Info on Bernard Langan?

Discussion in 'General Martial Arts Discussion' started by GeckoDelMar, Oct 29, 2005.

  1. GeckoDelMar

    GeckoDelMar New Member

    Info on Stillness in Motion studio in California?

    Hello all. I was wondering if anyone had any information about a teacher named Bernard Langan. He seems to specialize in internal systems and has a studio in Albany, California. The website for his studio is www.stillnessinmotion.com.

    Anyone every heard of him?
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2005
  2. zenbaseballbat

    zenbaseballbat New Member

    if i remember rightly hes written about in Alex kozmas book esoteric warriors
    :)
     
  3. Tseek Choi

    Tseek Choi Banned Banned

    whoooh!
    Man he's done some stuff!

    I'd go find a proper Internal chinese martial arts teacher rather than this guy (no disrespect) but you want to learn CMA from someone whose focus is on CMA
    Just my personal opinion, but he doesn't seem to concentrate on CMA.
     
  4. GeckoDelMar

    GeckoDelMar New Member

    Thanks for the replies all. Yeah, the amount of style history seemed like a lot to me. When it gets down to it, his focus seems to be on healthy/proper body movement.

    I actually got to visit a class and things seemed pretty good to me. In my fairly limited experience, he seemed to explain things clearly. I would definitely be tempted to return for more lessons, but it turns out that my schedule for classes wont work out.

    So my original question is pretty much moot now :) But like I said, I would definitely be tempted to go back to check things out more if I could.
     
  5. moy vat

    moy vat New Member

    excellent martial artist

    I know Bernard Langdon. He is alittle different, however, he is extreamely good. If you have a chance to study with him, you should. You will learn a great deal. He is for real.
     
  6. Wannabe Kiwi

    Wannabe Kiwi New Member

    I'm pretty late to the party in replying here, but I will in the hopes of informing somebody else in the future.

    (Disclosure: I currently train under Sifu Langan and have trained under Sifu Mike Bingo in the past.)

    I would highly, highly, highly recommend him. He impressed me the very first day I met him, and is the only teacher that I've met (and I've met a lot) who is comparable to the late Mike Bingo. (I wouldn't try to state who I think is/was better since I'm not qualified to judge at that rarefied level, but I will say that both are/were the real deal and share similar characteristics that convey that.) He has real internal skill, and I've grown a tremendous amount in the few years I've trained under him.

    I am in no way shilling for Sifu Langan here, but I genuinely believe that anyone looking for a real internal MA master in the Bay Area could hardly do better than he.
     
  7. Pretty In Pink

    Pretty In Pink Moved on MAP 2017 Gold Award

    What does "real internal martial arts" mean? Like Yellow bamboo stuff is fake I guess.
     
  8. Latikos

    Latikos Valued Member

    12 years.
    Why on earth would you resurrect a thread after twelve years?
     
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  9. Wannabe Kiwi

    Wannabe Kiwi New Member

    @Latikos : Because there is not enough info out there on good internal CMA teachers as it is, and any up-to-date intel is valuable. I've struggled with the search many times before and I know the frustration of seeing a 12 year old thread and wondering if the guy is still around. So why not resurrect a thread to let people know that yes, he is still around and yes, he is well worth your time. (And I only just came across this the other day while bored at work. It's not like I was waiting 12 years and suddenly thought to myself yesterday: "NOW is the time!" )

    @Pretty In Pink : That's a tough question to answer, what are "real internal martial arts". If I knew that definitively then I would be teaching right now and not just a student. But, after meeting/studying under many teachers, good and bad (I've moved around the U.S. a lot), here are some things that stand out to me that signify a "real internal martial art":
    1. The teacher has excellent iron body conditioning that goes beyond external methods of simply banging yourself against a pole. Sifu Mike Bingo was known for breaking baseball bats with his bare hands, and I know from experience that crossing forearms with him was like making contact with an iron rod, and hitting him in the sternum was like hitting a steel plate. Sifu Langan has this feel to him as well.
    2. The system stresses complex movements of the abdomen and usage of ligaments and tendons, not just muscles, to create power. With Sifu Bingo this was couched in our qigong exercises. With Sifu Langan it's more explicitly described. In either case, you end up learning how to move and use muscles you didn't even know you had.
    3. This is an odd one since it's an assertion by omission, but there is very little, if any, talk of mystical qi powers. Both teachers teach/taught visualization techniques to enhance the exercises, but I have never gotten the impression that all I needed to do was wave my arms around and wish the qi to go somewhere and magically I would gain internal power. Both teachers teach/taught very practical, physical skills, and it's those skills that are the foundation of developing power. Perhaps at some higher level there is actual magical transmission of qi, but in my experience it is only the schools that don't really understand the internal that are the ones "teaching" that right off the bat.
    So those are my criteria when evaluating an internal school. There are other factors, too, but those are the most important, IMHO. And who knows, I may be wrong. If so, I'd gladly hear otherwise. But yeah, I've met a lot of martials artists in my 25 years of studying, and these two guys stand out as the most authentic internal practitioners that I have met.
     
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  10. El Medico

    El Medico Valued Member

    Nope,Wannabe gave a decent summation.It's physical stuff.

    But as so many,esp. Chinese systems, have these things to varying extents I still find calling specific systems "internal" rather misleading.And elitist.For the latter part you have to understand the socio-political era in China which spawned this idea.

    We may all vary a bit in the training and preferences-( the main teacher I got these things from was adamant from day 1 about not using visualizations in nei gungs and form training-only actual conscious control and kinesthetic perception)- but the resulting mechanics themselves are pretty much the same.
     
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  11. Pretty In Pink

    Pretty In Pink Moved on MAP 2017 Gold Award

    Excellent. So what is the main purpose of internal martial arts?
     
  12. Wannabe Kiwi

    Wannabe Kiwi New Member

    I agree with @El Medico that at the highest levels, I presume, it all blends together. Perhaps "internal" or "external" better describes the path rather than the ultimate destination. But that's above my pay grade.

    Also, to clarify, visualization is not an end in and of itself. It is (I think) simply a means of activating certain neuromuscular pathways to learn how to move parts of your body in ways that you've otherwise forgotten or didn't know in the first place. But the key is that you have to have a teacher who knows what they're doing so that they can teach you how to make visualization effective. Just standing there imagining stuff will not do anything. You have to have a specific goal of the visualization, whether it's expanding the joints or dropping the breath, and then you have to eventually link that visualization with an actual physical sensation.

    So to answer your question, @Pretty In Pink, IMHO internal martial arts is about to using your body in ways that are different from what you're used to. Parts of that include relaxation, deep breathing, structural alignment, etc. But all of those work towards the same goal of retraining yourself to move in a different way.
     
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  13. Hannibal

    Hannibal Cry HAVOC and let slip the Dogs of War!!! Supporter

    Same as "external" but with a different training methodology
     
  14. Wannabe Kiwi

    Wannabe Kiwi New Member

    I realized after I wrote my reply that my answer was pretty trite. Obviously the purpose of any martial art is to train yourself to move in a different way. Internal arts, however, focus on non-obvious ways to train power, ways that would be very hard to come by yourself (not impossible, though, since somebody obviously did).

    One example is how the various fibers of the body are trained. The obvious way that many external styles use is to build up the muscles and tendons via weight lifting, push-ups, stance training, etc. While there is plenty of stretching in these styles, the underlying mechanism is the contraction and shortening of the fibers of the body. Internal training, on the other hand, focuses on lengthening the muscles, tendons, ligaments and fascia, and using the body's natural springiness and stretchiness to develop and direct power. (To be clear, Sifu Bingo's style, Tang Shou Tao, had plenty of strength conditioning to it. But this was meant to develop a base level of conditioning, and would be superseded by more internal conditioning later on.)

    Again, let me qualify all of this by saying that these are concepts that I myself am only just beginning to glimpse and learn, so I may be totally wrong here. I'm no master. There are a lot of details here, too, that I'm leaving out because I am not qualified to teach or explain them, so I apologize if I'm vague on some things.
     
  15. El Medico

    El Medico Valued Member

    To do "unpleasant" things to the opponent.
    Thing is,there is no one path for supposed internal MAs- or supposed external MAs.

    It's mainly just an aid to help your eventual conscious control of physical tissues one doesn't ordinarily have command of. That's why it's ok to use them (for a while) or not.

    Again,the problem in such a statement is that so many CMAs have some of these "internal" methods that it makes trying to create a dividing line rather silly.Is Southern Mantis "internal"? How about Hung Gar? Northern Shaolin? They all have what would be classified as such "internal" training.Northern systems especially seem to have these things.

    But we could say the same thing about baseball.Or figure skating.
    Except of course the practices in those many CMAs which would be "internal".See above.
    TST isn't a style.It's the teachings and systems of Hung,I-hsiang.Unless something's changed.
     

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