Interesting. I started boxing, then moved over to kick-boxing. I have a hunch that Western / heavily Westernized MAs are a better fit for people living in Western circumstances. At least I don't have to deal with fake spirituality - it is clearly sold as a combat sport, not as a spiritual path. By fake spirituality I mean I had my fair share of Zen and Vajrayana meditations, which are fairly efficient at creating altered mind-states, and yet they happened rarely and not very deeply, because I am not a Zen monk doing it all day but a normal guy who catches three half hours to sit a week. Same was if people would be doing kung-fu for 10 hours a day in a Shaolin monastery for a decade (which is probably less efficient at creating altered mind-states than meditation) perhaps some satori type spiritual breakthroughs would be likely, but I am sure the way we usually do it - 2-3 1.5 hour long trainings a week - every spiritual aspect must be pretty fake and this is part of the reasons I try to go on a more Western path of martial arts where they don't try to sell me spirituality at all.

It may be also meaningful that in kick-boxing everything we do seem to make sense for me. Non-combat exercises develop total body mobility, cardio and strength alongside with control and coordination and balance at the same time, such as running backwards while throwing heavy medicine balls to each other, or running from one to end of the mat to another touching the ground at the end, and when the trainer claps going prone and jumping up, or going down in a push-up position and trying to slap each others knuckles while trying to avoid such slaps from others, or pool noddle fencing, or sitting on an exercise ball without feet on the ground and throwing heavy medicine balls to each other etc. They all seem to develop multiple aspects of the body and mind towards combat.

I would be very skeptical if I had to do things like the horse stance. I don't see its utility much. Perhaps all this pain tolerance thing makes sense in a monastery doing it 10 hours a day, as part of a legitimate spiritual path, but isolated in 2-3 treenings on weekday evenings like most people in the West do it seems a but superfluous to me. Strictly from a combat use of legs angle as opposed to quasi-spirituality angle, just doing squat-jumps and stretching with splits seems do more.

Nevertheless, give it a fair try, just try to not buy into any kind of "Asian people know mysterious spiritual secrets unknown to Western man" thing. If it is something that works, pretty sure Western e.g. boxers or MMA guys are doing it it already, after all kung-fu movies are popular since the 1970's so there was plenty of time to learn. If you cannot imagine they would be doing anything like this, be skeptical.