WHAT IS SWANDA KARATE ?
Swanda is an eclectic karate system which traces its roots back to China in 225 A.D. There, a Chinese physician named Hua T'o created a series of exercises based on animal movements. The warrior monks of the Shaolin Temple practiced the refined these movements of animals and elements, and called them the Eighteen Lo-Han Postures.

The self-defence applications derived from those postures became known throughout China and Asia as Shaolin boxing. Over the centuries, Shaolin boxing split into hundreds of different boxing styles and influenced the development of every major fighting style in Asia.

All rational men love peace, but history has always been written in blood. The necessity to fight and the desire to win stimulated the evolution of countless separate and distinct Shaolin boxing styles, several hundred of which exist today. However, in an effort to maintain secrecy, some of these boxing styles limited their students solely to family members. Over the years, through mishap or natural selection, many of these smaller styles were lost.

Swanda is one such small, family style which restricted its students and, as a result, was brought very nearly to extinction around the turn of the century. Fortunately, circumstances delivered the Swanda System from Chinese hands into Japanese hands and, finally, into American hands, but throughout its travels, the System has been carefully cherished and personally protected by its students and guardians.