Displaying posts written by

Debbie Shayne

who has written 55 posts for KaiMen.

Sep
28
2013

A Fine Martial Hand

A few weeks ago, we were in San Francisco and stopped at one of our favorite shops, Brendan Lai Supply Co. Brendan, sadly, has been gone for several years, but the shop continues to operate under the experienced and expert guidance of his wife, Esther, and son, Al. A single post does not offer the […]

Jul
20
2013

Tai Chi For Health: Core Movements Workshop (2 Opportunities!)

Always pleased to let those of you in our area (Santa Cruz, CA) know about the local seminars we host at our Academy. Although this ‘Tai Chi box’ is something Ted teaches to his beginning Tai Chi students, it is coming from the martial perspective, and maintains the structure of Tai Chi Chuan, so it […]

Jun
16
2013

A Couple of Old Friends (that is, Books) Return

Is it silly to get worked up over the return of books? If so, then color me silly, because I actually get excited when certain titles come back to Plum, in this case, two that have been difficult to restock for awhile: Chi Family TongBei and Chuo Jiao. In both cases, we were only able […]

Mar
21
2013

Plum’s Newest! Bagua Eight Animals Book & DVD

We are delighted to announce the arrival of the newest member of our Plum family: The Eight Animals of Bagua Zhang, by Ted Mancuso. As mentioned in an earlier post, this initial seminar-only project circled ’round to become an expanded book and DVD package. Plum’s particular love for Bagua is not much of a secret; […]

Mar
12
2013

Bagua Zhang’s 8 Animals: First the seminar, now the Book (and DVD!)

It’s not our way to just ‘bang something out,’ so the basic manual turned into a larger project, and soon we had a fully illustrated and photographed, 144 page book, not just on the Eight Animals…

Jan
13
2013

Book Go Round

Another quick post about a few Chinese books that have temporarily returned; we always say “temporary” because, for the most part, every time we get these in we don’t know if it’s their last time ’round. While there is certainly a growth in the quantity of literature on Kung Fu, a lot of the classics […]

Sep
20
2012

Bagua Zhang on the Inside: Tom Bisio’s Newest Book

Not that many years ago, there were hardly more than a couple of books in english on Bagua Zhang: texts by Robert Smith, Lee Ying Arn, maybe one or two others. 40 or more years later, the list is still relatively short, but a few names start to emerge as important and original contributors (as […]

Sep
19
2012

A Rare Baji Announcement

At Plum, we love Baji Quan. But there is not that much available and, even some of what is produced is out of print. So, it is with a bit of excitement that we announce the return (in limited supply) of Su Yu Chang’s Liu Da Kai Baji DVD. We don’t have a tall stack […]

Sep
15
2012

Chen ZhengLei’s Taijiquan Manuals–In English!

Grandmaster Chen ZhengLei, of course, is one of the tigers of Chen Style Taijiquan…

Sep
9
2012

Sometimes They Come Back

A few more desirable Chinese-language books have found their way back to us, and we offer them for your enjoyment. As with many of these, they are limited in supply…click any picture to go to the page to read more about these books, or to order.

Sep
2
2012

Sun LuTang’s Xing Yi Quan Xue: Alive and Well

I don’t think that we will ever get tired of announcing the returns of important works to martial artists, like today’s Xing Yi Xuan Xue: The Study of Form-Mind Boxing, which is now in stock at Plum. When we first started Plum, a lot of our quest to ‘bring to light’ these works involved rummaging through […]

Aug
27
2012

More of the Good Stuff

Just received a nice order with some items that had been gone for a while…thought you’d like to know! Here are the first few…more, soon!

Aug
18
2012

Sun LuTang Returns to Plum

Plum’s first mission statement included the words, “…to preserve and promote Traditional Chinese Martial Arts.” That was almost 20 years ago…

Aug
6
2012

Gao style Bagua Bear Boxing DVD

To the best of our knowledge, Plum’s newest offering, Marcus Brinkman’s DVD on Bagua Bear Boxing, has never previously been available…

Jul
29
2012

The DVD That Completes the Book

As we promised, though a little late, we have finally completed our DVD on the Bandit Knife form. This is the much-requested companion to our book, “The Bandit Knife: Kung Fu’s Rebellious Weapon.” This new DVD fills in where the book left off, covering demonstrations of basic strikes, and a step-by-step breakdown of the complete […]

Jul
25
2012

Sunday Qigong Seminar Series: The Five Animal Frolics

Completing this summer’s Qigong seminar series at our own Academy in Santa Cruz, California, is the Five Animal Frolics. Said to be created by the legendary doctor Hua Tuo over 1500 years ago, this Qigong combines spirit and action to imitate Tiger, Deer, Monkey, Bear and Bird, and their corresponding representative states of consciousness. This particular […]

Jul
13
2012

Ooops!

Oy vay…one of our faithful customers just reported that the ‘Chinese Books links’ on our books page had disappeared. Don’t worry! What we lack in web vigilance we more than make up for in great, rare, interesting, astonishing and downright wonderful books in Traditional and Simplified Chinese on the martial arts. So, just to say…they’re […]

Jul
12
2012

Wang ShuJin’s Bagua Zhang DVD

Kent Howard’s companion disk to his translation of Wang ShuJin’s Bagua Linked Palms.

Jul
8
2012

Sunday Seminar Series: Taoist Wudang Qigong

On July 15, Plum will be co-hosting—along with our school, The Academy of Martial and Internal Arts—the second in our summer Qigong series. Taoists monks at the famous Wudang Temple developed this  simple, modular routine centuries ago, and it is one of the treasures of Qigong. This particular regimen is a series of 14 linked […]

Jun
11
2012

Magic and Martial Arts

Ted and I ran into a friend the other day, a consummate and quite excellent magician…