For perspective, I would like to begin with a little bit about myself. I come from a good home, have an over-protective mother, and a very patient father. I have never been in a fight in my life. I am near-sighted and I am asthmatic. Throughout my childhood years, I was tall and skinny for my age, but not even remotely athletic in the most liberal sense. The closest I ever came to fighting was in the 5th grade in elementary school. A kid was bullying me around. I was pretty much a geek as a kid, so I was easy prey for the most part. Anyway, I remember a day he had done something to really make me mad and I chased him, intending to run him down and tackle him or whatever to at least humiliate him in front of our peers. Of course, I was asthmatic at that point in time as well. I was so determined to catch him, I ran after him until I literally could not breathe. I collapsed and he just kind of sat on me, claiming victory in a scuff that could hardly be called a fight, since we never really even hit each other. Anyway, this was my initial motivation to learning martial arts, I hated being a geek, being picked on, and feeling helpless. My father learned Tae Kwon Do in Vietnam on a military base and still has the black belt he earned while serving there. However, as a federal correctional officer, he has also had the opportunity to learn some basic Aikido, and felt that if I really wanted to learn a martial art, that was the one I should learn. He taught me a few basics and I wanted so much to learn more. At the time, there were only a handful of places in town that even taught martial arts and it was pretty much either Tae Kwon Do or Kickboxing.

This is when I met Ike Stafford. I was 9 years old. I joined Stafford´s school with a bunch of friends and it was fun and games for a while, but, if nothing else, Mr. Stafford taught me the value of discipline and respect. Soon, my intentions turned away from the initial "I wanna learn how to fight", to where I was beginning to learn things about myself. I was presented with a challenge and I loved it. My friends and I quickly became fiercely competitive, and we egged each other on. Ike had us doing everything from punching boards to toughen our knuckles, to running barefoot on gravel to toughen the feet. I was with him for a couple of years or so, but, during that time, he began to teach more Kickboxing than Tae Kwon Do. I actually kind of liked Kickboxing. It didn´t seem as rigid, you could actually accomplish more with fewer basics, and it was vicious and aggressive, two things I never was, but used to long for. Ike Stafford had a lot of respect from a lot of martial artists from all over the world and took frequent trips to Japan and some other places for Kickboxing fights and so forth, and he intended to draw me into that. At the time, I thought it would´ve been the coolest thing in the world to leave the country and train to be a professional fighter, of course, my mom didn´t quite see things the way I did.

     One of Ike Stafford´s oldest students, Chuck Mercer, started teaching Tae Kwon Do at a local fitness center and attracted a lot of students who wanted to stay with Tae Kwon Do as opposed to Stafford´s lean toward Kickboxing training. This is where I went next, to continue my Tae Kwon Do training. By this time, the last of my friends finally quit, giving me at least a little pride in keeping the vigil. Here, the training wasn´t as tough as Stafford´s used to be, but it began to get harder as time went by. There were a lot more Tae Kwon Do practitioners here and it was a group I would grow with for almost five more years. During this time, I really fell into a rut. I was good by their standards, but I always felt something was lacking. Of course, having been there so long at that point, I was respected by a lot of other students. In fact, by that time, I was already reaching a point where I was being passed up by people who had not taken as long as I. This made for black belts teaching me who didn´t even have my skill level, yet, I didn´t feel worthy of a black belt. This was kind of awkward for a while, but I continued to strive to better myself. I was with this school through most of my high school years.

High school was rough in general for me. Academically, it wasn´t too bad, but I had lost a lot of desire by my sophomore year. I was skating by, and just trying to keep out of trouble at home. I would slack a bit in my Tae Kwon Do training, but, I always knew it wouldn´t take me long to recover any ground I lost training-wise. I had to come up with new challenges for myself, because, Tae Kwon Do had begun to lose it´s challenge to me. I was wanting to grow, yet, Tae Kwon Do seemed to be holding me in the same place. I began to view it as a good way to stay fit, keep exercising, and a good thing in general for healthy body and mind. Still, even with what confidence Tae Kwon Do had given me, I was still without much in the way of desire, and I was struggling with my self-discipline.

     My life felt out of control. By the time I graduated high school, it really didn´t mean anything to me. I had no real direction at that point, though I had all sorts of doors open for me. Opting to keep my parents happy is what got me started in college. I tried to do the military thing, but my asthma made me ineligible, of course, if I´d had any real desire, I could´ve lied about it and gotten in anyway. I started college in okay physical shape, but really poor mental shape. I tried again to re-develop my sense of self-discipline. By this time I wasn´t even taking classes with Mercer anymore, I had relocated to a school closer to my home. This school was run out of a church by Carl and Joy Bunselmeyer. This school was more or less a satellite school for Mercer, since he still over-saw the belt tests and so forth. The big difference was this was close to home and the Bunselmeyers taught for free. The only cost was a $10 monthly donation to the church.

     My first year of college was almost a crash and burn. I lost my academic scholarship and had to transfer to a more affordable college. Still lacking desire and trying to keep the parents happy, I was still at home and remained so when I transferred to SMSU. Once again, I tried to recapture some sense of discipline over myself, to try and force myself somewhere, even though I hadn´t truly found a desire yet. This whole time, Tae Kwon Do remained there as a good exercise and something I did for sport. By my second year of college at SMSU, I had found something to desire. I joined the MSU handball team and found a new challenge. I threw myself into it hard. I was practicing every chance I got. I was in the court, practicing simple things until my hands were so swollen and bruised I couldn´t even pick up my backpack afterwards. Also, during this time, I started running for the first time in my life. Having asthma, I never had to run even a mile throughout just about all of my school years. I had begun to recapture some discipline in my life, and I found it through handball. It was a driving force in my life for just over a year. I was on the team for about a year and a half and had the opportunity to be with the team as they won their 6th consecutive, national collegiate title.

     During this time, Tae Kwon Do had really started to stagnate. In the entire 13 years I studied it, I spent most of my time changing things I learned. Mr. Mercer was trying to keep the art pure by changing all of our techniques to the standard, but was implementing them as he learned the ´proper´ technique. So, if I took a month off or something, I´d come back and something would be different, like a kick would be different, a salute would be slower, a stance would be wider, or something of the like. All in all, I would say I learned about a year and a half of information crammed into a span of thirteen years. I mean that with no disrespect to my former teachers or anyone else who places value in Tae Kwon Do, I´m just saying, that to each his own, and Tae Kwon Do didn´t satisfy me the way I longed to be satisfied.

     At this point in time, a lot of critical things happened in my life. I fell in love with a woman who would almost destroy me financially, mentally, and spiritually. My life had begun to spiral out of control. I was starting to feel desire, but still had no direction. I went with a friend to check out a kung fu school because I had always thought of kung fu as something beautiful, yet unattainable for someone like myself. It was at that school I really had my first glimpse of another martial art so different from what I knew. The complexity is what drew me. I knew at that point I would eventually have to learn kung fu, but I didn´t know if I could commit to it. The first class I went to there resulted in me feeling arrogant cause I had studied a martial art for over a decade and felt all other martial arts should come just as easy. Well, let me give you a few facts before I tell you how that day went. First, I sweat a lot when I work out. Second, at this point in time, I never worked out with shoes on, always barefooted. Third, this school had the workout area completely covered with mats, and I had never worked out on anything other than carpet or asphalt. Well, I have always taken pride in my kicks, which I know now were slow, heavy, and not well balanced. But, I was flexible and could get them pretty high, so they suited me. In the process of my showing off to these other beginning students, I was doing one of my favorite kicks, a jump spinning heal kick. Well, remembering the facts I just told you, I landed barefoot on a puddle of my own sweat, causing me to fall sideways. This resulted in a really hard landing on my left hip and my first serious concussion.

     A car crash and two concussions later, I found myself rebuilding from what felt like nothing. Around this time, I found out that a friend of mine through school took kung fu. He never talked about it much, and I was never able to really draw him into a long conversation about it. Still, I was intrigued. Shortly thereafter, myself and one of my best friends went out to meet a most interesting individual. His name was Mark DeMate and he probably had the craziest hair of anyone I had ever met. He interviewed me late one night at his house. I will admit, at first, I wasn´t all that impressed with him. That night we ended up talking until about 3am. The way he talked about what he did with such passion is probably what first piqued my interest. I had already decided that I would give this a try, but, it wasn´t until we got to talking about what the system of Shaolin Lohan Kung Fu taught and would require of me that I really got interested. He was telling me about the traditional training system and how to begin with I would just be drilled on stance work. I could understand that, but remember, I went to this meeting with 13 years of Tae Kwon Do under my belt. I thought the transition would be easy. I thought I was bringing as much into this as I could expect to get out of this. I don´t think I could have been more wrong.

     My mindset at that initial meeting was that even though Mark seemed to be an accomplished martial artist, he had only studied for 9 months. I went there wondering what on earth could he possibly teach me. I think he sensed that, because, even though I came to him on the pretense of learning, I came to him with my glass mostly full, so to speak. He quickly emptied it. In the short time of our first meeting, I realized, even in as short of time as 9 months, he had acquired power and control beyond that I had achieved in 13 years. Of course, I quickly discovered why, and it made perfect sense. The traditional training made all the difference in the world. For all my 13 years of martial arts, I had never studied philosophy, even though the root of any martial art lies in its philosophy. The idea of training your mind instead of just your body made so much sense, yet it had never occurred to me in the past 13 years that there is where my focus should´ve been. In any western style martial art, physical fitness seems to be the greatest goal of studying, with a close second being self-defense. In contrast, this traditional eastern system taught that the main goal of kung fu was to reach development of the mind through the discipline of the body. All benefits, in relation to physical fitness and self-defense, were side effects of disciplining your body and understanding yourself. I realized my weaknesses truly were not of the body, but of the mind, and I felt an immense frustration at not discovering that this is where I needed growth instead of trying to just keep myself in good fitness. To live is not to maintain what you are today, but to grow so that tomorrow you might be something better. In the disparity of a life in shambles, I discovered my life was focused on all the wrong things. I´m not saying I was headed straight into ruin. What I am saying is that I could very easily have slipped into a void of apathy and a life of self-maintenance and joined a majority of the American population in feeling sorry for myself and holding regrets. I have no regrets about myself and I refuse to stagnate. I have a better understanding of myself as a Christian, as a son, and as a person in general. In searching for a reason to stay alive, I found a way to keep growing, and I know that nothing will ever make me surrender that.

     Now, I am a person who does not easily give in to personal weaknesses and constantly strives to turn them into strengths. I am a college graduate and a certified teacher. I am a person who looks for strength within myself and for that within others. I am a person who will never stop growing and will do my best to help others do the same. I now realize that growth involves change and I refuse to allow fear of change to keep me from growing. What I am building for myself is something no man can take away. I no longer look for those things that make me happy, I am defining those things that make me happy. I am no longer just a martial artist, I am a student of Shaolin Lohan Kung Fu. In the Shaolin Lohan School of Kung Fu, I have found myself, and I have found family in the fellowship of those like me who study and train alongside me. In Sigung Vincent Cabais, I found a valuable teacher who helps me define myself and my existence, a valuable friend who helps me shape my mind and emotions to better suit me, and a valuable counselor who helps me find the focus to keep growing. It is in this school that I find the inspiration to not just live life, but to live my life, and I look forward to the long journey ahead.

     -Andrew S. Walls-