In this episode: Getting to know The Kung Fu Coach Ralph Hanel and his personal story of overcoming adversity and founding martial arts schools in Canada. He followed me on Instagram and I followed him back. Loved his content and

It's time for another exciting installment of the Stop Chasing Pain podcast with Dr.

Perry Nicholson, where we'll talk with industry innovators and passionate game changers to help you do what you love better, learning and sharing information to change the world 1 podcast at a time.

So get ready for the knowledge bombs and brain booms.

Welcome back to the Stop Chasing Pain podcast I'm your host Dr.

Now this guy started following me on Instagram a while ago and then I followed him back and he reached out and I started checking out his work.

I call him Master Ralph and if you follow me for any short period of time you know that I love martial arts.

Everything that it stands for in building strength, character, resilience, confidence, fantastic for mental health but also physical health and movement.

So I reached out to him and said hey Master Ralph you want to come on the show and let's just talk about anything and everything.

He's got a fantastic story that he's going to share that was really inspiring from how he brought himself to set up the schools that he does up in Canada.

And I got to say, he's got a voice that is so relaxing and calming.

I just feel like empowered when I listen to him almost like I went through a therapy session.

You'll know exactly what I mean after you listen to the show.

So really really sit back, relax, take it all in.

Before we get into the show, a reminder to check out StopChasingPain.com.

All my workshops where I'm going to be teaching all over the world about movement and about the lymphatic system Definitely check out my membership site where you can see over 600 videos of really cool stuff to help you do what you love better and also definitely pick up the best-selling worldwide video of Lymphatic Mojo showing you the most important and neglected system in your body, the lymphatic system, how to help your health.

With that, let's get right on to the show.

Hey, Ralph, thanks so much for coming back on the Stop Chasing Pain podcast.

Well, for those who this kind of an inside joke between Ralph and I, because he was on like last week and we did a podcast show and unfortunately the reception was really chopping in and out from where he was in Germany and just couldn't salvage it.

And I said, you know, hey, coach, you want to come back on?

And you're coming through loud and clear this time, my friend, where are you actually talking to me from now?

Today I'm in Berlin, in the middle of the big city of Berlin and weather looks good, so no storms that might interfere this time.

Well, guys, I mean, I'm really honored to have Ralph on the show.

He's known as the Kung Fu Coach on Instagram, and I've been following his work for a while.

He's been following mine, and I graciously reached out to him to say, man, you want to come on your, your show and just talk about, martial arts, Kung Fu, of course.

And then what you do, because anybody who listens to my stuff long enough knows that I really love the martial arts.

I love everything that it stands for in relationship to just making you a better person overall, mentally, physically, and spiritually.

And I just gravitated towards Ralph's channel and the great work that he does.

So, You know, coach, why don't you tell everybody about yourself and definitely, you know, just take us way back, man.

I'm really curious of your journey, that what brought you to do this is the passion in your life.

Well, first of all, I have to say I'm every day again so amazed whenever I read your posts then I have to say man this is exactly what I was doing last night in class but Dr.

Perry has such beautiful words to put the motion into words so this is what connected me to your account and why I'm following every single day and read your quotes.

So martial arts, yes this is for us same as fitness, being healthy, being happy, I guess a passion that goes on for decades and decades.

So for me, it started in 1977, way back then in East Germany, still behind the Iron Curtain.

And the only thing we pretty much could do was judo, boxing, wrestling, all the things that went towards Olympic Games.

It was so exciting getting first time, I was 13 years old, into this gym and seeing those guys in their white pajamas putting each other on the mats, the loud noises, that was so amazing.

So a year later, somebody gave me a secret tip.

There's this very old guy who still teaches original Japanese Jujutsu.

I had no idea how this could even happen.

So we went to the school and it was actually somebody who in the mid 1920s got stuck as a sailor on his ship for about 2 years in Yokohama, Japan, and then for 2 years, every day with descendants of some old samurai family trained jujitsu.

Later when World War II started, he ended up in the Soviet Union, was there basically recruited to fight against the Nazis, really behind enemy lines in hand-to-hand combat.

And many years later, in 1978, I saw as a 14-year-old now, this 70-year-old step on the mats.

So of course at this age you think somebody 70 years old what can he do?

He came to shake our hands or so we thought and instantly with a thumb lock had us down on the floor even the strongest of the teenagers and we thought man if at this age you can still be so mobile, so powerful, that is amazing.

So we continued this training that was a little bit underground but since he was a World War II veteran he could pretty much do what he wanted.

Then I continued on smuggling books from Hungary, Poland into East Germany into Shotokan, Karate.

I had a sailor smuggle a ship from Poland, a book that I had gotten on the flea market there into East Germany.

It was a huge, huge thing to get even things like this manual.

So then I started to write into the West to all kinds of different martial arts organizations and Wing Chun organization who later then became my Sifu was the only 1 who wrote back.

And so I started then to first begin with Kung Fu.

So it was more or less, well, a lucky thing that this was the style that I absolutely loved.

A year later, an instructor came from West Germany, and he was also very old, at the time being

And we were 3 young guys who welcomed him in East Germany at the train station.

And then we talked to him, what do you do if this punch comes this kick?

He looked at us and said, Hey, all 3 of you, why don't you attack me?

1 after another, he said, no, all 3 at the same time.

So we looked at each other and we're kind of nodding saying, man, we were what?

So we went forward and bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

This was the martial art that Bruce Lee had learned in Hong Kong.

We thought, whoa, is there some Bruce Lee channeling through?

And this guy also was a former professional boxer.

So but we thought, man, we are young, we're strong, we should be able to do something.

Now nose was bleeding, gums were bleeding and we were again on the floor.

So I knew, wow, if a guy like this can just take 3 of us out, that's what I want to do.

So I'm doing this now for 34 years, 25 years full time.

And so I started the very first school in East Germany and this of course wasn't very well received because in a communist paradise you don't need self-defense or Kung Fu or anything because it's so amazing and so safe there.

So, well, of course, a few years later, a second instructor came from West Berlin disguised as a day tourist because the first 1, they didn't allow him to enter the country anymore.

So and then in 1988, the secret police picked me up because I was the 1 who had started Kung Fu in the country.

So I was arrested by them and then interrogated for months without end what this Kung Fu thing is and what you can do with it and if you could kill somebody and and and so well yes so I suffered a little bit through this but as much as I could training every day it was strangely enough, even the guards were watching it, me doing my form exercises, my breathing exercises, my punching exercises.

I guess I was in the bad situation, kind of lucky, because it must have been exotic for them.

So that's just a tiny little bit of the story how it all started.

And so What brought you from Germany over into where you are now in Canada?

So in the big house, all political prisoners were eventually sent into big secret service controlled prisons where the real criminals were trying to control us and for some reason there must have been a diplomat in there who may have helped people to escape.

There was a book, a travel book about Canada.

So now there we were, a pastor, an engineer, a former party secretary, doctors and me, the Kung Fu dude, and we were looking at this travel book and everybody was saying, wow, North America and in this case, Canada, 1 of the last free countries in half around the globe, far of what we couldn't even imagine because, well, the Iron Curtain, we were caught in there.

So in this picture, everybody had said, I'm going to Canada or to the States.

And I was the only 1 who I had still this picture of Vancouver in front of me.

So 1 day I packed my suitcase and just left and started the first Wing Chun Kung Fu school in Canada, again from 0 on in a place where nobody knew me and where people came, how can a German in an English speaking country teach Chinese Kung Fu?

Isn't this a little bit too much in the mix?

I even had parents walking by, where's the seafood, the Chinese seafood?

Where I even had to say, I'm doing the class tonight because they didn't even pay attention to me.

I started to teach with amazing people there in Canada, many who are in my school for 20 years, 10 years, 15 years, and keep training, keep improving.

I mean, when you have something that impacts your life like that, or you know that it kind of hits you in your soul that you'll, I mean, you can move mountains, you do anything you can to just get there, you know?

So when you were, I'm sure it was different when you were in Canada, right?

I mean, like, of course, when people started to begin to take the courses and the classes there, right?

It just began to grow organically from that, from the very nature of what martial arts

right, Just in building them up and empowering them.

I mean, what is it about teaching this for you that you find makes such a difference for people that come in to see you?

Because I'm sure they come in to see you for all different reasons, to chain with martial arts.

Exactly, so for a lot of people, almost everybody has seen at 1 point a Bruce Lee movie, that's how it was in the past.

Many people come in wanting to learn to defend themselves and where they're a lot of times not even sure what this means.

And my passion has always been to wake up in people the potential that everybody has.

It has happened so many times over the years that somebody comes in at a young age, is kind of very shy, can't really talk in front of a crowd.

And then I see them grow year after year into confident, expressive people where when people see old video clips they say, no, I can't believe this is this person.

And so it has also become my passion to almost every day work on how I teach, the training methods that I recommend and also the learning methods, how 1 even learns and this opens up for many people worlds That is beyond just the self-defense part so that they become more confident.

And this is where I always have a lot of examples of what has happened in people's lives.

So many expect stories of having fought off 10 or possibly even 12 attackers.

But those are things that have improved everyday life.

So 1 of the stories I always like to tell is a young man who was kind of stuck in his career and wanted to get a new job and he was just in fear standing in front of a panel of people asking him all kinds of questions in order to get this job and he had heard that there were lots of applicants.

I said well it would be the same for me if somebody attacks.

But We learn to realize our own strengths.

We train in order to prove upon and just as in Wing Chun we learn to feel, recognize the direction of an attack.

We learn to feel, recognize the power that is an attack.

We learn to feel, work with the speed of an attack.

So I started to train with him and I said this is a question from somebody who's asking about your job.

Feel your fingertips, your toes, your whole body moving, get in sync with everything.

It's almost as if you can hear beat music coming up in the background.

And we were working and working and then 1 day he had this interview, there were I think about 6 people or so asking questions and it was for him just like the training.

He was looking them in the eyes, said oh interesting question, let me think about it for a moment, answered just as we had trained and he said after he was almost watching himself like in a film.

He almost didn't recognize himself because he was articulate.

He even lifted his hand, began to gesture and they said, well, we have rarely ever met such a young man who can express himself so nicely, who's not just trying to impress us, who thinks for a moment.

So this is for me the best self-defense there is.

He has made something out of the physical training, out of movement training, learning to be confident and he got the job.

I mean, you know, he just, it sounds like he was able to really change his whole persona.

And to really discover who he is and in most of our training, if it is fitness, if it's recovery from an injury, if it's Kung Fu, it's about recognizing who we are, discovering ourselves the potential and not feeling limited by anything.

So this is where a lot of times mention, because most people come to me, yeah, you're the Kung Fu master, you're doing this for decades.

And so well, number 1, by teaching every day, because it makes me happy to work with people.

And I said, and number 2, 1 of my absolute favorite people is Fred Astaire, as I told you last time.

That's the moment where I get to blank stare.

Because everybody's thinking you're going to say like Gandhi or something, right?

Or I was just in Belgium with very nice people in Brussels.

So the muscles from Brussels, Jean Claude.

If you wouldn't know him, he didn't look much, but he was an actor, he was a singer, and he was a dancer, and he was good at all 3 things.

And this is what I admire about many people if they're a musician, if they're a fitness trainer, if they're a chiropractor, a Kung Fu instructor, somebody who is creative and develops their talents as I said and Fred Astaire, I always have 1 example of 1 of his movies with Ginger Rogers.

They have tried this 1 scene over and over, trying to have perfection by doing something that looks so easy as if There's nothing to it, as every good skill should be in the end.

They train for dozens of hours for a scene that in the end is about 3 minutes long.

She had already blood in her shoes and they look like they hover through the air.

And so whatever you do, you want to feel this burst of creativity inside.

You want to feel how you make yourself better and put something out there where others say, man, I want to do exactly that.

I want to have a portion of what this guy has.

And that's why he's 1 of my people that I sometimes in a movie or watching movie look up to and not some Kung Fu guy.

I mean, some of the dancers, you know, like, like, Gene Kelly or Fred Estaire, I mean, they just, they just make it look so, graceful and effortless.

I mean, that's just the efficiency and movement right there.

And I'd love to get, I'm just going to say like, like a 1 word.

And I want to see what, if I say this 1 word, how that can relate back to with the Kung Fu and the martial arts and how that has a meaning to an interrelationship.

And I think you'll know what I mean when I start it.

I just decided to kind of do it because I think that we can feel the energy.

And that's actually what I want to start with, because you mentioned that word before.

What does energy mean when you're talking about martial arts?

It means For me, if I may start with another example, I had 1 of my students was first school that I opened after the Berlin Wall came down in East Berlin.

There was this young woman who came to my classes and she was always so serious.

I like to use examples that people in their profession and their job can relate to.

I always thought, sheesh, did I say the wrong thing?

And 1 day she came to my class and she was smiling, she came forward, she gave me a big hug and I thought what happened?

Must have been something that has nothing to do with Kung Fu.

She had been raped many, many years ago and for a woman to even take up the self-defense training and learn from a male trainer, this was already, it must have been so difficult for her.

So now what had happened she was at a supermarket was standing outside at her car and she just felt this tap on her shoulder somebody grabbing her she turned around and at this moment all the training kicked in.

There was somebody who was about to yell at her, he was saying something about give me your wallet, she felt alcohol on his breath and she just moved forward.

Later she said it was almost like a burst of energy.

She got him, bam, bam, bam, he went down, she went into the car, drove around the corner, she said I have no idea how I even started the car, how I could drive.

Then a couple blocks further she had to stop and there the hands were shaking.

She was crying and then the crying turned into laughing and she said it was sparkles, explosions, thunder, lightning, everything at once she was free.

And this is where she remembered the breathing exercises when I talked to her about energy, when I talked about movement, feeling it throughout your body, when we did two-man form training and she said suddenly this was it was there it saved her life and the band was broken and of course it will always be there but she had found herself back she had found her happiness she said it was It was like a humongous burst of energy.

And this is for me always such an amazing story.

Best example for energy, feeling what this is in you, how breathing, training, improving your confidence can do.

All of it comes together on several different levels.

I mean, you completely was able to change her life.

She had it in her and it was so amazing to see how she had changed from that day on.

She was smiling and she had herself back.

And this too for me is self-defense, the first line of defense, your own life, your happiness, where you are in the world, how you interact with other people to feel, hey, this is me again, I'm taking charge.

I mean, because so many people think about, you know, just going in and training to fight, but it'll be there for you, of course, but that empowerment of waking up the energy that you, it's almost like people when they come in, right, it's almost like they're dormant.

They don't have their real, they're like, this is who you see in front of me is not me, almost, right?

And that's why what I do when I teach is always I tell them when they say, well, I can't like you move from toes to fingertips and bring you your whole body and you talk about this whiplash effect and you talk about using your stomach muscles, opening your chest, feeling muscles underneath your shoulder blade, this that, say act it out.

I said well imagine there's cameras here and there.

Oh my gosh not cameras, it makes it worse.

Don't care how other people look at you, whatever you say, whatever you feel, spit it out, yell it out, put it out there.

And sometimes I like to push people's buttons and I train a little bit harder with them so that they really have to try to connect all the muscle groups and first I get the moaning and groaning and I get the huffing and puffing and then they start saying words to me and then they say oh I'm sorry Sifu I didn't want to say that to you I said oh please go ahead I'll get more out of you and by working this hard this is how many say you know what I I didn't even know I can do this I can say that I can express myself like this that this is a big part too, to open yourself up.

I had somebody, oh did you listen to this last video from Dr.

I said oh yeah, I said man He has sometimes a wave of words.

He's not just dry and told you, okay, you do this exercise and then you move here.

He sometimes pushes you, you do this too, pushing people's buttons a little bit and saying, using a word here, using a word there.

This is what people, what gets people going.

So I love this, this openness to just so that everybody sees this is you.

That's what I love from the very first clip that I saw.

I said, man, this guy knows how to express himself and this is just amazing.

I mean, sometimes I say something that actually makes sense every now and then.

But, you know, I mean, it's through, honestly, you know, it's through the process of what we've been talking about because I was really overweight, shy, introverted kid who I moved around a lot.

I got bullied relentlessly and I didn't like myself at all.

And I got into bodybuilding first, so that started to change my physical appearance, right?

But then I got into the martial arts and the combination of the 2, particularly with the martial arts, helped develop me into the man that I am today.

So I know that's why when you talk about these things, I'm smiling on the other end.

Because I just wish that I was able to go see you, man.

I mean, I'm so disappointed that I can't just come train with you like today.

Wherever you have your next seminar or so we will connect and I think this is what really comes across.

I tell my students always I said I was a very shy kid when my father said shake hands with this person say hello I couldn't do this I was so shy and people say no way the way you talk the way you work with all these different people and this is what makes what you do also so special I think people feel this in you how you help yourself and now you're helping others and this is so important and if you always have a little bit of humor in there, if people feel that there's something honest behind it as you do all the time in every podcast and every video clip and even the little posts where you have 1 liner in there.

I think this is how people can connect to the teachings and they don't feel as if you're talking down And I think we both like it to wake this up in other people because for me it was similar.

I started in a club, junior DJs, disc jockets, you know, with real records, vinyl, what's just coming back now.

And there you stand for the first time on stage with a mic in front of you, spotlights on and then maybe 100, 120 young people who just want to dance and you're supposed to say something funny to them to lead from 1 record to the next.

And then doing speech exercises or the all those funny things.

And this helped me later enormously when I started to teach martial arts.

And then eventually it came all out and now I can't stop it anymore.

Well, I got 1 more word and then we're going to move on.

We all have our daily problems, bigger problems.

And sometimes when you stand in a form, begin just to breathe slowly in through your nose, out of your mouth, then you feel because the problems you can't really empty your mind as Bruce Lee said in the movie you have a hard time even as instructor and then you slowly start breathing in really long Little stop breathing out.

Why I always use this idea, it's winter time, the window's frozen over, heating doesn't work, and now you're in front of this window and ah, Really try to, with your breath, to get a little hole so that you can look through that window.

You know, I'm making also a few noise effects here.

And then you get into the form training and suddenly All those thoughts that are in your way, they disappear.

Sometimes you hear your ligaments, your tendons.

Now you feel your heels, your toes, foot inside to outside.

It goes through your ankles, to your knees, into your hips, through your spine, through your shoulders, elbows, wrists, into the fingertips.

And now you get slowly into the spot to truly be mindful, to think about what you do, to afterwards be able in an exercise to do it with somebody else.

See all Perry Nickelston: Stop Chasing Pain transcripts on Applepodcasts

SCP Podcast 151: The Kung Fu Coach