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Ku Yu Cheung Source: www.martialartsplanet.com |
I
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placed one foot square canvas bag on a worktable
in my parent’s garage. I was in my teens
and it was a rainy summer’s day. The window over the workbench faced the
garden. It had been raining all night and all morning, and you could smell the
roots of the trees deep in the earth, bloated with rain.
The
top of the bench was level with my hip. I positioned myself over the bag in a
deep sei ping mah (four point horse
stance) and raised my right hand gently out in front of my shoulder.
Relax…relax.
Your hand is a wrecking ball at the end of a long chain. Allow it to drop, with
no effort.
My
palm struck the canvas and a cloud of lead dust billowed up from the bag. (Believe
it or not, I was actually using lead shot!)
And
so I stayed with this training, day after day. After all, what better use could
I be making of my summer vacation than to imagine myself becoming like Ku Yu
Cheung, a famous master of the iron hand. Someday, I too would stand in front of
a stack of bricks and break them all in one go with just the slap of a hand.
Would
I hurt myself? Not a chance…I was familiar with the warm up exercises and the
cool down methods, and besides, I had a bottle of dit da medicine.
Nevertheless,
I forgot to factor in one crucial thing – the emotional side of the training. I
had been warned about certain psychological effects but who listens when, after
only a week, you slap a mosquito feeding on your arm and you feel as though you’ve
just broken a bone. That’s the sweet pain of success.
After
another week, something really strange happened. I wanted to hit people…anyone,
it didn’t matter who. Just place someone in front of me that I can
hit. Fellow pedestrians sharing a sidewalk were like magnets. My palms were
drawn to them. Subways, streetcars…I was forced to dig my hands deep in the
pockets of my jeans.
All
the warnings about practising gentleness as you sharpen your weapon came back
to haunt me one evening when my girlfriend and I went to the movies. We held
hands…and I couldn’t feel anything. The physical part of me felt like a slab of
concrete. I remember too suddenly breaking out into a sweat, as though my
nerves were recoiling from trying so hard to feel…anything at all.
The
hand of the young lady at my side never recoiled. I think she was waiting for
my hand to soften, to balance, to feel again.
I
can train my body to become as hard as iron but at what cost? The Tai Chi
greats, the Aikido masters, the Kung Fu fighters who can sense the slightest
shift in an opponent’s movement with their skin, the Judo Sensei who relies
only on exquisitely timed technique, the Karate-ka who becomes impervious to
blows through his practise of Sanchin
yet can delicately carry his newborn in his arms…these are the examples I
forgot to follow.
Punch
a makiwara board a thousand times…then
play with the kids. Practise a sword cut a thousand times…then write a haiku. Throw – and be thrown – a thousand
times on the mats, hard, and with the spirit of a Samurai…then comfort people
in need.
Be
the hardest, baddest man or woman ever made…then go out and make a difference
in the lives of others.
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