Ving Tsun: You Can Go Home Again, a pandemic story

 A while back, I wrote a series of posts journaling my epic two-year journey from chubby chronically-ill suburban mom to chubby chronically-ill suburban mom who also does kung fu. A few things have happened since then. Let's catch up.

I finished the two-year program and kept training, rain or shine, an average of about ten hours a week. There were minor obstacles, sure - the occasional lupus flare-up, that one time I had major abdominal surgery - but even those problems became opportunities. Probletunities! Chances to sit still and observe, study how my Sifu teaches and how different students learn. I took a lot of notes. Helped out around the school, herded the cats during seminars, and eventually got back to training hard with a new focus - my Sifu trusted me to start instructing. As I took on more responsibilities as a senior student, the school became my second home.

Then the pandemic hit, and I couldn't go home anymore.

My compromised immune system lands me squarely in the high-risk category for covid-19 ... with all the ugliness that entails. So I went into ultra-mega-lockdown quarantine mode, and learned how to do life from inside a bubble. For over a year.

I never stopped training - the Texas schools teamed up to host classes on Zoom so we could all keep working out together from a nice, safe distance - but I'm not about to lie and say the isolation didn't have a serious impact on my training. Good and bad. There were a lot of introspective epiphanies about my forms, my structure, where energy comes from, etc, that I never would've had in a crowded class. ... But ... I was suddenly the sole driving force of my motivation to train, and most of my daily energy was being devoted to little things like keeping my family safe in a global pandemic and shoring up my crumbling mental health while processing bottomless buckets of existential dread. 

It's exhausting. There were days when I just couldn't train. When doing two-person drills in the air, by myself, in my house, in front of a screen full of little screens, filled my chest with such a tide of melancholy that it spilled out of my eyes. I was homesick. 

Kung fu is patient, though. It waited for me to finish wallowing and remember that there are a million things to study that don't involve having a training partner. So I wiped my face, worked on my forms, and tried to be as patient as my kung fu.

Waiting is not my favorite thing. I'm more of an instant gratification gal at heart. But one of the biggest lessons Ving Tsun has taught me is that some things just can't be rushed. Take a deep breath. Play more siu nim tao. No amount of fussing on my part would get a vaccine into my arm any faster.

Time passed - a thousand years? the blink of an eye? who knows? - and suddenly there's light at the end of the tunnel. I find myself fully vaccinated and, with some precautions on the advice of my doctors, ready to get back to class.

I can finally go home again! And y'all ... it is daunting. On multiple levels.

For one thing, I've spent the past year avoiding being within six feet of other people, nevermind touching their hands with my hands. I think about the years I spent blithely breathing the same air as dozens of other sweaty people and I shudder. The thought of going back to that now is a teensy bit anxiety-inducing. 

For another thing, I am Not In Shape. The past many months have drastically skewed my carbs/cardio balance. My quarantine physique is now much less "kung fu warrior" and much more "charmingly precarious stack of soup dumplings". And sure, yes, everybody loves soup dumplings, but nobody expects them to win a fight.

Getting back to training at my school is going to be difficult. It'll take work, a lot of it, not just physically, but also mentally, emotionally. I'll get tired. I'll get overwhelmed. I'll get scared. There will be uncomfortable conversations with other students as I set boundaries for my health. Sometimes I'll fail; have to pick myself up and try again. It would be so much easier to just stay home and be a hermit forever. To just ghost my Sifu and never come back.

But if I wanted easy, I wouldn't have started training Ving Tsun in the first place.  

So I reached out to my greatest resource - my Sifu and Simo. We talked about what it'll take for me to come back to in-person training, and worked out a plan. The rest is up to me - my Sifu can't do the training for me. I've got to put on my Big Girl Pants and actually go to class. It helps that I get to train in a place like this:

I'll have to use every lesson that Ving Tsun has ever taught me. Relax. Advocate for myself. Stay aware of my surroundings. Relax again. Don't expect, don't compare - my kung fu will not be the same as it was a year ago, and it shouldn't be. Relax harder. Don't give up; play more siu nim tao.

It's finally time to put in the work. See y'all at class.

Month 18: The Foundation

{Prologue, Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4}
{Month 2, Month 3, Month 4, Month 5, Month 6, Month 7, Month 8, 2016 WSD, Month 11, Month 12, Month 18}

Eighteen months ago, I walked out of my first kung fu class feeling like I’d just spent an hour trying to calculate pi to the last digit while composing a symphony in a sauna. Everything was new and weird and really hard to do and also I was sweaty.

But I went back for a second class because … well, for a lot of reasons that I could wax all poetical about for a few thousand words and paint myself and the school in all the noblest of lights, but if I’m being honest with myself and the internet, there was really only one reason: for a few blessed hours after I left the school, for the first time in years, my hands didn’t hurt.

One of the hallmark symptoms of my systemic lupus has always been painful inflammation of the knuckles and wrists. Turns out, if I do enough huen saus I can clear that up right quick. At least for a little while. For someone who despaired to find any non-pharmaceutical solutions to a hellscape cornucopia of ailments, being able to do this one thing to help myself was a game changer. Give anyone with chronic pain an “off” button for their hurting that doesn’t involve addiction or creepy side effects, and they’ll happily keep pushing it.

So I kept going to class. Kept chasing that temporary relief from my forever illness because instant gratification is kind of my thing. And somewhere along the line, almost accidentally, I built up my kung fu.

And that’s the thing. The kung fu. When I first started training, I heard folks talk about kung fu like it was some kind of quantifiable substance. Someone could have a lot of it, or not enough. It made no sense to me. They were using the wrong kind of noun. Kung fu is a martial art, a philosophy, not an object. They might as well be talking about trading handfuls of impressionism or pieces of epiphany.

Which is, of course, exactly what we do.

Pictured: a staggeringly wide range of kung fu quantities.
(hint: I'm the sweaty, tired, disheveled one. ... no, the other one ... no, the other other one...)

Kung fu is a thing. Everyone has their own kung fu that they make for themselves. Nobody else can make it for you. Students can exchange it back and forth. Sifu can give bits of it that seem like pebbles when they leave his hands but grow to boulders by the time they reach mine. I don’t know how to explain it better than that without touching hands with you.

Over the past year and a half, without really meaning to, I’ve developed my kung fu. I’m not sure what anyone else’s kung fu looks like to them, but mine looks like less pain in my life.

... Like hands that can grip a coffee cup.

... Like getting knocked flat on my ass by injuries or setbacks, and having not only the desire to overcome them, but (finally) also having the physical ability.

... Like not being forced to take a nap every single day.

... Like slowly digging, inch by hard-earned inch, a well of stamina that can handle a weekend’s intense training workshop or a serious bout of illness without running dry.

... Like walking without a limp.

... Like not starting half of my days wondering if I’ll plummet through a Series Of Unfortunate Medical Events and find myself in a hospital by bedtime.

... Like a patient friend, on those days when I’m too sick to train, waiting quietly nearby with no judgement in its steady presence, just a readiness to get back to work as soon as I’m able.

Whatever else my kung fu may be - self confidence, personal safety, strength - it is, above all of that, the thing that has allowed me to regain some control over my health.

Not complete control, of course. Never that. No lupus patient dares to dream quite that big. But ...

After eighteen months of training, my kung fu is the solid foundation that I’ve built beneath my feet, layer upon layer of effort and focus and sweat, that makes sure that when my house of cards does inevitably come tumbling down … it doesn’t tumble quite so far.

2016 Women's Workshop: A Mighty Family

3:30am - Scramble to shush my alarm before it wakes anyone else. My husband and kids aren’t crazy enough to be getting up this early; that’s all me. I have this morning planned down to the minute. Hell, I’ve been preparing for this morning for weeks, resting and eating right and generally pouring on as much self-care as I possibly can to ensure that my madcap illness will let me do all the things I want to do for the next three days. This is my first time ever travelling out of state for a Kung Fu workshop, y’see, and I’m determined to make sure everything goes right. I jump into the world’s fastest shower, scoop up my pre-packed bags, and slip out the door.

4:15am - Pull up to Simo’s house. I don’t even have time to wonder if I should knock or text to let her know I’m there before she’s opening the passenger door and climbing in. Good, no precious seconds lost. We cruise through the sparse traffic of a barely conscious city, on our way to the airport to meet the other ladies with whom we’ll be traveling. I’m all over my phone, navigation and clock, are we where we should be at this moment? Are we ahead of schedule? I get a little smug about how well it’s all going.

4:45am - Score a princess parking spot in the airport’s long-term lot and hustle to catch the little bus that’ll take us to the terminal. I check that I’ve got all my bags as the bus trundles away from the parking lot. Pretty sure we’re exactly on schedule to catch our flight, but probably I should double check the time.

4:55am - Realize that I left my stupid phone in my stupid car.

Looking back, I can pinpoint this as the first of many (many, many) kung fu lessons of the weekend. I could either pitch a hissyfit and burn a bunch of energy that my sickly self really couldn’t spare on something that would achieve nothing more than making everyone’s life difficult, OR ... I could just take a breath, laugh, and go with the flow of fate. Honestly, I was about to fly 1400 miles away from home to learn Ving Tsun from Grandmaster Moy Tung … what on Earth did I need my phone for? Was I gonna live-tweet about the workshop? Scroll through some Tumblr memes in between rounds of tsui mah? Pffft.

So I caught Simo’s eye. Told her about my phone. We got some dirty looks from the other travellers on the bus - apparently nobody laughs in a pre-dawn airport. Some folks just don’t appreciate irony.

Hours blended together and the passage of minutes became meaningless. For the next three days, we drifted on the tides of kung fu in a strange new world where training, learning, working together, laughing, more training, basically everything … is more important than such mundane details as sleep or the concept of time.

Even the weather seemed uncommitted to any particularly rigid schedule. The wind that howled in over the Atlantic brought everything from glorious sunshine to angry slate-colored clouds and swirls of this mysterious white substance that I would later be assured was, in fact, snow. In April. In a place with “Beach” in its name.

Luckily, the extended kung fu family that gathered for the workshop all banded together to get done whatever needed doing. We fell into an easy rhythm of training, working together, gathering groceries and securing lodging and, yes, making an urgent run to Target for some extra layers of clothes for those of us (me) who were too Texas to handle the weather (I am a delicate flower).

And … look, I don’t like many people. I’m a curmudgeonly sort by nature, though mostly it’s bluster to cover introversion and a sometimes-crippling shyness, so meeting new folks stresses me out and makes me cranky. But there was something about this place, something about all of these women coming together from all over the country, that bypassed my attitude problems completely. We were all there with the same goal in mind: to train, and train hard. To listen and learn and sweat and pass out and get up to do it all over again without even once complaining because we had all moved our own personal mountains to be there.

It’s impossible not to like people under those circumstances. Or, at least, it was for me.

The family that plays forms together, spends time together without talking to each other, is totally my kind of family.

This was a workshop just for women - the only menfolk on that beach were Sigung Moy Tung and his baby boy (I heard that a few of Sigung’s male students were around, helping from behind the scenes like magical elves to keep things flowing smoothly, but I never saw them) - so the entire weekend had its own unique energy. Maybe it’s the same with any all-ladies athletic type thing. Maybe any large group of combat-trained women would gather together this harmoniously. I wouldn’t know; I avoid the hell out of crowds and my most athletic pursuits in the past couple of decades have been marathons of the Doctor Who variety.

What I do know … what I learned from my brain all the way down to my bones over the course of the weekend … is that the women of this Ving Tsun Kung Fu family are a force to be reckoned with.

It's not every day you get to watch a very nice lady put her fist through your Simo's chest.

Ving Tsun women are strong and they know it. But not once in the hours upon hours of training did I encounter so much as a flicker of competitiveness. We tested each other, pushed each other’s limits, but it was never about winning or proving who was stronger. The only person I felt the need to compete with was myself, and I kicked my carcass all over that floor. So yeah, I won, but I also lost. Which is what learning feels like.

Ving Tsun women can fuss and laugh and holler and sing as much as they like, each to her own desires, but when it comes down to violence we all fall silent. Focused. For hours on end, the only sounds in a room full of women was the shuffling of kung fu slippers across slate floors, the rustling of cloth, and the occasional dull thump of impact.

In those long stretches of kinetic silence, I found myself imagining how eerie it would be for an attacker to find themselves dealing with a victim who, instead of screaming or flailing, steps forward with all the quiet inevitable aggression of gravity and every intention to, as Sigung put it, “do everything you can to make them swallow blood”.

Ving Tsun women can drive through five hours of blizzard, in the middle of the night, in solid flurries of silver-dollar-sized snowflakes, at 20 mph in darkest rural Ohio to get to a VT workshop. Some of the ladies at this workshop did exactly that, and stepped right into training the moment they arrived. Luggage still in the car, a long night’s horrible road behind them, and they were doing forms with the rest of us.

Because to a Ving Tsun student fatigue is not an obstacle, it’s a training tool. The more exhausted the muscles, the more solid the structure had to be. All of us survived for days on single-digit hours of sleep grabbed in bits and pieces on whatever horizontal surface happened to be available. We trained until we were tired and then we kept training until tired was a distant unlamented memory.

When midnight rolled around on the last night, Simo, the other Texas ladies, and I looked at the handful of hours stretching between us and when our flight was scheduled to leave and had a decision to make. We could either take a tiny, unsatisfying nap followed by the epic struggle to be awake enough to travel, OR … we could just keep training through the night until it was time to leave. So we trained. Because duh.

A single day in the life of this workshop consisted of …

... absorbing every ounce of education from Sigung Moy Tung that we could,

... dozens of siu nim tao played in slow, deliberate unison like some kind of epic performance poetry,

... chasing giggling babies,

... hours of clashing in rows of chi sao like the world’s quietest mosh pit,

... throwing literally thousands of punches,

... cooking vats of pasta and from-scratch marinara sauce, chopping piles of fresh salad, enough to feed the entire small ravenous army of us,

... taking brutal powerwalks on a beach relentlessly sandblasted with frigid gale-force winds,

... comparing notes on our training experiences,

... laughing together,

... clocking enough hours of touching hands to equal at least month of regular training,

... taking care of each other so that we can wollop the breath out of each other all over again,

... and maybe a nap. Maybe.

The women of this Ving Tsun Kung Fu family are a mighty tribe. And I’m honored to be counted as one of them.

Been there, done that, proudly wear the t-shirt.

A brief word about training with Grandmaster Moy Tung:

There is nothing else like it. Because there is no one else like Sigung Moy Tung. Over the course of this weekend, I started to understand why the term is “martial artist”. Because that level of interpretation, of dedicating one’s life fully to the study, of never losing the joy of discovering new applications of technique, of becoming so brimming-over full of knowledge that it has to spill over and be shared with students who will know its value … that is Art.

This workshop was an immersive experience. Jump into the kung fu pool and start swimming. Lessons were everywhere, in everything we did, around every corner. That’s why we only slept when we absolutely had to - when those lessons are being taught by Grandmaster Moy Tung, you really don’t want to be caught napping. You’ll miss something awesome.

Month 12: Halfway There

{Prologue, Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4}
{Month 2, Month 3, Month 4, Month 5, Month 6, Month 7, Month 8, 2016 WSD, Month 11, Month 12, Month 18}

I’ve completed a full year of Ving Tsun Kung Fu training. Me. The chronically ill suburban mother of two whose favorite activities include cupcakes and not running.

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this, notions that have been tumbling around in my head like drunken june bugs for weeks, cheerfully mocking all of my efforts to wrassle them into cohesive narrative for a blog post because I’d rather poke my eyeballs out than go all Buzzfeed and write a damn listicle.

But ya know what?

- Ving Tsun has taught me how to pick my battles. Don’t try to force something to work that’s not supposed to work, whether it be a palmstrike that can’t get through or a blog post. So fine. Fine. Listicle it is, and I’ll just try to find a way to sleep at night.

- They’re not fat rolls, they’re Muscle Bumpers™. Kung Fu training has done a lot to deprogram a lifetime of internalized body-shame. I’m a big ol’ gal, always have been, and while my training has added pounds of muscle it hasn’t subtracted much fat. Probably I could lose some of the extra curves if I liked ice cream a little less, but that’s not even an argument worth making because it involves less ice cream. And, also, because who cares? My body is a gloriously mighty machine capable of doing just about anything I ask of it. Which is mind-blowing to someone who, just a year ago, spent more days limping than not.

I’m healthier today than I have ever been. Not just healthier compared to a year ago, but compared to the entirety of my adult life. Speaking as someone with a chronic illness, who will be some kind of sick every day for the rest of forever, that’s pretty freaking awesome.

So if this amazing collection of muscle and bone and blood that I get the privilege of driving around this world has some lumpy bits that aren’t conventionally pleasing to the eye, that’s the viewer’s problem. Not mine.

- I’m tougher than I ever thought I could be. If I look back over the past twelve months and squint a little, I can see the early days when every single class sent me home with sore forearms that would be all the colors of the bruise rainbow by morning. Nowadays, I typically don’t bruise unless I’ve been handing out bruises, too.

But it’s not just the physical. I’m tougher on the inside, too. Everyday crap that used to make my head pop clean off is now more likely to get a raised eyebrow, a deep breath, and Dealt With. Because, honestly, if it’s not trying to hit me, how bad can it be? And if it is trying to hit me, well, probably I can hit it back.

- I’m stronger than I know. Not like in a badass kung fu warrior way, so much as in an oversized puppy way. I’ve had multiple fellow students comment on my strength. Some have asked me to go easier during drills. One even used the word “brutal”, in a breathy-laughing please-stop-hurting-me kind of way. I’d like to take these moments as compliments to my training, but there’s this voice in the back of my head that worries VERY LOUDLY about accidentally hurting people.

I grew up a girl, so I’ve heard it all my life. Don’t play too rough, it’s not ladylike. Don’t show off how strong you are, you’ll scare off all the boys. Don’t be too pushy. Don’t be bossy. Don’t take up so much space. Don’t don’t don’t be anything but small and quiet and non-confrontational. It’s always gone against my nature (my body is built big, my voice is a natural megaphone, and I’m contrary as hell), but it’s what I heard, so it's what I hear. Now, it tells me to go easy during kung fu drills. To not play so rough. I can grind my teeth and ignore it, but the teeth, they are a-grindin’.

Luckily, there’s always some iron-armed sihing available to knock me around and remind me that A) I’m nowhere near the strongest beast in the room, and B) never, not once in the past year, have they ever gone easy on me. They may have taken a drill slow for the sake of getting the technique right, but they always kept their hands solid. There is patience in their strength; I try to remember that.

I’m stronger than I think I am, which means that my thinking needs to catch up with my muscles. Then, hopefully, I’ll develop the sensitivity to be able to trust myself not to accidentally hulk out on some poor unsuspecting sidai.

Just a few of the folks who have to listen to my teeth grind. They're the true heroes of this tale.

- Competence is a fickle mistress. I’m starting to understand the idea of my kung fu, my application of the techniques and how my body translates the movements. I’m developing expectations of my own performance. And getting frustrated when I don’t meet my own arbitrary expectations.

At this point, I’ve learned a lot of the pieces of the kung fu puzzle. Enough to get the notion that I’ll be shuffling them around and finding new ways to fit them together for the rest of forever. When it comes to the basic stuff, the drills that I learned in my first few months of training, I have a half-baked idea of what I’m doing. I’m competent.

Competent enough to have a little bit of pride in it. Competent enough that, on the rare occasions when a training partner looks at me in all my mom-shaped glory and assumes that I don’t know what I’m doing or that I can’t handle a drill, I can feel the sharp edges of my slow-spreading smile and know that I’m about to set somebody’s wrong head on straight. Few things in life give me more joy.

Naturally, it is in these moments that my disease may choose to demonstrate its fine sense of ironic timing. Sometimes, I measure off with Assumey McPreconceivedNotions, fully prepared to hold my own and show them that behind this maternal facade beats the heart of a badass, when that badass heart will skip a beat. Or my lungs will gasp and my hands will shake. Or maybe the lupus fog will ambush me and all I can do is watch (from the bench) as all of my hard-won competence drains away in a whirlpool of sudden fatigue and clumsy limbs and I seriously could chew nails and SPIT BULLETS in those moments.

This is why it’s good to have just a little pride. Makes it easier to swallow.

- Time doesn’t mean what it used to mean. If you had asked me twelve months ago if I’d still be training in Kung Fu right now, not just training but geeking out about it, signing up for seminars, tumbling down rabbitholes of kung fu videos, well … I would’ve tried to distract you with a cookie, because the answer would’ve been “no” and I wasn’t as good at saying that word a year ago as I am now.

Every second of training has the potential to go on for eternity, like cold molasses made of fire ants that march endlessly over you searing skin as your face contorts into a rictus of grim death and let’s just say conditioning is my least favorite part of class, okay? And yet somehow I blinked my sweat-stung eyes and BOOM! A year is behind me. This phenomenon isn’t new to me; I’ve got two kids who are all weird smells and bony knees now, but I swear that just yesterday they were drooling lumps of cuddly screaming biscuit dough. I know from time warps. It’s just that it never occurred to me that they could apply to physical training. Which tells you something about my level of athleticism twelve months ago.

Whether I believe it or not, a year of training has passed. According to the school’s 2-Year Program, I am halfway to being a “basic expert” in Ving Tsun. Which is kinda like saying I’m halfway to the moon because in no way do I feel like my road is half-traveled. I have so much more to learn.

Moy Tung Tsui Ma Lesson

One of the better lessons I have seen on Tsui Ma (pushing horse) Drill within the Chi Sao Cycle. Any comments or questions? This Tsui Ma focus is on single step and top arm energy "push".

Shot at Detroit Kung Fu in Michigan.

Time For Meditation? 108 Luk Dim Poon Kwan Forms

Kingsley's meditation was superb this day

A quick time for meditation?  With the start of the new year, this might be a good thing to try. Take a moment, maybe while playing siu nim tao, or maybe just lay down on the floor.  Slow down your breathing, clear your mind, relax, and let the stress melt away.

Then ask your self what your new year's resolution is. Be very specific and honest with yourself. Is this something you can accomplish? If so, then how? What will you do, how will you prepare, where will you be, what will you look like? Visualize everything from the preparation, the execution, to the completion. Imagine all the steps as you plan to do them.  Completing your goal should be something you can already feel and taste if you have done this exercise correctly.   Setting a goal and completing that goal can be very rewarding. It can also be motivating towards setting future goals.

 We kept this in mind during this morning's workout. Our workout today consisted of completing 108 luk dim poon kwan pole forms with our heavy quan dim wood poles that are 9' long and 6+lbs.  It took about 3 hours to complete 108 good, clean forms but we completed the challenge and it's now that much harder to let any Kung Fu training defeat us.

 Performing challenges such as 1 hour long siu nim tao, 10,000-20,000 punches, 108 forms non-stop, etc. will not only affect your physical training but it will really boost your mental game. If you can defeat your inner wuss and complete these challenges, no matter how badly your mind wants you to quit, what can defeat you in your training? You have challenged yourself against the worst you could come up with and still come out alive.

--Vyvial Sifu
we are all alone in this together

Also, I would like to welcome 4 new people to start today at the Moy Yat Kung Fu Academy in Austin: Joshua, Rhian,  Don,  and Cesar. These guys are off to a great start for 2012!

Some footage we shot today during class

"My Way. Or My Way With a Black Eye"

"My Way. Or My Way With a Black Eye"

For about 17 years I worked as a Dolly Grip, making movies, TV shows, music videos and more. I was working on a TV show called 6 Feet Under and we were shooting on stage at Sunset-Gower Studios in Hollywood. One day, we needed to move our equipment and carts from one stage to another. Space around a film set is at a premium with everyone fighting for prime real estate in order to be able to efficiently work and service the set. The grips have the most equipment, the biggest equipment and the most dangerous. Well, this day as I was saying, we started pushing our equipment, carts and everything to our normal spot, we came across a Gold Room. It was right there in the middle of where we needed to be.

A Gold Room is a room for the props or set dressing departments to store and secure their valuable junk. We normally have a good relationship with these departments, but the fact of the matter is that there are two Unions you don't cross in the movie business - the Teamsters and the Studio Grips. We both have the useful ability to make anything look like an accident, but we are also the guys you go to when you need things done.

This is pretty much what I did while working as a Local 80 Dolly Grip

So the Key Grip (my boss at the time) showed up and saw the situation and called over the set-dresser or prop-master, same thing really, and asked what was going on and why they decided they needed to take a space that had already been claimed for quite a while. Obviously the explanation wasn't good enough because the end of the conversation had my boss saying, "There are two ways this can go, MY WAY or MY WAY WITH A BLACK EYE, your choice!" The next day, the choice was apparently the "MY WAY" option, since we had our spot back. Pretty much a regular occurrence on set with the grip crew.

So what does this have to do with Kung Fu?

Something I overheard my Sifu say a few times in the past is that there are really only two answers  to every question in Ving Tsun: A1. Play More Siu Nim Tao and A2. Do You Want To Be Knocked Out?

The "Play More Siu Nim Tao" is the "My Way" and the "Do You Want To Be Knocked Out?" is the "Black Eye".  But what does this really mean? Do we punch people in the face for asking questions? No, of course not, but what is really being said is that if you have a question about Ving Tsun, the first thing you need to do is study your Sui Nim Tao and look for the answer within. Siu Nim Tao contains the entire system of Ving Tsun. If you study it hard enough, you will unlock all the secrets of the Ving Tsun System. Now if you say that you don't have enough time or focus for that, we do have another way to transmit the secrets of the system. There is an old saying of Ving Tsun that says, "Some techniques I can't teach you unless I hit you."

This does not mean that we are going to brutalize our adult students - that is not what we do. However, if a student wants the process to go quicker than normally advised, Ving Tsun has options.

As far as asking questions, that's fine. It's not taboo like it used to be in the old days. I can actually say that I have asked my Sifu a total of six Ving Tsun specific questions in the span of my martial arts career, 4 of those questions being about my students' training. Most martial art teachers nowadays are more than willing to share their knowledge and are happy to help, but the one thing you should make a habit of, is to formulate an answer before you ask the question. This will help you grow in your kung fu much more than getting an easy answer from your sifu.

--Vyvial Sifu
We are all alone in this together
Moy Yat Kung Fu Academy

Neil Plays Siu Nim Tau at Moy Yat Kung Fu Academy

Bai-Si Ceremony and Old Man’s Tea

Bai-Si Ceremony, Outdoor Students and Old Man’s Tea

The practice of drinking tea is a long-standing tradition in China. Legend says that Chinese Emperor Shennong discovered tea when a leaf from a camellia sinensis tree fell into a pot of water that he was boiling.

One can drink tea at many times during the day such as morning, during meals and even before bed. Chinese tea is normally classified into five categories: oolong, green, white, red, and post-fermented. Tea is considered one of the “seven necessities” of Chinese life, along with rice, oil, salt, vinegar, soy sauce, and firewood.

I grew up watching kung fu movies from the 70’s and in every movie you would always see the Kung Fu Master accept a person into his inner circle only after being served tea by the disciple. There was usually bowing involved as well. In modern times, this custom has mostly vanished from western martial arts schools, but the practice has stayed alive within the Moy Yat Kung Fu Family.

The custom of a todai (student) offering tea to a sifu is known as the bai-si ceremony and should be considered one of the most important ceremonies a kung fu practitioner can be invited to perform. The ceremony is what sets the disciple apart from the "outdoor students". Historically, a sifu would share 100% of his kung fu secrets only with disciples who had earned the opportunity and demonstrated that they could be trusted with this knowledge.

Outdoor student vs. Disciple

What is an "outdoor student"? Many traditional Chinese martial arts were taught privately as family styles, and classes were taught within a sifu's home or a family's hall. Only the trusted disciples (those who went through the bai-si tea ceremony) were allowed in the indoor areas for training or "Kung Fu Life". The "outdoor students", not yet having the trust of the family or sifu, would wait to train outside in the courtyard.

These distinctions continue to hold true in the modern kung fu school. Normal clients are the"outdoor students", and those who wish to take their kung fu to the next level are invited to participate in the bai-si ceremony and become "indoor students" or disciples.

The Ceremony

A todai who has been invited to perform the bai-si ceremony will kneel before the sifu who will seated before him (or her). He will recite a school code, kuen kuit, or maybe even just explain why he wants to commit himself to the sifu and the kung fu. If the sifu accepts, the todai will kowtow, bowing three times with his head touching the floor. This is considered the highest sign of reverence. The todai will then be handed a cup of tea to drink by someone who is assisting. Another cup of tea will be handed to the todai who will bow again and offer it to the sifu. If the sifu accepts the todai as an "indoor student" or disciple, he will accept the tea and will drink. This confirms the ceremony, and the todai will offer his "kung fu father" a gift such as lucky money in a red envelope to end the bai-si.This is just a basic, simplified explanation of the ceremonial process. There are many variations of the bai-si, and some ceremonies may last for many days.

A disciple who completes the bai-si ceremony becomes like a son or daughter to the sifu and the sifu will even bestow a kung fu family name. My sifu was a disciple of Moy Yat and was given the name Moy Tung, meaning Moy East or "Man of the East". When I became a disciple of Moy Tung, I was given the name Moy Saup Tung or Moy 10 Tung.

It is important to keep in mind that a discipleship does NOT mean blind obedience; it truly means mutual loyalty between the Sifu and the disciple. The disciple pledges to continue training hard, learning everything the sifu teaches while maintaining the integrity of the school and the kung fu. In return, the sifu pledges to completely pass his kung fu knowledge to the disciple to the best of his ability. That said, loyalty does demand some obedience and supplication - that is the nature of relationship between master and student. However, it must remain positive and must not be abused by the master.

The bai-si should not be taken lightly, for it is a big leap. Although I have students who are considered inner-circle, I have not yet had a student perform a bai-si ceremony with me. I never thought I was ready for the responsibility, but my kung fu and my students' kung fu have grown to the point where it really should not be put off any longer.

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I can remember that Sigung Moy Yat loved his tea. If I recall correctly, he drank oolong, but maybe it could have been jasmine. I learned a few years ago, while visiting my kung fu uncle, Miguel Hernandez, that in Sigung's later years, he drank Shau Mei tea. Which is a type of white tea that he called "Old Man's Tea"due to its strong, bitter flavor.

A few months later, I was in Boston’s Chinatown eating Dim Sum at China Pearl with my Sifu and Sigung Bak Moy Bing Wah. There were a few types of tea at the table but I noticed that a special tea was brought for Sigung Bak, I tried a cup and it had a really strong bitter taste. When asked what type of tea it was, Sigung Bak replied that it was Shau Mei.

So I finally had my chance to try Sigung’s “Old Man’s Tea”. Now it is a taste to which I have grown accustomed, and now I drink it every night before bed. Could it be perhaps that I am getting old?

Tea was very important to Sigung, and the bai-si ceremony carries a lot of meaning. The last person to bai-si as a "Grand-Special Student" to Sigung Moy Yat was my kung fu brother, Barry, who is a sifu in Richmond, VA. The tea ceremony is a traditional element of Chinese kung fu that I am glad to see live on, even after the death of MoyYat.

--Vyvial Sifu
We are all alone in this together.
Moy Yat Kung Fu Academy