Why Bother With An Internal Approach To Wing Chun?

You cannot have an interest now a days which has not been commercialised.  Fashion, sport, music art etc, anything new is taken apart, packaged and sold back to us.  Football (the beautiful game), the Olympics; they are now just ways to cynically extract money from us and exploit our passion.  A good example is barefoot running, once this became popular Nike started selling specialist thin soled trainers for £100, the irony being they invented thick soled running shoes which are supposed to do so much damage to our bodies. £100 for a label and a bit of plastic.

Art is supposed to be different but even there the individually is stripped away, catagorised and cleansed of uniqueness. 

The true beauty of these interests is that when we engage in them ourselves, play football, paint, make music etc, the joy becomes ours and is  much better than observing.  We do not need to be ranked, measured or critiqued, joy comes from doing and not analysis .

Why internal martial arts? 

With an internal art we are not looking outside to be judged, for a certificate to prove merit, the interest is in knowing what we are capable of. Understand your body better, let it move naturally and we get the outcome we were seeking without the effort. Like any art it takes honesty with yourself, a teacher points the way but once you know what you are capable of it is in your hands how you develop and ultimately what you will achieve.   My recent experiences in practicing/teaching with people who have trained in other wing chun lineages, is that they have been taught to crudely copy movements without any concept of why they are doing them. Even a decade of train like that will get you nowhere.

What has this got to do with commercialisation?

People will try to sell you uniforms, gadgets, books, secret methods etc, but ultimately you are your own laboratory of experimentation. The real investment you need to make is working on yourself in training. I own four guitars, but that does not mean I am any good at playing them, my youth was spent dreaming of the playing on a stage as opposed to practicing.

Effortless is actually the result of a lot of effort, just ask any martial artist, sports person or musician.  The trick is not to  concentrate on the desired end, but enjoy the journey and the results will come naturally.