Wing Chun Sydney, Australia

“You can’t beat people up and have them say I love you”.

Here is something for all of us who regard ourselves as Traditional Martial Artists training in a Traditional Martial Art to ponder.

This thought exercise is not pointing any fingers in any direction, but it is something that we should all at least think about.

This is not a new topic, and not just about Martial Arts, back in the late 1960s American comedian Murray Roman had a socially aware record album release called “You can’t beat people up and have them say I love you”.

The same question from a different direction.

“Q”. Do people who believe they are actively involved in improving themselves and evolving into a higher state of being, through the practice of an art such as Kung Fu, believe that violence is the answer to “ANY” question?

This is IMPORTANT.

If we ever find ourselves in trouble, it will be our inner selves that respond to this challenge.

If that inner self does not believe in violence why would it choose to use violence, why would it choose our training?

If you are one of FB community that end a post by wishing people peace and love, which is commendable, this action indicates that you hold yourself to high account, or are at the very least on that path.

If this is you, the chances of you using your training are somewhere “south of zero“.

Or it should be if you are working toward being that person.

In our modern “Social Media World” trendy Maxims are more often quoted than statements of genuine wisdom, maxims such as “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind’ sound fine and dandy until someone rapes your daughter, steals your truck or runs off with your dog.

Yet another FB favourite is “believe in Peace but prepare for War”.

These sentiments have no basis in reality.

If you believe in Peace you Believe in Peace, so why would you be preparing for war, only people who think that violence works prepare for war.

There is nothing wrong with believing that violence works.

But there is plenty wrong with claiming that you do not believe this and then practising how to use it.

Which of course is what the “believe in Peace but prepare for War” people are doing all the while talking of their wish for Peace.

Hypocrisy is not the path to enlightenment.

There are no sides to this discussion, so please do not take one, just think about it, and how you and your training relates to it.

We can train Kung Fu with no intention to use it, no foul there.

But whichever we choose we should be honest.

At the end of the day, we make our own choices, even if we would rather not admit it.

But did our inner self get the E-mail about not using our training if we get in trouble?

Train hard, think deep, choose wisely.

LOVE EVERYONE, BUT NEVER SELL YOUR SWORD. Just kidding.

during my study Tea became much more than Tea

One of my favourite parable-like stories is the one about the Japanese Tea Master Sen no Rikyū (千利休).

On his retirement he was asked what he had learned after dedicating his life to the practice of Chanoyu, the way of Tea, he answered.

Before Chanoyu Tea was just Tea, during my study Tea became much more than Tea, but in the end, once I finally understood, Tea, once again, became Tea.

For Richard Feynman, the world-famous theoretical physicist it was “If you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it.”

We all overthink things, and it is at pandemic levels in Wing Chun.

We all somehow forget that the main principle is SIMPLICITY.

Violence is a shit fight, so at the end of the day it is understanding shit that matters.

Hey guys,

As you all know I like playing with swords, and as such I will look for information on Youtube.

You all also know that i do not think that there is any stylistic value when it comes to violence,this is niot just Wing Chun vs other styles, it is also armed vs empty hands.

Violence is a shit fight, so at the end of the day it is understanding shit that matters.

Here is a brilliant video on Swordsmanship that could just as easily be about empty hand fighting.

Instead of doing a diservice and reframing all the points in this vide i think it far better to just post the original.

Enjoy, and hopefully learn and survive.

I quite simply could not have said any of this better.

PIC

Of all the people that post videos in Woing Chun I have the utmost respect for Alan Orr.

Here is a recent video that hits the nail right on the head.

This gentleman is a real teacher.

NO MAN STEPS IN THE SAME RIVER TWICE.

This video as is up on YouTube, we desperately need new blood so I am breaking with my own advice and posting it there, it is a thin hope at best because the people who use YouTube are either looking for entertainment or do not live anywhere near us.

There are some excellent points to listen to in this talk, even though you have heard me say these things for as long as you have trained with me, it is good to be reminded of the core elements.

BECAUSE IT IS NOT THE SAME RIVER,

AND HE IS NOT THE SAME MAN.

“What would need to happen for me to be able to use this thing out in the wild”?

This is another YouTube video, but it is an important conversation so read on.

Sooner or later we all fall for the Kung Fu fantasy of astonishing deeds for no effort, and the prime example is the One Inch Punch.

Like a great many things in Wing Chun, this is an exercise about the whole IDEA behind our thing, that at its heart is about every time we make contact, with any strike, from attack or defence, it is about understanding the dynamic of force and what is needed to manifest it.

My Sifu was amazing at this, and I have been on the receiving end and it is very, very real, at least in the non-chaotic, passive interaction that is a demonstration event.

But like everything we do, or see, we should ask…

“What would need to happen for me to be able to use this thing out in the wild”?

We soon realise that this training exercise has very little to do with performing a one-inch punch.

But if we can ignore the Circus, this is an excellent exercise with meaningful learning objectives.

But unfortunately most Wing Chun students just love the Circus.

If ever we had a contender for the best example of the “Finger pointing at the moon”, this will have my vote.

“The only wrong move is not to move”.

I’m back.

Not that I have been anywhere, just be busy doing more interesting stuff and forgetting my role as chronicler of the Everlasting Springtime Fist.

For the last few months, training has just been the senior guys and this style of training is more non-physical and not very video worthy, hence no posts, but I have reactivated my YouTube channel and I will try to add some content there, so I will also post it here, we desperately need some new blood to join us so even my dislike of youTube must be put aside.

If you are one of my lost tribe then you know well that I teach the physical aspects of Wing Chun as, at best, the third most important aspect to understand, not the main reason, and that I try to teach people how to successfully and powerfully defend themselves, as opposed to the mainstream approach of just being good at Wing Chun stuff.

This is the first posting to YouTube, I hope it helps someone.

Wing Chun is in danger of becoming a dinosaur or worse yet a religion.

This is a reposting of something from 2021, I think it is well worth revisiting.

Who did what, where, when and why?

Back in the mid-1850s, Leung Jan of Foshan {the creator of Wing Chun} was a doctor, herbalist and bonesetter working with the Red Boat Opera Troupe in Guangdong Province.

From his experiences with the Martial Arts actors of the Red Boat Troupe, he formulated a new Martial System that he called Wing Chun.

As a bonesetter, he would have been conscious of anatomically correct movement, and of course, would have avoided any of the injury-causing movements that he would have been treating the Red Boats Martial Artists for.

If we relate his situation/position then to what occurs today he would have been akin to a modern-day Physical Therapist working through a CrossFit Gym.

Perhaps along the lines of T.R.S’s Kelly Starret or Smashwerx’s Trevor Bachmeyer.

He was coming from a position of avoiding injury but more importantly doing things better than before.

Fast forwards to 1950, Hong Kong, Ip Man opens a school that would ultimately bring Wing Chun to the world.

It is doubtful that Ip Mans Wing Chun was remotely similar to Leung Jan’s, his knowledge came from a variety of sources and from the outset his ideas reflected the living experiences he had as an undercover policeman and intelligence officer.

Dark alleys, multiple attackers.

It is well documented that Ip Man deliberately removed many of the traditional Chinese elements from his Wing Chun, such as the Bagua and 5 elements, to appeal to the more modern thinking young people of post-civil-war Hong Kong.

Three times Ip Man changed the presentation and content of his Wing Chun to the point that when his sons joined him in Hong Kong in the early 1960s they did not recognise the art he was teaching compared to the art he taught them in Foshan.

Ip Man was feeling the pulse of the times and quite possibly created a new Martial Art.

Just like Dr Jan of Foshan, he was coming from a position of doing things better than before.

Two of Ip Mans more famous students, Wong Shun Leung and Chu Shong Tin, went on to make severe departures to what Ip Man had taught them, interestingly their changes were in contrary directions to each other.

Their reason for the change was more an update than a reinvention, they were coming from the same position of doing things better than before.

Ip man passed in 1972, Wong Shun Leung passed in 1997, Chu Shong Tin passed in 2014.

If we look around the Wing Chun world, everyone is ideologically stuck in the late 20th century Hong Kong.

Wing Chun is in danger of becoming a dinosaur or worse yet a religion.

Surely it is time for someone to be coming from a position of doing things better than before.

The old torches have long since burnt out.

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

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

Doing any Form is a kind of dancing, without a goal it is pointless, when we know what we are looking for we will instinctively find it in any Form, in every Form.

It was 17 years ago this month that my Sifu shuffled off to the great Kwoon in the sky, a great loss of a great man.

He is missed.

Something he would often ask me as I was standing doing the S.L.T. Form was “What are your Ankles doing at this moment”?

At first this really baffled me but after many conversations it became clear that he was reminding me not to be in any one part of my body at any one time, but to aim to be in all of my body all of the time.

This of course is an aspect of the “IDEA”, and a component of Sil Lim Tao training.

A trap I would fall into when he asked me this was to change my focus to my Ankles and as such be making the same error.

Since his passing, and the creation of my own school, this is something I try to pass on to you guys, and, just like my Sifu with me, I have no easy answers for you, no shortcuts or hints.

Only the FORM.

But do you know how to use the Form to improve capability?

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the poet, the author of The Little Prince, a hero fighter pilot who perished in World War II had this to say to us.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks or to do work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

Doing any Form is a kind of dancing, without a goal it is pointless, when we know what we are looking for we will instinctively find it in any Form, in every Form.

Do not waste your time and effort building ships, instead, yearn for the open sea, our incredible brain will then set about building ships.

In the video with this post may be difficult to see the point of what we are doing, after all effortless power is easy so it does not clearly show up, with this in mind watch how little everybody is effected when they do stuff.

Effortless power is achieved by transferring as much of our body mass/kinetic force as possible into the target, any kind of recoil effect that results from an action is a sharing of that body mass/kinetic force, no recoil is a sign that all of the body mass/kinetic force was transferred into the target.

Moving at speed increases momentum that in turn increases the force applied, moving slowly is simply the first of many baselines that can be scaled up.

The first baseline, i.e.moving slowly, if performed correctly will transfer the static body weight of the person punching, all of these guys are over 80kg, so these slow punches are the equivalent of being hit with 4 bags of concrete.

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment we contemplate it bearing within us the image of a Cathedral”.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry