Reviews of Kundala Tao Sanctuary

I recently moved to Cottonwood from Phoenix to start a new job at Enchantment Resort. My job is stressful and was looking for a good school to study kung fu and tai chi in a traditional way (internal training, and stances). I started visiting martial arts schools in Cottonwood and Sedona. Classes were alright but, the vibe wasn't right for me.

I met Sifu Michael accidentally at the market last Friday and was invited to the Sunday Kung fu class. This guy is awesome! Move's quick and powerfully for a small dude and knows his art through and through.

I would have given the school 5 stars, but they only offer two days of Kung fu and one day of tai chi. I feel like a third class somewhere in the week would round it out for me.

Pros:

The Sifu knows how to teach. Everything is clear, organized and he doesn't end class right on the hour if you need a little extra time to get a difficult move or technique.

Small class sizes. They train in groups of 10 at a time.

Training is traditional (it's difficult and legit) Shaolin kung fu, the five animals, and some pretty cool Shaolin fist forms.

Cons:

Need more than two classes of kung fu and at least a weekend class for Tai-Chi Chuan.

Warm up is long, like 10 minutes long.

Weapons training is currently limited to long staff and broad-sword. I was hoping to learn the tiger fork.

The sifu of this school is an understated guy who has somehow managed to learn and become good at several difficult martial arts styles. When I asked about how he did it he said, "hard work, dedication, and the good fortune of being accepted for training at a young age by an exceptional kung fu teacher. "

The kung fu classes I attended were tough! I am from the bay area where there are some good traditional Chinese martial arts teachers and was pleasantly surprised to discover this school hidden away in Sedona. While I was in town I studied Shaolin kung fu, tai chi, and took a chi kung class with sifu and all of his classes were of excellent quality.

My only gripe is that we spent almost 15 minutes warming up for a 1 hour Shaolin class, but after starting the stance training part of the class it seemed justified. In all fairness, he kept teaching a little past the hour in order to give the class a nice finish.

Class sizes are kept small (no more than 10 I believe) so if you are coming into town, you may want to schedule ahead of time. Private lessons are available but $$$. This was not in my budget this trip so I did two while I was in town. One to learn part of Bodhidharma's 18 Hands Nei Kung and the other to learn part of a Shaolin Tiger form and both were worth the money.

Bottom line, I definitely look forward to returning to Sedona and studying more at Kundala.