The Method
I've known TJ my whole life; that’s what I’ve always called him, although in the massage community he goes by Taylor. He’s been very influential on me; he may even be the reason I started in martial arts. After he introduced me to Bruce Lee movies, I spent my childhood running around shirtless in black pants. I started out training in a variety of traditional martial arts before moving into combat sports as an adult and working security at nightclubs in downtown Vancouver.
Around this time, TJ was attending West Coast College for Massage Therapy. After graduating, he decided to take up a new hobby and looked to Wing Chun, Bruce Lee’s first martial art. He asked me to join him for a trial class, which I initially declined but was reluctantly convinced to attend to help him evaluate the practice.
The teacher, Sifu Leo Lit, turned out to be the best martial artist I’ve ever met. After our first lesson, TJ asked me, “What do you think? Should I sign up?” I replied, “You can do whatever you want, but I’m dropping everything I’m doing to study with him.” I quit two clubs, cancelled my gym pass, and started training seven days a week. TJ joined too, and although he couldn’t attend classes to the extent I did, he developed the same deep appreciation for the art.
Initially, what most impressed me was how Leo could maintain any position effortlessly as I tried with my whole body to disrupt his balance and break his structure. He would stay there, relaxed but unmoving, smiling and laughing as I tried my best and failed. The power was the hook, as I was looking for combat skills. But my appreciation deepened as I came to understand that he achieved this without sacrificing any aspect of his health, which was in stark contrast to my experience in combat sports.
As I came into my own as a Wing Chun practitioner and began teaching, TJ was also transitioning from practitioner to teacher. He had recognized that massage therapy education taught students what to do, but was missing the how. At the same time, I had come to see that perhaps the most important aspect of Wing Chun wasn’t self-defence, but a way of being that enabled practitioners to realize their latent potential and improve their health and well-being. For more than a decade, I considered how to extract the universally valuable practices of traditional martial arts, while TJ explored how the mechanical efficiencies he had seen our teacher demonstrate could help manual therapists maximize their effectiveness and longevity.
Before retiring, Leo would often say to me, “Gongfu is a new movement habit!” This was an important reminder not to simply repeat behaviours, but to continually develop new and better ways of moving. Without this perspective, we often develop habits that harm us over time, potentially leading to burnout, injury, and, in the case of massage therapists, an early retirement.
When Sifu Leo Lit retired in 2025, I began teaching full time and decided it was time to create this new system for non-martial artists to benefit from.
This is how the New Movement Habit Method was born. It is a standalone system useful for anyone, in any walk of life, with a dedicated branch that TJ and I have developed to improve the practice of manual therapists, including massage therapists, physiotherapists, chiropractors, and other bodyworkers.
