We started the year out with some Training Tips and the February Post on Mastering the Discipline of Breathing. This would be a good time to review that Post. We spent the last few months discussing the 2nd – 5th Chambers of Lesson Plan 1. You know now that your power comes from your ability to maintain a connection to the Earth that creates pushback and Earth Qi, and to control your breathing in order to access and control the forces of Heavenly Qi. You should now understand that when these two disciplines are put into harmonious integration qi will flow though your body and you can control the direction of its flow. You should also have a better understanding of why we put Stances, Stepping, Turning & Shifting, and Foot & Leg Way before Fist Way. Lesson Plan 1 teaches you how to connect with Earth Qi and Heavenly Qi and cause it to flow through you. Now you can direct the power of those internal forces outward through the various parts of your hands.
Lesson Plan 2 introduces you to the Five Basic Striking Surfaces of the Fist. Many of the techniques in our 7 Circles System are actually open hand or animal hands techniques. But the fist has a unique bone structure that sets it apart from any of the open and animal hand techniques. It is versatile, hard, and handy. It is your portable hammer if you happen to need one. And yes! Some of the Shaolin masters practice driving nails into wood with the various fist techniques. The head of the fist where the large joints of the index and middle fingers converge and protrude slightly is the most obvious striking surface and the one that that average street fighter will use and expect. Fist Way teaches you to multiply your advantage (muni ipa ifa – seize the advantage) by using all five striking surfaces of your fists, the head, the heart, the hammer, the back, and the eye. Since each of the striking surfaces attacks from a different angle the opponent has to deal with a much more complex array of possibilities. Add in your dynamic movements from your Leg Way training and your ability to move the qi however you choose and you become a force to be reckoned with.
The striking surface is the point on your hand where you will direct the qi. It is the end point of your delivery system. What you are delivering is energy, gathered in you, directed by you, and delivered by you from the striking surface of your hand to the contact point on the surface of your opponent’s body. Yes! Release the energy on the surface of your opponent’s body. In some systems the hands are hardened so that the practitioner can punch or strike into or through the contact point. That is, the hand pushes into the body compressing its surface. In the 7 Circles System we also train our hands to be hard not to penetrate the contact point but to focus and control the energy that we are releasing into the contact point. For us it more like breaking glass than punching through wood, a short snapping technique as opposed to a deep penetrating technique. We train to gather and release qi using our bodies as the conduit for that process.
Our Conventional Fist is used for penetrating blows and our Southern Stone Fist techniques. Our Black Tiger Fist is used for Qi Extension blows and snapping power to deliver qi to the opponent by touching the contact point we have chosen. If you practice creating snapping power with each of the Five Striking Surfaces of the Fists you will develop a skill the will serve you well in maintaining good health and in elevating your abilities at self-defense.
Live Wu-Te
Seifu Sharif
Support the Wu-Te Performance Troupe
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
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