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You Can't Steer a Parked Car

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Working hard over the last week to get 'The Three Refinements' practice guide out the door and into the hands of Wing Chun practitioners. I'm happy to be able to say that it will be available for purchase June 1, 2020!  For the last couple weeks I've also been tuning in to Sifu Francis Der's Sunday Siu Nim Tao , and connecting with other Wing Chun brothers and sisters over video classes at San Francisco Wing Chun . Finally, I've been  producing a series of  20 Minute Standing Meditation  videos, and am now available for 1:1 tele-practice sessions at Three Refinements Wing Chun .  For escapism and cardiovascular exercise while cooped up in the house, I have really enjoyed taking virtual bike rides around various mountain lakes on my under-desk cycle.  It can feel impossible once you have been overcome by stationary inertia, but it's important to keep moving, to keep finding things to do better, and really all it takes to get started is a little nudge in the
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Head Over Hips Over Heels

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Here's a sneak peek into Chapter 2 of my upcoming ebook : 'The Three Refinements: Training for Simple and  Effective Wing Chun'   Building and Refining Structure Proper vertical alignment forms the 'center structure' , connecting your upper (arm) and lower (leg) structures and unifying them along a vertical 'stack'.  Alignment of the head over the spine and tailbone (hips) creates a  fulcrum  along the spinal axis upon which the base edges of upper and lower triangles (formed by pelvis and shoulders) can operate as components of  simple machines   (eg inclined plane, wedge, lever) .  The correct vertical alignment is described and remembered by repeating the saying " Head over hips over heels ". This arrangement feels stiff and awkward at first, but with practice you will find that proper alignment provides  an extremely effective and very efficient (in fact, completely passive) method for force or energy to be relayed or
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On 'Balance'

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I was thinking about the saying 'it's all about balance' a while back.  As an advised approach to resolving complex issues, as a reminder of the need for 'flexibility', as a sort of cautious vote of confidence acknowledging the ability to meet challenges known to be coming but about which little else is known.  While the statement is arguably true, I think it is only marginally useful, as finding simple answers to the questions of what that means for a given person in a given place at a given time, and how it can inform them as to what best to 'do' can be frustratingly elusive. It certainly appears that the reality, the 'real world' we inhabit is itself 'all about balance' (eg Laws of Physics, 'Nature abhors a vacuum', etc), however, our lives, while we are living them, are a continuous series of adjustments we make in response to the stimuli provided by the multiverse soup of our reality (or the Tao if you prefer) dynamically
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