Starting out
About Mindfulness in Motion
Traditional Kung Fu in Preston
Our School & Lineage
Mindfulness in Motion has taught traditional Chinese kung fu in Preston since 2015. The school is led by Sifu Guy Rhynsburger, a level 8 master, fifth-generation lineage holder and a disciple of Grandmaster Jimmy Heow. The art we teach is Wuji Yi Lik Quan Kung Fu.
It is an internal art. That word gets used loosely, so it is worth being plain about what we mean: the work is in the structure of the body, in sensitivity, in timing, in learning to use the whole of yourself rather than force. None of that makes it gentle. It is still a martial art, and
we train it as one.
Our Lineage
The art traces back to Master Lee Kim Chow, who brought his family kung fu system and Fung Yang Xing Yi to Kuala Lumpur in the 1950s. He taught the local Hakka community while working in security at the tin mines around the city. Grandmaster Jimmy Heow grew up in the village of Hulu Langat, Selangor, Malaysia. He initially was exposed to Kung Fu though the stories he heard at family gatherings as a child. He always listened with rapt attention and dreamed of Kung Fu.
He began training kung fu from the age of 7, spending the next decade learning from several local masters, including senior students of Master Lee Kim Chow. In time he was accepted at Lee Kim Chow’s school directly. In the early 1970s, a training group grew out of that school to test and refine the art. GM Heow was the main provocateur who tested it.
Through the 1970s and 80s he fought full contact throughout South East Asia. From the mid-1980s he led students to various parts of Malaysia for martial arts exchanges and hosted many delegations for similar exchanges. It is that record of testing and refining the art that has led to students to seek him out from across Southeast Asia, Europe and Australia.
Sifu Guy began training with GM Heow in Malaysia in 2010 after first meeting him and trying his hand in 2007. He became his disciple in 2012. He has trained with him extensively since, hosting him in Australia and visiting Kuala Lumpur
regularly. He has taught the art on his behalf in Europe and Malaysia. He is now one of GM Heow’s senior students.
How We Train
We do not grade and we do not award belts. Progress here is the skill in your hands; you and your teacher both know when it is there. What we ask for instead is consistency, turning up class regularly, and a few minutes of focused practice between classes. This is the real secret to good Kung Fu.
The school runs two kinds of classes. One works through application and fitness — pad work, partner drills, the practical side of the art. The other works through the internal side — structure, sensitivity, the fine mechanics of how the body moves. They are not a beginner
class and an advanced class. They are two ways into the same art, and in time it asks for both.
"At first the student learns not to fight themself, then learns not to fight the opponent and then not to fight at all"