Kung Fu, patience, and commitment

Happy Chinese New Year! This is the year of the Metal Tiger!
Also Happy Valentine's Day!

Last time we talked a bit about Tai Chi and what it is and about the Chinese concept of Internal Martial Arts. This time we are going to discuss the popular term associated with Chinese martial arts in general. Kung Fu or Gong Fu in pinyin means work and time. These two words combine to mean skill that is gained or work that is done over time. The words kung fu can apply to any endeavor from music to writing to cooking to martial arts.
If someone has practiced a lot and has attained a high level of skill then he or she can be said to possess large or great kung fu. If someone has not practiced enough and they cannot perform the skill well then they are said to have no kung fu or that their kung fu is very small.

This leads us into the idea of patience. In any skill especially martial arts or sports, you must proceed gradually little by little. If you are in a hurry to do more faster then at best you will have no skill at all and at worst you may cause yourself an injury. Tai Chi is not something you can pick up in a weekend. It is not even something you can master in three years. Tai Chi or any style of kung fu takes commitment. Robert W. Smith, the famous martial arts writer, had this to say about commitment versus involvement. "Being involved or committed is like bacon and eggs. The chicken is involved but the pig is committed."

What does commitment mean here? Well in the case of Tai Chi it's simple can you take 10-20 minutes to practice every single day? That is all that the art requires and it gives incredible benefits like strength, agility, improved immune system, flexibility, and a peerless framework for self-defense. Realistically, committing to practicing Tai Chi is committing to being healthy by the most efficient means available. Take the time to learn Tai Chi correctly and you have something that you can do everyday for the rest of your life.

The great Tai Chi Master Cheng Man-ching said that people would learn from him and then they would fail to practice what they had learned or they would practice a few times a week not daily as the old masters recommended. These people he said were like paupers who walked up to a mountain of treasures and having looked at all the gold that was there for the taking, failed to stoop down and take a single piece.

Cheng also said that there were 3 requirements for mastering Tai Chi:

1. Talent- This is your natural coordination and it is really almost trivial. It's a gift from birth. You either have it or you don't. However if you are talented or not you can still succeed in mastering the art.
2. Right Teacher with the right method- A good Tai Chi teacher is someone who can impart to you the basics of the art, who has the attributes that you want to achieve. We will talk more later about the qualities of a good Tai Chi teacher.
3. Perseverance-This is the most important aspect. This is the quality you have to develop if you want to master Tai Chi. You have to practice a little bit everyday if you want the benefits. If you can't do that then Tai Chi is probably not a good choice for using your time.

This being said, a properly trained Tai Chi student will have glowing health, great strength, a cheerful positive attitude, and an abiding confidence that comes from the ability to defend oneself at will. You can achieve all of this without the muss and fuss of gyms, weights, sandbags, etc. With just a little daily practice.

A little commitment is worth a big payoff.