Let’s talk about the teaching philosophy, concepts, and methods of Pure Ving Tsun. What is the approach in developing a practitioner’s understanding, practice and skill?
JERRY YEUNG: Siu Nim Tau is our teaching foundation. All movements taught at PVT are connected to the movements of Siu Nim Tau. In Chi Sau, the acts extracted can be pieced back into Siu Nim Tau. This understanding is very important so as to ensure that your Ving Tsun actions are 100% correct. Many Ving Tsun practitioners, when they Chi Sau their actions, can’t be extracted and pieced back into Siu Nim Tau. From this you will know whether the Ving Tsun practised is correct or not. The correct method should have the ability to be pieced back into Siu Nim Tau and not be mutated into something other than Ving Tsun’s core movements, which is Siu Nim Tau. Therefore, Siu Nim Tau being a very important foundation, is taught, practised, and explained to all our students at every single class.
MARK WONG: We like to pick a topic and have our students work hard on it and we explain to them why we do things the way we do. Too many times students are practising for the sake of practising, without adopting a real understanding of what they are doing. So we try to avoid that by explaining things and we have our students try to explain it back to us in their own words. We have an open communication structure and follow up with each of our students to see how they feel they are progressing in class, as well as asking them questions so they can also think for themselves.
-- Spread of our interview with Sifu Jerry Yeung and Sifu Mark Wong from the upcoming Issue No. 15 (on sale December 18).
