DOING NOTHING! WHAT IS THAT?

Our default setting will always be evolving, always trending to easier movements.

This is a two-part post about the same thing, just from different perspectives.

Last weekend, while working with my very senior students, which if you understand Wing Chun is frequently about understanding what “doing nothing” is and trying to internalise it, one of the guys effortless shunted me across the room.

He looked a bit nonplussed so I said “you do understand that you have just effortlessly thrown a 90kg man across the room do you not”?

He answered, “Yes, but you were not resisting”.

This is a statement that students who have no genuine experience of street violence frequently voice.

Things like asking for their partner to apply “More Force” is a classic example of this thinking.

If a person’s IDEA of a fight is two highly trained Combat Athletes competing against each other this is an easy misconception.

But on the street, attackers have no respect for their target and they do not expect anything except a screaming success in their attack.

Resistance is for defenders, not attackers.

If someone violently lunges at us and we step out of the way there is an even money bet that they will end up on their ass with no assistance from us.

Attackers do not offer resistance because they themselves do not expect resistance.

Have a cup of tea and think about it.

Is this “A-Hole” happily stepping in to get punched in the throat?

If the guy can end up on his ass without our help we do not need to do much to help him achieve his downfall.

Secondly.

Although we talk of doing nothing, we are obviously doing something.

And that something is just being as normal as we can be in the circumstances, and this obviously can vary according to the situation we encounter.

The nothing is that we are adding nothing extra to any move we perform, especially no extra and un-needed strength.

Adding “nothing extra” depends a great deal on us understanding our default settings.

The FORM, the complete FORM, allows us to explore how we can move in an easy and effortless way, the more we train the more we begin to be able to do these movements more easily.

Our default setting will always be evolving, always trending to easier movements.

This is of course the reason for the FORM in the first place.

To understand how we move, to observe our body at its base level and to try to keep it at that level even when the world around us is turning to shit.

This is a difficult task, even when we are training in a friendly environment it offers a challenge.

A challenge we will never rise to, but that is O.K.

Because it is trying to achieve our current default setting without forcing it that is always the aim and the recipe for success.

Yet again it is the lesson from Stravinski’s violinist.

Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon;

How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.” 

― Rumi,