a good student
Lessons from traditional Chinese martial arts
Back in Europe after 18 months.
Out of the Kung Fu school rhythm where I am fed, housed and trained at regular times.
Back to creating the discipline and structure myself.
Yes, it’s a slight nuisance. But it’s good for my coaching. Inspires me to reinvigorate the tools I used to navigate the so-called ‘real world’ and which were less needed in China.
In particular, I’m finding the experience of taking online lessons from Shifu Chen Geng, who taught Gulun Kung Fu to Shifu Shi Heng Yi, very helpful for putting me back in the shoes of my own students.
I’m writing this article to document how I go about being a student - both to assist my own process and also to give my students an indirect kick up the bum. Take note!
I detail the two characteristics of a good student before describing how I seek to embody each within this teaching relationship.
The Two CHARACTERISTICS
What makes a good student?
Many things.
I could cut the pie in many ways. I could list the 14 Wu De (martial virtues) of Shaolin or the Mahayana Six Paramitas.
But for present purposes, I’ll keep things simple.
There are two biggies.
One is Yin. One is Yang.
1. Emptiness
2. Taking Responsibility
EMPTINESS
Emptiness is about silencing the self. Drop your ideas, experiences and preferences. Listen. Don’t try to impress the teacher with clever ideas or questions - especially with your knowledge of martial and meditative arts.
Of course, there are plenty of awful teachers to whose energy you’d be ill-advised to surrender wholeheartedly; but it’s your job to find a good ‘un you can trust.
The transmission from student to teacher is clean when the student doesn’t erect defences in the form of his or her ego. If the student is blocked, the transmission is inefficient.
Whatever the teacher recommends, do. In class, no emotion, no drama, no hesitation. Just do. No giving the teacher a running commentary on how you’re feeling or how tired you are. No talking unless there’s a health risk. No attitude of negativity. Release all adolescent ‘I can’t do this’ or ‘I don’t want to be here’ vibes - both in body language and speech. Body language is attentive without being nervous: no slouching or fidgeting.
hierarchy
To enable smooth energy flow, there is a hierarchy between teacher and student. Limit engagement in a dialogue with the teacher. I remember Shifu Shi Heng Zuan correcting me for saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah!’ as he was speaking. Why? Because my ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’ implied I had reached the same level of understanding as him and I was on his level. The correct response is a humble yes, a bow or nothing.
This may sound authoritarian to us Westerners, who have been taught to never bow down and that the ultimate authority in the world is our own clever head. But with Shifu Shi Heng Zuan, for example, I surrendered my power to him entirely and he used it to help me. No funny business. There are benevolent teachers in the world.
All of these ways of behaving in class are totally different from the modern Western approach where the teacher is constantly trying to please the student so they can thrive in the crowded marketplace. It took me years of training to empty myself so I could behave like this. But when I did and when I was able to be a student in a more traditional sense, I saw that the difference was vast.
For new students, behaving like this can feel too intense. It can cause tension. And tension also blocks energy flow. So most important at first is for the student to feel relaxed. We strike a middle way. Don’t be a robot.
receiving criticism
I’ve come to hypothesise that the defining trait of a good student is how they receive criticism.
Many students can only tolerate one mild correction sandwiched between twenty compliments. This is because they are wounded and have been accustomed to a modern world designed for comfort. As with all training, students should look to gradually increase their tolerance of corrections and criticism. .
When I trained with his group, Shifu Shi Heng Zuan would always correct me - much more than any other student. He spoke up one day:
‘Why always Ben? Because I correct Ben and he makes no reaction. Nothing. But for most of you, if I correct you, then you will cry for five years. But know that when I correct Ben, I am correcting all of you.’
This is a sensitive matter - even I find myself acting like an 8-year old eager for their parent’s approval when being taught by certain Masters. I don’t think my ego is ready to tolerate a life without validation.
But if you can step out of the constant need for encouragement and reassurance, you can grow much faster. You receive each correction as a gift, not an insult. You treasure it and use it to grow, realising that without corrections, you cannot grow.
One of my teachers in Wudang was feared by all students. Many students even complained and left him because of the abuse. I consciously chose to learn from him so I could practise withstanding criticism. I enjoyed practising emptying myself so that his aggressive comments were like a fist punching thin air.
This is of course fantastic practice for life - emptying yourself so you never take things personally.
I made a dreadful error while in Wudang of offering to help an experienced yoga teacher and martial artist from Ubud in Bali (spiritual ego capital of the world) during his first week at the school. He of course rebutted my corrections with clever ideas from his years of study. My conversations with him later confirmed that while he had attained certain skills, he lacked the most important spiritual superpower of all: the ability to laugh at oneself and be empty, like a child. I infinitely prefer teaching those with no background in this stuff than experienced practitioners with gigantic spiritual egos.
application
I’ve been around the martial and meditative block.
But whenever I turn to a new practice, I enjoy the test of totally dropping everything I have learned to be a beginner.
Wudang style involves low stances and wide, expansive movements, with elbows always away from the body.
In contrast, the Gulun Kung Fu I am now learning is high stance and very compact, with elbows never leaving the rib cage.
Instead of seeing the two styles as conflicting, I see them as different perspectives. English and Chinese are two languages with entirely different systems; neither is better than the other. Just as I wouldn’t tell a Chinese teacher that the correct word for the thing I’m sitting on is a ‘chair’ and not an ‘yǐzi’, I wouldn’t even think about correcting Chen Geng.
I completely drop the pathetic ‘My Gong Fu is better than yours’ games that unfortunately dominate much of the martial arts world. I enjoy emptying myself so I can metamorphose and become the energy of the new practice. No fun otherwise, right?
I chuckle as I recall an aggressive, fat, chain-smoking ‘Master’ next to the Bodhidharma cave in Dengfeng demanding that I show him my Gulun Kung Fu before telling me it was a load of crap and that I should come to his school to learn the real stuff.
Another layer of emptying practice arises when being taught different details from different teachers within the same system. Chen Geng teaches me differently from my previous coach at Wu Gulun school. I never say something like, ‘Why are you doing it like that? It should be like this - my other coach taught me this way.’
If two teachers teach you differently, which one is right?
The one teaching you right now.
This isn’t to say I don’t ask questions.
I do, but always with the attitude of a beginner student asking for clarification and never with the doubting attitude of a smart-ass.
I empty myself within the practice itself but also the rest of my life so I can give this due focus.
So, I clear the decks to retain as much energy (easy translation: jing in Chinese, dopamine in science) for my practice:
PRACTICE. Right now, Wu Gulun Kung Fu takes centre stage. I keep other practices at maintenance only. No consciously learning new practices.
MIND. No social media, news, Netflix. Messaging and emails only in afternoons.
QUIET. 4am wake, multiple hours in nature per day, max 1h of meetings per day.
BODY. No alcohol, sugar, meat, dairy, gluten, spices, ejaculation (a classic recommendation for preserving one’s energy).
The most reliable predictor of falling off-track among my students is alcohol consumption. It’s an insidious beast that subtly corrupts any attempt at consistent growth, even in doses that people think amount to nothing.
These are changes I have gradually made over a decade. Something fundamental in my mind shifted such that I perceive the inner equilibrium they elicit to be treats. They do not feel like sacrifices. There is no conflict, no yearning for a pizza and a pint.
However, most would explode if they attempted such changes. As exploding isn’t healthy, I recommend slow change.
2. TAKING RESPONSIBILITY
The bleak reality is that 90+% of practitioners never progress past the point of self-consciously fumbling around.
In the Wudang school where I was based for nine months, I noticed that the vast majority seemed to have come with the hope that just by arriving at the school they would magically be transformed into Tai Chi wizards by the teachers and environment, without needing to invest any energy.
Very few people actually take responsibility for their practice: breaking it down, trying to understand the underlying principles, genuinely trying to understand what the hell it is they are actually doing.
Discipline, intensity and structure have become taboos in today’s spiritually soft environment whose perversion of terms such as ‘self-forgiveness’ and ‘acceptance’ tends to chastise hard work. But in the realm of traditional Chinese martial arts, it is critical.
I delineate between two types of student:
1. children
Children need me to hold their hand.
If there is one click of the mouse that I do not spell out for them, they complain that my instructions were overwhelming or unclear. They cannot respond to simple emails or execute simple tasks in their own time, needing me to be on a call with them.
They come unprepared to our calls and whenever I ask them question, they ramble without answering me clearly. Our calls tend to go on for a long time without really going anywhere.
They want me to provide videos they can passively consume while going through the motions. They need to be corrected ovr and over because they don’t take note of the corrections and work on them in their own time.
Important note: Children are not ‘bad’. They are how they are because their minds, bodies and lives are convoluted due to a variety of factors. They need a parent who can look after them and help them gradually grow up to the point where they take responsibility for their lives and practice.
Many of them have no intention of developing a particularly deep practice and want this area of their life to be as simple as possible - something they don’t need to think about so they can save bandwidth for other areas of their lives. This is OK. But they need to know that that they will progress at 5% of the speed of...
2. adults
Adults take initiative.
Not only do I not need to correct them multiple times, but they analyse my movements and videos to make corrections that I haven’t even vocalised.
Their knee-jerk reaction when they receive any stimulus (practice, work, reading) isn’t ‘OMG this is so overwhelming,’ but ‘I’ve got this’. They drop the drama and get to it. If a question isn’t 100% clear, they either figure it our or ask me immediately rather than running away.
They take 20 minutes to complete journalling exercises which children take weeks to respond to, and when they do, don’t answer them clearly.
They experience the truth of my promise that every minute you invest in my work will be won back twice over by reducing clutter and increasing clarity.
Our calls are usually short and to the point. After one 10-minute weekly check-in with Georg, I said, ‘Anything else?’
Georg responded, ‘No, nothing to talk about. I just do the practice and exercises and everything is easy.’
Adults are professionals. No drama. They just do.
Shifu Shi Heng Zuan said to me the Shaolin teachings are ‘accessible because you just do’. At first I thought this was a basic requirement. But the more I delve into this world, the rarer I see this to be.
application
Chen Geng doesn’t teach in the same way as me.
We have unstructured online classes. No training programme, no video library, no extras. Just Zoom calls.
This was the same as when I learned online from Shifu Shi Heng Zuan.
This is a more traditional approach.
The legend in the Wu Gulun family is that the art was passed down as the son of the master spied on his father practising late at night. As the father did not impose the teaching on the son, it ensured that if the son learned the arts, it would be due to his pure, dedicated heart.
There are countless stories of masters testing would-be students’ dedication by making them repeat a single mind-numbing exercise for several years before giving them any exciting stuff.
Alas, very few people in today’s consumerist world with TikTok attention spans, have a sliver of that level of dedication and initiative.
Here’s what I’m doing with Chen Geng’s calls:
VIDEO RECORDING. I record all online lessons with Chen Geng. I re-watch each online lesson every day (including freeze-framing and playing sections in slow motion)
VIDEO ANALYSIS AND SEGMENTING. I create mini-clips from the video with isolated practices that I can look at in turn. I write notes with corrections for each exercise.
PRACTICE PLAN. I meticulously create a detailed practice plan for myself. I put it into a spreadsheet and log my training every day.
RECORDING. A couple of times per week I video myself and watch the recording to check for errors.
PLAY. I mix my practice between (1) textbook training where I try to be a carbon-copy of my teacher and (2) play with the movements creatively (usually with music), expressing myself and making the practice my own with variations. I play with different Qi qualities, speeds, music.
Of course, I don’t have what is, under modern parlance, called a ‘life’.
I’ve given up on conventional fun to nerd out on this stuff. If all students were this uncool, I wouldn’t have a job. It’s in taking care of many of these activities for my students that I do something unique.
With that said, here is my practice plan for the following week. I’ll review my plan and give an update next week.
I am focusing on Wu Gulun basics as well as designing my own conditioning routines to help me develop the strength, balance and flow for the challenging single-leg movements that are a staple. I’m also throwing in flexibility training to improve my splits and chin to toe given (1) it’s flexibility season (summer) and (2) there’s a chance I’ll move to train within Shaolin Temple itself later this year, and flexibility is still my lagging point when it comes to conditioning.
Conclusion
Gong Fu (or ‘Kung Fu’) literally means ‘skill derived from hard work over time’.
It is not necessarily confined to martial arts and the principles can be applied to any field where one wishes to develop oneself.
The mysterious forces that be have drawn you to this article. What is more, in getting this far you have proven you have an unusual attention span (unless you skipped to the bottom, in which case I’ll give you another chance: slow down and read the whole thing!).
I now pose an important question to you:
How much do you care?
See your practice as a reflection of your life.
Yes, these practices can transform your life in all the ways you have fantasised about. But you have to care. You have to be among that rare breed that untangles themself from passive zombie consumption and into an adult who takes responsibility.
To be a good student, here’s what you gotta do:
Emptiness. Empty yourself of all ideas and experiences. Be totally humble and receptive to the teacher. Minimise the amount your body is distracted by harmful substances and your mind distracted by busyness.
Take Responsibility. Don’t expect results to happen just because you have a teacher. Treat the teachings as precious treasures that you must polish if they are to reveal their beauty.
As the old saying goes (I think), “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it understand Tai Chi.”
Email me at ben@benlucas.co. I’m all yours.
