THE PREPARATORY STANCE

 by Phillip Starr

A young gong-fu practitioner I know was telling me about his six-month stay in China where he'd spent time training in his particular style under an old and quite traditional teacher. His stateside instructor had written to the older instructor to let him know of his student's desire to learn from him and the older man smiled and asked the young man to participate in the class, which was already in session. Still a bit shaky from jet lag, the younger student endeavored to perform the same set as the other students in the park. Standing straight, he began and before he'd completed the first movement, the older instructor said, “No. Begin again.”

The young man was a little confused but he did as he was told. This time, he was told start over before he'd even executed the first move. “How is it wrong?”, he asked. “I didn't even begin.” He'd made a common error, although a very slight one. He'd started off with his feet placed firmly together, side by side. His teacher in the U.S. had always told his student to begin with “feet together” and this was how they all stood. It's a trivial thing, to be sure, but it was significant to the older teacher. He wanted the inner edges of the heels joined rather than the whole side of the foot. With just the inner sides of the heels touching, the feet were pointed outwards at about 45 degrees;

with the sides of the feet together, the feet pointed straight ahead.

Although not as significant as an error in a particular punch or kick, the “feet together” position was regarded as an error because it is somewhat less stable than the “heels together” stance. As it was explained to me many years ago, this posture is intended to foster a sense of self-awareness as well as acting as a sort of on-guard position. In the systems that I learned, the set(s) are begun from this position. Then the feet are often brought together (side by side) and the knees may be bent slightly as the fists or open hands are drawn to the sides of the waist just prior to the execution of the first actual posture.

Every single movement is performed just so for a reason(s). Most sets were not just tossed together haphazardly and our martial arts forefathers were very pragmatic. Very. Pragmatic. I like to think of the many tiny details (such as this one) of the Way as being ends of threads that all all wound up into a large ball. Pull on the thread, and part of the ball unravels. In this way, various facets of the Way are often revealed.