About the posture, emptiness and fullness... Mottoes (part 1)

About the posture, emptiness and fullness...

The vacuum...how many times we heard about this concept? Many times, isn't it?

Practicing Kung Fu, let's keep always in mind the idea of the vacuum, of the absence and of the precence of energy, force and resistance. Without the proper concentration, it will be really very hard. In the same time, we need to have a correct posture. Do you remember the motto "Free yourself from your own force”?
People speak so much about mottoes and concepts in Wing Chun, but if we go deeper, we find out many differences between different lineages... Also we find out many and big differences in the teachings of different gyms, because everybody changes the mottoes, or their interpratation, by his preferences, skills, or far memories from the past. That's why I show here some of the main mottoes about the posture.

Mottoes about the body structure
(San Ying Kuen Kuit)

Ding Tin Laap Dei - 頂天立地

Ding Tin Laap Dei - 頂天立地 - (Dǐng Tiān Lì Dì in mandarin) is a basic motto of Siu Nim Tau, and it is often not applied. Beacuse of this, many errors in the posture come out, even in the execution of the forms, which are one of the basic tools to train and to get those many little ideas.

頂 [dǐng] has many meanings, like "bring on the head", or other times "to go against" or "push from underneath or from behind". The simplified form is 顶 and it comes from 丁 [dīng], used for his phoneme, and from 页( o 頁) [yè], 'head'. In cantonese is /Deng/ o /Ding/.

                                                                

天 [tiān] is the 'heaven' or the 'sky'. It's a picture of a person with a very big head. The head nowadays is written with an horizontal high line (一). In cantonese it is /Tin/.

立 [lì] means 'to be stable', 'stand', or 'to be vertical'. The ideogram represents a man (大) standing firmly on the ground (一). In cantonese is /Laahp/.

地 [dì] is the 'earth'. Often it is used to mean 'background', 'position' or 'ground'. It comes from 土 [tǔ], the 'earth', and  from the phonetic use of 也 [yě], which means 'hips'. The pronunciation has slowly changed, and 地 [dì] now sounds differently from 也 [yě]. In cantonese is /Dei/.

'Push the head against the sky and stand firmly on the ground' is a good translation. Actually we have to do this during the performance of the Siu Nim Tau, and more in general in all the workshops at this level. We can imagine a light (so not heavy but always present) object on the top of the head, in correspondance of the point Baihui. In the same time, sink the point Huiyin at the center of the perineum: the effect is a stretching and an extension of the spine, in order to create a central axis which in chinese we can call Zhong Ding, or vertical mid-line, very important for the correct balance. This level requires indeed the comprehension of the space and of the concepts of Heaven - Man - Earth.

This is also why this motto is that important in order to connect strongly the mind and the body.

(continues...)