Tonight during Wing Chun training we concentrated almost solely on Chi Sao which my Sifu describes as “play fighting” in that it is not an all out brawl, there are certain rules and niceties and the attitude should be that you are there to learn. Sifu’s useful analogy was that of tiger cubs playing – they need to learn to hunt but they don’t want to kill each other so they go through all the motions but with their claws in; so there’s an element of trust involved as well as assertiveness (and controlled aggression maybe?)
One of the more difficult things I find about Wing Chun is that you’ve got to get over your British reserve and get physically close to people. I find this difficult, especially with a training partner I’m only mildly acquainted with. During Chi Sao I feel stupid because I don’t know what move to make next. I feel silly and embarrassed when someone gets through. I feel guilty and embarrassed when I get through someone’s defences and usually end up apologising for it. Also I feel that the men I train with are just indulging me and fear that they think they would get more out of training with another male. I also suffer from what I call “body dyslexia”, for want of a better phrase, which means that I may be able to do the moves when practising on my own but that it all goes to pot and I forget my left from my right when paired up with a training partner.
I think it true to say that during Chi Sao I’m just a bundle of conflicting impulses with a cloud of free floating anxiety on top.
I wonder if this kind of contact is perhaps easier for men because as children they’ve usually played some sort of contact sport at school (it may have changed for girls now but netball was about the only contact sport I did at school).
Controlled aggression may play a part in it but one of the guys I consider to be very good at Chi Sau seems to have absolutely no ego – if you get through (not that I often do!) he doesn’t take offence but always wants to know why and asks you to repeat what you did more slowly so that he can learn from it.
There is definitely a lot of cognitive processing going on during Chi Sao and I’m not quite sure what kind of body and brain combined intelligence is involved, but it appears to me that there’s great deal of skill involved in predicting your partners moves and coming up with a skilful countermoves.
