gongfu

 I was at my Nei Gong class last night, and we were being taught to use an old technique in an old way. The technique is a sternum punch from tai qi, with a relaxed arm, and the fist tilted slightly forward, and hollowed out. The first time the teacher did the technique, I recognized the fist, it was a ming fist, relaxed, with a hollow tiger’s mouth. Nobody at class knew what I was talking about, when I brought up the concept of the ming fist.

 This is the way I was taught. When the fist is held so that all of the first bones of the fingers are flat and level, it is called the flat or level fist. This is the most common way to hold the hand in modern wing chun and southern boxing in general. The punch starts out with the top of the vertical fist level with the forearm, slightly tilted down and forward. As soon as the first knuckle, the big first finger knucle, makes contact with the target, the wrist is flicked outward, with torqing power eminating from the waist, and a push off of the floor. The idea is that a huge amount of power is generated in a very short distance. This is also called “one inch punch” or “six inch punch” technique. It’s more of a kung fu parlor trick than anything, and you should be able to do it, just from studying gong fu body mechanics. The idea behind the technique, is that there are two punches, the first one is light, and they are rapid, with continuous forward motion. This way, the target responds to the first punch by a simple physical law, “every action causes an equal and opposite reaction”. The first punch, draws a response from the targets energy, while immediatly hollowing out and the second punch hits a sort of energetic void in the target that the first punch has thus made.

 It’s a cool trick, and you can send someone quite large, quite far with it, generating a lot of shock to the body.

 There are lot’s of other uses for the “flat fist”. However, there is one other fist that exists in gong fu, and it can be used in a myriad of ways. It is called the ming fist, or sun fist. The idea is that the fist is held in such a way as to resemble the Chinese character for “ming” or sun. It has the hidden meaning of this: pracitioners of a style which uses the sun fist, can be said to be agents of the ming dynasty, or by using the fist it is a way of saying “we must restore China to the peace of the Ming”, a concept now applied to peace and good rulers worldwide. The fist is just held so that, starting with the pinky, each finger sticks out a little further up to the top, and the thumb is pointed out almost past the top of the second knuckle down. It’s uses are myriad. If it is held relaxed, it has qi meridian values. If it is tightened, it is a devastating hammer or backfist. If you tighten this fist, the muscles on the pinky side of the hand become as hard as stone, and you can smash through tables with practice, equally as effective to the floating ribs, collar bone, neck, nose or side of a face.

 Anyway, thats the real ming hand. When you do a “salute” in many styles of gong fu, you make a fist and a palm, and put them together, thats the sun fist, and a moon palm. The fist should be held in the manner of the “ming fist” or sun fist, just two words for the same thing, and the palm curved like the moon, not in the more popular angular fashion.

  Peace

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