TKF PUMAS GYM​

The Pumas-Gym is to be understood as martial arts school and platform.

The exchange of knowledge and presentation of different arts, techniques, and experiences are at center stage.

The path of the martial arts provides a way of life, a philosophy, ethos, spiritual directive and pragmatic guidance.    According to  the TopKungFu-Philosophy, it is the way to unify body, spirit, and soul, with the objective of developing our human natural forces and expressing them in social conduct based on mutual respect. 

As a martial artist, I would like to approach this way according to fundamental scientific principles, in a structured, logical, analytical manner, and phenomenologically, through subjective perception, experience, and feeling, intuition and emotion.  

 

The Puma has been chosen consciously and on purpose as the heraldic animal of my school. As a martial artist and personally

I can relate very well with the characteristics of the Puma. We could say that the Puma is my "spirit animal".  - This depends on whether "spirit animal" is customary in our current language, in our mother tongue. If I had grown up in a different cultural background, in a different part of the world, I might have dealt with this issue earlier,  when I was a child. But as a German, I only encountered it much later, in Asian martial arts education. The origins of all Asian martial arts lies in observing and imitating nature and animals. In my humble opinion, the diverse martial arts that developed in China, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia and so on, represent "local knowledge". By many Europeans ("Westerners"), such knowledge might not be considered valuable, because it is not defined as useful, valuable, valid truth within their cultural, social, and political structures. According to my personal opinion and experience, it is highly useful and valuable. Due to increased networking and mobility, by now we have access to this knowledge. And we should use it. Neither over-critical analysis (out of academic or other interest) nor uncritical, devout support lead to the real value of such knowledge. It must be restructured, evaluated, and integrated in our worldview, to make sure we do not just replicate certain techniques. This webpage is designed to contribute to this process. My preliminary findings can be found here, at the Pumas-Gym.   

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Since I started my apprenticeship in TopKungFu with Grandmaster Isam Abughadara in 2002, I also had the chance to gain experiences in other schools such as Jiu Jitsu (Hanshi Siegfried Lory), Muay Thai Boran (Stefan Fehrer/ Giuseppe La Delia),   Tai Chi Chuan (Johanna Beer/ Toyo & Petra Kobayashi), Merpati Putih (Mas Eldi/ Mas Poeng), or Sang Cipta Rasa (Gusti Ali Mustofa). I like to share these experiences here, at the Pumas-Gym, with anyone who is open for it. I welcome any interest   or contact from experienced Budo-ka as well as inexperienced rookies !

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Respectfully,

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Patrick Keilbart