A tale of my Kung Fu journey

How it all began

I have been doing martial arts on and off for many years now. I started in 2015 in Albania with Tai Chi Chuan and Shaolin Kung Fu. After moving to Germany, I continued practicing both arts through the university sports clubs.

After university, I found a kickboxing dojo nearby. It was not Kung Fu, but I gave it a try. Unfortunately, there I experienced harassment from the instructor. I stopped training for the next following years (also due to COVID).

It was only three years ago that I found my Sifu, and thanks to him, I remembered why I was so drawn to Kung Fu in the first place.

It is hard work

Kung Fu is an ancient martial art, not a sport. Sports in general are about competition with others and you focus your training on speed, power, endurance.

In art, the competition is with yourself, to be better each day, to perfect your style, to push your boundaries. Of course we also train speed, power, and endurance. But the intention differs.

Kung Fu (功夫) means hard work. One of the signature stances of Kung Fu is the Horse Stance (Ma Bu). This is the most typical hard work, dare I say, the hardest of works.

This stance gives you physical benefits such as leg and core strength, flexibility, mobility, stability, improved posture.

However, while you are staying in the same extremely challenging position for minutes, you are also building mental resilience, discipline, and stability. You are rooting yourself to the ground. No one can move you.

Expand, don’t shrink

Kung Fu incorporates “exaggerated” choreographed movements not only to enhance your physical abilities or look cool. They also give you the space to exist loudly.

Another signature stance is the Bow Stance (Gong Bu). When I first did this stance with my Sifu, I was shy and didn’t take the full space. That prompted him to point out how some people don’t take space and don’t make themselves seen or heard. He then encouraged doing the stance as wide and as focused as possible.

BOOM. You shake the ground as you move forward with focus, commitment, and sheer forking will.

Three in, five out

Inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth. Loudly! Punch, kick, elbow. Exhale a loud breath with each strike.

Your breath, your voice is your power. It will feel weird at first, especially if you are used to: not raise your voice, not speak out of turn, not say stupid things.

I invite you by all means to challenge that. All the suppressed voices need to be loud for once and forever.

Prevent, assert, defend

With all that’s said and done, in the end, the most important piece of wisdom we learn in Kung Fu is: the best course of action when a dangerous situation arises is … to avoid it completely.

Imagine the following scenario: it is late evening, you are walking alone, no one else around, just ahead of you, you notice two people fighting. What do you do?

Well, your first instinct is to assess the dynamics of the situation.

Dynamic 1: They are both drunk, it seems that they are fighting over trivial things.

Dynamic 2: One of them seems dominant, the other one seems uncomfortable.

In one of them, you change the path. In the other, you choose the path. You decide where you stand. You don’t need to be a hero, but you have the responsibility to empower the oppressed.

Fight like a girl

As I prepare to teach 7th and 8th grade girls how to be self-assertive and defend themselves, I am reflecting on the lessons I have learned.

The girl back at that kickboxing course simply smiled uncomfortably and didn’t make her boundaries clear. And that experience was enough to put her back into her protective shell.

I wish I could go back and tell that girl that: