I'm a relatively intelligent person.  For most of my adult life I cultivated the 'left side' of my brain, I studied accountancy to degree level and for 20 years I've worked a job where I essentially judge the financial conduct of individuals and decide if and what censure they deserve.  I examine what might be grey situations and break them down into a granular level until they become black and white.

When I started wing chun I applied this type of thinking to my training.  I sought to understand everything, just like about 99.9% of the people in Sheffield and Hong Kong I trained with.  But Chu Shong Tin was different, he was very clever but somehow he had managed to remove that type of analytical thinking block and as a consequence changed the way he moved.  A great pity to me is that although he was able to change himself, his teaching method usually fell back to the old way of thinking/describing and his students were nearly all unable to make the great leap to something different.

When I started to train as an Alexander Technique teacher, again I tried to apply my analytical mind.  But with the help of kind teachers I was shown thousands of times how my gauges of measurement were wrong, that I had incorrect kinaesthetic sense, that my mind was wondering off trying to solve problems that would be easily sorted if I got out of the way.  I had to literally give up and see everything different.

The process of change took several years before it was embedded (say my first 1000 hours of instruction as well as application in daily life).  But of course when I came to try to show my friends and students how I achieved the change, I would at first fall back to my old way of thinking/describing as I did not have the tools to teach it.  That has only become established in the last two years by learning to not only embody it in myself, but also do that whilst working with someone else.  That is higher level skill and something that is rare in the martial arts to have a practitioner who can also teach.

So the topic of the blog is can you teach yourself this stuff?  You can guess my answer.

Lets say that what I wrote above represents three stages.  First the logical left brain thinking which most of us use and misuse.  The second stage is the long process of transition to a means-by approach, and the third is not only having those skills but being able to teach.  In my opinion you would have to be a genius to get to level two on your own without significant tactile help from someone.

So, the person who wants to teach them self, to use the internet as a how to guide, is going to be using stage one of thinking.  But somehow they are imagining that they can use stage three to teach them stage two.  But of course you need stage two to have the skill to teach at stage three, so how could they bridge that gap?  Its a virtually impossible leap to make.

If people are telling you that you can teach yourself, that you are already the stage three master capable of self programming, they are very much deluded and still at an embryonic level of thinking.  I may be an idiot, but at least I know I'm an idiot.

Find a teacher who can do what they say.  Find a teacher who has students who can also do what the teacher can do.  Find a teacher who embodies what they say and cares about their students.  Don't waste time watching and analysing videos on youtube because you are embedding the wrong thinking, unless you have already had a seismic shift already.  Internet sifus may be well meaning, but they just embed fantasy ideas which, for CST lineage, detract from the legacy which CST left.  Why don't they open a real club?  Start with one student.  Its hard enough finding time to write this without making endless videos.

If you want to swim in the sea, go to the beach. Sitting in the bath watching your mobile phone won't ever be the same, even if you have a rubber duck.

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This blog is here to signpost people to the Instructors page of our website which has been enlarged to include details of four of our senior students, Jon, Craig, Ziggi and Gavin. I want to recognise not only their abilty as wing chun practitioners but also the excellent work they have done in helping teach in class.  You can click the link below to see a short bio of their training history in their own words, but I thought that I would add a bit here about how I see them.

Instructors

In over 6 years of running the class, we must have seen over 200 new students come and go.  Even if they make it to the second lesson, not many make it past a few months.  What sets out our four from the rest is good old kung fu, which transales to 'hard work over time'.  There are loads of reasons why you can miss a class, a busy day at work, weathers too hot, too cold, sport on the telly - the list goes on.  Talent is important, but there is something else which sets them apart.

Jon is our oldest student, he came to our second class and was hooked from the start.  Over 6 years he has pretty much been at class every week, probably managing 50 weeks each year.  He is a busy school teacher, but unless is is forced to work late he will be in class on time with his notebook, readly to record what he has learned.  I've never heard Jon complain, moan or have anything but a positive approach to training.

Craig stated in 2015,or the first 5 years he would travel to class twice a week from his home Ripon, which is on average one hour and a half drive each way. Although he had studied wing chun before he was happy to start again with us.  Just before lockdown he moved to Sheffield so he could commit more time to wing chun.

I usually say to Ziggi that he does not need wing chun.  He is naturally powerful and fast so why learn a martial art devoted to relaxed power?  But Ziggi loves overcoming a challange.  Shortly after taking up running he was covering marathon distances and recently he ran over 100km. When Ziggi puts his mind and determination into something it happens; he is a force of nature.


Gavin is at a time in life when he could give up work and learn to play golf.  He had planned to retire a while back and move to Bulgaria, but...  Instead he comes to class twice a week as well as having 3 or 4 private lessons.  He is not a big guy but I've seen experienced teachers turn white once he has clamped his hands on them.

What these four have in common is the grit and determination to keep going.  To train  even when there are other demands, twinges and pains, when thing don't seem to be working.  This is the true talent needed to succeed in any complex skill.  For me that is what sets them apart and makes them true Sung Men.  This is not to say that they are the best, or that they have nothing left to learn, far from it as all of us are miles from perfect.  But, they have that key ingredient which can only blossom over the next few years.

So from me, a simple thanks for being part of the team.

My last blog was concerned with a methodology of teaching a student, but I deliberately left out a crucial point in the relationship which I call the ‘critical moment’. This is the point where it goes beyond the teacher imparting knowledge and experience and more about how the student can learn to take control of their own development. We can all reach such a point in our own training, but for a considerable period it does require a teacher to help you understand both how to get there and also what it feels like. Even when you find it unfortunately it can be fleeting and difficult to get back.

For me the critical moment is when my body and mind are in a good state of release (detached from trying) and when I go to move I can sense whether it will involve a stiffening and shortening of my muscles, or a more general release and expansion of myself. Movements look more obvious. Movement is pleasurable. At this point we not only learn that there is always a better way to move, there are a myriad of options to move, to move and think. It’s another one of those Matrix experiences where Neo not only realises that he can dodge bullets, but that he does not even have to. I’m not saying that we can do that, but what this way of thinking can do is help us experience reality for what it and how our perceptions of reality might warp the ways in which we think that we can move.

This is not always possible in a busy class but my approach to teaching a private lesson is based around getting a student to this point. It might take a few minutes; might take an hour, but we both know when they are there. It can be tiring because actual thinking, thinking outside of our habitual box requires a focus that most people do not use in their day to days lives. True thinking is not mulling over the past or planning the future, its being in the moment. It does not involve feeling, because feeling is not thinking. This is where the term mindfulness in movement comes from. If you can sustain such thinking then improvement can be multiplied many time over in a single lesson.

The benefit of reaching such a place in your thinking is that it changes your perceptions of movement and of yourself. That starts as physical but as there is no real separation between physical and mental then it is bound to change the way you see wing chun and the world.

It’s clear to me that CST taught with similar principles even if he did not express it as such. With inexperienced students he would ‘set them up’, but they would have no conscious knowledge of how it worked because it was not based on impulses from their consciously controlled muscles. With experienced students he taught them how to achieve this themselves. When they lost it, it just took a look from him to remind them, like a spark to light the flame. The aim of all us students of wing chun has to be to understand this way of thinking and ultimately reach it on our own without the crutch of a teacher to help us.

 I recently watched a video of CST setting up a senior student to do a pivoting side slash.   CST set up the student several times, gave explanation for why it was difficult for the student, and then demonstrated the movement (effortlessly) himself.  In some ways the video was no different than any other of him, or what happened every night in a typical class.  What was interesting was afterwards I saw and heard explanations from at least 4 very experienced wing chun teachers who each disagreed with the other about what had happened, and essentially how CST did the movement.  You might be surprised to hear that I did not agree with any of them.  I would not be surprised to hear than none of them would agree with me!  Buy why the differences?
 
The teaching methodology of CST was that he would allow a student to do a movement in their own way (they usually did it incorrect), he would show them what they did, show them what it should feel like, then set them up to do it in the way he felt it should be done.  That method was repeated time and again until hopefully the student was re-educated. If all of the students got a similar education why would they not only feel very different, but also explain the methodology they learnt so differently later on?
 
Here is the problem.  When a student first copies a movement they are confident that it is correct,  It feels correct.  CST would then set them up to do it differently and obviously the feeling was very different (it felt wrong).  When they try to recreate the movement they rely of feeling, but if we go to the start of the paragraph then we already have established that their feelings are incorrect.  Their kinaesthetic sense was proven unreliable (like a set of broken scales)
Last year I went on a race track day;  I drove a Ferrari and an Aston Martin for 3 laps each.  As I drove into tight corners the instructor said to me to keep accelerating until I reached the relevant marker on the side of the track.  Although I heard him I found myself braking heavily way too early.  Each time we went around I got a bit braver, but although I wanted to keep accelerating my brain said no and put the brakes on (the exact opposite to what I was told).  I felt that I would crash as my belief (backed up with my feelings) told me it was not possible for a car to move in that way.  Afterwards I was taken around the track as a passenger or a touring car race driver, even in a slower car I was astounded by the speed and control, it was on another level that I thought existed. 
 
Even if I had got a second chance to drive, I would not have been much quicker.  The fact is my sense of feeling needed to be re-educated totally as they were unreliable. I was inspired but really that is only the start. The only way to learn to drive like that would be go around thousands of times with an instructor, follow the instructions of when to turn, break, accelerate etc until I knew what was possible.  After that point, I would be able to start experimenting as to whether a change in my own instruction would make me quicker.  However, my feeling would not be the arbiter of speed, the evidence would have to be the clock.
 
So, to get back to wing chun.  When someone was set up by CST they usually commented that although incredibly powerful, they felt nothing.  However, with more experience a student starts to develop an awareness of the connectivity of the body and the inter-relation of joints and muscles etc.  The process that you are trying to understand is how the various parts of the body inter-relate (and are co-ordinated by thought) and for a long time in the process feeling is really counter-productive to doing this.  I am not entirely sure many people have grasped this difference, but I say now that if you rely on feelings instead of an educated system of habits of use, your wing chun will not be of an internal nature.  You will be trying to use wing chun techniques to make up deficiencies in your body use.
 
Most people interested in CST method wing chun  do not need to learn more wing chun, they need to relearn to use their bodies without using feeling and sensitivity as a guide as what they are currently using is inherently unreliable under pressure.  You need to understand how the body co-operates with gravity, how the release of joint in one direction creates a counter stretch in the next muscle group and that affects the whole.  Wing chun then becomes a method of manipulating your own body structure which is instigated with a thought.  I am going to be honest and say that although everyone needs to relax more, as an instruction it is generally useless in most contexts.  Sometimes you need to relax a muscle, but that is usually to get a counter response from another part of the body so the whole is in balance.  It is the balance of the whole which you are seeking, with no direct thought about relaxing of individual parts.
 
This idea of training is a real challenge for most people, to ask someone who has developed a sensitivity of feeling and alignment to reject that system, to rely on over-aching instructions relating to how the body works optimally; its really tough.  Even when you see and experience the truth it is hard to accept.
The question then is how can you learn something which is specifically about kinaesthetic sense at the same time as rejecting bodily feeling.  Well, in the same way as you would need to sit with an experienced race driver and do as you are told to learn to drive professionally, you need a lot of time with someone who can do it it better than you who can guide you.  Someone who has walked the path and made the same mistakes which you will have to make time and time again until your successes outweigh your failures.  Even if they are not a teacher, they may be able to provide a more subjective view than you have yourself.  The first step for myself was over a decade ago when training with Mark and Jon, we consciously chose not to complete with each other but to assist and provide feedback.  That opened a door to understanding which continues to fascinate me.