many people might you guess have graduated from your program?
KY: We have hundreds of people who have already graduated from it.
GS: Makes sense. Is there anything else you'd like to talk about?
KY: We could use this method to improve not just health but fitness and also a person's prosperity and relationship with themselves and everybody else. If you're able to communicate with others better, then others will be able to communicate with them better, because then they're on a level where they subconsciously are in synchronization with each other.
NOTE: What Dr. Kam Yuen teaches is printed in flow charts, and it's in a basic manual he goes through at his workshops. He treats his workshops as clinics and in the clinics he works on every person. He gives them a personal treatment and goes very slowly through the flow chart teaching them how to exactly pinpoint the root cause behind their discomfort. If there are multiple causes, he teaches how to pinpoint all the different ones.
