Kung fu is a skill concerned with a spontaneous and violent interaction between two people.
Though two-man forms do exist, most forms are practiced without a partner, and they are by nature choreographed; the spontaneousness of actual violence is not present.
So what purpose do they serve?
How are they useful in training the skill that is kung fu?
What I now feel about learning and practicing forms is this:
It’s not about learning and practicing "moves".
It’s about learning and practicing “movement” and “feeling”.
In that sense, learning and practicing forms IS dance.
And this, as I currently see it, is the combat application of the dance:
For beginners, practicing forms is a way of preparing to practice with a partner.
For people with years of experience, it’s also a way to practice feeling and movement when you don't have a like-minded partner available to practice with.
Which "moves" or "techniques" are strung together to constitute a form or a kata is irrelevant.
Spending a lot of time thinking about "how to use this technique" is interesting, but I don't feel it's central to what makes forms useful as a training tool.
The most important use of forms is both as a ritual and a dance that trains the correct quality of movement and emotional/mental state that allows movement to happen spontaneously and correctly when interacting with a partner (or, as mentioned, when someone is physically attacking you).
The fundamental principles that make kung fu work are far more similar to principles of salsa or tango than most people realize.
The movement and feeling of practicing forms is as joyful and pleasurable as doing salsa or tango or hip-hop, which is in and of itself a reason for practicing forms.
But since most of us are interested in the combat application, we probably won’t enjoy practicing forms unless we can directly feel how practicing these choreographed rituals relates to the skill of interacting with another person in a situation that is violent and unchoreographed.
That’s why I stopped training the forms, forgot them and had to relearn them.
For me, every move or technique under the sun feels exactly the same.
So I don’t drill moves or techniques.
I train that feeling, and the mental/emotional state that allows me to keep that feeling at all times while under rapidly and randomly changing pressure.
It feels like surfing.
When there is a like-minded partner available, I use that partner to practice the singular feeling and mental/emotional state.
When there is no like-minded partner available, I can practice feeling against the wall or a tree or a door, or feel how the bottom of my feet interacts with the ground as I shift my body weight around.
I also use simple, boring Wing Chun forms to practice that feeling and mental/emotional state.
Obviously, using a partner is more fun, more effective, and ultimately more important.
But I still find the forms to be useful as tools for both learning and practicing correct feeling and movement.
I once had a teacher who had learned more than 500 forms "because each one was more fun than the last".
But the simple Cheng Man-ching tai chi form consisting of 33 moves is enough to get the job done.
Anything more than that is just for fun.
Comments?
(This was something I had been thinking about for a long time. So when I finally started writing a comment about it on another blog, it all came gushing out. Since it was one of many blog topics still in my head that I haven't had time to write out, I decided to cut and paste it to the blog.)
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Friday, December 4, 2009
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 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.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, March 16, 2009
NINJA PARADE
Cut and paste this link:
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/ninja_parade_slips_through_town
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/ninja_parade_slips_through_town
Thursday, January 8, 2009
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.
“..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.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
What is "feeling"?
All kung fu is about learning to “feel” (not just wing chun).
Many people think that "feeling" or "sensitivity" means you "feel" what is happening and react to it by "doing a move", like "pak sao" and "lap sao" or "kwan sao".
I believe this is much too slow to work in a truly violent situation.
Violence is chaos.
I believe that real violence simply happens much too fast to know how to react to it.
If I’m not mistaken, it was Mike Tyson who said, "everybody's got a plan until they get hit."
People train as if they are going to know what to do if the guy does this or what to do if the guy does that.
People think that if they develop "feeling" or "sensitivity", they will know how to react when the time comes.
In my experience, reacting is just too slow.
Reaction will always be flawed.
I train to remain calm and maintain a singular, steady intent in the midst of violence.
I don't train how to react to violence, I train how to be unaffected by it.
I train how to ignore it.
If I am reacting to what I feel, by doing "kung fu moves", I am not doing kung fu, I am imitating kung fu.
Maybe we have to know what kung fu is supposed to look like so that we know if we are on the right path or the wrong path.
Maybe imitating kung fu movements is a step in learning it.
Maybe an important step.
But imitating kung fu is not the same thing as doing kung fu.
Doing “moves” can help us begin to learn feeling, at first.
After we get a sense of feeling, we can stop doing moves and allow our selves to be moved.
When I follow my feeling, new moves magically start to appear when they are appropriate.
To me, this is the single most important fact about learning to “feel”:
EVERY MOVE FEELS EXACTLY THE SAME.
There is only one feeling to be learned.
If I know what several moves feel like, I know what all moves feel like.
I can ignore the moves, the moves are a distraction from what's really important. I focus on the constant, singular feeling that is kung fu.
I stop focusing on which "move" to use and focus on maintaining the same correct "feeling" at all times.
My goal is to maintain that singular feeling, that singular state of feeling, at all times.
I project energy and intent correctly and wait for the correct movement to happen.
This way I can learn any move I need.
I have not learned the third wing chun form, but I have seen moves from the third form appear in my chisao, just from following the same feeling at all times.
These moves don't happen on purpose.
They just happen.
When the wrong move happens, it's not because I "did" the wrong move.
It's because I lost that feeling.
I lost that one, true feling that I want to keep at all times.
I lost my connection during a transition.
Either I got disconnected, or I got stuck.
When the feeling is correct, I am relaxed and projecting energy outwards at all times.
My body is equally connected to the ground under my feet and to the ground under my partner’s feet, becoming a bridge.
I don't "make" a bridge.
I am the bridge.
So long as I maintain this feeling, projection and connection at all times, the correct moves just appear spontaneously, I don't have to "do" moves.
I just watch them happen.
It has taken me tremendous faith and diligence to learn kung fu this way, but the more I train this way, the more it works for me.
When it does work for me it is very, very powerful.
It is also one of the most addictive, blissful and pleasurable feelings in the world, when I can achieve it.
It is not at all strenuous.
It is effortlessness.
I don't have to struggle, I don't have to "try".
I feel relaxed and at peace in the midst of violence.
I believe this to be the true way of all traditional, non-sport martial arts, like Filipino Kali, Indonesian silat, taijiquan, Okinawan karate, etc…
Feeling is feeling, projecting energy is projecting energy, and connecting your center of mass to another person's center of mass is the same, regardless of stance or style.
This is what I try to feel every time I practice chisao.
Is there anybody else who has felt this?
Isn't there anybody else who wants to feel this?
Many people think that "feeling" or "sensitivity" means you "feel" what is happening and react to it by "doing a move", like "pak sao" and "lap sao" or "kwan sao".
I believe this is much too slow to work in a truly violent situation.
Violence is chaos.
I believe that real violence simply happens much too fast to know how to react to it.
If I’m not mistaken, it was Mike Tyson who said, "everybody's got a plan until they get hit."
People train as if they are going to know what to do if the guy does this or what to do if the guy does that.
People think that if they develop "feeling" or "sensitivity", they will know how to react when the time comes.
In my experience, reacting is just too slow.
Reaction will always be flawed.
I train to remain calm and maintain a singular, steady intent in the midst of violence.
I don't train how to react to violence, I train how to be unaffected by it.
I train how to ignore it.
If I am reacting to what I feel, by doing "kung fu moves", I am not doing kung fu, I am imitating kung fu.
Maybe we have to know what kung fu is supposed to look like so that we know if we are on the right path or the wrong path.
Maybe imitating kung fu movements is a step in learning it.
Maybe an important step.
But imitating kung fu is not the same thing as doing kung fu.
Doing “moves” can help us begin to learn feeling, at first.
After we get a sense of feeling, we can stop doing moves and allow our selves to be moved.
When I follow my feeling, new moves magically start to appear when they are appropriate.
To me, this is the single most important fact about learning to “feel”:
EVERY MOVE FEELS EXACTLY THE SAME.
There is only one feeling to be learned.
If I know what several moves feel like, I know what all moves feel like.
I can ignore the moves, the moves are a distraction from what's really important. I focus on the constant, singular feeling that is kung fu.
I stop focusing on which "move" to use and focus on maintaining the same correct "feeling" at all times.
My goal is to maintain that singular feeling, that singular state of feeling, at all times.
I project energy and intent correctly and wait for the correct movement to happen.
This way I can learn any move I need.
I have not learned the third wing chun form, but I have seen moves from the third form appear in my chisao, just from following the same feeling at all times.
These moves don't happen on purpose.
They just happen.
When the wrong move happens, it's not because I "did" the wrong move.
It's because I lost that feeling.
I lost that one, true feling that I want to keep at all times.
I lost my connection during a transition.
Either I got disconnected, or I got stuck.
When the feeling is correct, I am relaxed and projecting energy outwards at all times.
My body is equally connected to the ground under my feet and to the ground under my partner’s feet, becoming a bridge.
I don't "make" a bridge.
I am the bridge.
So long as I maintain this feeling, projection and connection at all times, the correct moves just appear spontaneously, I don't have to "do" moves.
I just watch them happen.
It has taken me tremendous faith and diligence to learn kung fu this way, but the more I train this way, the more it works for me.
When it does work for me it is very, very powerful.
It is also one of the most addictive, blissful and pleasurable feelings in the world, when I can achieve it.
It is not at all strenuous.
It is effortlessness.
I don't have to struggle, I don't have to "try".
I feel relaxed and at peace in the midst of violence.
I believe this to be the true way of all traditional, non-sport martial arts, like Filipino Kali, Indonesian silat, taijiquan, Okinawan karate, etc…
Feeling is feeling, projecting energy is projecting energy, and connecting your center of mass to another person's center of mass is the same, regardless of stance or style.
This is what I try to feel every time I practice chisao.
Is there anybody else who has felt this?
Isn't there anybody else who wants to feel this?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
