One of our Wing Chun kuen kuit (“sayings of the fist”) is “kuen yao sum faat”. This means the fist methods come from the heart. Let’s deconstruct this kuen kuit to arrive at a very important notion which is pivotal to the mastery of all true martial art and of our art of Wing Chun. There are a number of levels at which this kuen kuit can be understood.
First, we can interpret the kuen kuit to mean that the true Wing Chun punch comes from the heart. A literal interpretation. However, there are two ways I’ve seen the Wing Chun punch executed. Both vastly different in structure and powering philosophy. Yet, it could be said of both that they “come from the heart”. The first is for the practitioner to put his fist with the face of it facing forwards and the wrist bent in front of the heart and drive it forward. The wrist is straightened as the forearm moves forward. The fist is clenched. The elbow is at the side and the fist is said to be propelled by the elbow. The punch finishes with the arm angled in from the shoulder with the elbow fairly much on the side body line. It entails what I would interpret as “fai jahng” or flying elbows. That’s the external way of doing the punch. It’s quite frankly incorrect. Why? It breaks some basic Wing Chun principles. It eschews genuine relaxation and alignment, it doesn’t involve optimal self preservation if it were employed against a really skilled practitioner of the second style of punching mentioned below. It tenses unnecessarily twice - once at the cocking of the fist in the bending of the wrist and once again as the punch is driven forward with the muscular processes of the shoulder and back pushing it. The second way is to utilise cher lik, to literally throw the punch, which is an “empty fist”, the wrist never bending, and to align and relax properly. The elbow doesn’t power this punch as it is said to power the first type of punch. I’m not going to describe it in detail here - I do that in my classes. Be assured it’s the internal way and is genuine Wing Chun. It has the advantage of closing the centerline.
Second, let’s go further at a deeper level. The word “heart” can be interpreted to mean center or “core”. Hence, according to this interpretation, the punching method comes from the core of the practitioner, from his centerline and center of gravity. Not just “from the heart”. The notion here is sound but, as above, how it is operationalised can make a vast difference.
Thirdly, the word “fist” is not meant to be taken literally but represents any strike or deflection, or, indeed, any movement or gung fu as a whole. The notion we must grasp here is that although at times, due to contextual circumstances we can strike or deflect quite effectively with the isolated musculature and structure of a limb or a set of muscles supporting the limb when we must, we ideally strike, deflect and move not with isolated segmented parts of our body but with the whole body integrated as a whole. We employ not only the mobiliser muscle sets but also the stabilisers. We refer to this as “being linked” - like the links in a chain must all act together, see? Thus, it’s correct, once this is understood, to say that the whole body is the punch. We put our dynamic body mass behind the punch. Moreover, we do this whilst maintaining control of our balance, alignment and our centerline. Westerner boxers have known and practised this putting their body weight into a punch for quite a time. Of course, in a very different fashion to gung fu, however. This is because their sport doesn’t entail kicks, leg traps or sweeps.
Body movements are controlled by our nervous system, and are the externally visible effects of working of our muscles and working our skeleton internally. The skeleton is a system of levers and joints interconnecting them as fulcrums and axes, and muscles are the pulley system source of power for moving our levers. People often, erroneously, say we must not use strength in Wing Chun. This is technically incorrect without qualification as all movement must utilise some muscular contraction to enable movement to occur. No muscle tensing, no movement. No muscle tensing and we lose the alignment of joints and can injure ourselves on impact. Such contraction is strength in a literal sense. The point is we must not use excessive strength extraneous to the needs of the situation and we must use angles and leverage to reduce the need for more than the minimal amount of strength required. The trick in Wing Chun is both to know how much strength to use and to use no more, and to know how to generate power without using excessive muscular force. Probably everyone who does Wing Chun thinks that they do this. The fact is, very few actually do. I refer you to my article “You don’t know what you don’t know!” and urge you to read and think carefully.
So, with the muscles moving the skeleton, all the possible types of bodily activity can manifest. We can perform a wide range of movements within the limits of the structural determinism of our human body and within our own individual limits based on our flexibility and agility.
The nervous system is vital in all this. The nervous system receives and sends sensations and our intentions, or our body’s intentions, for movement. Why say “our body’s”? If you’ve ever accidentally touched a hot stove you’ll have realised it was not your analytical cerebral cortex analysing the situation and deciding to move your hand. “Oh, my hand is hurting. Yes, it’s burning because I’m touching this hot plate! Hhmm, think I better move it!” How ridiculous it sounds! The reaction was instant, controlled by the body’s inbuilt self preservation system. Not by analytical thinking, not by the mind. This is the level to which we must drill our Wing Chun reactions - the thought-less, instant self-preservation response. We must incorporate - that is, literally “put into the body” - put into our neuro-muscular memory - our Wing Chun reactions. “Wing Chun must be like walking” said Sum Num. What did he mean? Just as we walk automatically, without thinking and deciding on each move, so must we apply our Wing Chun.
There’s a final dimension to the kuen kuit, by my analysis. That the nervous system is influenced by our mind’s thinking activity is fairly obvious I imagine. A traditional gung fu saying says that the mind commands power. Sometimes the mind is metaphorically compared to the general directing the army of the body. I often say to my students “Kill the general and the army will die too”. The term “yi”, one of several employed to distinguish different aspects of the mind, describes the intentional aspect of our thinking. If a trainee neglects understanding and training how to employ intention without getting caught in analysis their use of their potential power is limited. Any true martial art, certainly our Wing Chun, concerns itself with training the co-ordination of both the mind and the body.
If your body is not moving, the mind activity is traditionally described as “empty”. If the mind is not engaged, body movements are traditionally described as “blind”. The famous story of Li Guang, the famous archer, who shot an arrow into a rock with his bow one night illustrates how intention can influence our power. Li Guang thought he had seen a tiger crouched to spring on him as he was walking one night. However, what he took to be a tiger was merely a rock formation, the outline of which looked like a tiger in the half light. The amazing thing is that his arrow penetrated several inches into the stone. When he later realised it was only a rock outline he had seen, he tried again many times to lodge an arrow into it, but wasn't able to do so. What does the story tell us about the relationship between the mind and power? There are different effects when the state of mind is different. Without the correct state of mind, proper power is impossible. Wang Xiang Zhai used to say: "mind is power”. There is no real power without the mind.
Every time we move it entails muscular activity. This muscular activity can’t be divorced from the mind - from our intention. From the biomechanical aspect, impact power depends not only on the size of the muscles. It depends on how effectively we can control and recruit muscle systems and joint trains to add speed and body mass to our strikes. It also depends on not using, that is not tensing muscle systems that impede the strike delivery. In addition, we have to develop appropriate trained responses to attacks within the gates so that we are able to launch them without thinking. In our Wing Chun we also target quite specifically rather than just throw out a technique at the attacker’s body, hoping to hit him anywhere.
So, next time you hear “kuen yao sum faat”, be aware it has several layers of meaning. Learning to punch from the heart is learning to punch not only with the body but from the mind. If you understand what I’ve written here - and can actually put it into practice, then it can really be said that “the mind punches”. Perhaps this is one of my kuen kuit.