what is the loongtao?

I'm often asked what is the loongtao. Let's start from the beginning. My grandmother used to babysit chinese babies, er, asian toddlers. The parents of those kids use to shower my grandma with gifts. As a child up until my teens, we would spend every Sunday there. Being exposed to the asian culture was a regular thing and had an obvious influence on me, to this day.

In the later years, I would study martial arts, as a physical aspect of this influence. I also purchased clothing, artwork and furniture relative to the culture. Eventually, I sought mental and spiritual enhancement, dominated by Taoism, Buddhism (Chan, Zen, Tibetan), Shintoism, etc. Even my girlfriends ranged from Filipina, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, and Thai. No Vietnamese yet, but there's always tomorrow.

10 years ago, after years of studies in all facets of life (heart, soul, body), I wanted to create my own personal philosophy. It would be a combination of everything I've learned. Of course, I had to come up with a name that would encapsulate this diverse and unique philosophy. It really was quite simple.

I called it LoongTao. Loong means dragon in chinese, and tao means way, or path, for my love of the dragon (east and west) to this day, since childhood. The words had to be one, but I've capitalized the T to emphasize that the second part was as important as the first. When pronounced, the T sounds like a T. Strange you ask? In China the T is pronounced like a D. Hence, tao is pronounced dao. Sometimes it is spelled that way. I pronounce it with a T because I am not asian, and don't claim to be. So I use a Western pronounciation; T as in T.

LoongTao is universal. What I mean is, as my personal philosophy and as my martial art. The LoongTao system is a combination of spirtual and physical/mental attributes. I call the spiritual aspect, the tri-level method, for body, mind, sprit. First level - arts / philosophy / tradition. This is the foundation, and what we study, or follow. From there we move into the intermediate sector, the second level - honesty / integrity / sincerity. This how we live, how we carry ourselves. Next is the final level - transcend / evolve / become. This is the spiritual final frontier where we rise above it all. Sorta like attaining buddhahood. But I'd prefer to be a boddhisattva (one who forgoes buddhahood to go through life teaching and helping others. I guess a buddha can't be bothered with that. Sounds pretentious if you ask me.)

The martial LoongTao system is comprised of forms and techniques taken from the martial arts I've studied over the years. Very similar to Bruce Lee's jeet kun do, which was his own, taken from all the arts he studied. Mine consisted of aspects from aikido(jujitsu/judo), shorin-ryu (Okinawan karate), hung gar (tiger/crane kung fu), choy lay fut (northern / southern kung fu), and wing chun kung fu.

There are also smaller amounts of infleunce from the budo ways of the samurai as well as those of the medieval knights of old (gotta have my western background in there somewhere).

So there you have it. The LoongTao Way.