Looking Back on 2013

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the whole Cambridge Kung Fu family!

2013 has been quite a year for Cambridge Kung Fu, and we have definitely finished on a high with (Si Je) Emily, (Si Je) Nicole, and (Si Hing) Neil all achieving their Technician Grade in Wing Chun Kung Fu. This is the equivalent of a Black Belt in our system, and this grade is awarded by my teacher Sifu Benno Westra, who came over from the Netherlands to grade them. They did a great job and we are very proud of their achievement as they have all worked for many years to achieve this. Nicole in particular has had an amazing year of achievement as she was awarded her doctorate from the University of Cambridge! Whilst we are on the subject of academic achievements, our students who took their GCSE’s all did incredibly well this year, and several of them are now Assistant Instructors in our Children’s and Youth classes, which is really cool as in most cases they have been with us since they were Tigers, Dragons and Warriors themselves!

Our goal in all of our classes is to combine education and fun, watch out in 2014 for more improvements as we live by the motto that we are either ‘perfect or striving for perfection’; and since achieving perfection is a fairly challenging goal we are firmly in the striving for perfection category! This means we are constantly looking for ways to improve all that we do. One of my favourite innovations of this year has been in the Children’s classes, where we have introduced ‘Move of the Week’ as it has allowed us to connect to all our students more personally, which is something I have missed since taking a step back from teaching Children’s classes regularly. Adults and Youth students please look out for more online resources coming in 2014 too!

I like to write a little something about what our dreams are for Cambridge Kung Fu in my end of year emails; something about what we are really hoping to support our students in achieving. One of our core beliefs is that all ‘things’ can be thought of as a skill that can be improved upon. It is common to describe ourselves or others as if we, or they, are fixed. I am an (under)confident person, a shy person, a strong person, an (un)disciplined person for example. We label ourselves and others everyday. Of course this can be useful as long as it is understood that this is a snapshot and not a fixed state. We are all capable of creating ourselves as long as we have the resources needed to change our skill level. If you perceive confidence, discipline, awareness, curiosity, intelligence etc. as skills rather than fixed qualities, our world can change and we have the power to create the world we live in. At Cambridge Kung Fu our goal is simple; to help support the nurturing and (re)learning of the key skills and resources needed to achieve this for all our students. This is not a small goal and normally takes many years to achieve (and to a certain extent it is never-ending) depending on the individual but this is the ultimate goal of Kung Fu training. Kung Fu means ‘attainment through hard work’, attainment can be applied to anything but the ultimate goal was/is to achieve what is known as immortality. Immortality in this sense does not mean to live forever, the following quote is the best explanation I have found for what the ancient Kung Fu masters meant by immortality.

“Death is not an event in life: We do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not ‘infinite temporal duration’ but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein.

So to be immortal means to live an eternal life, to live in timelessness, to be truly present. Our aim at Cambridge Kung Fu is to systematically teach ever more sophisticated movement, movement that requires your whole being, mind and body, to be fully engaged in order to master it. This then becomes a tool that can be applied to all activities in life, the tool to truly focus our attention on the task we are currently occupied with. We have all, at one time or another, probably many times through our life, experienced what Wittgenstein calls timelessness. Those times when we are so fully engaged in something that we have no concept of time passing because we are enjoying ourselves in each moment, moment to moment. I experienced this just the other night at our Christmas Party. I was enjoying myself so much that it came as a complete shock to find out it was after 11pm and we needed to go and relieve Granny and Grandpa from baby-sitting duty with my son Zac! Kung Fu is simply, or at least it has the potential to be, a systematic approach to this. An education with the end goal being able to achieve this in any activity at any moment. Combat is a fantastic tool for this as there is no room for distracting thoughts when someone is trying to hurt you or worse, whether that’s in training or for real. It allows us to incrementally progress towards this goal slowly getting better and better at 1. choosing where to focus our attention, 2. being resilient when things don’t go to plan and 3. consistently expanding and deepening our awareness. With these skills we are all set to live and love our lives.

I would like to thank you all so much for supporting Cambridge Kung Fu this year by attending our classes, bringing your children to our classes and coming along to our events like the Big Weekend and our Ceremonies; we truly appreciate it every day.

See you in 2014 for lots more fun and lots of new things to learn and be curious about.
Very best wishes
Sifu Ross