Chi Sau a wonderful condensed version of the game of life. The close contact, the interlocked movement and the desire to overcome your opponent or prevent them from over coming you.
The close contact of our daily interactions with people, pressures, situations and events. How we cope with these, is this not just a bigger game of Chi Sau?
In Chi Sau we’re taught when;
it’s hard go softer,
to place rather than force,
when we feel the mass drop our own further,
keep our forward intent,
protect our centerline,
take their centerline.
In following the above we should overcome our opponents.
In our life outside Chi Sau could our centerline be our values our core beliefs? Could the distractions and events of our day be our attackers? Could it be that the aiming for the centreline is a reminder of where to focus our intent or desire. Despite shit happening, bills arriving, people letting us down, we keep our core values (our centerline ) we focus on going down the centerline ( our intent). This intent is happiness, true happiness is freedom.
In Chi Sau, when we get struck unexpectedly we sometimes react and the yang rises, the state the poise are overtaken by the ego and before too long we end up on our back defeated.
Doesn’t the same apply to the life outside chi sau?
The failed expectation, the unpredictable event, the plan not going to plan or the seemingly unfairness of what happened. When we react to these events, we invariably end up on our backs or exhausted.
What if we took Sifu Lawrence’s advice, what if when it gets harder we get softer, what if it gets heavier we get lighter, what if it gets unpredictable we drop further into our state, we increase the precision of our intent. Our intent for happiness, freedom from attachment. Precision will always overcome mass.
– David Mccan, Mindful Wing Chun, Grade 3 student, May 2018. Hong Kong