The importance of knowing why

On Tuesday evening I received an important reminder about why it is necessary to understand what you are trying to achieve when performing a technique in a form. I was practicing a broadsword form and Sifu Maury entered the training area to observe the students. He was standing right by me and so, being lead by my ego, I tried very hard to impress. At one point in the form you perform a sidekick from a defensive position and follow it with a horizontal cut. So I pull off a beautiful head-high sidekick with a wide-sweeping cut and feel pretty smug that I didn't screw up.

Sifu Maury enters the floor and then educates us with the history of the weapon and tells us about the form being in combat with a staff. It turns out that a high sidekick pushes the opponent backwards, giving them the range advantage of the staff, so the sidekick is actually supposed to be a low one to the knee. This brings the opponent body down and forwards so it is perfectly in range for a quick follow-up cut. So rather than my spectacular sidekick impressing Sifu it just demonstrated my ignorance of the form.

A couple of great lessons here. Putting the controlling my ego lesson aside - something that I fear has a great many years of work ahead of me - it is a great illustration that every move in the form has a purpose and it is critical to understand the meaning in order to perform it
correctly and to help you remember. This enables every move to have an intention which will channel your body's energy into every technique. Back to intention again, I knew it would not be long before I mentioned it again...

Nick
White Sash

Intention

The subject of intention will most likely come up frequently in this blog as I have found it to be such an essential component of everything we do. In massage therapy school I was exposed to some of the power of intention in many situations. For example during myofascial work you can impact deeper fascia not by pushing harder, but simply by intending to do so. A very challenging concept and one I still haven't totally got my head around. More easier to grasp is the answer to people's concerns about massage and sexuality. Therapeutic massage is not sexual because there is no sexual intention behind it. If a practitioner had sexual feelings for the client the intention and energy in the touch would be different and it would be obvious to the client.

While training in massage therapy the excellent instructors would continually hammer home to us "what are you trying to achieve with your contact right now?". We were trained to question ourselves and if we could not answer that question then we needed to do something else. This creates the difference between a massage therapist that wants to make the client feel 'nice and relaxed' and a therapist that is trying to make a specific change to improve the musculo-skeletal health of their client.

So back to kung fu. Intention came up in the last class during sparring. While sparring we need to remember:

Why am I here? What am I doing? Is it real?

With every technique we need to be able to answer the question "what is the intention behind that technique?" if we can't answer that we are just waving our arms and legs around and wasting energy. Every attack needs to focussed on an area of the opponent that is vunerable to attack or be used with the objective to create that opening.

Is it real? That is a great way to remind us that although we are 'playing kung fu' as the Chinese put it, we are learning to fight for our lives while sparring.

That is enough about intention for now, but I guarantee it won't be too
long before I write about it again...

Nick
White sash

'No mind' through 'Sticky hands'

I was introduced to 'sticky hands' sparring last night. Fortunately we were able to swap between opponents to pick up on the difference in the feeling between each person. It was intense and just as mental as it was physical. You just put your body into a state of not trying to attack or defend, just being open to any movement that feels right and keeping as relaxed as possible so you can pick up on the opponents energy and intention. This was the sparring training I have been searching for, an opportunity to be in a state of 'no mind' while sparring and not worrying about taking a beating while I was experimenting with the approach.

Fighting with 'No mind' was an inspiring concept I picked up in Bruce Lee's 'The Tao of Gung Fu'. The mind gets in the way when fighting and if you have to take the time to think about your movements it slows them down. It is a mistake to be to cerebral about thinking 'now I will be offessive' and 'now I will be defensive'. You need to just relax your mind and put your trust into your own training which will respond when it needs to. It makes sense to me but is very challenging to do in practice, particularly if failure while getting used to the idea means taking a few knocks.

'Sticky hands' brought me much closer to the opponent, spatially and mentally. You get much more in tune with the opponent and it gets you thinking as much about what your opponent will do as well as your own actions. Focussing on your own performance is only being aware of half of the battle, learning how your opponent moves is the next step up and gives you the edge.

When practicing with a more experienced student I really felt that I got it last night. We tried again after the class and we were both very relaxed. I picked up on a subtlety which was not apparent before -- there is a place of most resistance coming from both hands at consistently changing directions. In the relaxed state it became clear that there was no point expending energy to be opposing this resistance and so you moved your body and intention to a path of least resistance around the main direction of force. This is a subtle concept to pick up on and something I have understood to be important when fighting - this seems to be the basis of softer styles of martial arts such as Tai Chi. It was not until last night that I actually experienced what it felt like.

Nick
White sash

A class with Sifu Maury

On Saturday the leadership class were honored to have Sifu Maury teach an additional class focused on forms and polishing the details. Sifu's way is to provide a solid background of instruction to do with the background and practical combat uses of the moves at the same time to help get an understanding of each move. It was just fantastic and brought the basic patterns to life for me. We went over the genesis series of blocks, temple sequence, 36 point block, our chi building exercise and mantis 1. Without understanding, Mantis 1 seems more like a dance with those strange mantis hands movements. In reality it is a way to teach speed and agility and the mantis hands a very clever blocking tool which is not obvious to look at. Mantis hands is a way of blocking that uses very little energy projected to the attacker. This is fundamental to the 'white eyebrow' style we are doing. Combat is fundamentally a series of energy flowing back and forth. If you defend someone with a strong energetic move as I have been trained in TaeKwon-Do then the opposing reaction is to react strongly to it. A low energy block doesn't create this reaction in the opponent and there is less likely to be any defensive reaction before you deliver your attack which you focus your energy in. The power of energy flow in combat cannot be underestimated, the samurai would win fights before they reached for their weapons.

Sifu made if very clear how important the stance work was, such as the temple sequence. The main point, besides developing power in the 'power generators' was to strengthen the knees and ankles, the weakest parts of the body. Shaolin would spend the first 3 years of their training in horse stance alone. The movement between the stances is critical as well, generating the power in the stance shift is fundamental to our art and allowed Bruce Lee at 135 pounds knock men about that were 2 times his weight.

The class was inspiring, helped to continue to fuel my passion for kung fu.

Nick
White sash