Using wing chun as a self-development tool

by Nino Bernardo

Wong Shun Leung was first recommended to me by an old Buddhist monk from Po Lin temple on Lan Tao island. Why would a man of peace recommend a tough fighter as a teacher? Could it be that this monk, who I´d never met, knew something about wing chun that I didn´t know at the time?

Also, why did the monks in the Shaolin temple, who Eddie Yuen will discuss in the next column, develop systems of wushu, possibly including wing chun? Could it be that there´s more to Chinese martial arts than just clever fighting systems?

When I started training with Wong Shun Leung, I knew nothing of his reputation. I didn´t know that he was a famous street-fighter. I didn´t know that he had been Bruce Lee´s main kung fu instructor. I´m pleased about this now, because my ignorance meant that I was able to listen to what he was saying without any preconceived ideas.

Obviously, most of my sifu´s teaching was about fighting. He certainly wasn´t a monk and he didn’t meditate. Instead, he used to talk about using fear, anger and frustration to win fights. He was very domineering and direct in his chi sao, which he used as a tool to read the character of others, to develop entries and to cope with the intense stress of fighting. Many people have only heard of this side of him.

However, as a Cantonese speaker who trained regularly with my sifu over a period of time, I also picked up on certain undercurrents. For example, although he wouldn´t try and develop the personalities and characters of his students, he took great pleasure in observing how they developed and changed through training in wing chun. During my time in his kwoon, my own friends noticed my guitar playing improving. I have since learnt to classify this as one of the positive side effects of learning wing chun.

When I opened the Basement in London in 1984, one of the most difficult things that I found was the way that Western students would ask for in-depth explanations of what they were meant to be doing, rather than just doing it. In Hong Kong, asking questions like that would have been disrespectful. However, I was in a new country, so I had to adapt. I began searching for ways of describing wing chun in a way that my students would understand.

It was during this period of intense study that I began to think of chi sao (sticky hands) as a fight-like game that helps practitioners develop certain side-effects. As I have mentioned in previous columns, these include using both hemispheres of the brain, developing awareness of our bodies, improving our skills in other areas and developing ruthless intelligence. Another side effect involves trying to read the mind or character of another practitioner through physical contact with them. As I went further along this road, I began to think of the system as a whole as a clever self-development tool that can be used by fighters and others to develop and sharpen certain attributes.

I referred to this new way of thinking in my first column when I said that tools can be used in different ways. We can use a screwdriver to stir our coffee just as easily as we can use it to take a screw out. We don´t need to change the design of a tool to find a new use for it. I also referred to this change in the column on safari wing chun, where I described how I began to encourage my students to take photographs, rather than shooting a big gun. This led to a deeper understanding of chi sao, as we began to focus on underlying structures, mechanics, tactics and strategies.

How different is this interpretation from what I was taught in Hong Kong? I believe that my sifu, Wong Shun Leung, used wing chun primarily as a fighting system, which had some unspoken self-development benefits. He was already a fighter when he met Yip Man, his own teacher. By training in wing chun, he was able to develop his fighting skills to an amazing level.

By contrast, I emphasise the self-development side and don´t promote the fighting aspects of the system. There have been times in my life when I have chosen to fight. However, I´m not proud of that. I believe that violence is stupid, negative behaviour. I would never brag about fighting in my marketing material and I don´t accept challenge fights. If someone comes to me because they want to become a tough guy and the only part of the system they´re interested in is the ability to kick people´s heads in, I´ll tell them to find another teacher.

By stripping violent intent out of chi sao, my students and I have been able to really study the structure of our bodies without getting distracted by striving to hit each other. This has deepened our understanding of the system. To further this aim, I have been experimenting with using the seven pillars of mindfulness in wing chun. These are a series of attitudes taken from meditative techniques that have been summarized in a very simple form by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a doctor who specialises in the science behind meditation.

The pillars of mindfulness involve not judging our thoughts, feelings or experiences; being patient; seeing things with a beginner´s mind; trusting ourselves; not striving; accepting things as they actually are; and letting go of our thoughts. I have found that adding these attitudes to the forms and exercises of wing chun, including chi sao, has been very successful as a way of opening up the deeper undercurrents of the system.

Of course, wing chun works extremely well as a fighting tool if we add violent intent back into the equation, but there´s much more to it than that. The system is wonderfully clever and fighters aren´t the only people who can benefit from it. We can use wing chun to hack away at our own stupidity, leaving us as intelligent as we were meant to be before our families, friends, school-teachers, televisions and the like got in the way.

Some students of mine have told me that by training in wing chun, they have been able to develop enough self-control to avoid stupid fights by learning how to keep their tempers and egos in check. Their knowledge of potentially lethal techniques has given them a sense of responsibility that they lacked beforehand. Meanwhile, other students have found the ability to improvise under pressure has helped them to avoid random street violence.

Although some might say that this outlook is a new way of looking at wing chun, the old monk from Lan Tao island who first put me on this path might recognize it as belonging to a far older tradition. When all is said and done, though, it is Nino Bernardo Wing Chun. If anyone wants to learn Wong Shun Leung Wing Chun, it is too late as my sifu is sadly no longer with us.

© Nino Bernardo, 2006


If anyone is interested in discussing these ideas with Nino Bernardo, he´d be happy to talk to them at one of his regular seminars in London. Further details are available on www.ninobernardo.com

Nino Bernardo´s next column will introduce Eddie Yuen, who will write about the history and culture of wing chun