Editor’s Note

Nasser Butt

Welcome to Year 6 — Volume 21 of Lift Hands Magazine 2022!

First and foremost my apologies for the slightly delayed [4 days to be precise] first issue of the year.

We’ve had a fantastic first five years and I want to say a massive thank you to all those who made that possible and we’re not easing up — here we are with the 21st issue and it’s a bumper pack with over 140 pages of in-depth articles!

This has been the largest issue I have put together and it has taken a lot of time editing and that has been part of the reason for the slight delay.

Anyhow, onwards… to start Year 6 you are getting a double helping of 20 Questions and we have a couple of new entrants contributing to the magazine. A huge welcome to Gemma Burman and Tommy Joe Moore!

Dr Gregory Lawton has dished up a timely part two to his brilliant article ‘The Eye of Destruction: Self-protection in a World Spinning Out of Control’ — a much needed common sense approach to self-defence alongside Tommy Joe Moore’s ‘Fight Like Your Grandad’!

As ever, we have an excellent contribution from Gavin Mulholland in ‘The Knockout’ and Alan Ludmer continues his insights into practicing and developing one’s Taijiquan.

Lift Hands is so privileged to have some of the great minds in martial arts contributing to our pages and every time I read an article by Katherine Loukopoulos Sensei, I feel like I am transported back in time into an era when martial arts had not yet lost their souls to the ‘business model’. Anyhow, I digress…

2022 is a packed year full of martial arts events from Kaizen to The Asian Martial Arts Show and a heap more other workshops and gatherings… Lift Hands will try to get to them all and bring you more in these pages.

Keeping Lift Hands free online has been a challenge in these difficult times and I really do genuinely want to thank everyone, who with their generosity, have made this happen for another year — from individuals, whom I won’t name, to The Gatherings and other organizations. I bow low to you all!

I hope that life is regaining some kind of normality wherever you are on this globe spinning in space… despite the wars and humankind’s madness into self-destruction.

I’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy and peaceful Ramadan, Easter, Pesach [Passover], Vaisakhi — all being celebrated in the month of April. And to all our secular friends — enjoy the spring holidays.

See you in June!

105 Countries

26.5K Readers

Albania Algeria Argentina Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bangladesh Belarus Belgium Bolivia Bosnia & Herzegovina Brazil Bulgaria Cambodia Canada Chile China Colombia Costa Rica Cote D’lvoire Croatia

Cuba Cyprus Czechia Denmark Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt Estonia Fiji Finland France French Guyana Gambia Germany Ghana Greece Guatemala Hungary Iceland India Indonesia

Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Korea Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lithuania Macedonia Madagascar Malaysia Malta Mauritania Mexico Moldova

Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nigeria Norway Oman Pakistan Palestine Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Qatar Romania Russian Federation Saudi Arabia Serbia Slovakia

South Africa Spain Sri Lanka Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Tanzania Thailand Tunisia Turkey Ukraine UAE United Kingdom USA Uruguay Venezuela Vietnam Zimbabwe