KUNG FU NOTES 11/30/2009 PART 1

I’ve been spending a lot of time feeling the ground with the bottom of my foot.
I noticed a while ago that whenever I’m doing chisao with Will and working on “being connected”, I always get a “fail”, I feel stable and at rest.
My weight falls on both feet.
Whenever I sometimes don't get a “pass”, I feel mildly unstable, like I’m in mid-air.
My weight is only on one foot at a time.
I’ve heard the term “third leg” around somewhere in wing chun talk, and when I’m connected to the other person all the way down to the ground, it feels like I’m using them as a third leg.
When I’m “in mid-air”, there’s a pressure on the bottom of one foot pressing against the ground.
When that pressure disappears, I’m disconnected and my kung fu stops working.

Recently, I read Chen Man Ching’s book Tai Ch’i Chuan.
He talks about tai chi “coming from the bottom of the foot” and “springing from the legs”.
That exactly describes what I’ve been feeling in the last few months.
I play around with constantly with the feeling of pushing against the ground
Being on one foot at a time but never resting on one foot.
Always moving in a direction while my body weight is in mid-air, always falling in one direction or another.
And constantly changing direction.
Sometimes it feels like a slow form of tap dancing, hip-hop, or doing an Irish jig.
Sometimes it feels like playing basketball.
I play around with switching my weight from one foot to the other foot.
Sometimes as quickly and lightly as I can, sometimes as slowly and gently as I can, but always as delicate and gentle as I can.

Chen Man Ching writes that “the weight is never on both feet at the same time.”
Does that mean that, practicing the tai chi form, the weight is always rocking from foot to foot but never resting on either foot, like I’ve been feeling? Since I don’t do taichi, I’m going to watch some Youtube videos of tai chi to see if that’s how they do the form.

So, after all this playing around with developing sensitivity and awareness in the bottom of my feet, I felt something very clearly for the first time – I could feel when my foot pressed against the ground, taking out the slack between us, and making a connection all the way down to Will’s feet. Will’s talked about it lots of times, but it was the first time that I had really felt the ground under my feet connected to the ground under Will’s feet. That’s what I believe “making a bridge” means. Our bodies meet together and make a bridge, connecting the piece of land under my feet with the piece of land under Will’s.

All this time I’ve been training wing chun, I’ve never had any awareness in my feet. That was a big break in the chain.

I'M BACK. (AUGUST)

I haven't written anything on this blog for more than half a year, as the health of my business and my new baby takes precedence over writing a blog.

Lucy's now 7 months old and doing great, and my business is growing more and more stable. I still have too many thoughts in my head to not write. My hope is to sit down and write one or two posts a month. I just don't have more spare time than that, but I the need to process and express the information and experiences that have been accumulating and percolating inside me.


More to come soon.

NINJA PARADE

Cut and paste this link:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/ninja_parade_slips_through_town

RAMBLING ABOUT "TRANSFORMATION" OR SOME SUCH NONSENSE...

A blog that I like recently wrote:
“..my hope is to learn the rest of the CPL BGZ and XYQ systems this year. I may learn some liuhebafa, as well, if time permits…”

I thought I would take 5 minutes to write a brief opinion, instead I stayed up until 4 am trying to work out my thoughts until it came close to saying what I wanted to say.
I'm trying not to ramble when I comment on other people’s blogs, I prefer to do my rambling on my own blog. That way nobody reads it.

I tried to describe ideas that have been forming in my head for years that needed to be released into writing like a boil that needs to be lanced.

“..my hope is to learn the rest of the CPL BGZ and XYQ systems this year. I may learn some liuhebafa, as well, if time permits…”:

These few sentences stirred up the following mess:

Do you want to be the CMA equivalent of a professional college student – you know, the guy you knew in college who had been in school for the last ten years and still pursuing another degree because they weren’t ready to face the real world?

Training martial arts is not about acquiring more and more choreography.
Training martial arts is about experiencing a transformation;
a transformation of how you move,
a transformation of how you react,
a transformation of who you are.
The choreography is a means to that end.
Learning the choreography is often mistaken as the goal, rather than a path to that goal.

Forms are not about learning “moves”.
Forms are about learning how to move.
Forms are about learning movement skill.
Bagua Zhang, Hsing Yi Chuan, and Taiji Chuan are all beautiful forms and each alone should be more than sufficient to train movement skill.

Liuhebafa is just as good, but the forms you already know are really good forms, and more than enough forms to last you the rest of your life.
Some people collect forms like Imelda Marcos collects shoes.

Acquiring more forms is not the same as acquiring more skill.

How many forms do you know now? 10? 20? 50?
How intimately do you know each form?
How many forms do you need to know? Maybe one is enough?
How often do you practice your forms, every day?
If you practice the same form once every day for a year, you’ve only done a few hundred repetitions of that form.
You have only just begun to feel it.
Transformation requires doing it thousands of times.

This is just my opinion, based on my own experiences, but I think you should spend more time practicing the forms you already know.
Practice what you’ve already learned,
Learn to feel each form more deeply, more intensely, more intimately.
The kind of transformation I’m talking about is about learning to feel.
Transformation requires endless hours and hours and hours and hours and still more hours spent in continuous movement, both with and without a partner.

The skill of a martial artist is not measured by how much choreography we have memorized, or how many “techniques” we’ve learned.
Our skill is measured by our ability to move spontaneously under pressure, under threat.
The only way to measure that is by practicing with a non-cooperative partner.

How well do you move under pressure?
In the face of danger, of physical threat?

Do you rely on strength to overcome strength, or do use technique to overcome a stronger person without using strength?

Do you tense up when you work with a strong, resistive partner, or do you stay relaxed and continue moving, without speeding up, without tensing up, and without getting trapped or stuck?

If a friend who is as strong as or stronger than you holds both your wrists, do you struggle?
Do you use upper body strength to break free, or do you channel your lower body strength through relaxed, empty-feeling arms, without struggle?
Does your bi-cep, tri-cep, or shoulder flex?

If yes, you don’t need to learn more forms.
Practice your forms, yes.
But spend hours and hours and hours and then more hours working with different partners,
with varying degrees of resistance,
until you can channel the power of your legs and hips through your arms without your arms getting jammed or locking up.
When you can do that, go learn as much choreography as you want. Have fun.

Many martial arts, like Judo, Tae Kwon Do, and Muay Thai have excellent techniques and are easier to learn than TCMA, but they rely on both technique and physical conditioning.
TCMA are designed to rely on perfected technique alone.
Every TCMA is about learning idealized movement skill.

Most people train TCMA for years, decades, even lifetimes, and never learn that skill.
Most people teaching TCMA never never themselves learn that skill.
They think that learning the choreography means they’ve mastered kung fu.
The choreography is not the kung fu.
The choreography is merely a path to finding the kung fu.
To borrow language from Rory Miller,
Violence is the territory, choreography is just a map.
Mastering the map is not the same thing as mastering the territory.

I don’t mean to sound like an expert or a know-it-all. This is just my opinion, based on my experience and understanding at this time.
I have experienced the transformation that I am trying to describe, but my own transformation is only partially complete.
I have tasted “perfected form”, I know how it feels far different from raw strength, but I’m not at this time able to maintain perfect at all times.
I still have my own work to do.
Some people will not understand or relate to what I am talking about.
They haven’t felt it, it’s outside of their paradigm.
But people who have felt it will understand.