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Writer's pictureUnified Gong Fu

Part Three – Martial Arts

This part of the book deals mainly with kung-fu. Amongst other things, it contains the things I see as important and descriptions of drills one can practice alone, mainly based on the school of martial arts "Ways to Flow".

This part of the book contains concepts that can be imposed on any martial art, especially those based on katas.


Guided Imagery and Images

The world of martial arts contains a lot of images, especially the Chinese martial arts. A large portion of the knowledge is passed by sensations and guided imagery. Katas, forms and even moves have graphic names. Those metaphors supposed to help us, the practitioners, to try and understand the move, the spirit of the move, the intention of the move and its source.

Transferring ideas via metaphors is a common concept in the eastern culture, the Chinese pictography is a good example for that. It is possible to write same sound with different drawings, thus changing the meaning completely and vice versa, different drawings in different order make same sound, but the essence will be different.

We must always think like, feel like and imagine that… this is why same move can be interpreted in many ways, the question is what essence we are pouring into the move. Our body is the brush, the moves are the drawings and the brain and the heart are the painter.

The essence put into the drawing is the martial art.


The form (the kata) is an encrypted file, filled with knowledge and meanings. In order to decode the code, we should have the right tools, will and persistence.


Motion and Posture

Move is a part of the form and can be addressed to as a dynamic posture, the difference is that a posture is quasi-static.


Motion

According to Sensei Su Dong Chen, the form is a continuum of postures and it does not matters how fast one perform it, a continuum of postures, no matter if dynamic or quasi-static, Postures. The form is just a part of the study, the first step of the study. In order to achieve high combat knowledge, one must study the motion.

The research of motion is personal, individual according to everyone's body dynamics, and it requires long and deep researching. This research is examining how the body moves, how the moves and postures combines, how to move in order to achieve a certain goal.

Two doors for this research are the questions "what do I do wrong" and "what does not combines within the forms and how do I combine it".


Posture

The subject of posture as was demonstrated a lot by master Su Dong Chen and interpolated by my kung-fu brother Ariel Jodorkovski.

Postures are quasi-static, which means they are not really static. The posture must be strong and steady, however this is achieved only by losing the muscles, leaning on the skeleton and by constantly small moves for balancing and stability (just like an aeronautically unstable fighter jet, that uses this instability for high performances). 

Just like with motion, the postures are also individual subject, and each needs to study it for him\her-self, according to the next steps:

1.      Getting into a posture.

2.      Losing the muscles.

3.      Leaning on the skeleton as much as possible, rather than on muscles.

4.      Breathing while using guided imaginary for strengthening the frame.

5.      Stabilizing. One should stay stable even against external load by small corrections and slow movement.

6.      Transition to the next move while trying to keep the construct and the rest of the parameters.


The next learning stage is after assimilating the constructs. At this stage it is possible to move fast while using the construct and doing applications using the constructs that have been learned.


Those constructs allow us to be strong and effective with no unnecessary muscles involved, thus we can keep our ability of rapid changing and the heaviness of motion (as a hammer or strong water flow).


This way of learning is much easier with the inner styles (tai-chi for example) since they are built for this kind of learning with their slow flowing moves.

This learning method is also applicable on kung-fu forms, however it is better to use short drills such as those in chapter 8. Of course this is also correct for the multi-purpose technics.


This sort of learning causes a broken movement of the body, as a robot, this is of course for training only, since the real movement is smooth and combining what have been learned on motion and posture alike.

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