Sifu Wong Kiew Kit's Home Page

Questions-Answers Series

SELECTION OF QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
FEBRUARY 2012 PART 2

Question 1

Answer

Is the one who asks you to help a stranger presumably for free, your personal friend or another stranger? She seems to think that any healer can do wonders and for free. Despite her good intention, she is the kind of people who debase chi kung and chi kung healing, and make the arts a laughing stock.

A good healer must know his (or her) limitation, and must always treat his patients with confidence knowing that he can help them recover. You haven't been trained in distant healing, and you have been advised not to take people with serious heart problems as your first patients. Yet you are considering to treat this stranger when you have neither the skill nor the confidence, and worse from another person who just asks you presumably for free. If you carry on like this, you may soon become a charlatan.

Tell the person who sent you the e-mail that right now you are not ready to treat patients with serious heart problems. Tell her firmly that patients who want your help must come to you themselves, not through another person with or without the patients' knowledge.

Tell her to advise her friend with heart problem to seek one of our chi kung healers who is ready to help her. Ask her to refer to our List of Chi Kung Healers.

Alternatively, her friend can attend my coming Intensive Chi Kung Course. Ask her to refer to my home page.

Anyone who seeks your treatment must pay the required fee, i.e. US$10,000 until he recovers or the fee is refunded in full if he has attended at least 80% of the daily healing sessions for a year. Stick to this arrangement and you will be successful.

Editorial Note

Molly promptly replied as follows

Dear Sifu,

This woman who contacted me is not a friend. As she said she practiced exercises out of your book, The Art of Chi Kung. I imagine she got my contact information from your website.

I realize that this is exactly the sort of situation for me to sit down, clear my mind of thoughts, and meditate briefly on the problem as you have taught me. Had I done that, I would have had the answer right away that I am not ready to help this woman and should not do so given these particular circumstances. In retrospect, I feel foolish for seeking advice from you when I had all the right tools to find the obvious answer myself. Please accept my apologies.

I find that there can be a slippery slope when it comes to healing people. I may want to help people, but if I compromise the methods in which I have been taught, then I won't help anybody, and as you said, become a charlatan. I have no interest in becoming a charlatan.

I do find it frustrating that so many people say they want help, but in reality so few are actually willing to get up and do anything about it for themselves. My hope is that this woman will send her sick friend the information, and the sick friend takes steps on her own to cure herself.

Once again, I find myself seeing that people have to make their own choices. And those choices cannot be made for them. Again please accept my apologies at my foolishness. I have emailed the enquirer and conveyed the advice you gave.

Question 2

Answer

Shaolin Kungfu is certainly sufficient to defeat a black-belt. If one practices Shaolin Kungfu and is unable to use it for combat, the fault lies with himself and not with Shaolin Kungfu. He has learnt only the external form of Shaolin Kungfu and has missed its essence. This, unfortunately, is the norm today. Many people who practice Shaolin Kungfu, even for years, cannot defend themselves though Shaolin Kungfu is an excellent martial art.

On the other hand, it is worthy for black-belts to note that the art they practice is generally a sport, not a real fighting art. If they use what they practice in their classes in a real fight with a street-fighter with a knife, they can be easily killed! Happily such a scenario almost never happen in Europe. But in many other parts of the world, this can happen.

I would take this opportunity to warn fathers whose young children are black-belts. The fathers often think that their young children with black belts can defend themselves well. Indeed self-defence is often the main reason why fathers send their young children for martial art training.

The truth is that these young children with black belts cannot fight -- not at all. If these young black belts were to fight with a ruthless adult without any martial art training but with only brute strength, the young children will be badly hurt or even killed. The ruthless adult, for example, could just pick up a young child and throw him onto the ground.

One of my students once told me that he met a boastful father who was so naive that he insisted that my student must spar with his son who was under 10 years old but held a black belt. The father became angry when my student refused to spar with his son, saying that his son could beat up my student easily. If my student who could break a brick, could also break a small boy's skull. But of course he wouldn't. He just smiled and walked away.

Question 3

Answer

Actually all kungfu styles develop internal force although most kungfu practitioners may not realize it. Zhan zhuang, or stance training, which every kungfu student would undergo if his training is traditional, is an excellent way to develop internal force. However, most kungfu students today practice zhan zhuang wrongly or insufficiently.

Although Choy-Li-Fatt is generally known as an external style, a few Choy-Li-Fatt masters I know have powerful internal force. Sifu Chow Kok Chee, for example, could kill an ordinary person with a single strike. His brother, Sifu Chow Kok Hong, could break someone's bones with his arm.

Internal force is an important aspect in the Choy-Li-Fatt we practice in Shaolin Wahnam.

Question 4

Answer

No, it is not impolite. I learned Choy-Li-Fatt from my sifu, Sifu Choe Hoong Choy, whose Choe Family Wing Choon was derived from the Wing Choon of Leong Ye Thye and the Choy-Li-Fatt of Yik Kam.

I also exchanged some weapon sets for Choy-Li-Fatt with Sifu Chow Kok Chee, who was my childhood friend.

Question 5

Answer

You are grossly mistaken. One main reasons why masters of karate and other styles could not match genuine kungfu masters was because of the internal force of kungfu masters.

Question 6

Answer

Restoring the glory of kungfu has been our aim in Shaolin Wahnam since our school was first established. An excellent way to do so is to let our students participant in and win free sparring competitions. Before we can implement this aim we have to train our students in genuine Shaolin Kungfu and Taijiquan, which fulfills another aim of preserving genuine kungfu for posterity. Only when we have fulfilled this earlier aim, can be embark on the aim of preserving the glory of kungfu.

We can fairly say that we have fulfilled the earlier aim of preserving genuine kungfu. We now have kungfu students in all the six continents of the world.

But why didn't we embark on the aim of restoring the glory of kungfu earlier? A main reason is our priorities. We place attaining good health, vitality, longevity, mental freshness and spiritual joys higher in priorities than winning free sparring competitions. Having achieved all these priorities quite well, we now move to this relatively lesser priority.

Our purpose of embarking on our project of training our students to win free sparring competitions has no connection whatsoever with our victory or defeat in sparring with other martial artists. We have claimed that kungfu is effective for combat. We want to walk our talk.

I have not been sparring with other martial artists lately. But in my early days of sparring with many other martial artists and being involved in some real fights, I was lucky to remain undefeated throughout.

Question 7

Answer

You can overcome the problem by practicing the following exercise early every morning.

Look towards the sky and smile from your heart. Don't worry how you do it, just do it. Then sincerely ask God or whatever term you call the Supreme to protect you. Feel the strength and grace of God flowing through you. Assure yourself that with God's protection, nothing can harm you.

At night just before you go to bed, thank God for his protection and kindness.

Question 8

Answer

Their forms are different. The Tiger Claw is relatively more open, the Dragon Claw is more rounded, and the Eagle Claw more close.

The training methods are different. Tiger Claw practitioners grip jars and jab into beans, Dragon Claw practitioners circulate chi into their fingers, and Eagle Claw practitioners grip Y-shape branches and pull poles from ground. In our school, we use Fierce Tiger Cleanses Claws to train internal force for Tiger Claw.

The applications are different. Tiger Claw grips tendons, dislocates joints and grips vital points. Dragon Claw tears muscles. Eagle Claw immobilize opponents’ hands so that the exponent can strike them more easily.

LINKS

Selected Reading

• Courage and Confidence in Teaching and Healing
• Participating in and Winning Free Sparring Competitions
• Glimpses of Choy-Li-Fatt Kungfu
• is there Further Training after an Intensive Course?
• Does Practicing Different Kungfu Styles or Many Kungfu Sets Contribute to or Distract from Kungfu Progress?

Courses and Classes

• Intensive Chi Kung Course
• Intensive Shaolin Kungfu Course
• Intensive Taijiquan Course

• List of Certified Shaolin Wahnam Instructors
• List of Shaolin Wahnam Chi Kung Healers

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