All I can do is offer a path Last Saturday I had a student come check out my class. She has a physical limitation on her right shoulder because she had to have some muscle removed due to having cancer. She has some range of motion when doing the center line punch, but can not fully extend her arm out all the way. And doing bong sau at its usual height may be impossible. Now to the literal person, this may be an issue. You cant extend your centerline punch all the way? You cant do rotate your shoulder all the way, or lift it up all the way? As I explained to her, wing chun is a path for self development and self awareness. In fact, that is what gung-fu actually means. Something done for your personal development. Wing chun is just one avenue you can take to get there. Because anything you do for your personal development, play a musical instrument, study a foreign language, but along the way, you should be bettering yourself. Becoming more aware of your body and your mind. And if you are doing something to for your personal development, that means you are practicing gung-fu. (but it does beg the question, if you are doing something for your personal development, do you have to tell everyone?) So much of wing chun is finding out what your limitations are, and developing the skill to exceed past them. In the sense of wing chun, you can think about it as control and coordination. At first you may only be able to juggle one ball, but with practice youll one day be able to juggle more balls. Its like that with wing chun. With something like the centerline punch. At first youre just moving your arm forwards and backwards. Then you start to understand the focus of the elbow forearm line to the target. And you start to feel how you dont want to pull the elbow back, but actually develop a dropping motion of the elbow. And how when you are dropping that elbow, its critical to maintain the elbow forearm line to the target. And just how relaxed you need to keep the wrist so the fist can naturally fall into place upon contact with an object (if you were to actually strike one). And by keeping your elbow/forearm line to the target with a relaxed wrist youll be keeping your middle knuckle in the centerline throughout the extension and dropping of the elbow motion. And by keeping your middle knuckle in the centerline youll be intercepting your centerline meaning that you are keeping your arm in a more neutral position, which will allow you to relax it more. And all this is for is to create one half of the arm triangle because you have to do the same development with the opposite arm. And then youll be able to start to do all that with body support. Becoming aware of all the little things is how you can exceed your limitations. Because youll learn to do it faster and faster, as you relax and allow the motion to become more natural. And that is why having some type of physical handicap is does not mean you cant develop wing chun skill. Because all you are doing is learning your limitations, and then exceeding them. But you have to walk that path to find all that treasure along the way. Ken
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 05:02:47 +0000
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