There is no sugar coating it, this year has been a disaster, and we will feel the effects for years to come. 

Not many people know this, but at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, I saw a therapist. Not because I had any specific issue or reason to, but as an instructor and a relatively new father to two children, I didn't want to pass my baggage onto my kids and on to my students. The idea of seeing a therapist felt like it would be a short affair, I imagined that I would go in there and the therapist would quickly see that I was fine and didn’t need to spend money on a therapist. 

How wrong I was!

My therapist was excellent. We spent three months doing weekly sessions. She was able to help me see that the view from the window I was looking out of was beautiful, I just needed to shift focus and stop looking at my own reflection in the glass. This stood me in good stead to face 2020.

In January, I took some of my senior students on a trip to Singapore. Singapore is my favourite place in the world to visit, and it happens to be the home of our Tiger Crane Combination and Shuang Yang system. Apart from the two days of food poisoning that I suffered, we all had a wonderful time, eating our way through the food courts.

We visited a Feng Shui shop to get hold of some amulets for the new year on this trip. The Feng Shui Master explained that this coming year is the year of the metal rat, and it will not be a fun year. He explained that this year will be a year of disease, economic collapse and that there will be a significant hit to the travel industry. As a sceptic by nature, I am still trying to logically understand how his prediction was so accurate.

Covid-19 hit us in March and lockdown after lockdown started. In this time, my Kung Fu School, like most others, has suffered a lot. We have had to teach a lot of the year on zoom, this was a difficult transition to make, and we have not been allowed to spar or practise partner drills at all since March. On the business side, we have lost around 30% of our students, and have had to adapt to last-minute rules from the government on lockdowns and restarts.

On a personal note, 2020 has been a year of refinement and learning. My own Kung Fu level has taken a massive leap forward, and I have reworked and adapted the way I teach. I have already seen the improvements my students are making and continue to make with these new methods.

Here is what I have learnt this year.

Many businesses have been forced to close for good, and many more are on the brink. Our school has been able to continue and is looking good moving forwards. Many people tell me that this is due to my hard work and my ability to keep my students motivated to train. I politely thank them but know this is not the real reason. The reason is very simple, as much as we like to think we are the masters of our own fate, no person is truly an island. I have been able to continue teaching and running Kung Fu Zone because my students refuse to let me stop. Through zoom training, to training in the rain outdoors, to covid secure training in halls, back to zoom training. My students have been there with me, learning and keeping me motivated to teach them. I even have students who have trained in maybe 3 or 4 classes all year, who refuse to cancel their memberships. 

I have always considered my role as a teacher and guide as a lonely role. My students have taught me this year that it doesn’t have to be lonely and that when the waves are violent, and the ship is in danger, they will all lend a hand to keep us steady. I love them all and will always be grateful to them. 

2021

I don’t know what 2021 will hold, nobody does. I just know that if we are resilient, we will get through it, and if we are together, we will thrive.

As a father to a young son, I will do one thing in 2021 that I wasn’t so good at before, I will tell my male friends I love them more. If you feel it, and it will bring joy to another person, why hold it back?

My family and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Head Instructor - Shkar Sharif
December 2020

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.

There are different ways to look at one's progression within the traditional Chinese martial arts. One way that I like looking at one's progression is based on our Tiger Crane Combination systems teaching on the three battles. I have discussed the three battles before but want to offer a slightly different perspective.

The three stages of development:

The first stage a student must go through is the stage of forms and shapes. A student must learn the specific shapes, movements and physical structures that the particular system they have chosen teaches. They must change the physical body so that the structures and shapes are not forced and can be settled into with ease. Taking them to a stage where the shapes and structures of the system become the intuitive way they move and stand. Thought is no longer needed to align correctly; it’s automatically correct. These shapes can be like external scaffolding that allows the student to now enter inside and do the next stage of work. - This stage can take between 5 to 10 years of training - this depends mainly on the quantity and quality of one's training.

With the body now aligned correctly and holding our structure in place correctly, we move inside and begin the long and challenging process of changing our inside. This process is not about adding anything - it is purely a process of letting go and abandoning all that is unnecessary. We build up a lifetime of bad habits, ways of thinking, emotional states and these all have a direct effect on how our body and energy move and react. The work at this stage is about letting go physically and mentally of all that offers resistance, our first 5 to 10 years of training has given us the scaffolding and structures physically and mentally so that we don't crumble during this process of abandoning the unnecessary. Most martial artists begin this stage but do not leave it. This stage can take between 20 years and a lifetime of training - Again, this depends on the quantity and more importantly here, the quality of your training. This part of training is also challenging to achieve without a good teacher who knows the path through experience, not intellectual understanding.

The third stage is about removing the scaffolding, the structures and shapes you have mastered no longer matter, you have changed your mind and your body to become Kung Fu completely so everything you do and don’t do, think and don’t think, say and don’t say is Kung Fu. Internal and external are no longer separated, and all things are united.

In essence, the journey is about learning how to to do so we can abandon doing.

Here is one of my favourite quotes from Chuang Tzu that embodies this process,

“Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.”

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.