Ling Gar Today by Ric Meyers (from Kung Fu/Qigong - July 2000) After winning his fourth International Kickboxing championship, Vincent Lyn knew something was missing. When he was slaving on his nineteenth Hong Kong action film, Operation Condor, battling Jackie Chan in the movie's climatic wind tunnel fight scene, he knew something was missing. When he was completing his first jazz album, Wing Sing, after years of composing music for commercials and Cantonese pop songs, he knew something was missing. Even after opening his Lyn Academy of Martial Arts in Stamford, Connecticut, he still knew something was missing. He just didn't know what. It wasn't until after teaching kickboxing and kung-fu for more than two years that he realized exactly what. He wasn't accepting, and teaching, who and what he was. He was not sharing the kung-fu that was, literally, in his blood.                                                       "My school was opened for two years before I started teaching Ling Gar," he says. Ling Gar Tzau Kune Do, the way of immobilizing an attack from its origin -- and the subject of an extensive article in the July 1998 issue of Qigong Wushu Kungfu -- is a famous Chinese family style only Lyn, progeny of a Chinese father and British mother, could teach, because he was the last living recipient of the style that dated back more than 700 years and twenty-two generations.  "For the first two years I think I was more concerned with establishing the school and building the student population," the ex-Asian model explains. "And during that period the types of classes I taught also grew. I felt that, in the beginning, I would create a set program of kickboxing and self-defense based on the southern Shaolin style of kung-fu -- predominantly Hung Gar and Choy Li Fut." Local students responded with enthusiasm, eager to find a more fulfilling program than the quick-fix, belt-driven, fight-fixated karate schools. "The scary thing is," Lyn elaborates, "if you open a gymnastics school, you need a certain certification. If you open a tennis camp, you have to have a certain certification. But if you open up the John Dough Martial Arts Emporium, you don't need to register with anyone in the local, state, or national government. There's no background check or anything at all. You can be teaching anyone -- children, teenagers, women -- and there's not even a police background check required. It's sad, and frightening." Lyn's thirty years of study and twenty years of training was the real certification for his academy, and grateful students responded to Lyn's obvious expertise. And, as his student population grew, so did the number of classes. "As did my knowledge of what my students wanted and needed," Lyn adds. "As they got better, there was greater interest in a Wing Chun class, then Chi Gung and Tai Chi. We even tried Chi Na." But there was only so many days in a week, so many hours in a day, and so much space in Lyn's school. He had to make a choice: consolidate or expand. "But I've found that the faster a school expands, sometimes the lesser the education," he maintains. "There's a limit one teacher can do if he wants his mind to remain sharp. So now that the schedule was quite full, I had to decide: to find more teachers or consolidate the styles." To his credit, Lyn did both. To truly live up to his school's symbol of the yin/yang mingling mind, body, and spirit, Lyn called upon the expertise and experience of martial artist Danielle Orsino, who was teaching kickboxing at Richfield Fitness while giving self-defense lectures for the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network. This proponent of tae kwon do, aikido, hapkido, tan soo do and judo completed the school's rounded, flowing approach.  "I think our teaching blend of old and new, male and female, lends itself very well to my academy," Lyn says. "Because the one thing we want to avoid is perpetuating the kind of American martial arts mentality that was portrayed in the Karate Kid movies. There's sexism and stupidity everywhere, so our openness is very beneficial to everyone." With his female assistant instructor stressing strict tae kwon do tournament style, Lyn was freed up to decide which styles were the most important to teach, considering the limits of the American mindset. "A lot of the Chinese forms can be very indirect and flowery, with a lot of posturing and posing that can be very confusing and frustrating to Americans," he says. But his family style -- the one he initially thought too esoteric and personal to teach -- lent itself perfectly to his knowledge-hungry students. "I think that both Asians and Caucasians can both appreciate and understand Ling Gar because it is known as 'The Wanderers' Style,'" Lyn explains. "I am descended from the Hakka Chinese, who are very nomadic. So our family style originated in the north but came south, and became predominantly known as a southern style. So while I'm fairly tall and long-legged, my relatives, even as close as one or two generations back, were stocky and short-legged. Even so, the style worked quite well for both them and me without adapting it at all for Americans." The key is in the style's form, which was not drenched in arcane subtleties, designed to foil outsiders from learning the art. "For the want of a better term, my students found it very user-friendly," Lyn recalls. "Even long-time students of certain subtle Chinese forms learn them by repetition and rote, not really knowing what they're doing or why. What my students have found is that the Ling Gar form is eminently practical, easy-to-understand, and easy to apply to actual practice. It's better for students to learn by knowing what the application of the movement is, and it isn't just for show or to be obliquely symbolic." It also came as a natural extension of what Lyn had already been teaching. "Both Ling Gar and Wing Chun work along the concept known as the 'center line principal,'" he explains. "But Wing Chun is only about 300 years old. Ling Gar is more than 700 years old, and is comprised of approximately sixty percent open hand techniques and forty percent leg techniques -- everything being primarily linear striking to immobilize an attack at its source." The timing could not have been better. After his career in Hong Kong movies and the establishing of his school, Lyn had been delving deeper and deeper into his roots, becoming a greater proponent of his family style than at any other time of his life. Just as Brandon Lee had returned to the teachings of his father, Bruce Lee, after a youth seemingly trying to avoid it, Lyn returned to his family's teachings after a youth following the precepts of Bruce Lee. "Everything my father, uncle, and grandfather had shown me came together," he remembers, "and it was like I had been practicing it exclusively all my life. And, as I looked at my students and thought about the future, I realized I am the last teacher of Ling Gar that we know of in the world, and that it actually has never been taught outside the family, period. It was time." Ling Gar, the style that has been taught in the Lyn family for twenty-two generations came as a revelation to his students. And while there are on-going classes in Tai Chi, Chi Gung, Wing Chun, kickboxing, and others, more and more students are gravitating to the truly unique, truly special Ling Gar classes, and the Academy continues to grow in creativity and accomplishment. While Orsino was named 1999 Female Instructor of the Year by the World Martial Arts Hall of Fame, and Best Female Competitor of the Year from the Martial Art Masters, Legends, and Pioneers Hall of Fame, she has been nominated for Miss New York for Miss USA this year, having won First Runner Up in the 1999 Miss International Princess pageant. Lyn, meanwhile, became a Ph.D. in Martial Sciences and Sports Medicine, and was inducted into the World Sports Medicine Hall of Fame with additional "Man of the Year" honors. As he centers himself in his family teachings, his other talents have also come to the fore, resulting in a deal with BMG Asia to distribute his new CD, Wing Sing, in Taiwan, China, Singapore, and Malaysia. Lyn also favors natural extensions of his school, rather than rabid expansion, preparing a new adjunct sports/health office to train clients one-on-one, while working on a new health book and new American action movie. "It's an exciting time," Lyn admits. "And, even if my album, book, and movie become successful, the most important thing I will have accomplished in this new era is to know that Ling Gar will continue into it's eighth century, and beyond."

Into its 8th Century... With its only known teacher