I have no problems with forms. After practicing them a great while, and drilling them in your head, it helps, because instead of thinking, your reacting. But can this be a bad thing? Do you think it’s possible to restrain a reaction?
For example, you get into an argument with someone in your family. A brother for instance. Now brothers fighting is probably common in most homes. He swings at you, and you react instinctively.But you hurt him badly, using a very strong technique with out wanting to. Could this happen?
It is not likely to happen as the part of your brain that assesses danger (amygdala), would recognize that your brother is not presenting the same level of danger as say a stranger attacking you on the street. It is also this area of the brain that prevents you from getting the big epinephrine/norepinephrine dump when fighting your brother as opposed to the stranger. Hope this was helpful.
Sometimes, forms arent meant to teach you a reaction so much as to teach your body apropriate structure. If you remember how awkward it was the first few months when you went to class trying to get your body to stay in the positions you had to be in, but as time went on your body was conditioned to become comfortable.
Some forms, such as Sil Lim Tau in Wing Chun, are also a tool box, a way of showing you what your art has to offer in its simplest forms.
I think forms training for the sake of preset reactions is a little too restrictive.
I’ve reacted to friends/family getting ****y over a game or something. Nothing major. Its usally a light swat on my part that registers a little deeper than expected/intended.
Always comes down to, you shouldn’t swing/kick at me.
As for forms, there is only one form that I have been taught that I have reallymaintained and go back to from time to time to study: Jik Pu from Bak Mei.
I think that form is genious, though my master pointed a flaw in it without knowing at class last week. He demonstarted a technique found only in that form to my knowledge and showed how itcan be countered. I don’t know if he has studied the system, he has studied pretty much everything else.
Great form though. The more I study it the more I’m convinced he must have studied Hsing-I or perhaps Hsing-I and Ba Gua.
Something like that.
The style I made for myself has the Siu Lum Tao approach that red5angel is talking about.
Less concerned am I with perfecting external accuracy of posture than I am with developing internal power. My style’s jing is that of internal contraction, so my sets are geared toward that end.
“Jik Pu” from Bak Mei is a great set.
The Bak Mei point-thrusting jing is a little like mine, though I have a very different leg philosophy.
I share two two leg philosphphies. One is that of Jik Pu, or a HSing-I go right in there and take the territory aproach: against smaller or sensing weaker apponants, be it body or mind.
When I know the other has power, my foorwaork is more evasive, the amount of force they apply detremines how much I move and where, but the kicking is there. Or actually, I’m working on getting the kicking there. Ba Gua is a funny art. Things don’t seem possible in theory but they are in application.
I’m intrested in seeing more of Bak Mei from a research point of view, to compare it to what I am learning. I was fortunate to have been tuaght what little I was, unfortunate to have not gone deeper. But I wound up exactly where I’m supposed to be.
You can always stop yourself. I nearly hit my sister once when she came to tickle me in my sleep, but once I realised who it was I stopped - 1 inch from her face.
“Based on my last 10 years of formal kung fu experience sparring and training - also briefly as a closed door disciple.”
Most people wait 20 years at least before even being recognized as a master.
I have in over 22 years and only a lowly 5th degree.
Is your system recognized by any national or international organizations?
