WHAT ARE YOU IMPLYING??

 By Yang Shuangxing

Heian (aka., Pinan or Ping-An) Yondan. First posture. Looks like an overhead block and knife-hand block done simultaneously. Then, seemingly without countering, we turn and do the same thing in the opposite direction! When I asked my instructor about it he said, “That's just how it's done.” Period. So I shrugged it off. But there were other things I wondered about...

The so-called “augmented block.” The enemy's attack is so strong that a normal forearm block can't stop it? And what about the so-called “X blocks”, high and low? If you do it low, the upper half of your body is left wide open to attack. If you do it high, your lower body is defenseless. Kind of stupid, I thought. But I didn't dare ask my sensei. And there were numerous other postures in various kata that just didn't seem right...

It would be quite a while before I'd find the answers to my questions. Sensei Oyata Seiyu laughed when I asked about the movements in Heian Yondan. “No, it is not a block!”, he said. Then demonstrating with a student, he showed me how it is actually a joint technique and takedown, akin to aikido's “ikkyo” technique. “This join technique and takedown are implied”, he said. “In many places within the kata are implied techniques. They are not shown openly.”

The others; the augmented block and the “X blocks” were also hidden joint techniques. Only the entry to each technique was demonstrated in the kata. Inscrutable! But WHY didn't the authors of these forms openly show the complete technique? That question had been answered by my gong-fu teacher, W. C. Chen. He would instruct us to practice a particular movement at home and then return to demonstrate it's true application. Of course, as often as not, we all got it wrong. This was especially true of the arcane art of baguazhang. But it was also to be found in taijiquan, and to a lesser extent, in xingyiquan and shaolinquan.

Jumping up from the chair in which he often sat and observed practice, sifu Chen would perform the movement(s) as they were shown in the form. “It looks like this”, he said. “But it is really this...”, and he'd continue through with a hidden joint technique, throw, or strike (or a combination thereof). “The real application is hidden”, he said. The main reason for constructing forms in this way was to prevent unwanted observer from learning them, Chen told me. In China, training was almost always conducted outdoors (the same was true of Okinawa) and people could watch from positions of concealment. So the true technique was often hidden or camouflaged with an outer layer of movements.

The odd duck in the bunch was baguazhang. Styles such as taijiquan, xingyiquan, and shaolinquan (from which modern day karate emerged) often concealed techniques, openly revealing only the entries. Bagua, according to sifu Chen, was often very different. “You can only punch this way and this way and this way”, he said as he demonstrated various thrusts. What he meant was that there are only so many ways in which a human body can move and execute certain techniques. “Bagua is an art of principles”, he told me. “You learn them and you can apply them to your techniques. Then they become different.” It would be many years before I fully understood what he was saying.

This is what led me to write HIDDEN HANDS, my fourth book. Within the traditional forms is a great wealth of knowledge. They are, in a very real sense, books. But before we can discover their secrets, we must learn to read.