by Mpstaples on Tue Jun 06, 2017 9:40 am
Hi guys. Dave asked me to say a few words about the burning hand, and I am happy to do that. I'm also open to talking about most things, so it doesn't have to be just about the burning hand as far as I'm concerned (but I know there are protocols for these kinds of forums). So, the burning hand... But first, perhaps a story. Remember… I’m a writer. I like telling stories.
The force of qi, an integral feature of the burning hand, is one of those things you need to experience in order to really get the idea. You can watch a gongfu master send a student sailing through the air, but there is a part of you that figures it’s either a trick, or there is an explanation that isn’t going to boil down some mysterious, unexplained force. And yet…
My first White Crane teacher was a character of sorts. He was short and stocky, always wore a silk Chinese vest, and spoke with a kind of Pidgeon English I too would adopt for some odd reason. He fancied himself a race-car driver, though no one really knew what that was about, and, so he said, an expert cha-cha dancer (it was a Hong Kong thing). He would make appearances during our workouts, gathering the students around him to demonstrate various techniques. One of us…mostly me…would serve as the attacker and he would demonstrate how to do this or that.
As we practice it, White Crane was a predominantly “long arm” style of gongfu that called for a healthy program of forearm training. We all worked diligently a hitting, smacking, and generally abusing our forearms so that they could take the abuse of sparring. Indeed, I was one of the more fanatical forearm trainers, able to bring tears to the eyes of those working the “three-point-hit” exercises where babies would cry, women would scream, and forearms would turn to mush.
And so it was that during one of Mr. Long’s demonstrations, I lined myself up in a typical attack position, then came barreling in with a punch aimed at Mr. Long’s nose.
At the time, Mr. Long was mostly talking as I was coming in with my punch. He wasn’t paying much attention to me, and as a result, he deflected my punch by “slapping” my forearm away a bit too hard.
The “Burning Hand,” was Mr. Long’s signature technique, and he was quite open about teaching it those who wanted to learn it. It was an “internal” specialty, different from “external” pushing power. More a slap than a hit, Mr. Long would sometimes place a phone book on your shoulder and give it one of those “slaps.”
You could feel two things coming through the phone book. The first was a push (the external component) that would set you back a foot or two. That was to be expected, but it wasn’t anything to worry about. It was the second thing that was nasty... a sharp, stinging sensation that penetrated your shoulder.
This second force seemed to follow the more external, first force. It seemed to lag behind. But the external force was then gone in an instant, while the stinging second force stayed -- and grew.
Now, I am not a gullible person, and it was going to take more than a trickle of this second force through a phone book to convince me that this slapping stuff was anything much. And so it was that Mr. Long deflected my punch with a slap…just a little too hard. And as a result, my arm locked out in front of me, as if frozen, while a searing pain moved through the flexor muscle compartment of my forearm. My jaw clenched shut as I could feel beads of sweat forming on my face. Mr. Long continued to yack away at the other students, unaware of my predicament. I was struggling to breath, actually. I couldn’t move, actually. But out of the corner of my eye, I could see the other students now looking at me with some concern.
For his part, still talking to the group, Mr. Long began pulling back to strike again. He still wasn’t looking in my direction. I tried to retract my arm, but couldn’t move. Then finally, I managed to whimper something out… like “Aaaa!”
I know that sounds dramatic, but that’s what happened. And lucky for me, it was enough to get Mr. Long to stop talking and turn his head to see that I was in some serious hurt. I would not have been a happy camper had I been hit like that twice.
The next day I had a huge black and blue mark on my forearm, pretty much the size of his palm. But this was not a result of force #1. That kind of force would have maybe broken a bone, had he hit hard enough, or maybe it would have done nothing, if he hadn’t hit hard enough, but this was something from force #2. And call it whatever you like… call it qi, or burning hand, or whatever… it is something you need to personally experience in order to get the idea. And I got the idea.
M