First Meeting and more

After our talk at Burger King, I followed Don and son over to his in-laws house in the small town and we settled in his garage area. He asked me if I knew SLT (Sil Lim Tao) which is Wing Chun's first form (and some say also the most advanced form, and I agree). I bragged that I did (actually I had learned most of the form from a tape), so he said, "show me". I went through the form and thought I had done terrifically. It was a great surprise when he said it had good elements but all of the energy was wrong. It took me about 5 years to understand what he meant by that. In Wing Chun, you don't always understand what is going on until you "get it" yourself. It can be explained to a degree, but until you understand every aspect of a principle and experience it yourself, you don't really know it. Of course, even after 10 years of private lessons with Don (meeting approximately every two weeks on Sundays) I freely admit that I don't even come close to knowing it all. I think the great Yip Man would say the same (not comparing self to him). We worked on the form and he asked me to show him one of my Karate forms which I did. He indicated that it was triangular which is common for forms. Don has an uncanny ability to see a form for the first time and understand it almost completely. Next time, I will go over more of the first meeting and talk a little about a trip!