By: Elizabeth Nightingale

​On 28th July this year, a large group of us headed off for the Kung Fu Zone club’s first-ever training holiday. We stayed in the pretty village of Pismenovo in Bulgaria, enjoying panoramic views of the surrounding countryside from our private resort. The resort came complete with a pool, much needed given the 5 hours of training we averaged each day! Training alternated between our resort in Pismenovo village and Perla beach in Primorsko. Training included a mixture of running, Kung Fu, and Suang Yang Tai Chi led by our Head instructor, Shkar. As well as training hard, there was also plenty of playtime, meaning we not only came back fitter and more focused, but closer as tiger cranes. 

Most of us go to school until our late teens or early twenties, and we believe that we are done learning after this stage. We throw ourselves into our careers, and our family lives, leaving less and less time to learn and develop ourselves further. Even when at school, we learn fixed curriculums and our teachers' primary focus is how to pass exam after exam. Our educators seldom address the important questions about the nature of self and consciousness. 
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I have been fortunate to take a path in my life that has helped me understand the value of learning and training oneself. I have been training and learning all of my life, and I am only starting to scratch the surface. I have had some remarkable teachers who have helped me along the path of refinement and growth. Some of these teachers would be proud of the road I have taken and others less so as it can be difficult to watch your students find their path, a path that may diverge from your own. In the end, we all need to be honest with ourselves. We must ask ourselves constantly whether we are making decisions based on attachments to principles that are themselves impermanent. Are we trying hard to hold on to the character or characters we believe we are in our own internal narratives of our lives? The further we develop ourselves spiritually, the more careful and the more mindful we need to become. Our sense of self, our ego is relentlessly trying to co-opt any progression for its own gain.

My Kung Fu training has been the single biggest tool that I have used to grow and learn. The word "grow" in this context can be quite deceptive as it implies adding stuff to make something bigger or larger. Most people will agree with that usage of the word as it is related to adding knowledge and skills to make ourselves better. But real personal growth is not about adding things; real personal growth is about taking things away. Our lives burden us with mental patterns, habits and ways of thinking that do not stand up to scrutiny when dissected and examined. We hold on to ideas that make us happy and push away ideas that make us sad. We lack the training and discernment to ignore the emotional swings and look at the true nature of what happiness and sadness actually are. We get angry, envious or greedy, but we do not detach from the emotions and skilfully look at the nature of our minds during these states. Like a scientist would when observing a natural phenomenon with unbiased attention. 

When a beginner trains in my classes, I can see at first the battle they have with their bodies. Why doesn’t my arm go to where I want to it to go? Why can’t my hips and my legs flex enough to get into the posture I need to get into? At first, students try to force their bodies into the positions and stances that the system requires but over time something changes in the student. They stop striving for the perfect posture or movement, and they accept “as good as I can do.” They tell themselves, "my body won’t do it; I will go to as close as possible, without causing myself too much discomfort." This line of reasoning is, of course, an illusion, this is the mind, the ego wanting to stay within its comfort zone. A lot of students plateau at this level and refuse to push themselves, and this is fine because it is where they are at that current stage. They may end up training on and off and eventually stop training altogether, giving me their reasons for leaving. Reasons that they firmly believe to be true but when probed further is another illusion rooted in staying within their comfort zone. The students that continue to train eventually start to change. They begin training in more classes, repeating movements outside of class and even start dreaming about their training. These students begin to see the difference between what they can achieve with real effort and dedication and what the false limits are that their mind creates for them. This ability to observe the mind that students acquire through training is the most important tool one needs to grow and change.

Like a great sculptor you are trying to chip away at the unneeded excess to find the masterpiece that is the real you. Real refinement of self is about stripping away who you believe you are, eliminating the limits that you have created for yourself and abandoning the excuses your mind creates when going out of your comfort zone. Real maturity begins the moment you understand that the little voice inside your head, constantly talking you out of things is your biggest adversary.