www.ymaa.ie

About Us

About us  ~  about lineage ~ And about you   Lineage is important. It is the repository and conduit of knowledge.  But enough about that for the moment, because we should start with you. If you intend to spend many hours in practice, as we hope you will, you are entitled to know, and it would be sensible to enquire, about the history and knowledge base of the particular school.   YMAA (Go to WWW.YMAA.COM you will find our school registered there), was established by Dr Yang Wing Ming in 1982 to develop and disseminate knowledge, of Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Shaolin Kung Fu, and other related Chinese martial arts and health disciplines.  

Dr Yang is probably the most published author of Tai Chi and Qi Gong materials today, having translated and published upwards of 30 texts & over 50 videos and DVD’s on Tai Chi, Qi Gong and related diciplines, often drawing from original Chinese resources.  He strongly believes that Tai Chi must be brought back to its roots, if it is to serve people properly and effectively with respect to its martial or it's health giving benefits. The style of Tai Chi practised is Yang Style, and elsewhere on this website we discuss the programme, and for members we provide reference materials, and a discussion forum. Master Yang is now properly titled grandmaster because he has brought a number of his  students to Master level today.   His most important current project, is a school for  training future teachers.  You can see details about this at :  http://ymaa-retreatcenter.org Picture history with respect to lineage:    Master Kao  (Master Yang’s own original teacher) Here pictured at the Portugal, in the 2009 summer camp.    

 Master Kao teaches Qi Gong in Portugal 2009 :  Here 'The Swallow Flies Up'  (of course it does!)   Master Kao Centre with back to camera.  The rest facing are lazy students not lifting legs! Master Yang Founder of the YMAA School. Short Details  of his biography and of his textbook publications are provided elsewhere on this site. Several European Teachers with Master Kao Portugal is one of the few venues in Europe where you can avail of extensive teaching experience for several days.  At the Irish Camp you will also be fortunate to have a number of very experienced teachers, including Pedro seen 2nd from right using Nicholas Yang as a crutch! Master Yang Teaches Irish Director Paul Moran in Dublin: Some Photos will be grainy recently and sorry about that!    Paul Moran - Irish Director Here Paul is demonstrating some high jumping stuff, at an Irish camp.  You won't be expected to do this stuff !   Damian Fox - Clonmel Director Demonstrating his kick for Master Yang.  Damian mentors the Clonmel school, and will be attending periodically to review training at the Clonmel school.  

Fred Binchy :  Fred is your local facilitator. 

What is a teacher? You will often hear people describing themselves in terms of having "10 years training" and so forth.  You need to have more information at that point. If this was a commercial airline pilot, you would like to know when he last flew a plane, and more especially how many ‘flying hours’ he has recorded within the past several years. Fred has been training for about 10 years, but you can sure strike that from the record because the first few years very scratchy and you sure would'nt want him to fly the plane.  He turned in the direction of YMAA in 2004 because it offered a systemic and a comprehensive training programme, with plentiful background study and reference materials.  Since then he has punched up several thousand hours of flying time, which gives him a base from (foundations, no walls) through which he can help you in your training.   However through this School you don't fly un-piloted.  There is instrumentation, controls and recorders to guide your flying time so that it is of good value to you.  You will be regularly in training and reviewed by the Director, Damian in accordance with the YMAA Tai Chi and Qi Gong Stripe Programme, You will be part of the Irish Annual Training Camps through which you will access Teachers with extensive experience and qualifications, and you will also be able to access more teaching and materiels as your learning proceeds.   You will also that some of the Teachers you will meet have extensive experience & qualifications in the YMAA Programme.  Some of them are in full time teaching and training.

We will explain more about how the school works when you visit us.  But in the meantime we like to think Clonmel is a  little special because it is a local faciliation group.  They set out to help each other and to facilitate each other's training in every way they can.  If you go to our first newsletter you will see the bunch who have been training together for a number of years now.  Long may it continue 'guys' and you the reader are very welcome to join them. See you there.