From searching for direction in Asia to building a Kung Fu community in Greece.
2016
Arrived in Pai, Thailand
Beginning a journey through martial arts and Asian culture.
2017
Wat Pa Tam Wua Monastery
One month living within a Buddhist monastery, exploring meditation and mindful practice.
2018
Nam Yang Instructor
Graduated from the Nam Yang Instructor Programme after several years of full-time training.
2020
Moved to Greece
Started a new chapter, bringing the practice into family life and a new country.
2021
First Retreat
Hosted the first Nam Yang Greece retreat in Arillas.
Present Day
Teaching in Corfu
Sharing traditional Kung Fu and Chi Kung through retreats, workshops and weekly classes.
Every one of these milestones quietly changed the direction of my life. What follows is the story behind them.
Pai, Thailand, 2016
I’ve been fascinated by Asian culture for as long as I can remember.
As a teenager, I spent countless hours watching martial arts films, anime and playing games that opened a window into a completely different world. What drew me wasn’t just the fighting or adventure, but the values behind them: perseverance, discipline, respect, friendship and the belief that mastery comes through dedication.
That curiosity eventually led me to study Japanese and begin practising Karate. At the time, I had a romantic dream of travelling to Japan, finding a Karate master and becoming his disciple—sweeping the dojo floor, running errands and dedicating my life to the practice.
As the years passed, my interest in Asia only grew stronger. Eventually I packed my bags and began travelling across the continent, searching for new experiences and, if I’m honest, a better sense of direction in my own life.
That search eventually brought me to a small mountain town in northern Thailand called Pai.
I wasn’t searching for a Kung Fu school.
I wasn’t searching for a career.
I was simply looking for something.
When I arrived at Nam Yang, I had no idea how important that place would become in my life.
I had originally signed up for a month of training—long enough to experience the school, meet the people and discover what this way of life was all about.
From the moment I arrived, something felt different.
It wasn’t the training hall, the mountain views or the beautiful surroundings that stayed with me most. It was the atmosphere.
There was a genuine sense of community—a feeling that everyone was walking the same path while supporting one another along the way. Students, teachers and long-term practitioners lived, trained and shared daily life together.
For the first time, I wasn’t simply visiting a martial arts school. I felt like I had found a home.
What was meant to be a one-month stay eventually became several years of my life.
During that time, I immersed myself fully in the practice. Life at Nam Yang followed a simple rhythm: waking at sunrise, training throughout the day, sharing meals with the community and repeating the process again and again.
The days were balanced between Yin and Yang practices. Chi Kung, meditation, Kung Fu forms, partner training and theory all supported one another. Rather than learning isolated techniques, I was gradually discovering a complete system for cultivating body and mind together.
Part of that journey led me to spend a month living at Wat Pa Tam Wua, a Buddhist monastery in northern Thailand. There, the practice became even simpler. Meditation, daily work and long periods of silence taught me that practice wasn’t confined to the training hall. It could be carried into every aspect of everyday life.
When I returned to Nam Yang, I committed fully and joined the school’s teacher training programme. Over the following years, I returned again and again, spending months at a time immersed in this way of life.
I wasn’t the fastest student, and I often took longer than others to learn new forms or progress through the ranking system. Looking back, that became one of the greatest lessons of all.
Real progress comes through patience and repetition.
The years I spent in Thailand shaped not only the martial artist I became, but also the teacher I am today.
Nam Yang Instructor Graduation — 2018
Teaching a staff class at Nam Yang, Pai, Thailand
As part of the teacher training programme, I began assisting classes and teaching some of the more fundamental lessons fairly early on.
What surprised me most was how much teaching accelerated my own learning.
When you’re learning something for yourself, it’s easy to follow instructions without fully understanding them. But when a student asks a question or struggles with a movement, you quickly discover how well you truly understand it.
Teaching encouraged me to look beyond techniques and explore the principles behind them.
The student makes simple things look complicated, while the teacher learns to make complicated things look simple.
Helping others progress challenged me to communicate ideas more clearly, simplify complex movements and understand the arts at a much deeper level.
My training and teaching developed together. The more I taught, the more I learned. The more I learned, the more I could share with others.
Over time, teaching became just as important to my own development as training itself, shaping both my understanding of the arts and the instructor I continue to become.
In 2020, after several years in Thailand, I moved to Greece and began a completely new chapter of life.
The training continued, but life looked very different. Instead of living and training at the school, I was building a home, raising a family and creating opportunities to share the practice in a new country.
The first retreats were small, but they represented something much bigger than numbers. They marked the beginning of a community. A place where people could come together to train, learn and experience the same values that had shaped my own journey in Thailand.
Although the setting had changed, the intention remained the same: to create an environment where practice, friendship and personal development could grow together.
Growing up with the arts.
Everything I experienced throughout those years in Thailand continues to shape the way I teach today.
The classes, retreats and community at Nam Yang Greece are inspired by the same balance of hard and soft practice, personal development and shared experience that first drew me to Nam Yang all those years ago.
While no two places can ever be the same, my intention has never been to recreate my experience in Thailand. It has been to preserve the spirit of the practice while allowing it to grow in a new home here in Corfu.
Whether someone joins for a weekly class, a retreat or private training, my hope is always the same:
That they leave with something meaningful they can carry into everyday life.
If you’d like to learn more about the practice, retreats, or training opportunities in Arillas, I’d be happy to hear from you.
Talk With Thomas