In this episode of Notes on Practise, I reflect on walking without destination and what begins to change when attention is no longer shaped by efficiency.

Drawing on decades of living in central London — and the stillness of the lockdowns — this is a meditation on drifting through a place, on memory layered into streets and buildings, and on the quiet reciprocity that can emerge when we slow down enough to listen.

This isn’t a guide or a theory. It’s an invitation to move differently through the places you inhabit, and to notice what becomes available when a place is met without demand.

White Crane Kung Fu is often treated as a single, unified system. In practice, there are several distinct flavours, each emphasising different qualities — technical precision, softer internal work, or clearer links to earlier ancestor arts.

In this episode, I look at White Crane as a final layer of refinement built on Taizuquan, and at San Zhan as the method that runs through both. The aim is not to define White Crane, but to clarify how its different expressions emerge from a shared foundation.

These are reflections from my own training and lineage.

For the first episode, who better to sit down with than Kristina — the person who’s been in the middle of all of it with me.

We talk about what it really takes to build a martial arts school. The version with empty rooms, long days, bad months, doubt, pressure, and the slow work of turning an idea into a place where people actually belong.

We talk about:

– how this all started

– what nearly broke it

– what kept it alive

– the mistakes you only learn by making

– why community matters more than image

If you train, teach, build, or carry something you care about — this is for you.