Welcome to the Wing Chun with Sifu Gardner Notes! 

I’ll add the past notes and future notes here for future reference.

Housekeeping

• Please consider donating to Sifu Gardner for generously offering his time, talent, skill, compassion and wisdom consistently via Zoom for the past three years. A couple options:
  • venmo: @Jerry-Gardner-22
  • Set up an auto pay via online banking
• I was in class after all and get to add these notes a week later than usual.
• There was class on January 14. Those notes will be next.
• There will be class on January 21. Bring double knives if you have them.
• My plan is to add a tab or tabs for the sitting and standing warmups—with illustrations of some sort. It will be a work in progress.

On to the notes!

The space in between. Feel it. A sense of patterning. Does it live in your bones? See if that has been acquired in your training. The Kung Fu training is the life and the life is the Kung Fu Training. Chi Sau—living in the bones of the hand, our brain is too slow. It’s like touching a hot object. Connect to that.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Centered, coming back to center maybe, is the fun of it.

Amitābha—Buddha of Boundless Light. See yourself as this Buddha, an energetic charge radiating out. Can you tame a lion who has a thorn in its paw—then you have something.

Rise up—Wing Chun—simple instruction with many meanings. Going through dailyness, notice your thoughts and how you move through space, through your house (in the grocery store etc.) Like the impressionists, (e.g., Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Mary Cassatt, Alfred Sisley) pay attention to the light. Hopefully with ease we go through life and all its complexities. If you enter an area with fear, you lose and with hoe, you lose. Let go of both, (one of Sifu’s) Rinpoche says. What is your hope and fear right now? Dr. Jesal (Patel, MD, oncologist) must have moments of presence.

“May we link in fortunate times.” Sifu adapted this from the famous fortune cookie ”May you live in interesting times.” A six year old shot his teacher and must live with this for the rest of his life. The teacher is in critical condition. Pay attention to what we’re creating in our world and the world around us.

Check in 2 hours from now. Can you remain in the center? It is ever present. Rest in your own presence, your recognition of being aware.  Face opponent, being present—do without doing. Have the ability to be patient. Have awareness of space and light. Find opportunity with empty clarity. “I have looked into the eyes of the opponent and I see myself.” Sifu’s first koan (that Ronald Taganashi gave?)  “Who am I?”  Don’t give an answer, something breaks through. Have you ever experience total clarity? We’ve taken 1,000s of years learning how to be in that space, knowing that it takes a split second.

Sitting—Open the portals to allow in the space and light. Open the gates, establish the channels and the three regulators balancing harmony and peace. Ask, ”what is the feeling of my body?”

Wing Chun—Focus on navel, use the waist. Can we infuse the qi into the bones so they’re light and mobile with the strength of steel? Using the bone strength to engage and shock the opponent.

• Double blades—waist first, then cut. The mechanics are there already with the punch. Go through drills. Use no effort.
• Bang sau—remember relax the shoulder, elbow higher than shoulder, wrist below elbow, relaxed.