Kung Fu

Wonder Wednesday

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The crazy amazing thing that is the lantern shield.  It feels so much like a hyper-fictional invention, bristling with sharp bits of a (retractable?) sword, a gauntlet with spikes for weapon trapping, a pointy bit on the shied for bashing, and, yes the titular lantern to dazzle your opponent in the dark.  And yet, it was an actual thing, with writeups in fencing manuals and everything.

Kung Fu clearly doesn’t hold the patent on odd weapons!  (And like many of those, how much the lantern shield was used in practice is perhaps very little…)

 

Philosophy Tuesday

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A friend made this observation the other day, and it’s so delightfully tied to my interests I wonder why I didn’t come up with it sooner:

“Learning how to fail is like learning how to fall in parkour or Aikido.” *

And it is.  So much so.  In quite a few ways.  For starters, there’s learning now to fail/fall without being injured or otherwise taken out.  But, even more so, is learning how to fail/fall gracefully, so that we can roll and come right back up.

Then there’s the next level, which is how to be during the failing/falling, without a loss of being present and our peace of mind.** Our spirit doesn’t get taken out either.

Then, as we build our ability and get used to the whole thing, it becomes part of the process.  We engage, we vault, we fail/fall, we roll, we examine, adjust, work, grow, and continue.

And we may just begin to get thrown, fall, or fail less often to begin with.

 

* Or any other martial art…

** My own experience with this is fun/weird/remarkable/unbelievable/did I mention weird?  There are these two instances I can remember clearly where I’ve slipped or otherwise fallen during kung fu practice.  And both times, I had this amazing moment of realization in the air, as my body hit the horizontal, that was clear and surprisingly calm:  “Oh, I’m falling,” it said.  And with that, without any need to think or plan, I rolled and was on my feet, no worse for the wear from the fall.  It was smooth and fluid and “automatic” and drama-less and I was able to continue my practice right where I’d left off.

Philosophy Tuesday

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In life, when something (usually unexpected) pops up, there’s two ways we can proceed:  we can react, or we can respond.

They may sound the same, but they are different.  A reaction is an automatic impulse that usually is aimed directly back at the incoming force.  It, at best, resets the situation.  At worse, our automatic flailing further mires us or even might make things worse.

To respond, however, is to take what’s coming in and move it where we want it.   We listen, we engage, we reflect, we direct, and we bring it to a place of resolution.  In responding we have both agency and flexibility.

Perhaps the best way I got to experience this difference – and thus learn to distinguish them for myself – was through Sifu, especially through our push hands exercises.  With an incoming force, to react is to resist and push back.  Again, at best this might stop the incoming force, resetting the situation and allowing things to start anew.  More often than that, however, reacting causes us to stiffen or to overreach, leaving us spent, off balance, and open for an exploit.  And against someone with good sensitivity (ie, someone who is trained in responding), our reactive energy can even be used against us.

But when we learn to respond, an incoming force is not a crisis.  It is just an incoming force.  We can feel it, sense it, know its direction, know its intent, recognize what could be done, and then guide it to a place of safety – or beyond, harnessing it for our advantage.

No surprise, so too it goes in our lives.  With mindfulness and practice* we gain access to the beauty of responding.  A world of equanimity opens up, and with it the ability to create outcomes that empower and enliven ourselves, those around us, and the community at large.

 

* Especially in dealing with and doing the work to remove our “buttons” and worries and concerns and etc that have us freak out or get defensive, things that very much almost force us to react forcibly…

Philosophy Tuesday

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In the last few years we got to train under Sifu an amusing scene would often play itself out.  One of us would ask him a question – usually about how we were trying to embody one of the concepts or apply one of the fundamentals – and he would respond with:  “Well….. yes/no.”

It happened often enough it became a running joke among us.

BUT! Within that humour lies some fundamental truth(s).  (No surprise, of course, given that it was Sifu…)

Take just about anything that’s deep and related and foundational, and as you explore it or use it or apply it or see it arise around you, very little is exclusive or binary.  Gradients exist everywhere. And elements that seem like opposites don’t always act in opposition to each other.  They may instead be differing sides of the same coin that work best when both are brought to bear in appropriate amounts.

Putting it a slightly different way, yes/no is the principal behind Yin and Yang and its notion of dualism where even seemingly contrasting energies not only are interconnected but they often contain (and, again, work best when they do engage) a little bit of the other in it.  In addition, there is a flow, with energies shifting and waxing and waning in differing amounts to respond to what’s appropriate in the moment.  When there is an unbalance, that’s when things fall apart.*

Which is something that we tested and experienced time and time again in our tai chi training!  Apply a particular concept or tension at 100%, and we would collapse.  But shift it a bit, even dialing it a little back by 10%, and then we would be strong.**  At our core, 60/40 was often the sweet spot, though at times 70/30 was a better split.  And we could be 90% at the point of application while maintaining balance within our core at 60/40, doubling the yin and yang to not only between differing concepts, but also between our active extremities and our rooted and originating core.

And while it manifests itself quite viscerally in the physical testing of our tai chi training, the concept of yes/no holds sway far beyond into all aspects of our individual lives to that of our families and communities and beyond.

Best of all, for me at least, I’m lucky that whenever I notice I’m beginning to stray from the middle path and set myself to wonder about it, I get to be guided back with Sifu’s voice echoing in my head with a delightful and amused “Well… yes/no.”

 

* To which, this yes/no idea also connects quite well to another of my favourite fundamental concepts, that of the Middle Path (from within the Buddhist tradition).

** Which is related to the concept of “Straight but not Straight” or as I called it “Shaolin Straight”.

Let’s get down to business…

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In an amusing way, I feel “compelled” to review the new live-action Mulan, if only because my review of the original animated version has been archived for decades at IMDB for the whole world to see.*  But this was also one of the only Disney remakes I was actually keen on seeing.  When they announced that they would not be doing a near shot-for-shot remake and would instead be shaking things up (not making it a musical, the removal of Mushu, etc) my interest was piqued.  As long as they had good writing, I figured, this could be a good thing: a chance to tell the story in a new way, opening up new avenues to explore and to play in.  And even though I have very much disliked most of the remakes thus far, as long as they nailed that one, crucial, thing of good writing, it could turn out well!   Continue reading →

Philosophy Tuesday

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One of the things that we learn* in our kung fu training is this:

Not everything that feels powerful actually is.

Just because we put in a lot of effort, or engage a lot of tension, or become super fierce, or stoke the fires in our belly…  and just because it feels so much like we should be able to resist a mountain and even be able to split it in two… despite all that… when actually test the move we collapse like a house of cards, with nary an ounce of power there.

And then we get angry!  And we double down on it!  AAAAARRRRGH!  Which only ever serves to make it even worse. **

Fortunately, we also (eventually) learn to not force the point*** and to let it go, delve deeper, and adjust our form such that, remarkably and suddenly, it not only works but it works without almost any effort at all.

Like so many things in kung fu, so too does this apply with our ways of being and in the way we live our lives:

Not every emotion or attitude that, again, feels strong is actually strong.

As we interact with the many areas of our lives, we have so many ingrained and automatic responses and views and ways of being, and we often go forth thinking that they are strong, that they are necessary, that this is the way, and that anger and harshness and hostility and posturing and fierceness and downright hostility to the world and everything around it is the way to make our way and, more importantly, to get what we want.  We think they make us strong.  And wow does it ever feel strong!  And right!

And yet, it isn’t.  And we aren’t.  All that acerbic-ness ends up being unproductive.  We expend a lot of effort, and we may move the ball a smidge, but it takes a supreme toll on ourselves and others, and the results rarely stick.

Like with kung fu, we can let it be for a moment,**** set it aside, and bring to it a new level of mindfulness.  Within that clearing we can adjust and create a new context, choosing other ways of being that will bring forth what we want with velocity and without effort.

And that there is true power.

 

* And re-learn and re-discover over and over and over and over again…

** Which, like the above, we do it again and again even though we know it never works…

*** Also fortunately we learn to laugh at our stubborn silliness….

**** And laugh!

***** One corollary to all this is that when we see someone who is all fire and aggression and sees the world through metaphors of attack and destruction and always seems upset by everything, it’s the same thing:  It is not strength, they are not powerful people, and they are not paragons to laud.  They are all bluster and performance, with little to show for it, no peace of mind, and continually having a lousy experience of life to boot.

I Am Published – Again!

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Yes!  After much intense writing and wrangling, Volume 2 of the Northern Shaolin Kung Fu series that I co-wrote with my Sifu is now available for all!

As before, I might be a bit biased*, but this book is a fabulous addition to your Kung Fu library, whether you practice Northern Shaolin or not.  There is so much great insight and wisdom from my Sifu that has been distilled into this tome, covering Northern Shaolin’s advanced concepts, the generation of internal power (and what that even means), the principles of application and fighting, the exploration of all ten of the core Northern Shaolin hand forms, a multitude of advanced weapons, and even more.  Coming in at 50% larger than the first volume, this thing is packed with great stuff!

You can order your own copy (and check out Sifu Lam’s other great books as well) here:

Northern Shaolin Book Vol 2 by Sifu Wing Lam

And as a bonus, I’ll be hosting a live streamed Q&A session on August 22nd (at 430p EDT/130p PDT).  If you order the book before August 12th 2020 we’ll send you an invite to the livestream!

I am thrilled (tempered with the trepidation with something so personal being released for all to see) to have the book released to the world.  After nearly 20 years of practice I still love the art, and this book is stuffed with everything I could think of from all that I’ve learned from Sifu and from what I’ve gleaned through all that diligent practice.  I worked closely with Sifu to gather the material for the book and get it captured for posterity before he passed.  This is most definitively part of his legacy, and I am humbled to be able to be a part of it.  I hope it illuminates and teaches, and I hope that our passion for the art and – even more so – for sharing the art comes through its many pages.

 

* And as before, natch, I am very biased since I wrote it…