Opening Bow

With the Tiger Challenge coming up around the corner, now is an ideal time to focus on your forms and your sparring. When it comes to forms, there is some confusion concerning the opening bow.

To perform the opening bow properly, you must understand the purpose of(intent) of the opening bow. Our opening bow has two main purposes:

• Introduce yourself as a student of Silent River Kung Fu

• Trigger your flow by harmonizing your four quadrants (up, down, left, and right)

If you understand these two main intents of the opening bow, you will fully understand how to perform it.

In order for the opening bow to identify you as a student of Silent River Kung Fu, you need your opening bow to accurately represent the school. Therefore it must be performed consistently across the entire population of our school. Consistently means it should be done at the same speed - no matter what form you are performing. Therefore hard/soft and external/internal are irrelevant when it comes to the speed of your opening bow. Every form you perform should have an identical opening bow and that opening bow should consistently present you as a student of Silent River Kung Fu.

Jeff Brinker