“Tough times never last, but tough people do.”

The above quote and others like it are quotes I have seen repeated over and over again in the current climate. Prescribed as if it is a magic pill we can use to remedy the unprecedented situation we have all been forced into. The truth is that it can do the opposite, exacerbating our suffering and destroying our minds. 

Our minds are fragile things, and an untrained mind is often unable to deal with the demands our current way of living places on us. The way our societies here in the developed world are structured currently have made our lives safer and more comfortable. The vast majority of us no longer need to worry about dying from starvation. We no longer need to worry about external threats from animal attacks or other people wanting what we have. Our ancestors on the African savannah, on the other hand, faced real existential threats, and their minds developed mechanisms like anxiety and stress to take these threats seriously. The humans who didn’t have these mechanisms in place died off because they didn’t feel fear and a need to protect themselves when they heard a noise in the bush, they got eaten by the tiger waiting for them there. Those humans that heard the sound in the bush and ran off out of fear and anxiety survived to breed; and we humans of today are their direct descendants.  It is no surprise that humans today have highly honed anxiety switches that switch on and off without warning.

The threats we face today are usually not existential, but these triggers in our minds do not know the difference. Whether you fear a wild animal or fear having no work to go back to when this is over, you will get the same fight and flight response either way. As these existential threats are mostly non-existent any longer, our sensors have shifted. We no longer look for threats to our lives; we now look for threats to our comfort and our way of life. Our anxiety and stress triggers are switched on as soon as we feel challenged in any way that will take us out of our comfort zone. 

Mental processes like anxiety and stress are analogous to fire alarms. They are there to warn of a potential danger to us, and our judgement and aversion to this feeling cause us to suffer. We feel guilty and bad for feeling anxious as we think that we should be tougher. This thought process can make things even worse for us. 

Try dealing with your mental health with compassion, acceptance and love. Accept that it is an evolved part of you like your feeling of hunger or thirst is and try understanding what message it is giving you. This is how we develop real resilience and toughness in a universe that we have very little control over.

I often get asked by other martial artists, “How long have you been training?” As the length of time training is commonly used as a measure of ability and understanding.

Length of time training is essential and a beginner can get to a satisfactory level by just putting in the hours consistently over a sustained period. But there will come a stage in one's training where more time training isn’t enough on its own. The quality of training is the most crucial factor.

Training Quality

Training quality consists of two things,

1. The quality of the instruction and the teacher's ability to explain this so that the student understands and can work on doing.
2. The ability of the student to follow the instruction and apply it to their practice, without adding anything or taking anything away.

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The quality of one’s training will help a student very quickly advance with their Martial Arts.

Here is my little equation for Kung Fu ability.

L (Kung Fu Level)
T (Time Spent Training)
Q (Quality of Training)

L = TQ²

Time spent is vital to one's level, but the real multiplier here is the quality of your training.

A common misunderstanding within the Southern Shaolin arts is that we need to tense the arm/torso at the point of impact to transmit power into the opponent. This is not correct; the type of power we are aiming to transmit to the opponent is hindered by tension and muscle contraction.

So what do we do?

Southern Shaolin systems like our Tiger Crane Combination are based on the energetics & internal dynamics that was introduced by Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma’s teaching introduced the idea of creating power not through contracting the big muscles but by getting them out of the way as much as possible and engaging the Fascia & Sinew channels that run around the body like guitar strings. The training when done correctly should begin to develop these channels and link them up together; so that plucking one end of the string causes an effect in the other end. To get this we need to inflate & stretch. Our Suang Yang Form, which is a Shaolin soft fist emphasises this inflation of the body and this stretch constantly.
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So instead of contracting and tensing on impact, which will give you a kind of brittle hardness. Try to find the stretch in the movement, this will give you a more taut and elastic type of hardness and then your body will be able to transmit the kind of power Shaolin Kung Fu is famous for, which we call Jin or Geng.