Wing Chun must remain dynamic to ride that wave, not for adaptation to fight sport but as an expectation of common output that we have the greatest likelihood of encountering.
Chi Sau is a core vehicle for producing relaxation whilst adapting under pressure. It exists to foster practical spontaneous change. It also operates to manifest an individual’s expression of feeling based skill. It is a mechanism for building connotation of pressure, intention, and danger that does not exist solely on what the eyes perceive. This is advantage.
As a mechanism for skill enhancement, Chi Sau ensures we do not inhibit the gifted, or leave in our wake a school of cardboard cut-outs identical to their teacher and lacking in individuality.
If we lack coaching ability or care in leaving people to change during Chi Sau without the necessary experience to address their mistakes, then we should reassess our role as a teacher in providing guidance associated with fighting success.
Without discussing and practicing Chi
Sau we remove a student’s ability to express Wing Chun freely, and diminish
potential for success when using touch to assist in combat independently.
What could take Chi Sau’s place in providing students with the independence to experiment and build solid assertions on how to apply their Wing Chun effectively?
Everybody is entitled to an opinion, but if I was ever to imply that my experience was so great that I could afford to remove Chi Sau from my syllabus and transmit an equivalent degree of skill to a new generation without it, I would have to be extremely confident in my training methodologies and the aptitude of my students, before removing such an intricate piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
Everybody makes mistakes, until the human race loses the propensity to make mistakes, Chi Sau remains appropriate to training.
What could take Chi Sau’s place in providing students with the independence to experiment and build solid assertions on how to apply their Wing Chun effectively?
Everybody is entitled to an opinion, but if I was ever to imply that my experience was so great that I could afford to remove Chi Sau from my syllabus and transmit an equivalent degree of skill to a new generation without it, I would have to be extremely confident in my training methodologies and the aptitude of my students, before removing such an intricate piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
Everybody makes mistakes, until the human race loses the propensity to make mistakes, Chi Sau remains appropriate to training.
I have never met a respect worthy
exponent of Wing Chun that hadn’t absorbed themselves in some sort of Chi Sau
practice as part of their development. A characteristic of each and every
decent teacher I have come across is their uniqueness of output and the ability
of that uniqueness to remain underpinned by the core concepts and principles of Wing Chun
via Chi Sau.
Chi Sau could be viewed as a pipe
that students pass through, every so often we hit a knot and between us, we
work to untie those knots so free passage in the correct manner may continue.
It is the free unexpected nature of exchange, and the students’ reactive coping mechanisms therein that makes Chi Sau practice a progressive journey and a valuable time tested tool for self assessment.
It is the free unexpected nature of exchange, and the students’ reactive coping mechanisms therein that makes Chi Sau practice a progressive journey and a valuable time tested tool for self assessment.
As a measure of skill, students
and teachers alike should factor how intelligent and successful their output is
personally. Grounded in the commonalty of violence. Balanced against fight experience.
The problem we have is, Chi Sau is being used as a drill to build skill in avoiding injury. When we remove risk from Chi Sau, Wing Chun is removed completely from its domain. When you remove risk, people act on false opportunity. The probability associated to chance is skewed.
Attitude and change should be ingrained through risk and opportunity. Risk and opportunity in the form of aggression. When it is not, we are participating in a false reality. Without the head splitting honesty of consequence, we have only fight experience as balance and gauge. Without adequate experience or tutelage, you are playing blindfold Chi Sau... without the blindfold.
Chi Sau should provide opportunity
for honest reflection. (not at how well we fight, but at how well we sense and
adapt to stimuli in the immediate). However, when two parties connect with poor
skill, when two parties fail to acknowledge the damage associated with injury,
when two parties are not examined by a competent, honest reflection is subdued
by ‘what if’s’ and recognition hidden by non-contact.
The problem we have is, Chi Sau is being used as a drill to build skill in avoiding injury. When we remove risk from Chi Sau, Wing Chun is removed completely from its domain. When you remove risk, people act on false opportunity. The probability associated to chance is skewed.
Attitude and change should be ingrained through risk and opportunity. Risk and opportunity in the form of aggression. When it is not, we are participating in a false reality. Without the head splitting honesty of consequence, we have only fight experience as balance and gauge. Without adequate experience or tutelage, you are playing blindfold Chi Sau... without the blindfold.
Chi Sau should provide opportunity
for honest reflection. (not at how well we fight, but at how well we sense and
adapt to stimuli in the immediate). However, when two parties connect with poor
skill, when two parties fail to acknowledge the damage associated with injury,
when two parties are not examined by a competent, honest reflection is subdued
by ‘what if’s’ and recognition hidden by non-contact.Wing Chun is currently marred by a lack of respect. Bowing is usually sycophantic, (empty courtesy at best). Seldom an act of acknowledgement and respect.
Respect is recognition. Practicing fighting without the recognition of being struck, fosters very little respect and understanding between individuals. When we are enjoying ourselves, we don't tend to pay it much attention - because we are too busy....enjoying ourselves! When something unpleasant happens, we are inclined to stop and examine that thing, in the hope we can prevent 'it' happening again. I have hit a lot of people and have been hit repeatedly under controlled conditions. I bow or touch gloves before I do that. I bow after I hit them to convey my respect to them, and I bow at the end to convey appreciation for the opportunity to reflect on our interaction.
Outside the gym, when you hit
people, some of them want to shake you by the hand – Same
difference.
Sometimes, you have to burst a lip to burst a bubble. This is natural, behaviour adapts, a handshake extends...
Emotional processing of shock
and pain, and emotional competence therein is actually more important in building
competent individuals than the physical mode of exchange. Without this process,
behaviour will not adjust to cope.
The development of Kung Fu has
always involved pressure, conflict, and affliction.
Suffering will always catalyse development. From the beginning of history we can track invention next to suffering to either alleviate or accelerate just that. Suffering and survival are inexplicably linked. We need only glance at nature to confirm this. Suffering and survival accompany evolution.
There have been two standout events in my training that led to great change.
The first was falling five and a half feet onto solid concrete at sixteen, smashing my back during a training session in my garage. This took me out of my regular training regime for the best part of two years.
The second was during my Level Two training with Sifu Gary, where over-training with the Dragon Pole led to open cuts becoming infected. This in turn led to me being placed on an intravenous drip and two minor surgeries. I was about 24 hours away from septicemia.
On my return to the UK I was cut open again to remove more infected tissue and it took the best part of eight weeks for it to grow back to skin level and a further twelve weeks to recover from the massive hit I experienced after two months of consecutive antibiotic treatment.
From experience, when you train with resolve through pain and discomfort you access a certain faculty. When you
train everyday for long periods of time, you build a certain energy that has to
be used up. When you are forced to stop, that component remains active, it keeps going. In
both episodes, when that energy could not be used for any more physical practice, it rerouted its self to do something entirely
different instead. Something unexpected and useful. I am using this as an example to relay a message. Vitality is cumulative and stimulated by suffering. Suffering is natural, inevitable. Suffering in combat is probable. Fear of suffering is a block.
Embracing suffering is a skill. Practicing suffering is depth. It can be a stepping stone to an upgraded state.
Teaching fighting with a zero contact policy that extends across all activities, can do more harm than good. Chi Sau is essential, but it is useful to balance it with some actual.
If we take the experience of being struck and damaged occasionally as microcosmic episodes of suffering, we may begin to examine the propensity for accelerated change produced via mind/body stabilisation (healing, calibration, change). Suffering can be a powerful accelerator in building strength. What do you think Shaolin was doing? There is a lot to be lost, if training bypasses the risk of (potential) suffering. In doing so, you make yourself unavailable to this process of transformation. To eat suffering with all its trials and tribulations is a natural process. Without a little suffering, arguably, we have not demonstrated Kung Fu.
Suffering can enhance and empower you, make you stronger than you were by unlocking abilities you may not have realised.
By participating in fear, judgment, feeling and
injury, whilst practicing Kung Fu, we are chipping into this stuff on a daily
basis. You can’t escape suffering, but you may well benefit from it. Become acquainted with it,
adapt with it, and recognise opportunity in the change relating to it. You can season yourself in
the unpleasant on a’ little and often’ basis, or you can wait for something
truly traumatic to occur and take the hit all at once. With respect to the
latter, a process of change will ensue, but the results may not be identical.
Chi Sau should be balanced with other activities so a mentality and physicality can emerge to be injected back into Chi Sau play. Striking without the limbs in touch, engagement, pressure testing, and the collection of rotational force are, in my opinion, things that should be trained on a supplementary basis to Chi Sau. Being clipped occasionally, hitting bags, holding bags, and being thrown into mats are all very important in the scheme of attribute.
Suffering will always catalyse development. From the beginning of history we can track invention next to suffering to either alleviate or accelerate just that. Suffering and survival are inexplicably linked. We need only glance at nature to confirm this. Suffering and survival accompany evolution.
There have been two standout events in my training that led to great change.
The first was falling five and a half feet onto solid concrete at sixteen, smashing my back during a training session in my garage. This took me out of my regular training regime for the best part of two years.
The second was during my Level Two training with Sifu Gary, where over-training with the Dragon Pole led to open cuts becoming infected. This in turn led to me being placed on an intravenous drip and two minor surgeries. I was about 24 hours away from septicemia.
On my return to the UK I was cut open again to remove more infected tissue and it took the best part of eight weeks for it to grow back to skin level and a further twelve weeks to recover from the massive hit I experienced after two months of consecutive antibiotic treatment.
From experience, when you train with resolve through pain and discomfort you access a certain faculty. When you
train everyday for long periods of time, you build a certain energy that has to
be used up. When you are forced to stop, that component remains active, it keeps going. In
both episodes, when that energy could not be used for any more physical practice, it rerouted its self to do something entirely
different instead. Something unexpected and useful. I am using this as an example to relay a message. Vitality is cumulative and stimulated by suffering. Suffering is natural, inevitable. Suffering in combat is probable. Fear of suffering is a block.
Embracing suffering is a skill. Practicing suffering is depth. It can be a stepping stone to an upgraded state.Teaching fighting with a zero contact policy that extends across all activities, can do more harm than good. Chi Sau is essential, but it is useful to balance it with some actual.
If we take the experience of being struck and damaged occasionally as microcosmic episodes of suffering, we may begin to examine the propensity for accelerated change produced via mind/body stabilisation (healing, calibration, change). Suffering can be a powerful accelerator in building strength. What do you think Shaolin was doing? There is a lot to be lost, if training bypasses the risk of (potential) suffering. In doing so, you make yourself unavailable to this process of transformation. To eat suffering with all its trials and tribulations is a natural process. Without a little suffering, arguably, we have not demonstrated Kung Fu.
Suffering can enhance and empower you, make you stronger than you were by unlocking abilities you may not have realised.
Chi Sau should be balanced with other activities so a mentality and physicality can emerge to be injected back into Chi Sau play. Striking without the limbs in touch, engagement, pressure testing, and the collection of rotational force are, in my opinion, things that should be trained on a supplementary basis to Chi Sau. Being clipped occasionally, hitting bags, holding bags, and being thrown into mats are all very important in the scheme of attribute.
Activity
devoid of potential suffering or suffering itself, cannot adequately instil
qualities and comprehension born from the nature of violence. Fright, pain, and injury, can have a lasting effect on psychological and physical states (both good and bad, depending on the accumulation of resilience). Respect and understanding are born out of shared honesty. Courage and strength through repeated experience. There is an internal component to competence built through the recognition of, or actuality within - unpleasant experience. Chi Sau prepares you for modification, but it is not an all encompassing mechanism for fight competence with risk removed. Beware.
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My Wing Chun Website
My Wing Chun Youtube Channel
My Wing Chun Facebook
My Wing Chun Twitter
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