Tiger and Dragon Kung Fu School

Every August we honor our founder, So Jo, Chan Heung by celebrating his birthday with a Bai Sam Ceremony and getting together, to train and experience our community. I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to let Chan Heung speak back to us through time and one perfect way of doing that is seeing what his guidance is to us. His legacy is clearly written in the principles of Martial Virtue, Mo Duk. This year I would particularly like to address the very first principle.

#1 Train Choy Lee Fut every day and do not forsake it’s way without reason.

And then later..

#9 … Practice every day and do not forsake it’s way.

This is mentioned twice!

So my questions to you is simply this: Are you training every day and, what is your relationship to your own progress? Many times in class I have made the comment to students that one shouldn’t get too discouraged about the rate of learning and skill, because, after all, we are not full time monks who can devote our entire day to training Gung Fu. However, this doesn’t mean don’t practice at all, either. I recall at one point during my training, my first Sifu said, at some point you have to take this stuff seriously. I thought I WAS taking it seriously. I always came to class and I worked hard in class. Exactly what taking seriously meant was never described. I would like to offer some guidance here, particularly for those of us who are living in the busy modern world. First, you SHOULD be practicing something every day. I think most of know this, but are you really doing it, and by not really doing it, is that making your relationship to Kung Fu stressful, and frustrating? Shouldn’t this be more fun?!

You might think; well I am doing what I can or very busy and I really don’t have time to practice every day. If you really think about it you probably do. If you think practicing daily in the modern world is tough, consider having to train with secret furniture parts that you had to take apart and reassemble so you wouldn’t get in trouble with authorities. Most forms we train are no more than five minutes long. Practice a form you know. Practice pieces of forms you know if you are in a small space. How are your stances? Stand in horse stance. Trying holding a pose on one leg and strengthen your balance. Open doors with your knuckles instead of your palms. Condition your forearms by striking yourself or a door frame. Roll a stick or pipe on your shins. Kicks, punches or combinations of those are always good. Maybe that one move you are struggling with or a few jumps need more work. There is always SOMETHING you can do no matter how much time you have. Be creative. I use a tree in my office which poses as a heavy bag, wooden dummy and sparring opponent!

If you are just coming to class and learning one form after another, forgetting old forms and not practicing then this really is just chasing belts. Class is good for learning new things, checking progress, learning in groups with other people, but at the end of the day all of this is for DOING Kung Fu on your own. Just a little bit on your own makes the whole process less stressful and much more fun. You have the physical, mental and I would argue spiritual benefit of doing this daily and it really starts to connect for you the way it was meant to.

“Stress doesn’t come from hard work. Stress come from NOT doing the things you are supposed to be doing.” Jeff Bezos- Amazon

Day choy