I
realize the world is full of martial artists who are
certain that their school or system is the greatest on
earth, and almost all of them have very good reasons for
feeling this way. So, at the risk of singing a
familiar tune I would like to explain why, after
experiencing several schools and systems, this is the one
that has made me feel that I had found what I had
actually been searching for all along. It's about
cultivating chi for self defense, health, and expanding
awareness of yourself and your surroundings. (The
awareness was the part that surprised me - it's actually
kept me out of a couple of car accidents and made me
notice more quickly when other people were lacking in
their truthfulness.) In the internal arts it is all
too easy to find instructors who are teaching a
watered-down version of the system that consists of forms
and techniques without the knowledge of chi that the
system is supposed to derive power from. Sometimes
this is because an instructor is deliberately withholding
knowledge, sometimes it's because the instructor was
never taught everything to begin with. Tom
Morrissey is the first instructor I have been able to
study with who has not presented me with either problem.
I have certain difficulties with my confidence in
instructors who don't value their own knowledge enough to
really want it to be passed on to future generations, but
that is not happening in this class and there is no
danger of our system falling into the hands of people who
shouldn't be learning it, because they are the ones who
simply won't understand it or stick around long enough to
learn. As far as this practice is concerned, seeing
isn't believing, but doing is.
Robert B. Williams III
9-29-03 |
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