Secrets of the Pelvis for Martial Arts: A Practical Guide for Improving Your Wujifa, Taiji, Xingyi, Bagua and Everyday Life Kindle Edition

Right here! This has so many key core principles often misunderstood by Western practitioners. Immediate improvement of my training even after 13 years.

Yes, get the book. $3?

OK side note, if you don't know ANYTHING about internal MA or QiGong, this book may not mean much to you. That said, if you DO...this is pure gold.

Thank You Michael Buhr.

Train Well, sir.
Yadi

Michael Buhr has really written an eye opening study, or you might think of it as an almost 100 page research paper on the pelvis as it relates to qigong and martial arts.

I found the amount of research done on this topic to be very well done and detailed as this book uncovers and looks under every stone and for every bit of information you could think of relating to the topic. I personally find the reference material alone worth the price of this very reasonably priced book as opposed to other much more expensive and lesser detailed publications.

Now, as a martial artist myself... I will say some of the topics covered my seem to be "a little unusual" to read about in a book about martial arts. an example of this might be when Mr Buhr covers topics of the pelvis in great detail in regards to the anus and vagina. Although having some experience in various qigong practices, I have seen mention of these although rarely to the detail as shared and covered in this book.

Over half of the books bulk is made up from the 5 different very detailed appendices. Each of these are almost like little ebooks in and of themselves. Depending on your interest on the topic your value may very. I found the first 3 of the 5 appendices very interesting and with lots of links so I could read more about each. Here are a list of the three appendices I really found valuable:

Appendix A: Refences to crotch, waist, hips in martial arts
Appendix B: Qigong - Excerpts from books and articles in English
Appendix C American - Chinese cross-cultural analysis of Round

I wasn't interested in the other two appendices... That doesn't mean others may not find value in them so I'll list them here:

Appendix D: Historical use of medical rectal dilators
Appendix E: Chinese martial arts magazines in China

As I said the book is well referenced and if I remember correctly at the end of the book the list of used references is a number of pages long with numerous link for further reading on topics covered. I always find it nice to do further read on topics to see what an author gleaned from whom and the sounding context in the referenced materials.

Understand that I can be a bit of a nerd when it comes to information, so I personally found the depth and amount of information well worth the price.

As always I hope you find this review valuable in your decision to buy this book or not.

Michael Buhr spends the entirety of this book identifying a common problem most martial artists have but not offering any solutions. This book is basically a big abstract of web links to different articles which could lead one to some valuable information on how to correct the problem, but this info should be placed on a free access web page NOT in a book that one has to pay for. I suspect that the populartiy of this book over time will wane when many if not all of the links go bad (and they always do). I expected some blueprint or some answers to how to correct the problem and really open up the hips to increase power not some grad students "works cited" chapter of their thesis.

Let's say someone wants to sell you a book that purports to teach you the ins and outs of the bond market. However, when you open the book, you find that it mostly lists citations or links or short excerpts to or from articles in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CNBC, and/or other financial publications, and maybe even youtube clips in which experts discuss bonds.

This "book" may preface many of these citations or links with a brief remark like "this article has a useful discussion of the yield curve" or "this book's Chapter 3 addresses spreads between corporate bonds and Treasuries", but you are mostly on your own as far as deciphering what each cited or linked or quoted resource has to say.

If you like this type of approach, then Mr. Buhr's book may be for you.

If, however, you expect a book to be relatively self-contained - a coherent whole comprising the author's original writings - in terms of the thesis, reasoning, recommendations or instructions that it purports to impart, with citations or links being used primarily to support the original writings of the author, give attribution to briefly quoted passages, or offer resources for exploration of topics that are beyond the immediate scope of the book, then you may be disappointed, as I was, with Mr. Buhr's book.

As alluded above, Mr. Buhr's "book" strikes me as largely a compilation of citations, links or quotes to or from articles, blog posts, youtube clips, and books prepared by others. As such, it feels rather disjointed. For example, at the end of a chapter, the author asks you to watch several youtube clips and then come back to the book's next chapter, which like the other chapters seems to offer up more citations, links and excerpts as a large portion or most of the main text.

When I was reading the book, the questions that kept occurring to me were the following: where is the author's own synthesis of all this material? Which of the instructions or information in these cited works have been verified by the author's own direct experience, either working on himself or with others (e.g. students)? How do I separate the wheat from the chaff even if I go through the hassle of tracking down these other sources of information? What does it mean when the author strings together a series of excerpts, links and citations on any particular topic as the way to present his thinking thereon - does he agree with 100% of such third party writings or video presentations?

As to the modest portions of the book that represent the author's original writing, I note that they carry two premises: 1) your pelvis is afflicted by layers upon layers of tension, most of which are not even registering in your awareness; and 2) resolving and releasing such tension will go a long way towards engendering that total body connectivity that is the hallmark of internal martial arts.

I don't necessarily disagree with these premises, but my difficulty with the book is that it presents, in my view, rather limited actionable insights or information, based on the author's own direct experience working on himself or with others (e.g. students), as to how to identify and release such tension and how such release improves internal martial arts practice. In fact, at one point the author declines to share the specifics of how he actually goes about dissolving his own pelvis tension, claiming that they may not be applicable to others.

For all I know, Mr. Buhr may be an accomplished martial artist based on all his efforts at releasing tension from his pelvis. However, the book, in my view, certainly doesn't do much to convince readers that the author is qualified to expound on the topic, especially given the dearth of actionable information as mentioned above and his various confessions about continuing to be stuck in tension at various levels and being afraid to work with Bioenergetics therapists - despite the value that he says they offer - for fear of uncovering more of such tension.

To sum up, I give the book one star for broaching an interesting topic in martial arts, and another star for the compilation of citations, links and quotations. I think that the role of the pelvis in martial arts is a worthwhile area of research and Mr. Buhr might be on the right track, but this "book" has a strong feel of a work in progress that has come onto the market a bit prematurely.