Our Wing Chun Base

Our Wing Chun base

The very first thing that is usually learned in Wing Chun is The Yee Gee Kim Yeung Ma stance. This is a thing that takes some time to master; In fact it can take a very long time if it is not taken as seriously as it should.

Is it a training stance or a fighting stance? It is both in a way. The formal way used in the Siu Lim Tao form is for training but the essence of it will be present all the time after enough training. It will be less visible but it will always be present and active.

What does it train? Clearly, it is not a bracing stance. It is not low or wide so it cannot be comparable to the things we see in many other systems. It mainly trains how to find our center, some kind of zero point that is constantly moving from the front to the back, the left to the right, up to down and the same for the individual foot, depending on our actions and even or attitude.

Having found our center teaches us how to properly relax all the joints and calm the mind along with the low belly breathing that comes naturally with the practice. It makes us align the spine properly, all things that can put us in the proper condition to spontaneously begin using that kind of relaxed energy that is so talked about.

Its essence should be present in all aspects of the Wing Chun practice. It is hard to fall back on bad habits like using brute force to push our training partners around or doing crazy moves to win a futile victory in Chi Sao when focussing on developing real Wing Chun skills and principles.

The proper training and instinctive understanding of this simple action is what differentiates having some Gung Fu from having a simple collection of “techniques”