Any insights lately? 

This is a question commonly asked by masters of their students.

The reason for asking is to check if the student has been practicing. A student who has been practicing regularly and has put in the hours will have questions and insights.

The questions and insights indicate to the teacher whether the practice is in the right direction and how far along it has progressed. This in turn helps the teacher determine whether to release new material or continue with the current material.

Beginners tend to have more questions than insights. If a beginner has no questions, it means they have already figured everything out or simply haven’t been practicing, hence no feedback.

If you practice carefully over a long period of time, you will inevitably and perhaps suddenly experience a moment of enlightenment. It may be that you suddenly figured out a connection between something you know from elsewhere and your current practice that you did not notice before. Or you may suddenly realize something about Technique A that can be applied to Technique B. 

This flash of insight can occur during practice, while you are in the shower, or when you are reading about something that seems unrelated on the surface but suddenly connects to your current study. Let me give some examples of insights from my practice below.

Fan Through Back – In this technique we spread the arms at the end like a hand fan spreading out the leaves. When I opened a hand fan, I saw that the head also opens up because of the rivet.

So I wondered if the legs should also open up like the fan head opens. This means when performing Fan Through Back when our fists move downwards it should cause our legs to open up. Then when the fists move upwards and reach the end position, they should open into palms like the leaves of the fan. 

Now this is not mentioned in the book on the 22-form so I asked my teacher. He said that Grandmaster Wei Shuren did not teach this but it certainly made him think. A few years later when my teacher was teaching a group of students he stressed to the group to open up the bottom part before moving on to the top. Imagine my surprise when I saw the video.

My surprise was more so when you considered that my teacher is the designated keeper of the style. You would normally expect a person in this position to stick religiously to the teachings he received and pass them on unchanged. However, this was not the case, which gave me a second insight.

I actually had this second insight much earlier when I asked my teacher about the chapter on the 8 Types of Force and the other chapter on 64 Methods of Internal Strength Training. 

My teacher said that originally the chapter on the 64 Methods of Internal Strength Training was not supposed to be in the book because those methods do not exist in the system. However, Grandmaster Wei included it to make the system more complete. So now you know : the 8 Types of Force are what’s important. While you can combine the 8 Types of Force it does not mean you must end up with the 64 combinations though mathematically this would have been the logical outcome.

From here you can surmise that knowledge can be added, subtracted or lost. If something is useful, it gets added. If something is of no use, then you either set it aside or discard it. Insisting that knowledge that is passed down is unchanged and will be passed on as it is does not really make sense because the only constant in life is change. If everything cannot be changed that how does one explain evolution. In fact, many systems are created because the founders experienced insights that led them to changed what they know for the better. But I guess this lesson is missed by those who insist on no change.

For example, I learned an old Wing Chun style where they originally included head butts in their dummy forms. You might think that’s crazy, huh! until you see those videos of northern styles practicing head butts on trees. In this Wing Chun style when they realized that head butts were contributing to health issues they eliminated the head butt techniques from the dummy forms.

Similarly, there is a southern Shaolin system whereby a number of practitioners experienced heart issues after practicing their forms which utilize isometric tension. The grandmaster solved the issue by creating a soft form and adding it to the system.

Another example of insight is from Step Back, Repulse Monkey. At the end of the technique we imagine a dot in space in front of us dissipating at the same time as the Small Chi Sphere in our lead hand dissipates, feeling as if our Chi is reaching across space towards the dot.

When you practice this enough, you will feel your body fill up with Chi and expand like a balloon even as the dot and Small Chi Sphere dissipate. However, if you focus more on the opening and closing of the body a different insight might pop into your head. In my case, I suddenly thought of a dragon head swallowing and spitting a fireball.

The imagery of a dragon head swallowing a fireball into its body, then letting the fireball come up back, and spitting it out, comes from the transition between the Cloud Hand (3 opening, 3 closing) and Single Whip technique. 

So my insight is that I can use the dragon head swallowing and spitting a fireball in Repulse Monkey. Since there are four Repulse Monkey techniques (2 left, 2 right postures) we can practice the dot dissipation in the 1st and 2nd Repulse Monkey, and the dragon head in the 3rd and 4th Repulse Monkey.

There is a secondary insight from this – using the dragon head in Repulse Monkey makes it easier to actualize the 9 Bend Pearls. So you end up with two forces if you practice Repulse Monkey this way.

Insights like these are what make the 22-form such fun to practice. If this is something you would go for, just put in the practice. As my teacher said the true price that you pay for the skill is not money but the time you put into it.