Setting up the foundation for learning

First and foremost, I am a teacher. My goal is always to understand where my students are coming from and then do my best to be a good guide in their journey. And like any journey, we all have a beginning, history, and the current moment. All of these factors have influenced our self-awareness, self-understanding, and proprioception. As a teacher, I need to build a new path based on these foundations. 

Whether talking about a seasoned martial artist or a new beginner, our bodies carry our history. That history can be anything good or bad, but it is there—all the lessons we have learned and all the injuries we have endured. We all carry on and adapt.

Our history changes our bodies and minds and alters the connections within our bodies. The interconnected nature of our minds and bodies is always present but often ignored. When faced with a traumatic event, we treat the wound and mend the heart, but often separately. However, all events and learning happen on multiple levels. To learn something new, we need to understand the present and be aware of all connections that have been altered - to fix what we can and adapt when we can not. 

Learning any martial art requires a start—a beginning to a new storyline. Very often, we just start from the martial arts point of view. We start teaching proper techniques and movements. We start teaching forms. However, rarely does that training have a broader perspective. That storyline needs a beginning, that new artist needs a beginning, and it is a very different beginning to anyone else's due to that personal history. 

That unique starting point determines how well we will learn and how well all the new skills will be engraved into our systems. I will give you two examples—one for the mind and one for the body—and you will understand what I mean. 

You have had an office job for ten years, and over time, your eyesight has deteriorated due to lights and exhaustion. Sometimes, you need to look at your computer screen really closely, and sometimes, you are just tired and slouched all day. Since these changes occur gradually, you do not notice how your head constantly tilts forward and that your chest has caved, pulling your shoulders forward. Over these years, your posture, spinal support, and balance have become compromised internally, maybe even externally. If this is your starting point for your martial arts training, should you not at first include exercises that support the natural movement patterns and help to align the natural connections internally rather than start building new movement patterns on top of old compromised ones? 

You have been working in an office with a very authoritarian boss. That boss just gives orders and shares the blame, and over time, you have grown uncertain of your abilities and skills. Being doubted and only told what to do has made you self-conscious and timid. Having an insecure mind makes your body defend itself by limiting your actions. Your movements may easily come out rigid and tense. All because of your mindset, not necessarily at all due to your physical abilities. Should you then learn to let go of that limiting mindset, or do you think that being with a martial arts instructor who only tells you to be relaxed and soft to the point that you feel like failing even helps you learn?

These examples are easy to understand—the reason behind the behavior and its effect on the outcome. Yet, we as teachers often start teaching everyone the same way. Everyone starts the introductory course, and then we add on to that. We might advise on a more profound level, but the syllabus runs, and learning happens or not. There is no one to blame. Times change, and people understand better the underlying reasons for different physical accomplishments. We can resort to sports psychology and functional training. 

However, in the Western approach, all knowledge comes from separate fields of expertise and thus from separate individuals, and hardly ever will anyone who wishes to start a hobby go through that process. They either learn or not. In Eastern Military Traditions, Kung Fu is for killing; as such, it has had very little to do with any individual's well-being until today. 

By combining Traditional Chinese Medicine and Qi Gong to add a more holistic approach, we can practice those martial arts on a very different level. We can build stronger and more resilient martial artists than before. We can combine both sides of the world: The Eastern Tradition and Western Science. We need new visions to keep the traditions alive and well. And as Wing Chun Kung Fu should be ever-changing and ever-growing, I feel that the essence should always remain. We should rebuild the individual and personal foundations where the learning starts and, by doing so, make sure that that tradition is safe from personal deviations.