My Uechi Ryu Lineage
My Kyusho Lineage
KYUSHO and UECHI RYU KARATE
You might ask "what has Kyusho got to do with Uechi Ryu Karate?"
For many years I studied Uechi Ryu Karate with the Uechi Ryu Karate Association (GB). I took my Shodan in December 1979 at Liverpool, England. I continued to study with the association until 2001 at which time I decided to start training and studying on my own. I wanted to understand how pressure points worked within Uechi Ryu and I realised that my bunkai and prearranged sparring routines were moving down a different road, albeit a parallel road. Dan kumite is dan kumite and always will be.
Originally, Uechi Ryu was a Chinese for based in the Fukien Province of Southern China. Its' original name was Pwangainoon. There are varied spellings for this and it is roughly translated as Half Hard/Soft. The style consisted of 4 kata, Sanchin, Seisan, Sanseiryu and Superempai. Unfortunately, Superempai was lost to us. Master Kambun Uechi, the founder of Uechi Ryu was highly critical of himself demanding only the highest standards possible. He would not teach Superempai believing himself not good enough at the kata to teach it. The paper work to this kata was destroyed in a fire at the dojo. Uechi Ryu is influenced by two styles of martial arts, karate and kung fu. The nearest karate to Uechi Ryu is Goju Ryu and the nearest kung fu is Wing Chun. There are several variations on this but the main thing to note is how far back the lineage reaches. It was the Okinawans that brought the use of makawara to the style. This may indicate that they enhanced the harder side of Uechi Ryu. Other Masters like Tayama teach and work the softer side of the system. This does not imply that Master Toyama or any other Master of Uechi Ryu does not understand or does not make use of the harder side of Uechi Ryu. Uechi Ryu is a close in style and students of Uechi Ryu are able to generate a great deal of power from only short distances. The Chinese part of the system brings the conditioning, circular blocking, soft movements and small pointed weapons such as shoken, nukite and toe kicks. Indeed, the only place you might see a seiken performed is in the kanshiwa kata and this is not the case for all dojo. I use shoken for the first three tsukis. The makawara used in Uechi Ryu uses soft material rather than straw. The basic reasoning behind this was to build the muscles in your hands in order to make the weapon harder rather than tearing up the skin and making calluses on your knuckles. The one thing that stood out for me from the Chinese systems is the use of chi and pressure points. If we were practicing a Chinese system then where were our pressure point fighting techniques.
I have practiced kyusho techniques for some time now and I am still amazed at the ease of integration with Uechi Ryu. I saw a piece of text along with a drawing depicting the double boshiken strike out of sanchin kata. How old was this drawing, 5,000 years old!!! I have tried to maintain the same movements where possible so that we can still perform sanchin as sanchin. It is the energy drawn into the kata that make sit so different. We can only really work the three Chinese kata because those are the original kata. The intermediate kata were made for various reasons other than the use of kyusho, however, because each kata is a build on the previous one it is possible to make a very close interpretation.