Student: Is it like this or this?

Me: Yes.

Student: how can it be both?

Me: because it’s not what you do but how you do it that counts. If you are following the ideas and principles, depending on the situation, a technique can be done in a variety of ways.

People want ‘easy’ and ‘simple’, they want rules. If you advertise ’easy to learn’, ‘simple steps’ and lay down a simple framework to follow, people will buy into it.

The essential underlying principles, ideas and philosophy to a good martial art can be quite nebulous and require considerable study with an educated and alchemised energy and mind to grasp and internalise.

I use words to represent them, but they are just labels for the doors on my memory palace. Behind each door is an ever expanding room I fill with different ways that these ideas, principles and philosophies manifest in my techniques and life.

With ‘Kung Fu’ (time and effort), the room continues to expand until the walls finally disappear and all the rooms in my memory palace merge into one.

Get it?