The Swansea Wind Street bouncer who went to train at the Shaolin Temple in China and is now a shaman
James Waters spent ten years working on the doors of Wind Street, but then decided he wanted to change his life and headed to one of the most prestigious training institutions in the world
ByDemi Roberts
05:00, 19 DEC 2021
James teaching students after his training (Image: James Waters)
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James Waters has lived a life that most of us have only seen on TV.
Most days, you'll find him teaching martial arts such as Tai Chi or Kung Fu to a cohort of eager students, and on one special day of the month, you'll find him in his woodland back garden near Penllergaer woods guiding guests through an intense shamanic breath work ceremony.
While James' days are colourful and unique today, his day-to-day life twelve years ago looked somewhat different.
Before attending the Shaolin Academy and the Shaolin Temple in 2012 - some of the most prestigious training institutions in the world - James worked a more innocuous job: he manned the doors of various Wind Street pubs and clubs as a bouncer. You can read more Swansea stories here.
James initially got into martial arts as a teenager, which is what attracted him to the job in the first place.
He said: "I started doing martial arts as a teenager - I started with a Korean style of martial arts and it just hooked me. I loved exploring the different ways to use the body to generate power. I was asthmatic as a child so I wasn't particularly fit - I couldn't run around on a football pitch for 90 minutes, but short, sharp bursts of exercise worked really well for me. I really enjoyed it.
"I worked as a bouncer on Wind Street for about 10 years, and did the odd private security job in Primark and various other places. It flew past, and it was martial arts that actually led me to work on the doors. One of my instructors used to be a doorman and he told me that I had a good temperament for it.
"I loved it - I loved working with the boys and the comradeship that comes with it. I still keep in touch with a lot of them, but I just wanted to spend my time doing different things."
James working on the doors of Wind Street in his bouncer days (Image: James Waters)
James, now 36, moved back to Swansea aged 19 after living in Surrey for some years. When he first came back, he studied American Kickboxing before going on to study the ancient art of Aikido.
He said: "When I moved back to Swansea, I did a bit of American Kickboxing. I was training with one guy who was brilliant - a tough guy, cauliflower ears, the lot - but I didn’t want to be that type of fighter. I wanted to be able to do more than just take hits to the face. I went on to do some freestyle karate and kickboxing before doing on to Aikido, which is a beautiful art that's about body manipulation - manipulating the attacker's body, manipulating the power coming in."
The Welsh Shaolin
"During training, somebody lent me a book called 'The American Shaolin', which was about the first westerner to train at the Shaolin temple in the early 1990s. I read this book and I just thought: that's what I have to do. I put some extra hours in on the door to save up enough money to go, and then I went out to China for the most part of 2012."
Inspired by the book, James jetted off to Shandong to study at the Shaolin Academy, and later to the Shaolin Temple in Henan.
He said: "It was a shock to the system in many regards. I first went in January and I didn't expect it to be as cold as it was. It was minus 10 Celsius, and we were at the top of the mountain. I remember waking up in the middle of the night once for a drink of water and a lump of ice just hit me in the teeth.
"The training was as mental as it was physical. We'd have to sweep every day. If was raining, we'd sweep the puddles. If it was snowing, we'd sweep the snow, and if it was windy, we'd sweep the leaves. It was a huge mental exercise - an exercise in futility in some ways, but I could feel it changing me as a person from the inside."
James during his Shaolin training (Image: James Waters)
James, right, pictured with his master, left, while training in China (Image: James Waters)
"In the Shaolin Academy we did two hours of meditation every day. I did a bit of meditation when I was younger, but not on this scale. It was the middle of January and we'd be standing there with our arms out in the freezing weather, just breathing. All the other students would be there looking serene, and I'd look at the clock and think wow, I still have 50 minutes left.
"It felt like an eternity, but then, after two weeks, I felt this bolt of energy between my hands while meditating, a feeling like two magnets. I just stood there and played with that feeling, and the time just flew past."
This 'bolt' of energy that James felt is often referred to as the 'qi' - pronounced 'chi' - in Eastern philosophy.
"I didn't actually believe in [Qi Gong], until I felt it myself. After getting that feeling, I turned my studies to Qi Gong, which means 'life force'. It was a big moment in my life because I had to ask myself, 'what else don't I believe in that might be real?' In that moment, energy became tangible."
For James, being a good martial artist is about much more than fighting: for James, it's as internal as it's physical.
He said: "In China, my master was a doctor of Chinese medicine, and when giving a lecture one day he said, 'a good martial artist is also a good doctor'. What this means is that you have to strike a balance between the yin and the yang - the harsh energy with the soft energy - to maintain balance within the body. The goal is never to present yourself as a 'hard' person who fights - it's about being somebody who helps other people, too."
Shamanic breath work
James said: "I first came across shamanic breath work when travelling to India. It's a certain way of breathing that sends you on a deep journey within yourself, and the goal is to release emotions that get trapped in the body. We've all had that feeling where you want to cry, and you swallow that lump in your throat. That stays within the body, trauma can stay in the body, so the breath work is really about releasing that.
"I trained with a shaman in India who taught me how to bring that experience to others. It's a special practice that can be utterly life-changing for people."
James holds his shamanic breath work sessions every month from the comfort of his garden (Image: James Waters)
James performing reflexology - a holistic therapy that brings relaxation and healing to the body (Image: James Waters)
James added: "I compare martial arts to being a musician. You don't just play a guitar to make noise - you practise so that with time, it makes beautiful music. Similarly, when you train the body and practise over time with martial arts, you can do beautiful things with it. Martial arts can defend you if needed, but it's about more than that - it's about infusing the body with positive energy so that you can have a long, healthy and happy life.