Kung Fu Conversations Podcast

A reminder for students enrolled in our programs:

If you hope to be cleared to teach within our organization at some point, you will need to study Teaching 101 in depth.

Technical skill and practitioner rank are important, but the ability to perform material does not automatically establish the ability to teach it safely, progressively, and effectively. Teaching requires a separate body of knowledge, including curriculum design, lesson planning, objective assessment, progressive skill development, and an understanding of how different students learn.

For that reason, passing a course covering the contents of Teaching 101 will be required before practitioner grades can be converted into teaching grades.

Learn the art, develop the skill, then learn how to pass it on responsibly.

When you take a broad look at history, or you've been doing things for a while, you can often see the "pendulum" swing from one side to the other....

In martial arts, you can often see people accumulating a tremendous amount of forms, drills, etc, only to...a few decades later...then distill those things to their essence as they are better understood.

Then, a few decades later, those people are teachers and realize that teaching "distilled" lessons to others more junior often requires expanding the curriculum, re-invoking explicit material from the implicit lessons in the distilled data.

I believe this is a natural process of eating (accumulating) and digesting (distillation), however, the teacher and the student are usually on different cycles.

When you take a broad view of history, or simply remain involved in something long enough, you begin to notice the pendulum swinging from one extreme to another.

Martial arts are no exception.

At one stage, practitioners accumulate forms, drills, methods, terminology, and technical variations. Over time, as their understanding deepens, they begin to recognize the common principles beneath all that material; what once seemed vast and complicated is gradually distilled into something simpler, more direct, and more essential.

Then those practitioners become teachers.

They soon discover that the distilled understanding they have developed cannot always be handed directly to a less experienced student. What has become implicit, intuitive, and embodied within the teacher must often be made explicit again for the student.

The curriculum expands once more, not necessarily because the teacher has lost sight of the essence, but because students need examples, drills, distinctions, and progressive experiences before they can discover that essence for themselves.

This may be a natural cycle of learning: first we eat by accumulating information, then we digest by organizing and distilling it.

The challenge is that the teacher and the student are usually at different points in that cycle. The teacher wants to communicate the distilled lesson, while the student may still need the larger body of material from which that lesson was derived.

Special 50th Anniversary Episode of “In Discussion With”

This Sunday, 19 July, I will be joined by Jean Lukitsh and Stephan Berwick, two senior students of Master Bow Sim Mark, for a very special conversation celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Chinese Wushu Research Institute.

Founded by Master Bow Sim Mark in Boston in 1976, the Institute was a pioneering centre for the study and promotion of Chinese martial arts in the United States. Master Mark is particularly renowned for her mastery of the Chinese martial arts, as well as being the mother of Donnie Yen.

Jean Lukitsh began studying with Master Mark in 1978 and became one of her senior students. Alongside her decades of martial arts practice and teaching, Jean has worked extensively to preserve the history and traditions surrounding Master Mark and the Institute.

Stephan Berwick joined the Chinese Wushu Research Institute in the early 1980s. With Master Mark’s support, he later travelled to China with Donnie Yen for intensive professional wushu training before appearing in severa Hong Kong action films. He has since become an established martial artist, teacher, author and researcher, particularly within Chen-style Taijiquan.

Together, we will explore the history of the Chinese Wushu Research Institute, Master Bow Sim Mark’s teaching and vision, life inside the school during its formative years, and the remarkable legacy she has passed on to martial artists around the world.

Submit Your Questions

Members of the public are invited to submit questions for Jean and Stephan. Leave your question in the comments or send it to me directly through the contact form at www.mushinmartialculture.com, and I may select it to be included during the interview.

Join us for this special celebration of 50 years of the Chinese Wushu Research Institute and the extraordinary life and legacy of Grandmaster Bow Sim Mark.