A New Sort Of Tool!
This past Saturday's class was overflowing with gems of insight, and one in particular really struck a chord with me. We were discussing the bell block right at the end of Lau Gar III and I wanted to pay extra attention since it has given me nothing but trouble since I first learned it.
*(I want to be careful here because there was a lot of important context surrounding this discussion that I want to make sure future me doesn't take out of that context)*
We talked about how sometimes there is no way (for you/right now/but also maybe ever), to do a technique perfectly.
1) That was incredibly vindicating since I still struggle doing this technique despite it being in my chosen hand form for the Year of the Tiger,
2) We talked about how the compromise between having a pure perfect cat stance limits the possibility of doing a perfect bell block and vise versa and how you need to adjust them together until they are both as solid as you can make them (i.e. your eye for detail needs to be able to perceive multiple things, not just notice isolated issues)
3) I started to wonder why the form would be created that way. The form didn't just get unearthed from the ground one day, someone made it. Somewhere along the way, a person decided to put that technique in there. So why not change the stance or the block so that is was more harmonious or achievable? And then I started to think about how we use our forms as tools, and I realized this was a new tool I had never thought about before (!!!). This technique teaches us about the path of mastery, how perfection is almost never achieved (like doing both the stance, and the block perfectly can almost never be achieved) but can always be strived towards, making a constant effort to train to get as close to perfect as you can. It can also be used as a tool for challenging the idea of "impossible". Doing this technique with all it's components remaining pure may be impossible, but if you train the flexibility in your shoulder to a high enough level it might become possible. Teaching us that impossible is not as absolute as we sometimes think it is.
I have only ever thought of our forms as tools to directly improve our kung fu, if I practice Hung with the right intent my horse stance will become stronger, if I practice Lung my awareness of my internal harmonies will be sharpened, etc. But now I'm starting to understand that there can be a different kind of tool within our forms that can strengthen our understanding of kung fu itself. It is a sort of tool to strengthen our ability to ask why. None of these insights would have become apparent unless I really actually thought about why I was having so much trouble with that section (or if Sifu Brinker hadn't laid it all out for us). That it wasn't a problem with skill, but with understanding.
I want to try to think about what other sorts of new tools are hiding in plain sight within our forms.
Kayley Burke
