Wing Chun Sydney, Australia

But we are not and have never claimed or pretended to be training to become Elite Combat Athletes

Hey Tribe.

I had a fantastic two and a half hours with James Monday evening, mostly talking through what we have been doing for the last month and a half while he was away.

I have been a mentor to James for over twenty years we have a very open training relationship, James has never cared too much about the “Art” side of our thing, he cares more about what happens when the rubber meets the road, at the pointy end of the stick.

He sees what we do as a capital M …..  Martial -art, and not a capital A, ….. martial-Art.

If James thinks anything is in any way ‘suss’ he calls it out.

So Monday was probably 70% chat as I tried to explain the whole three-legged stool thing.

You know Mind – Body – [fighting] Spirit thing.

Being able to see beyond what we are doing at that moment in training, to be able to see things as dynamic relationships can help us see where and how our training fits into the bigger picture of surviving and escaping violence. This is I.M.O. The key to being a capable, competent human being.

This can only be done later in our down-time, going over events in our mind, comparing what we did to what we meant to do, when we self-evaluate the actions we took in training or in a shit-storm.

In the military this would be referred to as an ‘after-action report’, or debrief.

In training, we work on how to defend/defuse all and any of the usual attacks we can think a Bad Guy may use.

This is referred to as ‘generic attack training’.

Through this method we see that we can deal with any generic shape, any generic attempts to hit us, in short, we can beat anything a generic attacker will throw at us.

The complaint many Armchair Warriors throw at this generic approach is that all of the things we train against are nothing less than feeds, that we are ready for them, and that we not only know what is coming but make sure our training partners avoid trickery so that we do see it coming.

The claim is that in a real fight the Bad Guy will not let us see it coming.

On the surface, this sounds like a fair call.

But it is not and here is why.

Perhaps if we are two highly skilled Elite Combat Athletes that have trained intensely for this fight for months, watched videos to understand each others style and have come up with new ways to beat established defences this would be true.

On top of all that we, the Elite Combat Athletes, arrive at the venue for the fight fully rested, in peak condition, full of confidence and self-belief to the extent that when it gets hard and messy we can stay calm and not get stressed in anyway, hold off adrenalin, stay focused and stick to the game plan.

This complaint may appear to make sense.

Especially if you have never been a guest at one of these occasions.

But we are not and have never claimed or pretended to be training to become Elite Combat Athletes

For everyone except Elite Combat Athletes this claim is just as self-delusional as the claim that generic training is self-delusional.

The IDEA of training IS “to be ready for it”, and the IDEA of developing awareness IS “to see it coming”.

But training is never fighting and we all know this.

Not for ourselves or the Elite Combat Athletes.

Things never go the way we plan or the way we hope.

But if we start without a plan we cannot change our plan.

If we start without hope we have no hope.

There is a maxim in the Military, and if anyone truly knows about conflict it is the real Warriors, the guys that go to war, the Military. They say….

…. “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy”.

What we are trying to achieve through training is a condition, a mind-set, an attitude that when it is “Go-Time” we have the “IDEA” of being ready and the “IDEA” of awareness.

That will put us streets ahead because in a real shit storm the Bad Guy will soon have no IDEA ….. just anger.

Let’s keep this conversation going, we all speak English in slightly different ways, feel free to ask me what I mean by certain word choices. 

EVERYONE HAS A PLAN…….

IRON MIKE

Not Counter-Attack as a method or Counter-Attack as a strategy but as an IDEA or group of IDEAS that can give purpose to method and direction to strategy.

O.K. Guys.

This mini-essay was way too big for the WhatsApp chat and anyway you may need to bookmark it to come back and re-read it.

Wing Chun was hybridised in the late 1860s from various Shaolin Styles by Dr. Leung Jan, this is history, not news, but do we understand why it is worth remembering?

If the physical shapes we use began as Shaolin shapes they are still Shaolin shapes.

Therefore Wing Chun is everything else apart from the Shaolin shapes.

The everything else package is the “Little Idea”, the five principles, and one concept.

The “Little Idea” of uniting the three aspects of Body, Mind, and {fighting} Spirit to the same end. 

The principles of Directness, Practicality, Simplicity. Economy of Movement and Non-use of Brute Force.

The concept of Counter-Attack.

Not Counter-Attack as a method or Counter-Attack as a strategy but as an IDEA or group of IDEAS that can give purpose to method and direction to strategy.

If we watch anyone trying and failing to use Wing Chun in a violent situation, it is usually because they are FIGHTING and not Counter-Attacking. 

They are using shapes we would recognise as they walk into punches or stand still for kicks and take-downs, but these are Shaolin shapes.

People that have little to no experience of what Geoff Thompson referred to as the ‘Pavement Arena’, street violence, struggle to understand how to take this dance we are learning and make it shine out there in the dark.

Without experience, there is no way to compare our training to the ugly mess of violent reality.

But we do not need experience of violent street contact to understand a Concept.

A concept is a head thing, ‘reality’ is everything else.

I know that you guys think that I am some kind of sports nut and that’s why I bring everything we do into the sports universe.

As Hercule Poirot would quip, ‘au contraire mon ami’.

Sports is ritual warfare, it was a semi-civilised substitute for violent contact between rival tribes, you only need to watch Liverpool v Everton in the English Premier League, New South Wales v Queensland in ‘The State of Origin’, Chicago Bears v the Green Bay Packers in the American National Football League or the old U.S.S.R.v Czechoslovakia ice hockey teams in the Olympics to see that it still is.

A good starting point for this chat, what is Counter-Attacking in Sport? 

Counter-Attacking begins with a turnover of the ball/puck in the build-up attack by team ‘A’.

Up to that point, team ‘B’ was either not in the play or under the cosh.

This can come about from a tackle or a bad pass but to be relevant to Wing Chun it comes from team ‘B’ reading the play and being in the right place at the right time.

A team ‘B’ player unexpectedly intercepts a pass while team ‘A’ is still pressing forward, breaks free unmarked and heads for the team ‘A’s goal.

I can almost hear you all saying ‘DUH’ we know how does it help?

To ‘GROK” Counter-Attack we need to understand what team ‘B’ is NOT DOING before the interception.

Of great importance is they are not trying to force the play. 

They are simply taking up intelligent positions, moving with the press, filling gaps and waiting for that moment their training tells them will come, waiting for their window of opportunity to open.

And when it opens, they dive through.

Recently when we were working on defending against an opponent that kicks, I suggested that the learning objective should be to understand why the kicks failed and not why we succeeded.

This is tricky stuff because we need to refuse our ego the credit of a job well done and reduce it to a bad decision by the attacker.

As I said at the time, we should work on these defences against opponents kicks to understand the futility of unsophisticated, obvious attacking.

As we know Wing Chun is based on everyday human body movements, if our attacker is an everyday type of human, which they will be, there is a random chance that they could come up with the same response as we would use to the same attack. 

Without realising or intending it.

I realise that this is Chimpanzee typing out Shakespear level of possibility but it is a possibility, and Wing Chun does not take chances no matter how small.

Wing Chun is not for sport, if we are using our training someone is actively trying to harm us.

Not a place to take chances.

 Wing Chun training shows us is that when we use our shapes and movements, working from the perspective of Counter-Attack, the majority of what others see as effective, useable attacks do nothing more than put the attacker in a perilous position. 

Returning to the Sports counter-Attack for a moment, once the breakthrough has been made the counter-Attack is completed.

From this point on it is an attack in its own right, do not miss this.

 Did you miss it?

There is still a lot of work to be done, team ‘A’ will turn and chase, if it is Soccer or Hockey there is a goalie to take on and there is every chance of the break fizzling out and it is back to the drawing board, once again taking up intelligent positions, moving with the press, filling gaps and waiting for that moment, waiting for a window of opportunity to open.

Counter-Attacking is not a method or strategy it is a conscious and deliberate decision not to force an attack.

It is a waiting game.

Once taken, this decision can apply our method and prosecute our strategy.

I realise that this is a bit wordy and may take a few run-throughs to get it, there is another way, go watch some Football or Ice Hockey.

WE DO NOT SEE THE WORLD AS IT IS. WE SEE IT AS WE ARE.

Sil Lim Tao translates to the Way of the Little Idea. The little Idea is simple, but the ‘Way’ to discover the Little Idea is less simple.

Hi guys, this is to try to prompt those of you that do not yet spend quality SOLO time working with the Form to get more involved with it.

I get it, it can be frustrating trying to understand how doing a Form can be fundamental to our core abilities.

Been there, done that.

It took me about 7 years before I finally understood the importance but once I did my Wing Chun improved on an almost daily basis.

I am just trying to save you time. Lots of time.

Understanding complex ideas easily is as much about understanding the analogies we use as it is about genuinely related information.
Analogies are the pictures we use to bring into focus or gather up the loose ends of a vague idea or underdeveloped concept.

Try to consider the Sil Lim Tao Form as a physical manifestation of an analogy. Let it paint you a picture.

Sil Lim Tao translates to the Way of the Little Idea. The little Idea is simple, but the ‘Way’ to discover the Little Idea is less simple.

Because we confuse the “Way” with the”IDEA“.

The “Way” is not the “IDEA“.

“The Map is Not the Territory, the Word is Not the Thing” as pointed out by the philosopher Alfred Korzybski”.

The Sil Lim Tao Form is not the Sil Lim Tao, it is a Form, a movement set, as easy as it is to read this it can prove difficult to digest.
The Sil Lim Tao Form is not the Way, it is a vehicle to approach and then explore the Way. But it is not just a vehicle it is also a scaffold that supports and reinforces the IDEA while we build it. And it is also the concept that told us we needed a vehicle to find the IDEA in the first place.

There are three aspects to training, a physical aspect, what we do. A mental aspect, what/how we think. An emotional aspect, how we feel. These three separate aspects are tightly interconnected, how we feel affects how we think, how we think affects what we do, what we do affects how we feel, around and around and around we go.
Understanding this interconnection shines a light on the importance of self-talk because self-talk is the major contributor to how we feel.

What does your self-talk say when you consider spending 10 minutes on the Form?

Wing Chun was thought up many years before ‘data retrieval systems’ were invented, years before people understood the role of the conscious mind or short-term memory and the subconscious mind or long-term memory, and how these systems worked together. Years before neuroscience discovered that all physical action begins in the Brain/Mind.
From one synapse a signal is sent, that signal is received by a different synapse, a nerve or muscle is activated, an action is performed.

Even the action of standing still, doing nothing is something we actively do!

It is via this interconnection that we come to understand the “IDEA” that became Wing Chun.

When we are in training mode, moving slowly, deliberately and accurately, we are in our conscious mind, accessing short-term memory doing what we are thinking. Our brain is impressing/recording this action to our subconscious mind or long-term memory so that later if we find ourselves in a situation that we do not have enough time to assess and choose the right action, no time to think, we just hit the replay button and allow our subconscious to choose.

If we are not regularly engaging with the Sil Lim Tao Form then on some level we are telling ourselves that it has little or no value.

Without knowing it we are moving into a good/bad, right/wrong, correct/incorrect mindset.

Every action we do, every defence/attack choice is created from aspects of the Sil Lim Tao Form.

Why would our subconscious mind choose to respond with something that we keep telling ourselves is of little value?

Developing our power is 100% in the Mind, consciousness is not optional, if we are awake we are aware, conscious power is everyday power. 

Developing our subconscious power is less automatic, we reach it through consistent, deliberate practice.  

To phrase this in easy English the aim is to Act, Feel and Think in the same way to the same end. 

Three different paths, one vehicle.

The Sil Lim Tao Form.

Stack it up, power it up, build it up.

In the lower of the two videos, I mention that we are trying to be the best we can be at this or any other singular time.

There will be days in training when we appear to never get with the project, nothing goes the way we want it to go, even on this day we are the best we can be…. on this day, at this time in this place.

No one chooses to train poorly, we all give it all that we have, so if it starts going sideways be aware of this, do not try to train harder, do less, even take a break.

When it comes to fu**ing up… TODAY IS NOT THAT DAY.

Words of advice for young people….

IF WE HOPE TO SUCCESSFULLY BE NASTY TO OTHER PEOPLE IT BEGINS BY BEING NICE TO OURSELVES…..THE “D” MAN.

“And we may ask ourselves, well, how did we get here”?

KUNG HEI FAT CHOY to all of you guys and all visitors.

A new year a new start, well that is the dream, but this year it is tinged with doubt due to the Pandemic.

There is always hope or there is nothing, but new starts lead us into thinking of the past period that we have just endured

The changes our school has gone through are many, and some of you do not know the full story.

Chinese New Year is our anniversary.

It was the first Monday of the Lunar New Year for 2010, the Year of the Golden Tiger, that we held the opening night of what is now Wing Chun Sydney.

On the first Monday of this Lunar New Year, the Year of the Water Tiger, we turn 12 years old, and we are only just hanging on.

I know that there are many schools in a similar perhaps even worse situation, many have already upped stumps and headed to the Pavillion.

In the wake of the ravages the school has suffered due to the ramifications of Covid-19, what was once a healthy 40 students and 2 schools is now just 8 of us in the Studio at the back of my home.

To paraphrase David Byrne…

“And we may ask ourselves, well, how did we get here”?

My Sifu, Jim Fung Cheung Kuen passed away in 2007, to many who trained with him this was unexpected.

Out of nowhere, we were rudderless.

His school, the I.W.C.A. was suddenly adrift and taking in water.

The consensus at the top was to keep on keeping on, but this was always a flawed IDEA.

There was no natural successor.

So the school’s 7 most senior students assumed control, the governance of the school fell upon what was at best a non-aligned, non-cooperative committee.

The writing may not have yet been on the wall but the signwriters Van was in the Carpark.

Skip to 18 months later, Wednesday evening after instructor training, in the Cosmo pub over the road from the Training Hall, most of the remaining Senior Instructors carrying on like Wednesday night was party night.

In particular, as usual, me complaining about the fact that the new school had nothing in common with the school our Sifu ran, the school we helped him build.

The ‘Old School”.

A good friend and long-time training partner Greg turns around to me and says…

… “For f*cks sake Derek, are you still going on about this? Either get over it or just leave.”

The chances are that Greg had responded this way to my non-stop complaints every Wednesday evening.

But this Wednesday, perhaps I had not drunk as much, I heard him.

I nodded.

I thanked him for his insight.

The next day, Thursday, I turned up to the sub-school I was responsible for in one of Sydney’s outer suburbs, a group that I had managed for the past 11 years, and gave the students the news that for me…

… the race was run.

To be expected the sub-school continued but a few months and a few replacement instructors later one of the more serious students, Sam, asked if I would be willing to independently teach a breakaway group he had assembled.

A group made up of the core members of the old sub-school.

12 students met with me to lay out their IDEA and asked if I would teach them.

It was a good IDEA, more importantly, it was not my IDEA.

On the first Monday of the Chinese New Year of 2010, we came into existence.

Wing Chun Inc. Began as 14 people with the same goal.

12 students, my wife Mandy, and myself.

The first few years kicked on brilliantly, and there was a moment when we were almost famous, 2 schools at different ends of Sydney and over 40 students.

Things change, life is tricky.

Today, of the 12 Foundation Members, only Sam is still on-board, which is fitting as it was Sam’s drive that created the whole IDEA in the first place.

Thanks to Covid-19 we are now just 8 people.

But we are the best 8.

In February 2010 we grew from 14 people.

We still have Sam.

We can do it again.

Rise up, get on board.

THE REAL VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY IS NOT IN SEEKING NEW LANDSCAPES,

BUT IN SEEKING NEW EYES.

MARCEL PROUST.

HI GUYS,

Try to watch this video a couple of times before your next training, and of course, find time to work the movements.

Things will make sense a lot quicker and sink in a lot easier if you have this in your head.

Stay Frosty.

video

What message are we sending ourselves if we are trying to engage an opponent at medium to long-distance?

As you guys all know I believe that the most important attribute for a Martial Artist is honesty.

So honestly…

…does kicking have a genuine place in a Close – Quarter Combat style such as Wing Chun?

Let me clarify this when I say kicking I am talking about using our leg or foot as a primary attack weapon.

My teacher, Jim Fung {Chuen Keung} was an astonishing kicker and I witnessed some spectacular demos of his ability over the 17 years I trained under him, refer to the picture above to get some idea.

The thing is that kicks like the one above are, by my Sifu’s own admission, NOT Wing Chun.

He did them for the show, to attract more business because it was the type of thing new students wanted, and he always wanted new students.

Kung Fu Movie stuff.

But he was good at it.

Without starting a ‘Bun Fight’ over what is or is not Wing Chun kicking, because it really does not matter in the bigger picture, only results matter, surviving street violence is not an Olympic sport, no one is keeping score or awarding points.

However, if we claim to be doing Wing Chun then we should train Wing Chun.

Because ultimately it is not about Wing Chun kicking, it is about understanding the thinking behind Wing Chun kicking.

Those elusive ‘CONCEPTS’, that ‘Little IDEA”.

If, as we all repeatedly say, Wing Chun is a Concept Driven Fist Fighting style {KUEN} our theatre of operations is, at most, where we play Chi Sau, touching distance.

What message are we sending ourselves if we are training to engage an opponent at medium to long-distance?

I have always believed that Wing Chun is a ‘clever’ Martial Art, so let us take a clever approach to {sic} ‘Kicking’.

The video below was originally intended as the intro to a larger discussion on the merits of kicking, but I think that it is a good enough thought exercise to be viewed as stand-alone information, as a primer for the bigger picture of what is to come regarding how Wing Chun people use their legs in a violent situation.

As always, Y.M.M.V.

WHEN IT COMES TO ASS-KICKING, BE SURE IT AINT YOURS.

What is being taught is not correct but it is relatively easy to nudge it in the right direction if we know what to look for, and we are honest with ourselves.

I am still busy writing the e-book that I spoke of some months ago, writing an E-Book that actually has useable, honest information, is a very long-drawn-out process, longer than my first E-book by a country mile.

It is very clear to me that I will need to do an accompanying Video, or perhaps just commit the whole thing to video to bring clarity to some of the more, let’s say semi-controversial, deep or weird aspects of the training.

Here is the lead-in to my Chapter explaining Biu Gee, feedback is welcome.

What we were told as the history of Wing Chun is more and more being brought into doubt, recent research from respected professional Social Science Researchers has shed light in some dark corners, Ip Man is looking more and more quixotic.

NOTHING IS TRUE, EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED.

Hassan-i Sabbāh. 1034–1124

S.L.T. ‘C’. section.     BUI GEE.

As with Chum Kiu, it is important that we do not consider the Biu Gee to be a new Form but more a new dance, or even better some new moves to an old dance.

 If we can do this, once we get past the dance and have time to think about the moves of the Biu Gee, it actually helps to make Wing Chun smaller.

Observing how a certain movement from the first Form is expanded in the Chum Kiu and then transformed further in the Biu Gee lets us make the connections needed for the whole system to become one movement, one IDEA.

BIU GEE HIDDEN TRUTH IN PLAIN SIGHT.

A brief chat about what is publicly presented as Biu Gee, especially on YouTube.

Biu Gee is often referred to as being secret information that must not pass outside the door of the school.

 Although I do not believe in there being secret information in Wing Chun I am comfortable with the idea that early Wing Chun Schools wanted to keep their best bits to themselves and as such used disinformation so that other styles would not have knowledge that could allow them to win in a fight.

Especially at the time of the Hong Kong Rooftop Challenge Fights in the 1950s.

There was potentially so much Face to be lost.

 So not really secret, more likely just obscured from outsiders.

It makes a lot of sense not to allow your enemies to know what you do, but how do we keep it all to ourselves, how can we teach publicly without exposing our knowledge?

Junior students always talk to their friends, always try to show how their style is superior, they show everything that they have been taught, repeat everything that they have been told, in this day and age it is Youtube, nothing is held back.

If we are genuinely working on ways to defeat our opponents what would we do if we knew the opponent was listening to our lessons?

We would disguise all the information in a way that sounds correct but in reality, would never work.

This is mainstream Wing Chun today.

What most of the world thinks is Wing Chun is not the whole truth, in fact, I believe that it is deliberately misrepresented.

Is it at all possible to teach broken Wing Chun and yet somehow have the students learn the truth?  

This is the myth behind the whole closed-door student thing, in public, they were taught broken Wing Chun then behind closed doors, it was corrected.

I do not think that this is likely, it would be too confusing, but what I think is a real possibility is that the serious students were told clearly that everything was broken and that the real work was to explore what they were taught and understand why and where it was broken.

Learn how to fix it, or at the least come back to their Sifu with their findings so that he could put them on the right path.

If as students we believe everything we are told we have voluntarily accepted the disinformation.

Yes, the magic “broken” Wing Chun will appear to work really well in theory, in training, even in demonstrations it will appear to be unbelievably good.

‘One Inch Punch’ good?

 Disinformation fails if it does not appear to be true.

Wing Chun is fighting and fighting is not that complicated.

Unless someone has never had a genuine violent experience it is patently obvious that most of what is passed off as Wing Chun will fail and fail instantly against even a moderately combat-experienced fighter of any style.

It is not a long way wrong, but it is wrong enough, some vital information is missing.

But the truth is out there, in fact, it is right here in front of us in plain view.

 We call it Biu Gee.

 The correction formula that teaches us how to nudge broken Wing Chun into the art we all hope it is.

The ideas presented in the first two Forms will not work correctly without the oil and grease that can only be found in Biu Gee.

 It was always meant to be this way.

 Only loyal, dedicated students trained long enough to be shown Biu Gee.

 Dedication and loyalty to the school got the gravy.

But in this time-poor, ‘please feed me’ world that we live in, especially when we are paying serious coin to the Wing Chun School to provide a service, very few students undertake the real work.

 It is not the student’s fault, they more than likely were not told it was broken, many Instructors that set themselves up as Sifu are unknowingly teaching broken Wing Chun.

It is not their fault either, for they did not realise that they were teaching broken Wing Chun they simply passed on their Sifu’s disinformation in the way it was passed to them.

Generations of effective disinformation.

What is being taught is not correct but it is relatively easy to nudge it in the right direction if we know what to look for, and we are honest with ourselves.

Our Sifu or Sigung cannot teach us anything, only point us in the right direction, we must do the work in our own way and find our own Wing Chun.

There was a time in my training when my Sifu said to me…

  …“When you come to my class it should be to get your homework marked and not to ask for my help with your training”.

I very much doubt that I was the only one of his students he said this to.

No secret information here.

A painting of a Horse never won the Melbourne Cup.

There is a saying that my Sifu used, and many other Sifus still use that I absolutely and completely disagree with….  Wing Chun is easy to learn but difficult to Master, maybe like so many things in Wing Chun this saying simply does not translate clearly into English, because in English this statement is an Oxymoron.

To master something we must first learn it, if it is easy, it is easy.

Improving in any Martial Art, but especially Wing Chun is not really about the physical training, it is not about power production or dexterity, it is not about footwork or punching, it is not about Chi Sau or Forms but these are the things that consume our time, this is what we consider to be ‘THE WORK’.

But is it?

I know from experience that in the Chaos of a street fight there is precious little thinking going on, it is only in hindsight that we can garner an idea of what we did to survive.

Only once we are safe at home do we try to retrofit those actions to reflect our training.

As if it was even important.

Only the outcome is ever important.

An interesting thought exercise is to ask ‘does reaching Master Level have anything in common with surviving violence’?

These oblique ideas need to be justified if we truly wish to be in control of our own training and have it fulfil the role we wish it to play.

How do we do this, how do we shape our involvement and as such propel our training to the top level?

How do we become masters?

Many people here in Australia who practice Wing Chun focus the majority of their training on the Siu Nim Tao Form, which if it works for you is just fine but how do you know it is the best approach if it is the only approach you use?  

We benefit in any endeavour by using multiple approaches, by having different expectations, it may be cliche´ but it’s true that…

…“If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always gotten”…

…so hoping to achieve upwards momentum by continually working on one small aspect of a large system is a bit of a pipe dream.

I believe that working on only one Form, and this could be any Form, is procrastination, it is lazy,  growth and improvement require feeding with a complex diet, they need dynamic involvement. 

A painting of a Horse never won the Melbourne Cup.

There is another relatively large stumbling block when it comes to advancing in Wing Chun, most of the important learning objectives are achieved by working out how to “not do“ certain things.

Such as not fighting force, not creating tension in the body, not using overt strength so the real difficulty becomes how do we learn how to “not do“ something by actively doing something else?

This is quite a conundrum.

Anchoring our training in any single activity is self-limiting, self-defeating. 

Each Form has a core learning objective often multiple core learning objectives that only begin to make sense once they are viewed in relationship to the whole.  

For instance what does the Siu Nim Tao teach us about moving our body or accepting force?  

What does Chum Kiu teach us about driving our energy out to the edges of the Body or Core winding.  

What does Biu Gee teach us about moving around and negotiating an opponent? 

What does the Dummy Form teach us about extending our awareness and energy out to power a weapon?

What do the Knives or Pole Forms teach us about stillness?

Ultimately we must ask ourselves what does Wing Chun teach us about anything that is not in itself Wing Chun?  

If we can even come close to answering this we could follow it up by asking “what are we doing about this”?

Perhaps ask “what are we training for”?

When the brown gets airborne and the fan shares it around it will not be two people playing Wing Chun.

Every event is the sum of its parts, even if we are faultless, peerless, immaculate, any situation we find ourselves in will be at best 50% Wing Chun and 50% some nutter trying to hurt us.

Do we understand that the map is not the territory?

Alfred Korzybski, an early 20th-century semantics scientist and philosopher, stated that the map is not the territory. He believed that individuals don’t have absolute knowledge of reality. Instead, they have a set of beliefs built up over time about reality. People’s beliefs about reality and their awareness (their map) is not reality itself (the territory). 

 Be nice until it’s time to not be nice. Dalton

It is just us doing some stuff by using our ‘Body’.

Monday evening I was hosting a small group session with Kunal and Rick.

Kunal has only just returned since the beginning of the lockdowns so there was a good deal of chatter and updating going on.

While trying to explain my “Only one body, only one movement, only one thought” IDEA, Kunal had a lightbulb moment.

He said…

“It is like if I made 12 models of myself in different positions, squatting, lunging, throwing a ball and that kind of stuff when people who knew me saw one of the models, a different model for each person, they would say there is a model of Kunal.

They would not say there is a model of Kunal lunging or squatting or throwing a ball”.

They would see me because every model was me, always the same ‘Body’ doing the different things”.

Mr K. Nailed it.

At first, this does not sit right in our head but this is something to engage with, to think deeply about.

Whatever position we are in, whatever shape we adopt or whatever action we are involved in we are doing it with the same Body.

Our Body is always just our Body if we are standing up, laying down, running up a hill or falling off of a chair.

The shape of our ‘Body’ is always the same no matter what we are doing.

Body shaped.

Thinking that we need to relate to our bodies differently in different situations is a trap that many students fall for, with no understanding of why or where that idea came from.

It most certainly does not come from me.

As I said, Kunal nailed it.

It is just us doing some stuff by using our ‘Body’.

Once we understand how our ‘Body’ operates, we instantly and effortlessly adapt it to different needs without any apparent conscious input.

If we are playing a game that requires us to pass someone a ball to begin, if they are close it is simply ‘here you go’ from our hand to theirs.

If they are a metre or two away it is a soft and gentle loop, if they are four or five metres from us it is an overhand throw.

No need to think, just ‘pass f***ing the ball’.

How does this happen? 

Because we all know that it does happen.

Why did we not need to make deliberate changes to our body shape or our thinking and strategy to make the different actions?

Just as in the last video, I got Knunal and Rick to walk around the room keeping a ball balanced on the back of their hand.

Easy.

They even started doing a little jig without dropping the ball.

No overt thinking is involved.

Just a clear, simple, intention.

Nothing we do in training is trying to teach us Wing Chun.

It is trying to help us organise our thinking and movement into a coherent whole.

Once we see this it is simply a case of moving the Bad Guy’s hand out of the way and hitting him.

I hear you ask.

How do we move the Bad Guy’s hand away?

My answer.

How do we open a door?

Bring this up next time you train and perhaps you will have a lightbulb moment.

The WORK then becomes ‘how do we keep the light on’?

WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND, THINGS ARE UST THE WAY THEY ARE.

WHEN YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND, THINGS ARE JUST THE WAY THEY ARE.

ZEN PROVERB.

These are not real divisions but for now, they are all we have to work with.

HEY GUYS, listen up.

Wing Chun has two distinct sides, let us call them the physical and the non-physical.

These are not real divisions but for now, they are all we have to work with.

This post may not make a lot of sense to some of you, especially the newer guys, but that is fine, it is a primer for the work ahead.

A placeholder until you catch up.

If it does not make sense do not try to force it, just allow it to sit in your head and grow like soft cheese left in the fridge for too long.

That day may not be this day.

But that day will come.

And it will be wonderful.

Hold fast my hearties.

Stay the course.

A JOURNEY OF ONE THOUSAND MILES STARTS WITH A SINGLE STEP.