DEVELOPING ADVANCED ARTS WHILE KEEPING FUNDAMENTALS
Entering a chi kung state of mind is a basic skill in our school
Question 1
After learning so many advanced arts, how can we stay rooted in the fundamentals of our practice? What is the best way to progress safely through developing such advanced arts while keeping our fundamental skills clear?
-- Andrew R
Answer
We are indeed in a very privileged position in teaching and spreading the wonderful benefits of kungfu. We are like the Shaolin Monastery in the past, becoming a treasure house of great kungfu sets. As far as I know, it is unprecedented in kungfu history that any school has such a wide range of kungfu sets to teach. Our kungfu sets range from Four Gates and Lohan Fist to 12-Amimal Form of Xingyiuan and Swimming Dragon Baguazhang, from Flowing Water Staff and Plum Flower Sabre to Taming-Tiger Trident and Three-Sectional Soft Whip.
In some ways we are even more favorable than the Shaolin Monastery. The Shaolin Monastery taught many styles of Shaolin Kungfu, but it did not teach Taijiquan, Xingyiquan and Baguazhang, whereas we do. The Shaolin Monastery did not purposely and systematically transfer its arts to enrich the daily life of its students, but we do.
Yet, we emphasize the fundamentals. We not only say that the fundamentals are important, but actually practice them in our daily training. Our syllabus, from Level 1 to Level 12 of both Shaolin Kungfu and Taijiquan, are built on the fundamentals. All the other wonderful kungfu sets, like Drunken Eight Immortals, 50 Sequences of Eagle Claw, and Seven-Star, are supplementary.
We consider the latter parts of our basic kungfu syllabus, like weapon training, and single against multiple attackers, as fundamentals too because we consider that anyone who train kungfu should know these topics. For lack of a better term, we may call them advanced fundamentals.
Both the Intensive Shaolin Kungfu Course and the Intensive Taijiquan Course, which all Shaolin Wahnam kungfu practitioners should attend at least once, are based on the fundamentals. Many of the advanced arts, like Tiger-claw, Triple Stretch and Iron Wire, were taught in regional courses.
What constitute the fundamentals? Different people have different views. Many regard the fundamentals as elementary, i.e. what they first learned when they began kungfu. But without consciously realizing it, they first learned a kungfu set, and continue learning kungfu sets throughout their kungfu career, and often nothing else!
To us in Shaolin Wahnam, the concept of fundamentals is quite different. Our fundamentals constitute the foundation upon which all future development will depend. In practical terms our fundamentals include the follow:
- Entering Zen (or entering Tao in Taijiquan)
- Generating an energy flow
- Footwork
- Stances
- Basic patterns
- Six harmonies
- Right spacing
- Right timing
- Combat application
- Developing internal force
- Exploding force
- Breath control
No matter what advanced arts or kungfu sets we learn, we repeat our fundamentals. When we learn Tiger-Claw, for example, we have to generate an energy flow. When we learn a set of Sun Style Taijiquan, we have to pay attention to the six harmonies.
Hence, we automatically stay rooted in the fundamentals when we learn any advanced art or kungfu set. The better we are in the fundamentals, the better will be our advanced art or set. If we are poor in our fundamentals, we will be poor in our advanced art or set. Remember, the fundamentals are the foundation upon which our advanced art or set depends. If the foundation is shaky, the advanced art or set, or any art or set, cannot be good.
In an earlier example, I used generating energy flow as a fundamental skill in learning Tiger-Claw. Generating energy flow is our fundamental, but other students may not have a chance to learn it. So we use another common example, that of footwork. If students do not have good footwork, they cannot have good Tiger-Claw. Later, they may learn to develop internal force using their Tiger-Claw. Our students have a great advantage over other students, because our students already learned how to develop internal force as a fundamental. Our students could also explode force as a fundamental.
Hence, the question of keeping our fundamental skills while developing advanced arts, become irrelevant because the fundamental skills are already incorporated in the advanced arts. As students progress to advanced arts, they revise their fundamental skills while practicing the techniques of the advanced arts. There is no need to choose some elementary techniques to practice the fundamental skills.
An analogy may be useful. You learned the fundamental skills of driving by using a small car. Now you use a bigger and better car, a Volvo. You just revise your fundamental skills of driving using a bigger and better car, and as a result your skills of driving will also become better. You need not go back to your small car to practice your fundamental driving skills.
But if a driver had difficulty driving a Volvo, he would have to go back to a smaller car to learn the fundamental skills of driving. Similarly, if a student had difficulty learning an advanced art, he would have to go back to more elementary techniques to hone his fundamental skills, which he can later apply in his advanced art.
The coming kungfu course in the UK Summer Camp 2016 is an excellent way to hone and further develop fundamental skills. Besides learning to apply the strategy, which helped me to be undefeated in free sparring against other martial artists, course participants will have a good opportunity to revise and further develop fundamental skills, which they can apply to enrich their daily life. It is a course for both relative beginners and masters.
One of the fundamentals in kungfu is practicing the Bow-Arrow Stance
The above article is reproduced from the thread Applying and Deepening the Fundamental Skills of Chi Kung in the Shaolin Wahnam Discussion Forum.
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