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The Sil Lum Tao Form and Chi Kung

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, I shall illustrate and fully explain the meaning of the first form of the Wing Chun system, the Sil Lum Tao, or Small Thought form. Sil Lum Tao is the best known, and perhaps most important, form in the Wing Chun system. It is also the form that causes the most confusion among students. Indeed, some of the errors made in misinterpreting Sil Lum Tao may lead a student to almost certain defeat against a good street fighter. So let me proceed immediately to clear up the confusion. In these three volumes, I hope to place Wing Chun kung-fu on a coherent and scientific foundation, as well as to defend my style against many critics who see it as impractical, illogical, and fundamentally nonviable as a combative art. I shall attempt to show that Wing Chun is a very valuable fighting style, that is practical, economical, and logical.

Writers of books on Wing Chun constantly praise their style as being a logical one, but they never go beyond mere assertion and attempt to justify this by showing how and why the techniques work.

THE THEORY OF THE CENTER-LINE STANCES

Classical Wing Chun kung-fu is typically defined by means of what is known as the center-line theory, which is the foundation of the system, determining both the fighting stance and the logic of combat. The center-line is taken to be an imaginary line that passes through the median axis of the body. It is on this axis that the most vulnerable organs of the body are located. The fighter therefore defends this area by keeping his elbows in the center-line or plane of the body in both attack and defense and seeks to attack the centerline of the opponent. Wing Chun attacks must typically be linear because of the requirement of keeping the elbows in the center-line; in addition, the shortest distance in space between two points (such as a knuckle and a nose), is a straight line, so linear attacks are much faster than circular roundhouse style swings. It is also more difficult to defend against straight-line attacks because they are direct, fast, and tend not to inform the opponent of the intent to attack.

So far so good; all of this is true. However, there is a tendency for Wing Chun practitioners to fight front-on in a Chil Ying position. The fighter stands in a parallel stance known as Kim Nur Mar. This is the well-known, pigeon-toed, foot-adducted Wing Chun stance—the knees and toes point in toward the median axis of the body, with there being no more than a fist’s distance between the knees. Some Wing Chun fighters stand in a much wider stance, suitable for riding goats, and have up to four or five fist widths of space between the knees. There are a number of things scientifically wrong with using the parallel stance, or Kim Nur Mar, as a fighting stance, which I now summarize:

a) It exposes the maximum surface area of your body to your opponent, at least 25% more area than the side-on stance preferred by Jeet Kune Do fighters, boxers, and Thai kick-boxers.

b) The old-time champion boxer Len Harvey said that balance is the key to successful fighting (Len Harvey, Modern, Boxing. [London: Blackie and Son, Ltd., 1937], p. 11). Balance governs advancing, retreating, footwork to the left and right, and checking attacks. The Kim Nur Mar, or parallel stance, is not stable from the front (or back), its stability is from the side (try it with a friend who pushes you). Yet by facing your opponent head-on, you are presenting your unbalanced side. The parallel stance is more stable than standing up straight, but this is only because by bending your knees you lower your center of gravity. Compare the stability of the Wing Chun parallel stance to the side with the normal stance for boxing and note the difference for yourself.

c) The parallel stance simply doesn’t allow meaningful footwork. If there is no footwork, then there can be no victory.

d) It is well known to boxers and kick-boxers that the back hand or the back foot is the power hand or foot. The reason for this is that in kicking or punching with the back foot or hand there is a natural transfer of body weight into the attack. Fighting in the Chil Ying position doesn’t effectively allow this; it doesn’t allow for explosiveness of attack.

e) The large gap between the knees makes the fighter vulnerable to Wing Chun’s sticky-leg or chi gerk attacks (see the second volume in this series, Fighting and Grappling) as well as to front kicks to the groin.

Thus, I believe that the parallel stance should be used in Wing Chun as a training stance only. The knees are locked together while you perform the hand movements of Sil Lum Tao, to place strong isometric tension upon the leg muscles, thereby strengthening the legs for sticky-leg fighting. The correct fighting stance of Wing Chun, Som Kwok Bo, comes from the second form of Wing Chun, the Chum Kil, or Searching for the Bridge set, and is a side-on position with the forward foot turned slightly in and the back foot held at45 degrees to the median axis of the body. The feet are customarily. placed about a shoulder’s distance apart, but you should employ it with no more than a fist’s width between the knees when you are actually engaged in close-range fighting. The reason for this is technical and depends upon a knowledge of sticky-leg fighting. Approximately 70% of the fighter’s body weight rests on the rear foot, and 30% on the forward foot.

When using the side-on fighting position described above in an actual fighting situation, the Wing Chun fighter does not necessarily attack through the center-line by passing through the median axis of his own body. The attack is made through a center-line that runs down from the practitioner’s eyes, through the front defensive hand (which is held up high in order to guard the head), and through the forward leg. This is a powerful and directed line of attack that is aligned to the median axis of the opponent’s body. However, for close-range or street fighting, I prefer to use the Chil Ying position for the upper body, with the legs held as described above.

Attack ideally involves breaking through your opponent’s guard and then attacking his poorly protected side, locking up his leg in order to control his ability (or breaking the knee with a sticky-leg technique), controlling his hands with sticky-hand movements, and then attacking his vital points. Moving into an opponent and getting control of his side puts him at a disadvantage, for now there are two hands against his one. He is effectively fighting two opponents, or fighting at half-strength!

THE STRUCTURE OF THE SIL LUM TAO FORM

The Sil Lum Tao form is performed in a stationary parallel stance and involves only hand movements. It consists of an opening sequence and three sections. As it would be far too boring to describe every hand move verbally, it is better to consult the photographs. What I shall do however, is to discuss some of the least understood Wing Chun hand movements, as well as some of the better known ones that are often misused.

THE OPENING OF THE SIL LUM TAO FORM AND PUNCHING THEORY

The version of the Sil Lum Tao form given here does not begin with the fists placed beside the chest. The form opens with til sao, a defensive movement involving an upward lift of the arm, palms facing the body with fingers open, followed by a sudden lateral jerk of the wrist and the grasping formation of a claw hand, with its withdrawal to beside the chest. The til sao, or lifting deflection, is especially designed for counter-attacking a punch with a grappling hand move. There is a detailed theory of grappling, or chin-na, in Wing Chun that I shall discuss in the second volume of this series. For the moment, I want to point out that the til sao block has merit as a defensive hand move in that it can successfully defend a wide area of the upper body from hand attacks.

The formation of the claw hand and a twisting grab—as if to tear flesh from the bones of an opponent—is a technique constantly found in all three empty-hand forms of the Wing Chun system. The self-defense techniques using the claw, which I shall detail in volume two, are extremely brutal and must only be used in life-or-death situations. These include: gouging out the eyes, ripping out the hair by the roots, dislocating the jaw, tearing the flesh of the nose, ears, and lips, crushing the throat, and twisting and ripping the testicles. Such clawing techniques are a very effective means of self-defense for women finding themselves in violent rape attacks.

There are four open-handed strikes in Wing Chun kung-fu. The chop is a strike delivered with the blade of the hand. It is delivered with a snap of the arm to generate impulse—the sudden release of force in a very short time interval. The palm strike is a short-range linear attack which uses the heel of the hand. Force is generated by exploding with the body weight behind the strike, using the arm much like a battering ram. The side palm strike is similar to the palm strike but the target is the opponent’s side. There is a slight curve in the path of the attacking hand which impacts again on the heel of the hand, the force however is generated by a snapping action of the wrist. The cutting side palm generates its force by snapping the wrist, like the side palm. However the surface of impact is smaller, being the small round bone on the heel of the hand. The striking angle is the same as the side palm but it can also be used as an overhead strike to the face.

The most important hand move in the opening of the Sil Lum Tao form is the vertical punch. This punch is designed for close range combat. The vertical fist-thrusting punch in the form is executed by sliding the forearm across the chest with the fist pointing across the body. The fist is then pointed toward an (imaginary) opponent and delivered so that any punching attack initiated by the opponent will meet the bridge arm (forearm) and be blocked. Even if the punch is not a successful strike, once contact with the opponent’s arm occurs, the sticky-hand fighting skills can be employed.

Wing Chun punches typically involve inch-force, or ging, an explosive shock-wave effect. There is a lot of mystical nonsense written about the one-inch punch that knowledge of physics readily dispels. The idea behind snap punching is to reduce the time in which the fist is in contact with the body. This increases the impulse (the product of the average magnitude of a force on a body and the time for which it acts.) The great old-time boxer Tommy Burns said that the most feared punch is not a big swing or a long straight drive out from the shoulder, but “one of those half-arm jabs, which only travel about a foot or at most 18 inches, and which have the full weight of the shoulder behind them” (T. Burns, Scientific Boxing and Self Defence, London: Athletic Publications Ltd., 1934, p. 31).

Wing Chun punching also is greatly aided by exploding one’s body weight behind a punch. Jack Dempsey in his Championship Fighting (Long Beach, CA: Centreline Press, 1978) described a method of power punching involving a falling step, where a punch is launched after putting your weight on the front foot and then stepping and punching so that gravity gives a great momentum to a punch. However, Dempsey’s falling step occurs quite naturally after either a back-foot or front-foot heel kick, because as the foot comes down, the body starts to fall. A coordinated punch delivered at this time can have knock-out power. Other ways of putting body weight behind a punch include springing or leaping forward to bridge the gap with a jab and surging upward, using the legs as springs to fire a lifting punch or upper cut.

The vertical fist has been criticized on the grounds that there is a lack of bone support for the fifth metacarpal bone. However, in Wing Chun, we don’t land blows on the little pinky knuckle, but on the bottom three knuckles, which do give solid bone-to-bone contact for the transmission of impact force. It may be of interest to note that the great Jack Dempsey favored a vertical punch (see Championship Fighting ibid.), as did other old-time boxing champions such as Robert Fitzsimmons (Physical Culture and Self-Defense, London: Gale and Polden, Ltd., 1902, Chap. 18) and Jim Driscoll (Text-Book of Boxing, London: Athletic Publications, n.d.).

THE FIRST SECTION OF THE SIL LUM TAO AND CHI KUNG TRAINING

The first section of the Sil Lum Tao is done very slowly for the purpose of Chi Kung (Pinyin: qigong) training as well as for isometric tension exercises for the wrist and forearm, to improve the strength of the taun sao and fook sao. The internal taun sao (finger-drop, palm-twisted taun sao, or asking hand) is a straight thrusting-hand move used to deflect punches. Wing Chun is a very economical style: hard blocking is not desirable because re-direction of force is safer, quicker, and less demanding on your health and energy. The internal taun sao is used in close-range fighting, much like a punch: it moves along the body and then outward to catch any punching attack and harmlessly redirect it. A correct taun sao has the elbow in the center of the body, at solar plexus height. The palm faces upward, fingers straight and piercing forward to the eyes, in the case of the conventional taun sao, or else the wrist is twisted and the index finger is straight with the other fingers raised. This latter taun sao is designed for sticky-hands, and thus it sticks better to an opponent’s forearm. In any case, a good taun sao has an angle slightly greater than 90 degrees between the biceps muscle and forearm. Any less and the taun sao is too weak; any more and punches will skate over the top of it.

The hand moves of the haun sao and jut sao and wu sao (defensive hand) techniques are discussed later. The fook sao hand movement, however, is quite often puzzling to students, so it is worthwhile to take a closer look at its meaning and use. The taun sao and fook sao techniques are two important hand moves of Wing Chun’s sticky-hand style, occurring in both single and double sticky-hands (chi sao). The fook sao, or hooking (lying-on-top) hand, consists of the hand bent at the wrist so that the fingers face in toward the median axis of the body. The shape of the fingers is dictated by the need of this hand move to lock up the taun sao in sticky-hands. Like the taun sao, a good fook sao consists of the elbow in the center-line and not merely the wrist, preventing the passage of the thrusting taun sao not by virtue of the wrist action, but because the forearm blocks its passage. The fook sao is typically used, along with pivoting and footwork, to redirect attacks. In particular the fook sao is a quasi-grappling hand. In many cases it is far too slow to attack an opponent by grasping an opponent’s arm. Instead, one may use the fook sao to hook down the guard and attack. Thus, while the fook sao is at first glance an unusual hand move, its usefulness is obvious.

There are two hand moves in the opening of the Sil Lum Tao that merit a brief comment before I discuss Chi Kung. These moves are the downward X-hand and the cross-hand movement. The former move is not identical to the X-block usually found in karate. In Wing Chun, we do not use two hands to do what one hand could do, because in the case of a double lower block, one’s head is now vulnerable to attack. Nor would we attempt to perform hard blocking against a kick—Wing Chun is a soft/hard form of kung-fu believing that defense should be soft, involving deflection and flowing with the attacking force, while offense should be hard, directing the hard attacking weapons of the body against the weak points of human anatomy. The X-hand is a classical hand move, merely used to judge the center-line of the body when in the parallel stance.

The cross-hand movements are performed immediately after the opening punch in the Sil Lum Tao, consisting of an upward, downward, leftward, and rightward movement of the wrist. This is done not only to train the flexibility of the wrist, but because it embodies an important technique that is fully utilized at the Bil Jee level. The fingertips in Bil fee fighting are often used to attack around a block or defense by being flicked around it. The cross-hand movement represents the various angles of a flicking finger attack; this movement, like all other offensive hand moves, should involve inch-force, or ging.

For traditional Chinese kung-fu and other internal arts, the union of physical energy, breath (chi), and spirit is the highest aim of training. When this is done the five elements—metal, earth, water, fire, and wood—are in balance. Chi Kung is a way of obtaining the inner harmony of the body and spirit. This is a vast topic that cannot be adequately addressed here. However, I will summarize here a Chi Kung exercise that is practiced in the Sil Lum Tao. Grip the ground strongly with your toes to unite yourself, according to tradition, with the earth. Relax the body, close your eyes and concentrate on the tan-t’ien (lower abdomen). The tongue touches the roof of the mouth in breathing in, said by the Chinese to connect the major channels of chi-energy circulation. Inhale slowly expanding the tan-t’ien; exhale slowly, relaxing the tan-t’ien.

While this concentrated breathing occurs, a series of exercises are performed for the pubococcygeus muscle (PC), similar to the exercises now known as the Kegel exercises. The PC muscle controls urine flow and its spasmodic contractions constitute orgasm. Contract and release this muscle—squeeze it as tight as possible for 10 seconds, release, and then squeeze again and so on. A strong PC muscle prevents sagging of the pelvic organs, and can increase the intensity of the orgasm. Dr. Arnold Kegel devised a series of exercises for the PC muscle in the late 1940s, but Wing Chun practitioners interested in Chi Kung have been training this muscle for at least three thousand years!

THE SECOND AND THIRD SECTIONS OF THE SIL LUM TAO

The second and third sections of the Sil Lum Tao are very straightforward and are described by the captions to the photographs in this chapter. The palm strikes, chops, and finger thrusts are self-explanatory offensive weapons, or, in the case of the side palm, pak sao, a defensive parry. The second and third sections of the Sil Lum Tao also contain techniques for force redirection. The double lifting hands and the drawing-in are primarily used in close-range fighting to disrupt the flow of energy of an opponent’s attack. The drawing-in hand movement involves having both of your hands on the outside of your opponent’s hand. This is a strongly disadvantageous position as the median axis of your body can be readily attacked. The drawing together of an opponent’s hands constitutes a hand trap and puts you in the advantageous position. The drawing-down hand (la) and the upward-lifting wrist movement (ding) in the third section of the Sil Lum Tao are not primarily used as blocks, but rather function in sticky-hand fighting as conventional ways of opening up an opponent’s guard by either moving the guard down or up, followed by an immediate attack. The haun sa a and jut sao from section one of the Sil Lum Tao also serve a similar purpose. The jut sao is a sudden downward jerk with the edge of the heel of the hand, to clear a pathway for a strike. The haun sao is a wrist-rotating movement, used to twist around guards, or to open up a guard. In both cases we can see the evidence of the concept of sticky-hands; the use of all these hand moves presupposes that contact has already been made with the opponent’s hands, or forearms.

The bong sao hand movement is one of the most important hand movements in Wing Chun, but it is also the most complex and least understood. There are many types of bong sao movements in Wing Chun, including the wooden-dummy section, but to keep this discussion concise and uncluttered I will consider here only the simple bong sao in the Sil Lum Tao. The bong sao consists of a bent-elbow hand formation, such that the blade of the hand faces upward. The angle of the elbow is slightly greater than 90 degrees: any less and the hand movement is too weak, any more and punches will skate over the top. The elbow is elevated so that the shoulder is blocked from view of the attacker. This means that a punch will be deflected upward and will not be long enough to connect. The bong sao, therefore, functions as a distance-destroying deflection. The hand is bent for the purpose of sticky-hands, so as to glue to an opponent’s hand. This means that your hand is already inside an opponent’s guard, which wouldn’t be the case if all you did was raise your elbow to defend yourself. All that now needs to be done to counter-attack is to straighten the elbow to launch a bil jee to the throat, or alternatively to rotate the hand in order to drop a back fist on the opponent’s nose.

The bong sao, like all hand moves, has its weaknesses. It is weak to the side if an opponent pushes your elbow in toward your chest, and most importantly it is weak in the respect that it leaves your side unguarded. That is why in sticky-hands, the hand sequence goes from bong sao to taun sao—the Wing Chun hand moves are a coherent system of internally related hand moves that shift from one to another to cover up possible weaknesses in the preceding hand move. My system, like Western boxing, therefore places great emphasis upon combinations, not only attacking combinations but defensive ones as well. I cannot emphasize strongly enough how important in fighting it is to develop fast, fluid, and clear combinations, because unless you are fighting a fool, no fight against a skilled opponent can be ended by just one master technique. There is always the possibility in the heat of combat that your best technique may not work as it worked while sparring in class. Therefore, a good fighter is versatile, capable of both defending from all angles and attacking from all angles. Indeed, the ideal is to not merely simultaneously defend and attack with a hand or leg move, but to simultaneously defend and attack an opponent with both a hand technique and a sticky-leg technique with follow-ups. In the next chapter I shall begin describing how this is possible with a description of the Wing Chun footwork at the Chum Kil level.

THE SIL LUM TAO FORM AND CHI KUNG

OPENING

1. To perform the first form of Wing Chun Kung-fu, the Sil Lum Tao, or Way of the Small Thought, stand in the attention position, with your back straight, eyes focused straight ahead upon the horizon, your feet together, and your hands at your sides. In performing the Wing Chun forms, emphasis is placed upon symmetry: the left-hand movements and the right-hand movements are performed as if there were a mirror running through the centerline of the body. For this reason, to make matters clearer, hand techniques are often shown here only on the left-hand side, because the right-hand techniques are exactly the same but performed on the right. In this photograph, the center-line is an imaginary line running through points in the middle of the subject’s body. Maintain deep but relaxed breathing throughout the form.

2. Now move both hands slowly upward to perform a double til sao, or upward lateral wrist deflection. Both hands are moved together, at a deliberately slow pace, with the thumbs of both hands facing up, the knife edge of your hands facing downward. Slowly move your hands until your arms are fully extended and at right angles to your body. The fingers and wrists are very relaxed, like the leaves of a willow tree.