known as the king of insects, is also central to the Chinese martial arts, or kung fu, which are derived from various imperial, military-monastic, Daoist, and Buddhist influences. Here, in this martial arts reference to the praying mantis, is what one insider ethnographer, Douglas Farrer, has called “the unleashing of hidden human potentials” and “the continual revelation of esoteric embodied knowledge through practice”—that is, anomalous forms of embodiment that continue to morph and evolve, that are never exhausted.
