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Shaolin Kung Fu
(By Ben Skywalker) (Return to Teachings)

Shaolin Kungfu


 * LESSON ONE**

Stances are the foundation of Shaolin kungfu. As a Youngling you learned the basic stances. Now we will build on the foundation.

//Horse Stance//

To progress with Horse stance you should broaden and deepen your stance. If you have continued to practice holding the Horse stance you were taught as a Youngling this shouldn’t be difficult. From the basic shoulder-width stance you were taught step out a couple of inches further. This will broaden your stance and it will deepen your stance as your center of balance is closer to the ground.

As you are comfortable, you should continue to spread your feet further and further apart every few days until they are approximately two shoulder-widths apart. Your body should be upright, and your thighs almost parallel to the ground. Relax and breathe from the abdomen. Make sure that you don’t raise higher as you become tired. To strengthen your stance practice reverse breathing and lead your Qi into your legs. Focus on projecting your Qi out through the Yongquan cavities in the bottom of your feet and several inches into the ground. This should help stabilize your stance so you can stand as immobile as a mountain.

See how long you can hold this stance. Try for 10 minutes. Post your progress.


 * LESSON TWO**

//Forms//

A kungfu form is a series of kungfu movements. If you stand in a left bow-and-arrow stance (left foot forward) and strike out a straight right punch as heart level, this is a kungfu form. (A very short one.) This form is very common in many styles of martial art. In Shaolin kungfu every form has a name, which is often meaningful and poetic. This particular form is called “Black Tiger Steals Heart.”

Forms provide students with practice in moving from one position to another in fighting.

As a Youngling and a Padawan you have learned the basic stances, hand strikes, leg techniques, and blocking moves. A form is when you take several of these moves and put them together, pretending that you are fighting one or more assailants.

For this assignment, choose 10 of these moves (a specific move can be performed more than once, if you like) and make your own form. Practice it until you can get it to flow smoothly.

Post your sequence of moves, along with any comments you may wish to make about this assignment.


 * LESSON THREE**

//Structure of Kungfu Forms//

Kungfu forms are developed by masters based on actual experience in fighting or sparring. For this reason it is difficult to teach them adequately outside of an actual classroom. But I can tell you about some of the principles involved in developing forms.

For example, if you attack your opponent using a straight punch, he will most probably block or dodge your attack, and the way he blocks or dodges generally falls within a small range of a few alternative movements. The masters, therefore could anticipate the likely counters their opponents would make. In this way they devised short sequences of continuous forms, and linked these sequences into a set. So, when you learn a good kungfu set, you are not just learning the physical form, but also all the strategies and principles underlying the arrangement of the forms.

Think about the movements in the form you developed and how someone might block or dodge your attacks. How might you improve your form by modifying certain moves?

Post one example.