I would like to share with you a bit of knowledge and history of Korean mixed martial arts Kuk Sool Won.
It is a part of my life, a way of life and I hope this can become an interesting read as I blog about it in the future.
What is Kuk Sool Won?
It is a martial art developed from many different forms of martial arts for self defense. This includes punching and kicking techniques, throwing techniques and pressure points, immobilisation techniques and articular fractures. Even animal style techniques such as the tiger, praying mantis, dragon, snake, crane etc.
Kuk Sool Won was created by Su In Hyuk in 1961. He was born in 1939 in Korea and discovered the art of Koong Joong Mu Sool from his grandfather Su Myung Deuk.
Throughout the years he continued to study different forms of martial arts and in 1975, Su In Hyuk founded the World Kuk Sool Won Association with the help of Kenneth Duncan, to where the head office is located in San Francisco, United states.
Su In Hyuk
Kuk Sool Won is made up of a few different martial arts put into one:
*Sah Doh Mu Sool
*Bool Kyo Mu Sool
*Koong Joon Mu Sool
In my opinion, the most interesting one is Bool Kyo Mu Sool as it is an art from the buddhist temple. What is most interesting is that their religion is based on a strict non-violent principale. And so the forms of this martial art is what makes Kuk Sool Won the most fitting.
For the monks it was really important to stay healthy and fit as they spent (and still do) many hours meditating while sitting or on their knees and had to travel long distances, far from the protection of the monasteries. And this my friends, is what brought on the practice of Bool Kyo Mu Sool; the culture of internal strength and the development of attack and defense methods.
Really I can go on and on about all 3 of these arts and more but lets concentrate on Kuk Sool.
On September 11th 1974, Su In Kyuk, who we call Kuk Sa Nim (grand master) arrived in Los Angeles. It was his first american student, Mr Kenneth Duncan, that was persuaded to bring Kuk Sool Won to the United States. From being in Los Angeles for some time, they traveled to New Orleans to where they opened the first official school of Kuk Sool Won.
In 1991, they moved the association office from San Francisco to Texas in hopes to rapidly gain more schools across the States and into Canada.
In 1992, 4 years after appearing in the Inside Kung Fu Yearbook of 1988 for being one of the fastest mixed martial arts, over 100 schools of Kuk Sool Won was established in the United States.
Here are some other magazines Kuk Sa Nim and a few other black belts appeared in:
Today Kuk Sa Nim travels around visiting all the schools, attending meetings and black belt seminars.
I am greatly thankful for the World Kuk Sool Won Association and it's decision to move as we have a Kuk Sool Won school only 30 min drive away from where I live.
The dojo is ran by Ji-Doh Kwan Jang Nim (7th degree black belt), Mr. Normand Larocque and by his wife Joh Kyoh Nim (1rst degree black belt), Mrs. Jacinthe Larocque. Mr. Larocque first opened his school, Hap Ki Do World Kuk Sool Association in 1974. And in 1990 he dissociated Hap ki do to become World Kuk Sool Association only.
My husband, my son and I are quite honored to be trained by these two wonderful people. It has been 1.5 yrs that I have been studying, Received the ranking of yellow belt last spring and will soon be ranked blue belt this month.
Here we all are. Juniors and seniors
Seminar in Juin 2016 when Su In Kyun aka Kuk Sa Nim (grand master) visited our school.
I hope that wasn't too long of a read. There is so much information on the history of Kuk Sool that it was hard to break down.
The source of information I got is from here: http://garneau-veilleux.ca/kuksool/ along with some imagery. Other images are from various google searches, although all the magazines shown in this blog are the ones we have at the dojo. Hopefully I can get some images from there for the next time I write about this special martial arts.
Thank you for taking your time reading my post _ xx
On a side note... if someone could show me how to embed the sources (????) so that its not an eternity of http addresses, I would love that.