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Nir Adin Unger Lin -
BIO 1950’s-1999
Born in the fifties in
Tel-Aviv, Israel, Nir grew up in the Red Sea Fishing Cooperative in
Eilat.. His mother was a Physical Education teacher, a Shivananda Yoga
instructor and a student of M. Feldenkrais, his father a fisherman. At
13 Nir joined his father for fishing trips to Massawa, Ethiopia/Eritrea.
They took this journey 3 more times until he was 14. At 16 Nir traveled
on his own to California where he learned to surf with Dr. Dorian
Paskovitch, who also introduced surfing to Israel.
For his military service
Nir was stationed at Kibbutz Samar in the Arava region.
Following his discharge
from the IDF in the eighties he studied Thai-boxing with Avi Sued and
Ninjitsu (Japanese martial art) at Doron Navon’s Bujinkan school. (Doron
Navon ,also a direct student of Feldenkrais, applied the Feldenkrais
method in his martial arts training).
In the seventies, he
studied about 4 years at a “Fourth Way” school in Israel. In the early
eighties he studied Chi Kong and Tai Chi with Nir Malchi, who had just
returned from Japan.
Nir founded EKG - the first
Israeli Surfing Promotion Organization, as well as organizing the first
international surfing competition in Israel.
In 1983 he founded and
managed the first Israeli Surfing fashion company – ‘Artik’. The company
emphasized the use of natural fabrics and employing pensioners in
Kibbutzes.
In 1988 Nir traveled
to Macau, China and lived on the jungle-island of Coloan forestry. At
the same time he took up numerous Chinese martial arts and systems of
movement. His teachers included Sifu Alam and his father, Sifu Lion
Ting. At Sifu Alam’s he specialized in Lok Hap Fat Pat (Six Harmonies
Eight Methods) which are internal exercises with combat applications. He
also became the first non-Chinese who learned the Buddhist ritual dance
‘Tai Pei Kun’. Nir became a member of several local Martial Arts
associations and trained in “Shing Yee”, Ba Guah” and “Chi Kong”. He
also represented the Coloan Fishermen Rowing club 3 times in the Dragon
Boat Race.
He dedicated 1990 to
daily training (3 times a day, every day) in ‘Lok Hap Fat Pat’ and Tai
Pei Kun’. In the same year he was invited to participate in the internal
initiation ceremony of the Boxer Association of ‘San Kong’. In 1991 in
Hong Kong he graduated from the first Chinese Wu Shu Federation course
for international trainers in 2 categories: Tai Chi and Long Staff. He
was the first non-Chinese to have accomplished this rigorous course
successfully.
A year later, Nir
traveled to Australia where he attended a course on Perm culture
presented by the founders, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. Nir became
the first Israeli to join the Perm culture movement.
He went on to build a
jeep and journeyed across the length of the continent. The vast and
isolated spaces and his encounters with some interesting persons enabled
him to apply the understandings acquired in China: “movement released of
any previous learning pattern; Study that is not academic or confined to
a “learning space” but direct and experienced. One that can take place
anywhere spontaneously.”
One example of this
can be seen through his realization that despite his extensive training
in Vocal Chi Kong and Mongolian Overtone Chanting, he had not succeeded
in tapping into the underlying power and vitality of the voice while in
China. A chance encounter with Chris James in Australia solved this
problem and brought on new understandings. Chris James was at the time
voice training and conducting choirs and a 20-minute meeting with him
resulted in the connection Nir was looking for. The understanding that
followed was this: “The Chinese systems (as well as all systems) are an
expression of their culture, and thus are subject to that culture's
physical and psychological limitations on expressions. Therefore, if a
system is taught and the student only mimicked its physical expression
without actually experiencing a sense of discovery/originality, the
point is missed. You have to attune yourself to the performing/producing
of it and then you become similar, in a very particular way, to the
source from which the movement or sound are originating.”
Nir returned with his
wife to Macau to prepare for the birth of his first child: “I did not
look for the same teachers again. Originality was a better beacon for
finding a source.” He went back to Coloan and to his previous government
job as Forrester. The Coloan bay was populated by the Tanka, an ethnic
group of sea dwellers that caught his attention. With his new
understandings about movement Nir began to comprehend the wonderful
complexity of the Tanka people, their keen sense of balance and even the
way they organize their world on a boat. Nearing birth, Karin and Nir
went through intensive self learning materials for conducting an
independent birth. It was the first time they encountered the
limitations of traditional Chinese medicine (of the 20th century), which
does not offer any way for independent birthing (without any outside
intervention other than the parents). This kind of knowledge happen to
come from a German midwife and some literature from the 1960’s hippie
midwife group known as “The Farm”.
The birth took place
in the Italian Alps and from there they continued to Lisbon, Portugal,
where Nir worked for the Portuguese Organic Growers Organization
‘Agro-Bio’. While there he also trained the Globenkin Ballet dance
troupe, Olga Roriz’s Ballet Bellem troupe and choreographed fights
scenes for action movies.
In 1992 Nir moved to
Germany in to study Homeopathy. From mother tinctures, to preparing
homeopathic remedies, to self experimentation of a vast repertoire of
the Materia Medica.
Becoming a father and
the stay in Germany arose in Nir a need for self-healing in relation to
the Holocaust, his family’s history and their combined effect on his
life. For this he first chose to work for 3 moths as a Chi Kong Healer
at the “Evangelische Altersheim” hospital for the terminally ill in
Karltzheim. In Tubingen he opened his first school “The peach school of
centre of Gravity”, where he taught Tai Chi, Chi Kong and Tai Pei Kun.
Tubingen, at that time
suffered from a wave of violence by immigrant serbians, croatians,
muslims and curdish. Following an incident in which a social service
worker was attacked other government aid workers refused to go to that
neighborhood. The local social service office employed Nir in an attempt
to reduce the violence and bring the ethnic groups together. For this
project I opened a martial arts school in the heart of the “Lorreto”
immigrant neighborhood. Students trained in full contact martial arts
with full body padding while Hip Hop music played loudly in the
background. The school soon became an attraction to all ethnic groups
while spectators outnumbered students. The school became a social space
where anyone could feel comfortable, regardless of origin”. Nir went on
to teach self relaxation techniques to inmates of the “Drogenhilfe”
prison for drug abusers in Tubingen. At the University of Tubingen he
taught a seminar on “Non-verbal assertivenss” as part of the post
doctorate Psychology program. At the “Dance Therapy and Gestalt”
institute in Tubingen, he gave a Therapists seminar on Dance Therapy.
In 1994 Nir participated
in the European Championship Internal Martial Arts at Zurich,
Switzerland where he introduced Tai Pei Kun for the first time outside
China and achieved 3rd place in “Pushing Hands”.
Nir continued his
travels in Europe, where he continued to acquire knowedge in Ayurveda,
Indiology, Cranio Sacral Massage, Contact Improvisation, Aikyutzu, and
more. He went to the U.S.A where he trained with Peter Ralston, and
Janet Gee, both dominant figures in the American world of martial arts
and participated in a Psycho-Drama symposium on the Holocaust at the
Berkley University.
In 1995 the family
traveled to Thailand, choosing a remote island as their base. From there
Nir traveled for seminars and treatments around the world, including
Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Brasil and the U.S.
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