Bernadette is sparring with Sifu Jamie, and enjoying the experience. Their sparring reveals many principles, like being relaxed, letting chi flow smoothly and attaining six harmonies, which we regard as basics but which are open secrets that may help many others attain benefits practicing genuine kungfu would give, like being free from pain and illness and maintaining mental clarity even in demanding situations.

If you practice genuine kungfu, amongst many other benefits, you should be free from pain and illness, and have mental clarity even in demanding situations. But, instead, many kungfu practitioners today suffer from internal injuries, and are stressful and angry even at ordinary times. Why is this so? Why are so many kungfu or wushu practitioners today not healthy physically and emotionally, when practicing their art is supposed to make them so? One important reason is that they miss the secrets that enable them to gain these benefits.

Our school is noted for sharing secrets openly with the public. This has raised a few legitimate questions.

Kungfu masters were well known in the past for keeping secrets. Their students had to learn for many years before some secrets were revealed to them. Why are we so open with our secrets?

Many people are hostile to us. They accuse us for being boastful, for thinking we are the only school that practices genuine kungfu and genuine chi kung, and all others are bogus. They do not believe in chi or internal force, or that kungfu can be used for fighting. Why should we share our secrets with them?

By being so generous with our secrets, will others use them against us?

We shall address these three questions briefly here.

Conditions in the past were different. Now we almost never have life-death combat. So, one of the main reasons for keeping secrets is no longer valid. On the other hand, both kungfu and chi kung have been debased so badly that there is a real risk of their being lost forever to posterity. If we want to prevent this happening, we just have to share some secrets.

We are not sharing secrets with those who are hostile to us, though they will of course also read about our secrets. Because they do not believe in these secrets, they will not practice them, and therefore will not get the benefits from the secrets. Here is a good example that they do not benefit not because the benefits are denied them but because they block themselves from the benefits.

Of course their accusations are not true. We are not boastful; we are just being courageous enough to state the truth. We also never claim we are the only ones who practice genuine kungfu and genuine chi kung. We have acknowledged that there are other genuine masters and genuine schools but they are rare when compared to the debased ones. They are also not as open as we do in sharing secrets.

We need not be worried that others may use our own secrets against ourselves. Our open secrets are actually quite elementary. These were known by all kungfu and chi kung practitioners in the past, such as being relaxed and using proper stances, but the arts have been so debased that today most practitioners do not believe in them or they are even unaware of these principles.

Although they are elementary, they are very important. If you neglect them you will miss the essence of kungfu or chi kung. On the other hand, for those who have been practicing kungfu or chi kung for many years but not deriving the benefits these arts are purported to give, if they only follow these elementary secrets, they will find their result enhanced.

The video clips below record some of these elementary secrets taught in the Sabah Intensive Shaolin Kungfu Course of March 2007.