Interaction

In a previous entry, I mentioned that movement comes first. You have to learn how to move around in a relaxed mental state and properly interact with the ground. After movement comes interaction. 


In some sense, interaction is going on all the time. Gravity is pushing on you and the environment is interacting with you through your senses. Maybe a better way to think of learning to interact is to become more aware of the interaction that is always taking place. 


You can interact with the ground as I said, or maybe a wall or a ball or any inanimate object. You can also interact with animals and people. No matter what you do, you are doing some kind of interaction, but how do we get the best interactions or at least improve them as much as possible?


The first step is attention. It's not good enough to see or hear, you need to actively look, listen and feel. 


When you move around, in order to be balanced and move naturally, you should have your attention focused outward rather than inward. Some people call this "confidence". I think of it as the way a healthy person should be all the time. You should have a bubble of intent or attention around you. I don't mean a literal bubble...just think of it as a metaphor for how far around you your attention goes. It can be as small as just around your skin or up to 10 meters, 100 meters, a kilometer...I don't think there is a limit really. It should also be all around you and not just forward. If you are really focused outward, your body will relax, because your mind isn't telling it to tense up. Your mind is busy experiencing the world around you.      


At the point something enters into the area you are paying attention to, you are interacting with it. I don't want to get off track getting into the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and how intent and attention can be real forces, but let's just say that interaction occurs when your attention is on something. 


You start interacting with someone when they have their attention on you and you on them. If there is music playing, you interact with it only when you notice it, not when you just hear it. 


All of this may sound obvious, but here is the problem that often happens. People forget this simple phenomenon. You can get so wrapped up in your head and what you want or need that you can forget to interact. 


If you play in a band and you don't listen to your band mates because you are too busy trying to play perfectly or show off, that is not a full interaction. If you talk to someone and you just want to rant about something even if they don't want to hear it, bad interaction. If you are counting dance steps while you dance with a partner, bad interaction. If you are fighting and you throw out programmed moves, bad interaction. If you are having sex with someone and you are visualizing other people or situations in your head, bad interaction.


Luckily, bad interactions won't kill you in the short term or most of us would already be dead. They do do some pretty bad things though such as preventing fun, learning, energy and basically life in general. Living is interaction and the experience of that interaction is emotion.


Most people have been hurt physically and emotionally or they are too scared to let go to have real interactions with other people. Or perhaps they are busy wishing reality was different than it is or that people were different than they are so they can't let go and interact.  Other people are busy trying to get people to react to them in a certain way. 


Some people didn't get enough love and attention at a young age so they run around looking for people to give them energy, attention and/or approval. That isn't real interaction. Some people "fall" for a man or woman they know and start to see that person as the answer to their life. This expectation keeps them from really interacting with the person and perhaps starting a real relationship. Some guys never make friends because they want that person to first give them status and "respect" them before really interacting. 


Ok, so on to fighting. Fighting is an intense form of interaction. It can be terrifying, dangerous, and the person you are interacting with may or may not have their attention on you. To be as good as possible, you need to really understand how interactions work. Dancing should be a snap. You should be able to have great, fun conversations with people. You should be able to be vulnerable and your emotions should express themselves naturally on your face. If you can't do these things, you need to keep working on interaction. 


Of course, you can try to skip straight to fighting but in my experience you will have trouble going beyond your basic size, strength and speed. You will plateau and probably get really frustrated.  

Nickname blues

Names have weird mojo. There is a sound to them, a rhythm, a categorization effect. They don't define you and yet they seem to exert substantial influence. Everyone has a few names they don't like and people will even come up with character profiles based on a given person's name. "Oh shit, girls whose names end in -y are crazy!" For myself, I notice I seem to only be attracted to girls whose names start with B, M or S. Probably nothing to it, but it's a fun mental construct.

When a couple are expecting a baby, they have to spend a bit of time pondering a name because the name just might exert a bit of influence on how their precious offspring will end up. His or her destiny.

But in the end, you are stuck with a name just like you are stuck with premature balding or an unfortunate face. You can't change your DNA but there is one way to sort of change your name. The nickname. If you are "street" enough, you will probably get a nickname. Hopefully it's a good one. But, if it's not...(hurr hurr)

[This is the opening scene from The Wire, the greatest television show of all time in my opinion]
You might even be tempted to put a nickname out there for yourself, to push a nickname so to speak...not a good idea. In one of my favorite episodes of Seinfield, George decides to go for the name "T-bone" and it results in his co-worker getting the nickname. Here he decides to push the matter further.

You can almost always tell if someone picks their own nickname. It just doesn't have any weight or feel right. I met a woman in Thailand on my last trip. 5 minutes after meeting her, she says, "Everybody calls me 'Squish'." 5 minutes after that, she was fire twirling. I understand the feeling..."I want to reinvent myself so I will henceforth be called 'Squish the Fire twirler!'" Things just don't work that way.

I am the first born son in a family that follows the tradition of naming the first-born son after the father. The fifth in a row. There are only so many variations on Will, Bill, William, Billy, Willy and so on within a family before you long to be something completely different. Damn, I wanted to be know as Ozymandias or something.

Most of the nicknames I picked up were variations on my name. They were less nicknames than jibes. Wilma, Chilly Willy, the Mongrel, Mounger Man, War Monger, Fish Monger and the like. Luckily they never stuck. I almost got "Doc" one time, which ain't bad. Then later in Taiwan I fell asleep outside at a music festival and was seen passed out being attacked by a goose. That got me "goose" for a couple of weeks. Still nothing stuck. I seem to be doomed to go by my name.

Even things associated with me have trouble picking up cool nicknames. In college I had a yellow 1978 Honda civic that I bought for $1,500. It had an 8-track player and loads of character. I was on a road trip with some buddies and they even brought up the issue. "Dude, your car needs a nickname. What we gonna call it?" Some girl says, "well, if it's yellow, you should call it sunshine!" We laughed and made fun of her for not knowing how to nickname a car for almost an hour. "Ha, you need to go to the store? Hold on and let me go get 'sunshine'." After said hour passed, we looked at each other and my friend said, "You realize what we have done, don't you?" I said, "yeah, shit, now my car is named Sunshine." So I was stuck with an 8-track- playing Sunshine.

The whole reason I am writing this blog is that I was working on the bar I am building in my apartment in Taipei today. When I moved in, I noticed that a corner of my living room was a closed off stairwell that used to go to the lower floor. There was a metal railing that got in the way of using it for much of anything. I immediately saw the possibility and decided to build a cute little corner bar. I brought hundreds of bricks up 6 flights of stairs and have been working on making it "cool". My friends started asking me about it and I brainstormed ideas for a silly little name. Somebody mentioned "The Dojo" and that sounded great. I could run the bar with a little karate kid headband and put a rising sun flag behind the bar. Issue solved.

So, I get the bar partially finished and one of my friends comes over, a friend with a well-established nickname he didn't pick..."the Bull". That night he seemed obsessed with telling me about gay bars that he heard about where people piss on each other. "Dude, you should totally call your bar, splashers!"

"Ha ha ha, yeah  right." Well, there were a few dudes over that night and we drank a fair amount. The next morning, I go to my bathroom and there was piss everywhere. I talk to my friends and say, "damn, Bull was kidding about calling my bar 'Splashers' but after looking at my bathroom, it really is...." I was just joking, but guess what my friends now call my bar.

I guess I am happy just to be known as Will.

Ok, this entry has gone on long enough, but I will leave you with a story that I feel conveys the real dangers of caring too much about nicknames. In Taiwan there is a sport group that meets weekly. They have a tradition that everyone who participates gets a nickname. Mostly the nicknames are stupid and vulgar. A woman might be known as "Roboslut" or something. One friend I had put mousse in his hair and became known as "Vassilino". Silly stuff.

Anyway, this one guy had been involved for a while and was kind of leader in the group. His nickname was "Flaming Penis". After a long time of being involved in the group this new guy comes to participate. He is a male model. Flaming Penis tells the male model that he has decided to give him the nickname of "XXX"...something really insulting and lame. The model says, "so what if I don't accept that nickname? Why can't I be 'Flaming Penis'?"

"But 'Flaming Penis' is my nickname."

"Ok, so how did you get that nickname?"

"I wrapped newspaper around my penis and set it on fire and downed a beer before I put it out."

"How long did it take you?"

"I dunno, like 10 seconds."

So, the male model announces to everyone. "I want to take 'Flaming Penis' nickname. I will wrap my penis in newspaper and light the paper on fire and finish a beer in 8 seconds. If I can do that I want his nickname." Everyone gathers around and agrees to the contest. The guy pulls it out, wraps it in newspaper and lights it and skulls a beer quickly and puts out the fire." The whole crowd chants, "Flaming Penis! Flaming Penis!"

The man formally known as "Flaming Penis" is not about to go down without a fight. He announces that he will beat Mr. Fancy Pants Male Model's time to regain his nickname. The crowd goes wild.

He pulls down his pants but stage fright and temperature seem to be affecting his performance.

Someone yells out, "Hahaha, Look! He got a vagina!"

The crowd yells out, "Vagina Boy! Vagina Boy!"

Take a guess as to what his nickname is now.

So, yeah, my name is Will. Let me know if you need me to pick you up with Sunshine to come to Splashers.

Movement

I often divide up what I am teaching into three areas when people ask me about it: movement, interaction and fighting.

Movement means not just moving, but moving in the most natural way possible. You really can't move incorrectly actually, but you can move and not be in the right state of mind for movement or you can move inefficiently for what you are trying to accomplish.

Most people move quite well in many areas of their lives. It is not unusual to be completely awesome at putting on a sock or tying a shoe. Its usually the bigger movements where we run into problems.

One area where you can run into problems are simple whole-body movements like walking. If your intent is directed inward and you are wrapped up in your head, you will probably lean forward. This results in the body being out of balance. If your body is out of balance, you have to use muscles to compensate. Using these muscles all day leads to soreness and eventually chronic problems.

Some people have suffered stresses in life to the point where they can't let go at all when they move so they keep whole areas of the body locked up.

The body can only really relax and move naturally when emotions are allowed to flow. So some people have been given a reason to try to stop themselves from experiencing and/or expressing certain or all emotions. This will cause the body to lock up in reflection of the constricted emotion.

Some people can move well when they are alone but experience serious problems when around people or when doing specific activities. If you are worried about what people think or how you look, you can't move naturally (or you could say the fact that your attention is in the wrong place will cause interruption to natural movement). If you don't think you can sing and are worried that your singing (or any other activity) is inadequate, you will probably clench up in preparation for beginning to sing.

So I try to help people overcome these kind of issues and continue to work on my own. Some of the problems people have in this area tend to be pretty universal while others are specific to the individual.

These issues are also extremely "deep" in a person. What I mean is that it isn't a matter of showing or telling a person how they should move. That doesn't work. Their movements are tied up with their identity, their past, their parents, their culture, their everything. You have to go back to very simple slow movements and relearn things you already know how to do. Along the way, you also have to confront a lot of personal emotional issues. I find that I have to use a delicate touch (difficult for me) when dealing with these areas. It is no accident that there are whole schools of psychotherapy dealing with movement and emotional health.

All things being equal I would rather not get into the way people move and control their bodies and just teach straight fighting. It can be frustrating and messy stuff. So why do it?

Because you can't get really good at anything if you have fundamental movement issues and what's worse, the activity won't be fun on a fundamental level. If I teach wing chun without addressing these issues, people will do it, get better, then get a little better, then quit without much to show for it. If I teach 100 people, I will get a couple of people who already move naturally and they will learn to fight very well. Another couple of people will stumble upon the right way to move on their own or through some eureka moment. What about all the rest? Those people deserve to be great at something too, and I cannot in good conscious take their money and teach them just wing chun, when I know that they are not ready yet to make use of that fighting strategy.

Kungfu flying

I need to make a flyer.


I have always gotten students by word of mouth, but now my students are getting better and I would really like for them to have more people to interact with. Also, I love teaching so the more the merrier. 


If I were totally awesome, I would do something like this. 

But I have learned from experience that people who are planning to study martial arts often don't quite see the humor in things the same way I do. 


I think what you are supposed to do is put on some pajamas, pick up a staff and strike a cool kungfu pose and take a black and white picture in the mountains or maybe get a cool silhouette of a dude in a pose. Then you pick out a fortune cookie font and cut and paste some info about wing chun from wikipedia. Gotta be sure to say efficient and centerline a bunch of times for best effect. 


I was going to post some funny flyers that I found on the internet, but it's kind of depressing. They are all EXTREME and often have people kicking, especially the Taekwondo ones...Oh wait, here is good one. I knew good ole Aikido wouldn't let me down.

Yeah, I don't think so. 


Damn, if I am going to have a flyer, I need a logo. I think you just take a Yin Yang symbol and throw some Chinese characters on it, or maybe add a snake or crane or something, maybe some weapons. This is getting hard.


Ok, I will sketch something up in MS paint. Here you go.

That can be my logo. A dude chillin in hammock between two wooden dummy palms drinking a pina colada (I tried to draw a beer, but it was too much work and beyond my drawing skills.) Don't worry, this is just a draft. I will turn the sun into a yin yang symbol and draw a dragon flying across the sky or something. 


Of course I am kidding. I still have no idea what I will do. Probably just get name cards with my blog address written on it. Whatever I do, I will post it here so you can make fun of my photoshop skills. 


Now, what's the best filter to make a convincing chi blast?

Feelings, mental state and the body

The body is a hugely complicated organism or maybe I should say the body/mind is a hugely complicated organism.

I think most people think that the mind "controls" the body, but actually its more like a symbiotic relationship. It may seem contradictory but the mind and body seem to be both one and the same and reflect each other. I mean  to say that what happens in the body is reflected in the body and vice versa.

There are so many things going on in the body at any given time that you can't every hope to control it. You can mentally focus on one tiny thing and control it, but what is happening to the rest of your body while you are lost in controlling one aspect.

The rest of the things happening in your body are influenced or affected by your mental state or your emotions. If you are feeling anger, you can't just tell your body to relax. It can't happen. If you are agitated, so is your body. If you are trying to learn to fight, but you feel anxious, your body can't do the things it will need to do. The same goes for any activity.

This is why it can be so frustrating to learn new skills sometimes. If you think you can't play music or have no rhythm, then you will be tense when you try to play a piano. Your mental tension will be reflected in the body, or you could say that it is all the same thing and you can't separate the two.

This tension will mean that you can never connect to the activity you are trying to do. Certainly you will learn to fake it better, but it will never inspire you or anyone else until you get in the proper state.

Sometimes it happens naturally or by accident. It took an injury for me to do it in wing chun. But usually it never happens before the person quits the activity.

Of course there are some activities like human interaction you can't quit, so a person may just isolate themselves or just be awkward socially forever.

So, what does all this mean? It means you have to deal with the mental state before you engage in an activity, during the activity and after. Hell, you need to monitor your mental state all the time. Eventually, you can learn to just decide to be in a certain mental state.

To get started, get ready to do an activity like singing (this is what led to the creation of the Alexander Technique) and see what happens to you physically. Does your body start to tense up before you actually do the activity. You need to be completely relaxed and happy and direct your attention outward and not inward. Then start doing the activity with no expectation to do well. When you feel yourself getting tense or not having fun, stop. Start over and just have fun. Getting better comes from completely engaging in an activity.

How would you do the activity if it were easy or it came naturally? Stop worrying about outcome, you are exactly as good as you are. Trying doesn't make you better, it gets in the way of you doing the activity. You can't "try" and be engaged. Trying is just tension. Do and let what happens happen.

Always let yourself feel and express that feeling. Bottling the emotion results in tension and eventually disease and insanity. You have no choice but to experience emotion, its a side effect of life and kind of the whole point.

Escaping mental loops

What I call mental loops is when you get caught up in your mind and have cut off your connection with the world around you. In general, the thoughts involve things you can't change about the past or the future. I think we all do it from time to time, but some people do it almost all the time. It can result in insomnia, depression, and paralysis (inability to act or proceed with life). It can be some nasty stuff.

I have certainly done a few rounds with mental loops in my time. At different times of my life, I have obsessed on...

• death and its inescapability 
• afterlife religious possibilities
• what I should be doing to be a better person, have more money, etc. 
• the seeming pointlessness of life in general
• am I doing the right thing

Certainly all of these topics should be considered and thoughts in general are necessary and in no way bad. The problem occurs when you get these circular loops that you can't control. I think we often try to think our way out of the process when it is thinking itself that gets you in the loop. It's like curing alcoholism with beer.

As is so often the case the answer is to get out of the worries about the past and the future and be fully in the present. You can get that advice anywhere, but how do you do it? The answer is through the body. The body can rescue your mind. 

First, it is important to understand how the body reflects the mind and vice-versa. When you are locked in a mental loop of regret or worry, your body will clench up and your breathing will be shallow. Lock up your body and you can find yourself going into a mental loop. Also, your attention is focused inward giving energy to the mental loop. 

To stop it, you have to get out of your head and focus outward. Start looking and listening to what is around you and let your body relax. Breathe deeply. Feel. The instant your body relaxes, your mind will get off the treadmill. 

I used to have terrible insomnia, I found that it was caused by three things. Caffeine, insufficient physical activity and/or mental loops. I would sit in bed and worry and I couldn't sleep. Relaxing the body and focusing outward, pretty much solved it for me. I still forget occasionally, because knowing something doesn't mean you will do it all the time. 

   

Wing chun drills

Drills

Here are some drills that will help you learn the basic principles. Do them the way they are written but then play with them. Change them and make up your own. 

Basic Body isolation 

Goal: Learn to move specific parts of the body while maintaining a relaxed sunk position.

Hierarchy of requirements: stay relaxed, move the body part, use as few muscles as possible to do so

Drill 1: Shoulders. Move a shoulder up, down, forward and backward. Move in a circle. Try as many directions as possible. Do it with each shoulder. Move them together. Try going in circles together and then while the shoulders are in opposite positions.

Drill 2: Upper body (at sternum). Move upper body right, left, forward and back.

Drill 3: Hip. Move right, left, forward and back. Also move in a circle.

Rag doll

Goal: To learn to relax, center and sink

Hierarchy of requirements: centered, relaxed, sunk

Drill 1: Stand with feet about shoulder width apart. Relax all muscles and find the most centered point in your body.  Pretend that there is a string lightly holding your head up in a centered position. Find the center point where you are in balance and let all your muscles liquefy as much as possible. Become a rag doll that is just hanging on the skeletal structure.  Imagine that there is a heavy weight hanging between your legs and weights attached to every joint (shoulders, elbows, knees, wrists). Relax the mind as well as the body. Take three big breaths and let go as much as you can with each breath.

Drill 2: Stand up straight. Fall into the rag doll position. Take a step in a stiff way. Fall into the rag doll position. Lean forward…rag doll. Lean back, to the right, and to the left always returning to the rag doll position. Get into all kind of weird positions with your arms raised or down and then return to rag doll position.

Drill 3: Get into the rag doll position. Move around while never leaving the rag doll position. Move from your waist or center of gravity. Feel yourself being as raggedy or liquid as possible. Stumble like a drunk and observe your body move.

Drill 4: From the rag doll position, turn your waist and let arms flap without controlling them. Do it fast and slow.

Assisted movement

Goal: To learn to DO something with the minimal amount of effort stemming from the relaxed sunk position

Hierarchy of requirements: rag doll position, accomplish the task, relax the moving arm

Drill 1: Have someone pick up your arm and place it somewhere. They should hold you by the finger, hand or arm. Give up control. Feel the weight at each joint. Feel the blood drain out of your arms, your bone marrow drain down your arms down through your body and into your feet.

Drill 2: Do the same thing as in drill 1. When your partner puts your hand at a certain point, he or she will tell you to “hold position”. Hold the position as the partner lets go. Try to move as little as possible.

Drill 3: Move your own hand or arm with the other hand. Make sure you give up control to the opposite hand. Do drill 1 and 2 that way.

Drill 4: Now use only one arm, hand or finger and move it in a direction while maintaining the rag doll position and feeling the weight on your joints and feeling the blood drain down the arm and into the body and into the feet. Stop in a position. Do this in multiple directions with the arm unturned and turned in the air and against a wall.

Drill 5: Put your arm in a position quickly and then go “rag doll”. Let everything drain down yet hold the position. Do it in the air and on a wall. Try putting your body in weird or leaning positions and do it as well. Sink down always.

Various “Wall” drills

Drill 1: This drill is better to do with something you can grab or hold onto. Get into the rag doll position. Push your body back and forth by extending your arm and retracting it. Maintain rag doll position and remember to feel weight on joints and to feel internal energy draining down.

Drill 2: Lean on the wall. Push forward and feel how it feels. Try pushing “outward”. Try single and double hands and all possible positions right, left, up, down and across the body. Try it without leaning.

Hold a distance/Maintain hand at a point

Goal: Learning to move whole body with the hand or independent of the hand

Drill 1: Hold one hand in front of you in at a set distance. Walk around holding that position. Try different positions with one and two hands. This should be pretty easy.

Drill 2: Hold your hand in a set position in the air. Move the body back and forth and in as many ways possible while holding the hand in a fixed position. Try it on a wall. Try it on a hanging rope or something that moves easily. Change the hands. Try revolving around the point.

Frame

Goal: Learning to maintain the hand and arm in space under pressure

Hierarchy or requirements: rag doll position, no movement of the arm

Drill 1: Place one hand and/or arm and put it in front of your body. Place a finger from the other hand behind it pointing forward. Have a partner push you (start gently and use increasing amount of force…never TOO much). Try different positions.

Drill 2: Same drill but without the finger.  Try to imagine that the finger is still there.

Pinball

Goal: Learning to maintain the rag doll position under external force

Drill 1: Get into rag doll position. Have a partner push and pull you around. Start easy and increase amount of force. Start with back and forth and then add all directions.

Dance time

Goal: Learning to move others by moving self

Drill 1: Lock arms with a partner. Start by grabbing each others internal elbow (elbow pit?).  One person is passive or in rag doll position. Take a step forward. Do not move the arms. Visualize yourself moving and not moving the other person or perhaps the two of you moving together. Go back and forth. Try right and left and diagonally. Try it holding the hands or wrists of the person. 

Guidelines for new students Phase 1

So many new students recently that I can sometimes overlook some of the basic skills they need to learn. Here are some of the basic concepts that I think are important in the first stage of learning.



Phase 1
What are we doing? What is this stuff?
Our primary goal is learning to fight. We are trying to learn the best and most effective way to fight using any information and technology available. One of the things we do differently is that we try to learn the principles of fighting rather than the techniques. Some of the things we have to master on the road to learning to fight are body and mind control and the principles of interactive movement. These things are all very interesting and apply to many things outside of fighting, but fighting is the primary goal. 


How to learn
This is not the Will show. Ok, it’s my class, but I am just a guy who plays around with and looks for good fighting and movement principles. I learned these principles from people and books but mostly from trying them out and playing around with them. These principles exist for you to find (along with many better ones). They don’t belong to me. If you are interested in this stuff, make a commitment to figure it out any way you can. I will help, but you have to do it. It is easy if you just work the drills (and make up your own). 


Class time
In class, don’t wait for me. Start working on this stuff the minute you get there. There is a lot you can do alone or with a partner. If I am boring you during class, go do what you want to do. Take responsibility for your own learning.


Homework
Any skill takes work. You must play with this stuff any chance you get. Even five minutes a day has a major effect. Play with this stuff when you are walking around, watching tv or whatever.


Mastery
You must master the basic skills in this phase in order to progress. If you proceed without mastering these skills, you will get confused and frustrated and stop learning. It is also not fair for someone who has mastered these skills to have to work with someone that is not ready for more advanced skills. The most advanced skills are just a series of smaller skills stacked on top of each other.


Wing Chun Techniques
These are the techniques I need you to know at this stage. Feel free to ask me about them at any time.
Stance - See rag doll
Siu lim tao - Do it while maintaining the rag doll position and thinking about weights on your joints
Punch
Tansao
Bangsao 


Key Concepts
Body habit
We are all a collection of physical and mental habits. We learn one way of doing something and that is usually good enough. After you learn to walk one way, why change it? Who needs a more efficient way of picking up a beer? For what we are doing, however, we need to relearn how to do everything we do in a more efficient manner. We begin doing this by letting our way of holding our body go and going to the “rag doll” position. We then relearn to do things and use the minimal amount of effort required to accomplish it. This is that whole “empty the cup” crap. Let your way of doing things or of controlling your body go in order to discover a new way. Is it more important to do things your way or the best way? Let go mentally and physically and observe the differences. 


Understanding vs. doing
If you hear something and understand the words, you think you understand. When learning a skill, understanding doesn’t count for much. You can do it or you can’t. Nobody cares how much you understand the guitar, only how well you can play it. Informational learning by itself translates to 95% failure. It is ok to not understand. In fact, it’s normal. Just keep doing the drills. If you really get lost, back up a step. Be careful if you think of yourself as “smart”. It is easy for smart people to “understand” stuff and never bother to master the underlying skill. Dumb is good. 


Principle vs. technique
People love techniques. I don’t teach many techniques. If you deeply understand a principle, you can create an infinite amount of techniques that illustrate that principle. You own it. There are not that many principles. I hope to help you understand them as quickly as possible so you don’t need me (you don’t already).


This skill is easy
These fighting principles are simple if you take them step by step. If you learn little skills, they lead to great things.


You kick ass!
Ok, that is cheesy, but it is absolutely important. You have to believe you can fight first. I can’t teach you to fight if you want to learn to first before you believe. If you believe you can fight, you are halfway there. Start every class thinking how much ass you can kick (I can kick about 57 pounds worth). Finally, the best way to be successful is to help others be successful. Help your classmates and you will learn fast.

Halloween hair affair

I have never been the greatest at preparation of any kind, and certainly not for Halloween.
My general rules for coming up with a costume are...
1. No pun costumes
2. Gotta make it yourself
3. No masks or too much make-up
4. No boxes or complicated stuff
5. No gory, or "cool" costumes, the more ridiculous the better
4. Gotta do it day before or day of.

Last year, I had two hours to get my costume together so I decided to be Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force

Here is what I came up with.

So I shaved the "bozo" cut in my head. Nobody knew what the hell I was supposed to be, but they loved the fact that I looked stupid, so I kept the cut for a while.

I kind of grew attached to the look, but after a while you get tired of talking about bald heads, mustaches and how stupid you look. I don't think it did me any favors for attracting new wing chun students either. It lasted about a week.

This year, I planned to do the "bozo" with much longer hair and a bigger mustache so I went into mustache training at the beginning of the month. Wasn't sure what I was going to be, but I was sure a-thinking. Then, a week ago, I had to shave it for a job I did so no more mustache. Oh well, what you gonna do? I wanted to do something involving shaving my head because I was tired of having long hair. So, I shaved it.

 I wanted something good, but the best I could do was Mr. Clean.

Here is my version with Lady Gaga.

Ok, so the hair stuff doesn't end there. My friend with a shaved head was looking for ideas and all he had was some kind of flame wig. He wanted to go as heat miser.

I said, "no way, dude. You don't want your beers to get lukewarm in your clutch. Go as Super Saiyan Michael Phelps!"

"What's that?" he says.

"It's this."

Ok, he didn't know what the hell I was talking about because he not nearly as nerdy as I am. I just thought it would be cool for him to be the most obscure internet meme I could think of.

My friend didn't even know what Dragonball Z was  (I promise I only know what it is, never read it) so he wikipedia-ed it and decided to go as that.

So this fool just happens to have a Dragonball Z wig and then on the day of Halloween puts together a costume that would make lifestyle cosplayers hard. He even had a perfectly cut out comic accurate Chinese character on the back. He was a hit at the party we went to, but damn, I wanted my Super Saiyan Phelps.
Then, I got my chance...I saw a huge dude walk in dressed as Michael Phelps. I grabbed my friends wig and did some fast talking. The outcome....

That's right, Super Saiyan Michael Phelps sucking on a bong.

Mission accomplished. Happy Halloween!