I was reading something the other day that said if you can hold a smile for 30 seconds or more, just the sheer act of holding the smile, even though you may not feel happy, is purported have a therapeutic effect and make your day happier. I just spent the last half hour or so on the phone with a very good friend of mine who I consider a brother, and that action itself already put me in a good mood. This got me thinking about how we need to play our Kung Fu. Don’t train Kung Fu; play Kung Fu. That’s the term that we use. We don’t say “work” your Kung Fu or “do” your Kung Fu. We say “play” your Kung Fu. 玩功夫Wan Kung Fu.
Hau To was a famous doctor in Chinese antiquity, and he created what he called the “five animal frolics”. The word “frolic,” even though it may be erroneously translated from the Chinese, already tells you the overall attitude that you have to take when you perform or practice Kung Fu. It’s just like any other art or sport. You play baseball; you don’t “do” baseball. You play football; you play the piano; you play the violin. We always say play your form, play your weapon, play your matching set. Let’s play a game of chess or play this song. The word “play” is much deeper than people give it credit for. It’s a bridge that allows you to cross over to a place of different understanding. Kung Fu teaches you how to be through the premise of play.
This is the attitude that should be taken by the individual when they practice. The word “practice” sounds very much like an arduous, painstaking task (and sometimes it is), but let’s substitute the word “play.” The word “play” denotes happiness in doing that endeavor. The concept of play is something that every child knows, but as we grow up, we forget and lose touch with that aspect of ourselves. We must find the passion and joy of a child playing. I had a young student come up to me on Saturday, and she was so excited because she had just discovered the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She came up to me and said, “Sifu, they’re Kung Fu turtles, and they do this and they do that!” I could see the joy in her face and how it inspired her and made her want to play more. That’s what we have to learn. Even the littlest child can teach us how to be. The innocence, genuineness and openness that that child had when she was telling me her story is what each and every one of us want to have when we approach our practice. Because we’re taught to be “serious adults,” sometimes we forget. We need to remember how to return back to that special place, that mental state that allows us to practice properly.
Play stems from imagination. As we grow up, we often put our imagination on pause. Children, on the other hand, are wide-eyed and always thinking in an imaginative state. As I was watching some students the other day, I made note that most of them don’t utilize their capacity for imagination. You might say, “Sifu, playing games, imagination, how does this relate to fighting?” You might say this sounds like nonsense, but then I’d have to disagree with you. Imagination is the stem from which all art forms begin. It is the root. Someone at some point imagined how they would execute the technique that they wanted to execute and came up with a routine, a play, that they would utilize to practice it. They went and tested it, came back, revised it, and redefined it into a method, a play that they could utilize again and again, fostering the mind and the body to meld together through this play and imagination.
Even when we do sparring, it’s a game. When I was a young teen starting to do free sparring, this is what one of my masters told me. Sparring is a game of tag. I’m not trivializing it, and I’m not saying don’t be serious. But you must look at it as a game in the sense that you have to play it. It’s the mental state that you have to be in when you’re in that fight or sparring situation. You can’t be angry. You can’t be upset. You can’t be so caught up that you lose focus because you become too emotional. Step back and look at it as a game. “Tag, you’re it!” One analogy for a fighter in a sparring match is a racecar driver. You have to remain cool, calm and collected. You cannot run to extremes of emotion; you need to have balance. It is a game; it’s fun. Even though you’re in the heat of combat, or you’re in the midst of a race, you still remain the calm in the eye of the storm while everything else is swirling around you. When you learn how to play your Kung Fu, after a while it takes you to a certain mental zone, and you need to know how to go back to that mental zone in order to tap into that right energy, that joyful and positive energy that allows you not only to practice almost effortlessly, but allows you to grow into the art and into yourself.
The power of the mind, the power of imagination, the power of play is not wholly understood. We fashion ourselves and our reality based upon how we think. As adults, we have to deal with reality, so our imagination and play are tempered by that. A little kid imagines they can fly, but you can’t fly. That’s not to say you can’t imagine or mentally identify and define how you’re going to utilize any one technique when you practice your martial arts. That mental identification and re-definement is critical for your growth. The student has to realize that the form and/or the practice put in front of him is a puzzle that needs to be unraveled, figured out. It’s a game that you have to play with yourself in order to figure yourself out. The exercise is a teaser that allows you to investigate how deep you can actually go, how much you can actually see. I see many students approach their practice in a very stoic manner, dry and devoid of feeling, and I think this is a mistake.
This is why you always have drop off. You have people signing up to go to the gym or joining a martial arts school and then quitting one month later. This is in part because of the mental state they put themselves in. They view it as a task as opposed to something to look forward to. I can remember my teacher always saying to me, when you practice, you have to practice as though it’s your most favorite thing to do. It’s your favorite drink or your favorite thing to eat. It’s the most enjoyable thing that you’ve encountered, and you relish it. Playing something, be it a sport, a musical instrument, or the art of Kung Fu, is what each and every individual should be looking forward to rather than striving to do. When you watch two tiger cubs play, they “play fight,” but they’re playing and learning survival skills. This is exactly how you’re meant to train; take revelry and joy in the art of your practice by playing your practice rather than looking at it with feelings of dread and drudgery. When you have this frame of mind, you can access different aspects, feelings and understanding, and put yourself in the right mood to gain from the practice which has now become play. You make it much more enjoyable, palatable and digestible, simply by looking at it in a different way. In that way, you change your mental perception of the practice and make it that much more easy to assimilate into your system of thought and movement.
Doing it and hitting it hard is all fine and well, but if you don’t approach it from the point of view of playing, enjoying the process, enjoying the ups and downs, and relishing every time you get to train, the training will not have the same effect. Kung Fu is good medicine, but we need to be open to it, and having that state of mind of play allows our mind and heart to open up to it and accept it more easily. The concept of the mental state of play is not only on the individual but can also apply to the group. I’m sure everyone has experienced when the class is up and happy, and everybody’s working hard. The energy in the room makes everybody that much more receptive to the learning, as opposed to having a class where everybody is not in a good mood. The concept of playing Kung Fu is about creating the right energy, mental and spiritual, that allows you to not only practice, but practice well, and digest and adhere to all the things that you’re learning.
So, as I was watching some students practice, I had to make the comment to them, you are a little stiff, your energy is a little dead. It wasn’t because they were doing the movement improperly, but the energy was off. They weren’t doing it with live feeling, that happiness that comes in the play. If you’re struggling to do it, you can’t force the energy to come out right. In many instances, you just have to let it happen. I’ve used the analogy in the past where you say to your friend, we’re going to go out and party and have a great time tonight, and inevitably you don’t because you’re so desperate to have that good time. You’re so desperate to show how much you know and how good you are that you negate the positive energy that should be there just from the sheer joy that you can stand in the room and do the movement.
It’s all on your approach. Do an experiment with yourself. Take a piece of your form that you really like to play, but approach it differently. Change your mental state. Do you want to do it hard and fast to show what you know, or happily play it? I’m not saying that you shouldn’t try hard, but don’t be desperate. Try that a little bit on your own and see what the outcome is. I think if you properly do it and observe it in the right way, you’ll see that the attitude of play allows you to derive so much more than the attitude of, “I’m going to make this happen.” This is not to say that you’re not driven or focused. But when I practice, I just do it. I’m happy to do the movement; I’m not trying to show you how much I can do or how much I know. I know this works because I practice all day long, but at the end of the day, I’m not tired. The only thing that tires me is people with a bad attitude or bad mental state. When you approach your Kung Fu from a joyful mentality, it’s not tiring but actually inspiring. It creates more energy that becomes physical energy. This is how interrelated the mind and body are. You view yourself and think about things in a certain way, and that’s what they become. So, it’s about changing the mind’s perception of how the practice should be. That’s really what we’re taking about, and that manifests itself into physical action. Your form may not be perfect, but that changes over time. Your attitude is something that you can start to work on immediately, and that will have a profound effect on how you practice and change the end result. So I say to you Wan Kung Fu 玩功夫 -- play your Kung Fu; enjoy your Kung Fu; revel in your Kung Fu; make it something that you look forward to every day.
-Sifu Paul Koh 高寶羅
