In 1973, at the age of 15, I started practising Kung Fu. My first teacher was a young man from China named Ah Tung. He taught me South Mantis and Hung Gar. He is the only person that could show me the true power of Kung Fu, other than Bruce. My second teacher was the uncle of a friend. We began practicing together in 1975. His name was Master Fung and he taught me Wing Chuan. He learned his style from Bruce’s teach (Master Yip Man). In 1977, I met my third teacher. Though I forgot his name, he taught at John Abbott College. He taught me Young style Tai Chi. The rest of my style developed from listening to my friends, watching movies and studying books.
In 1982 I began teaching in the town called Ste-Julie. Nowadays, I have three former students of mine who are teaching Kung Fu. However, the techniques they teach are derived from my old style; that is, before I began practicing Chi Kung. Now, I am teaching Chi-Kung-Fu and I named this style Moesum. Because I have been practicing many different styles and because I have blended them all together, no existing style could properly identify what I teach. Hence, I call my style Moesum, or Without Thinking, or even Without Style.
How Kung-Fu became soft style as people call it these days
In Chinese history, we used Kung-Fu to protect ourselves, our family and even used it to fight wars to protect our country. So how did Kung-Fu become soft style you ask? In my opinion, for the past 50 years, people didn’t use Kung-Fu the way it meant to be used. Maybe because we don’t need Kung-Fu as much as before or maybe for the last 50 years the method of Kung-Fu teaching has become so hard or sometimes painful. So people loose interest to practice the real Kung-Fu. Therefore, people just practice the movement that looks nice.
When you do a Kung-Fu technique or movement without energy and body conditioning to back it up, the technique will become just nice to look at or you might call it a dance. That’s what I call it. It made me so sad when I heard people call Kung-Fu soft style, nice, not practical, and there are so many other reasons. For me, I try my best to practice Kung-Fu the ways it should be practiced. But my knowledge is limited and I haven’t met anyone who can teach me more. I hope someday by practicing and experimenting, I will find out what is the power behind the real Kung-Fu technique and the self healing in body and mind as history told us how Kung-Fu can give us the alternate health and power.
Two ways to practice Kung-Fu
There are 2 ways to practice Kung-Fu. One I call play Kung Fu. That’s mostly practice these days. It is fancy, nice but not practical. Sometime it is harmful. Because of the high kicks and fancy jumps, it’s dangerous. If you are a robot, it’s O.K! Anything broken, you just change parts. But you are not. Any damage or injury might be for the rest of your life. Secondly, if you don’t breathe right when you practice, you will hurt yourself internally without you knowing it, especially if you practice hardcore’. I have been there so I know. I remember the headache and out of breath after 5 minutes of work-out.
I myself teaches play Kung-Fu too, but I make sure the students know it’s for fun, not for real fighting. Even play Kung-Fu, they have to breathe right. Then there is the practical Chi Kung-Fu practice. That’s what I teach the most. It’s for health and practical self defence. It needs a lot of hard work and pain. Like I’ve always said: no pain, no gain.
