Currently I’m studying Shaolin Kung Fu. After doing nine years of Kenpo Karate, I’ve come to find myself in need for something more in depth. By in-depth, I mean more internal, and by internal I mean more focused on developing mental control. Kung Fu was the way I could achieve this.
What is mental control?
What I would describe as mental control would be one’s ability to extend your mind from only focusing on the physical aspects of martial arts to focusing on the slightly mysterious aspects of martial arts. The Shaolin Monks truly display the mystery of martial arts by their slightly freakish abilities. When men show themselves applying pressure to spear heads with their necks and bending the poles, or breaking stones with their hands, you have to wonder how. Answer: Their ability to control their mind and body a.k.a chi flow, allows them these abilities that most normal individuals can’t fathom. This of course takes years of training that makes any form of army training look like pre-school.
The Origins of Kung Fu
The term Kung Fu does not stand for one thing, instead it stands for a very broad topic. To shorten up what otherwise would be a long description, Kung Fu is martial arts. When someone practices Kung Fu, he is essentially practicing every martial art ever created. Before martial arts came to China, the Shaolin Temple originally didn’t practice fighting style, they simply were monks dedicated to their religion.
Their lack of knowledge in defense made them vulnerable to attack from thieves, which happened often. It was a man from India who came and taught them the fighting methods that his people had created. The monks easily picked up on the man’s teachings, seeing as how their training in meditation gave them the perfect amount of focus needed to master the art of fighting. For the next 4,00 years, the Chinese would continue to develop this idea into something that has completely changed the world.
The Styles
Some of the most popular styles that make up Kung Fu are the five animal styles.
These styles were developed after a monk or an outsider to the temple would watch an animal with the mentality that something can be learned from the way they fight. Each style exemplifies an idea or strength to achieve a combative goal.
Tiger style was designed to have the most strength out of all of them. It focuses on strength in the fingers and palms, seeing as how it must transform a man’s hands into claws. This means that the style itself requires a great deal of iron palm training. This requires you to hit a sack with metal beads in a way that helps strengthen your hands and fingers. It is the strongest style, which of course has some of the most tedious training.
Crane is one of the more graceful styles of Kung Fu. It’s strength does not lay in the shear striking ability, but instead it relies on the surprise of someone attacking you in the manner that a bird would. But seriously, the point of crane is the point you form with your hands. This style reflects a bird, thus you will utilize your hands as a bird attacks with it’s beak and wings. The stepping of crane is also important. It takes advantage of complex angles of attack and it utilizes very flashy and flamboyant hand movements to throw off your attacker. It’s interesting to say the least.
Snake style is one that involves complex movement around an obstacle to reach a certain goal. This means that it targets the object which it plans to strike by slithering around and then striking in the same fashion that a snake would. The fingertips are the main striking points in this style, and wrist flexibility plays a large part. Considering it is based off of the movement of a snake, it is incredibly sporadic and quick. It’s not an easy style to master, thus i wouldn’t recommend it to beginners.
Mantis is in my opinion the most affective style in the five animal Kung Fu system. Why? This style incorporates all of the good aspects of the other animal styles and places it nicely in one package for the artist to utilize. It’s quick strikes are unparalleled by any other style, and it focuses these strikes on specific pressure points to break apart your enemy’s defense. With mantis, all parts of the hands and feet become weapons. It’s focus is broad in that it doesn’t restrict itself to one aspect of fighting, which the other styles often do. Those who use it are best known for their ability to spar seeing as how they don’t telegraph their motions, and they move in angles that are awkward for the opponent to handle.
Monkey style is by far the weirdest style that is so openly accepted in the Kung Fu world. There are other styles which are weirder, for example frog style, but those are obscure and no body cares about them. In my valuable opinion, monkey should be incorporated into everyone’s curriculum. The style itself isn’t very practical, but the skills that are tagged onto it are valuable to any martial artist. It requires a great deal of acrobatic ability, which in terms of physical understanding is good for all people to have. That’s about all I have to say about that.
