“Because what ever word we choose is just a made up word for an imaginary event that we only think is happening”.
Imagination is how we humans interact with the universe around us.
How we see it.
Not as it is.
But as something it is not.
Something that we can make sense of, work with.
This does not make it “REAL” in any sense of the word, but it does make it a very valuable mental method.
When teaching my IDEA of “Crazy Horse” I encourage my guys to give their imagination free reign.
I put it to them that what we are doing when we engage our imagination is creating a language that both our mind and our body can use to communicate with each other.
Creating what I refer to as “feeling pictures”, or “screenshots” of our inner working.
One imagining I like to use is to think that we have a hydraulic pump deep in our pelvis.
This pump sends pressurised water down our legs, up our spine, along our shoulders and into the arms and hands until we are full and can even feel our skin bulging as the water tries to exit through our fingers and toes.
Most students achieve this easily and sometimes ask….
“Is this Chi/Nim Lik/Nim Tao/Kundalini”?
I answer…
“It can be if you wish it to be”.
“Because what ever word we choose is just a made up word for an imaginary event that we only think is happening”.
Some people take umbridge with me for saying that Chi, or Nim Lik, or Nim Tao, or Kundalini are only imaginary, they feel I am being dissmissive.
I am not.
I do not see any problem with using our imagination.
I am repeating myself here but Imagination is how we humans interact with the universe around us.
We all deeply believe that when we look out of a window and see BLUE skies, GREEN trees, RED cars on BLACK roads it is because they are real.
And I am the first to agree that not only do I do this but that this is a universal consensus.
The fact that we all agree, all think and perhaps even see the same thing does not make it REAL.
Not even close.
We do not LOOK OUT of windows, we do not LOOK at anything, our eyes are more akin to cameras than scanners, we open the lens and the view flows IN.
We only IMAGINE that we look out.
In our universe there is no colour, there is only different wavelengths of electro-magnetic energy, we interpret these different wavelengths to represent different colours.
Except of course for the “Clour-blind” in our society.
All and any interpretation of any subject is just us using our IMAGINATION.
What has all this got to do with teaching and studying Wing Chun?
When people from the C.S.T. lineage like Sifu John Kaufman talk about Nim Lik and Nim Tao, when people from the Robert Chu lineage like Alan Orr talk about the 7 Bows and linking/de-linking or when I talk about putting on our Crazy Horse and staying in the Goldilocks Zone we are using a different imaginary language to talk about the same thing.
The Ghost in the Machine if you wish.
Underneath this language, our bodies are doing or at least attempting to achieve the same objective.
That is the reality of what we are doing and as such is the true work.
If we take the Kung Fu and Spirituality away completely, what is our body ‘actually’ doing when we ask it to link and de-link, to bend one of the 7 bows, raise up Nim Lik or engage Nim Tao, stay in the Goldilocks Zone or put on our Crazy Horse?
Whatever we think that is we would benefit from exploring in that direction.
Apart from any other considerations this thing is measurable, observable and capable of being experienced/felt by a person other than ourselves.
It is REALITY and not IMAGINATION.
Do I know what lies beneath the imaginary language I create, beneath my Crazy Horse and my Goldilocks Zone?
I believe I do.
But I could just be imagining it.
As always…
WORK ON YOUR WEAKNESS – PLAY TO YOUR STRENGTH.
Wing Chun Sydney, Australia 