Wing Chun Articles
By Women for Women
by Houston Wing Tsun
photo by WCO
Wing Tsun is self defense by women for women, pure and simple. The system was created about 350 years ago by a female Kung Fu master, the legendary Buddhist fighting nun, "Ng Mui". She conceived of a simplified, streamlined martial art that would quickly enable a practitioner to defend him or herself against attackers from any other martial art styles of the day. Her first student was also a woman, the girl "Yim Wing Tsun" after whom the new system was later named. This new system was revolutionary in that it did not rely on strength and predetermined patterns of movement, but on an ingenious method of "controlled yielding" and constant, pro-active, forward energy that allowed its practitioners to literally feel out an opponent's attacks, stick to his arms and legs, absorb his attacking power, and unleash it all back at him with accelerated fury.
Rather than relying on the age-old tactic of trying to increase your own strength until it is superior to that of any attacker, WingTsun teaches you to literally "borrow" your attacker's force in order to keep yourself out of harm's way. At the same time WingTsun training enables women to position their arms and legs in such a way that preemptive counterattacks automatically flow together with simultaneous defensive actions, so that a man with superior strength is prevented from ever using his size and power to his advantage. This creates a structural advantage for the WingTsun practitioner that eliminates the need for second-guessing an opponents intentions and his next maneuvers.
It is this need for second-guessing an attacker's moves that is responsible for the typical "freeze up" resulting from mental/emotional overload when we are confronted with a real-life threat to our personal safety. WingTsun training short-circuits this inhibitive mental process by "automatizing" the student's reactions according to the actual power input from an attacker. This frees our mind up to stay relaxed and aware, and capable of dealing with the needs of the situation at hand.
Special exercises in WingTsun called "Chi Sau" develop this kind of sensitivity from the very early stages of training, and slowly nurture and hone it to a very high degree. In the advanced stages of training, a student often learns to "read" an attacker's intentions almost before he himself becomes aware of them.
This may sound like some kind of science fiction or "martial arts fantasy" to most. But to even moderately advanced WingTsun practitioners this is an ever-present and evolving reality. There is no doubt that this works. It is only a matter of time until you can make it work for you at will. This is the very thing that allows higher level WingTsun fighters to literally fight blindfolded. Blindfolded "Chi Sau" practice is a normal component of WingTsun training. A German WingTsun student, Sylvia Weisskircher, was blind from birth. She learned WingTsun for only a few years and now can hold her own with even the best of fighters, whether from WingTsun or from other systems.
It is also a proven fact that women often learn the principles and movements of WingTsun faster than most men. This is because women in general are "smarter" in that they habitually do not rely on their (brute) physical strength in trying to make a movement work. WingTsun teaches exactly that. Most men have a difficult time with the fact that, in the first phase of WingTsun training, they are literally asked to "lose their strength".
This, of course, does not mean that students need to become physically "weak" in order to learn WingTsun. They do, however, need to shed their habit of using or relying on their external strength too much when practicing and applying what they learn in class. The normal progression of WingTsun training goes like this:
Phase One: Learn to "lose" your own strength.
Phase Two: Learn to lose your opponent's strength.
Phase Three: Learn to use your opponent's strength against him!
It is this aspect of WingTsun training that makes it especially well suited for women who need to learn to fight back. Women are often more intuitive than men in their approach to problem solving. In the end, WingTsun is nothing more than a "new" way of problem solving. You learn to solve the problem of (usually male) violence. Developing the confidence, and the natural fighting spirit that goes along with that greater confidence is a natural part of WingTsun training. WingTsun builds upon the student's existing strengths to produce a more well-rounded, secure, and aware person. Everything depends on how much you put into your training. But WingTsun can literally set you free! (from fear of violence, from your own bad mental and physical habits, and from restrictive, counter-productive beliefs and attitudes)
Try it. You will be amazed at what WingTsun can do for you!
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