Wing Chun IS Life

 

Beautiful 

 

Many state that Wing Chun is Chi Sau and Chi Sau is Wing Chun, and at the same time there are many people who see their Wing Chun as a way of life, therefore, if Wing Chun is life & life is Wing Chun, and if Wing Chun is Chi Sau, then by the same token, Chi Sau must be a way of life.

 

I see this in the most obvious of examples, the straight line approach being the most obvious.

 

For instance, when asking a student:

“How did you get here today, which road did you take?”

I am always to be given the same answer, the most direct route.

 

We would not usually deliberately decide to take a 15 mile diversion so why would we do that with our punches?

 

While sitting at your computer you do not usually sit there tensing your whole body and burning yourself out, so why do that in a confrontation before a strike has even proved to needed?

 

 

As for connecting Wing Chun to life…

 

On Thursday morning at 7.00am a skip arrived and I started work on demolishing a series of walls, brick by brick with a mallet and a tiny chisel, which I then had to dump in the skip, along with a stack of building materials left behind by the houses previous owners such as sand, breeze blocks, pallets and patio slabs etc.

 

For the last two days I have worked non stop to get done what I can , filling the skip (and not a small one either) to the point that my hands and fingers ache, however, when I woke this morning and went into the garden, there was nothing.

 

Of course this was the intention all along and the reason for hiring a skip, but I felt a little deflated and the fact that after all my work, there was nothing to show for it.

 

I had built nothing, I had only created space, but this got me thinking of the philosophy of Taoism (Daoism), a philosophy which works very well with Wing Chun, for in Daoism they say:

“In life, in the search of perfection, it is not what we take on board but what we get rid of”

 

This Wing Chun connection also goes someway to when friends will visit and I happily show them the space in the garden, they will think,

“What are you showing me?  There’s nothing here”

 

Because although it now looks great to me, they have no idea what it looked like before and what it took to get it where it is now,

Just like Wing Chun.

 

NOT so beautiful

 

Everybody wants to be as good as you but no one wants to do the training, so use this time of lockdown to put some hours into something that will be with you for life, make an investment in yourself and study where you can, there is no shortcut but there is a longer way.

 

They say practice makes perfect but it does not,

Practice makes permanent,

It is only perfect practice that makes perfect.

 

That is what we offer at wingchun.online the chance to allow yourself to train every detail to perfection.

 

Happy training everyone, keep well and stay safe