Pearls of Wisdom

By Grandmaster Doc Fai Wong

Training For Life February 1995

In ancient China healing arts were often reserved for martial artists. Injured people went to the martial arts sifu, calling him the dit da (tit da) doctor. Dit means falling, da translates to be beat up or struck, hence people injured from fighting or falling went to martial arts dit da doctors for treatment. From there dit da became a term for any injury, covering burns, cuts or bleeding, broken bones and even bullet wounds.

There were several levels of treatment practiced by dit da doctors. The first were minor injuries caused by falling, bruising such as hematomas and muscle injuries. The next level is joint dislocations, such as a broken nose, jammed finger or wrist joints, elbow or shoulder dislocations, and any joint hyper extensions. After that comes fractured bones. There are all injuries treated by martial arts masters. Even today, kung fu sifu in Asia treat and set injuries and broken bones.

Injuries come from sports, labor or work related injuries. In the old days small Chinese towns and villages didn’t have hospitals, so injured people went to see the local martial artist for relief. Some of these people were good doctors, who had special herbal formulas and techniques handed down from generation to generation in their families.

In China in the old days there were no such things as stitches for open wounds and cuts. Therefore, using the right herbal powder was a must for stopping bleeding. Any good dit da doctor had to have a good formula to stop bleeding. The one you buy over the counter today, yun nan bai yao, is rated the best in China for “blood stop” medicine.

Besides good herbal formulas, martial artists needed to be expert at certain healing techniques, such as how to replace a dislocated joint and how to set a broken bone without it healing crooked. Remember there were no X-rays in the old days.

Martial artists got their training from watching their own martial arts teacher in action healing others. Information was passed down from teacher to teacher. Today, in various parts of Asia, martial artist dit da doctors still practice their trade. Many people will go to no other doctor for relief from injuries.

Even those with muscular pains, such as an elbow that isn’t dislocated or fractured - possibly caused by a strained tendon or muscle - go to experienced dit da doctors. Dit da doctors should know whether to massage or not to massage soft tissue injuries, like the strained elbow. Sometimes rubbing an injury causes more damage to the original injury. On the other hand, some tendon injuries come from tendons that are slightly twisted or shortened. Good dit da doctors know massage techniques that loosen the tendons and relieve pain.

Besides massage, dit da doctors had a lotion to apply to the injured area. Now known as dit da jao, this lotion hastens healing when used with massage. Jao means alcohol or liquor and describes the base ingredient that speeds absorption into the injured area. Dit da jao has become the most popular lotion in the martial arts school.

For major injuries and deep bruises, rubbing dit da jao won’t do the job. Martial arts healers made a dough based plaster to apply to injured area for four to eight hours at a time. This means the dit da doctor has to have another remedy called dit da fun (powder). Dit da fun is made from many types of herbs, ground into powder, stored in a container and used by scooping anywhere from one half to one cup, heated and mixed with different lotions to make a dough that is not too weary nor too dry.

In the old days the dit da doctor might use a piece of leaf, like banana or lotus leaf, as backing for the dit da dough. Nowadays, they use wax paper or Saran Wrap, with the dough spread about a quarter to one half inch thick in a four to six inch rectangle, depending on the size of the injured area. For an injury caused by a hot swelling, a cool plaster is used.

If the injury is not swollen a hot plaster is used. The plaster is then wrapped with an Ace bandage. For example, a foot injury is treated by wearing a plaster for about eight hours overnight (longer than that might develop a rash because of a lack of air on the skin surface). Then the dried plaster is taken off its base and put in a bucket of hot water, where the injured foot is soaked for five to ten minutes for a second treatment at about 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Deep injuries or internal bleeding that disturbs circulation heal faster with dit da yuen (pill), an internal medicine that helps improve circulation. These are large, ping-pong or golf-ball sized pills. The actual herbal pill inside is about the size of a marble - the rest is wax. To make dit da yuen, a special dit da powder is mixed with honey and rolled into a marble-sized ball. Then wrapped with a piece of rice paper, bee’s wax is used to seal it into a large ball for a longer shelf life. Dit da yuen is taken once in the morning and once at night, sometimes for a week to ten days. The pill can also be dissolved in a liquor and rubbed on the skin for muscle injuries.

Dit da doctors must also have the knowledge to cook specific herbs into teas for internal treatments. These are called dit da tang (soup). Most martial artists had only three formulas: neck and above injuries, body, and one for the legs to feet. Some with more knowledge have more formulas, one for every kind of injury.

While today many people go to hospitals for serious injuries, martial arts doctors still flourish in Asia and many Chinatowns throughout the world.

Grandmaster Doc Fai Wong is a columnist for Inside Kung Fu Magazine.

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Wong Gong aka Wong Ming Sang, was born in 1928 in the city of Kong Moon (Jian Men), Guangdong province of China. He began his study of Choy Li Fut Kung Fu when he was 10 years old from the famous Choy Li Fut Great-Grandmaster Chan Cheong Mo. Besides his great Kung Fu skill, he is also an expert in traditional Southern Chinese Lion Dancing . Each year when the city had its annual city parade and on all the other celebrations for different occasions, he was the lead lion head performer. He was also one of the senior instructors of Chan Cheong Mo’s Hung Sing Studios in Kong Moon city.

When he was 17 years old, he met Great-Grandmaster Chan Yen, the chief instructor of the King Mui Village’s Hung Sing studio. Wong Gong and Chan Yen got along quite well and Chan Yen invited Wong Gong to visit the King Mui Village. After Wong Gong paid respect to the original Hung Sing Studio founded by Chan Heung in 1836, he saw and admired Great-Grandmaster Chan Yen’s fighting ability and his Choy Li Fut Kung Fu skills. He decided to ask Chan Yen to take him as a closed-door student. Chan Yen believed he was a good martial artist and a good student and accepted Wong Gong’s request. When Wong Gong was 19 and 20 years old, he was the head instructor at two branches of Hung Sing Studios for Chan Yen in the neighboring villages of King Mui.

In 1949, when China turned Communist, he went to Hong Kong to work as a traditional Chinese herbalist and acupuncturist. Although there were too many traditional Chinese medicine physicians in Hong Kong at that time, he was very talented and made his living as a marine seaman and worked on the ships as a carpenter and maintenance engineer for many years. Since Hong Kong was handed back over to China in1997, he has practiced Chinese medicine as a full time profession until today.

Wong Gong learned all of Choy Li Fut Kung Fu’s unusual animal forms and the founder’s special weapon, the Nine Dragon Trident and other advanced weapon sets from Great-Grandmaster Chan Yen. Grandmaster Doc-Fai Wong is his senior student and the primary representative of his teaching outside of China.

Science is organized knowledge.  Wisdom is organized life.

-Immanuel Kant

Knowing others is intelligence, knowing yourself is true wisdom.  Mastering others is strength, mastering yourself is true power.

-Tao Te Ching

Years teach us more than books.

-Berthold Auerbach

A 2004 study of middle agers showed that participants in a martial arts program showed an overall higher level of fitness than those who were sedentary.  The study conducted by the New York Institute of Technology measured the effects of a martial arts program on eighteen volunteers aged 40-60.  The group made up of 14 men and 4 women had an average age of 47 years.  Nine of the participants were actively engaged in a martial arts program while the other nine remained sedentary.

After a one day battery of tests the study found that body composition (body fat %) was 18.9% for the martial arts group and 30.8% for the sedentary group.  The martial arts group was able to balance for 61.8 seconds compared to 26.2 seconds for the sedentary.  The average number of push ups performed was 47 vs 19, and the number of sit ups was 66 vs 37.  The participants also had flexibility and leg strength measured and you guessed it, the martial arts group showed higher levels of flexibility and quadriceps strength.  Perhaps the biggest difference showed that the martial arts group had a 25% higher level of aerobic capacity.

The study concluded that there were significant differences in between the two groups on all of the physical fitness tests.  The martial arts group showed better strength, flexibility, balance and aerobic capacity.  The martial arts group also had a significantly lower body fat %.  However, the study did not point out how long the participants were engaged in their martial arts program or whether diet was a consideration.

Martial arts is an excellent form of physical exercise for adults and can be a great alternative to a gym membership or expensive home equipment.  The combination of physical and mental exercise creates a perfect method of training for the baby boomer set.  Studies have shown that martial arts is not only a way to improve overall fitness levels, but it can be an effective way of maintaining cognitive function and memory as well.

White Dragon Martial Arts, Train Hard-Live Better!

by Jane Hallander

Black Belt Magazine December 1996

Royce Gracie doesn’t wear a cape or have a red “S” on his chest. He can’t fly, bullets won’t bounce off him, and he never has, or ever will, leap over a tall building - especially in a single bound.

But after the talented Brazilian Jiu Jitsu fighter won titles at three of the first four Ultimate Fighting Championship events, you’d have thought Gracie was Superman, the way people were talking about him. Of course, these days, he’s simply a mild-mannered Jiu Jitsu instructor working at a great metropolitan martial arts school.

But, all analogies to Superman aside, Gracie’s tournament successes have forced martial artists from striking systems to take a serious look at their arts and address the distinct possibility that their styles may be lacking when it comes to fighting on the ground. Many instructors who never before saw a need to teach the topic are now imparting grappling techniques to their students so they will be better prepared if they are taken to the ground.

But just exactly how do you defend against a guy who latches on to you like a boa constrictor and tries to squeeze the life out of you while you lay in a tangled heap on the ground?

Kung Fu stylist Martin Ferreira believes he has the answer.

Ferreira, who wrestled in college, teaches Choy Li Fut Kung Fu and Yang Tai Chi Chuan at his White Dragon martial arts schools in Encinitas and El Cajon, California. Although Choy Li Fut is noted as a long-range fighting system, according to Ferreira, it actually contains many close-quarters techniques which would prove useful against grapplers. And Ferreira claims Tai Chi, while lauded for its health benefits, is an effective fighting art at close range and includes a number of joint locks and pressure-point strikes.

The Kung Fu strategy involves separating a grappling attack into three stages: as the opponent closes the fighting distance, as he is attempting a hold, and while fighting on the ground. “It is necessary to know how to defend against grapplers from the time they approach you to the time they have taken you down,” Ferreira asserts. “Our strategy is to make a grappler come to us. I try to keep my body as compact as possible, because a grappler needs something to work with. Jiu Jitsu stylists need you to extend your limbs to take you down. A true grappler comes up underneath your center of gravity, so when you extend your arms or legs, you are open to his attack.”
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THE BIOMECHANICS OF THE MEASURED, FLOWING MOVEMENTS OF TAI CHI DEMONSTRATE THAT SLOWER SPEEDS LEAD TO GREATER MUSCLE ACTIVATION IN THE LOWER BODY.

by Yun Shi | August 27, 2009

If you’re familiar with exercise, you know that speed is an important factor to control. For common exercises like running and weight lifting, volumes of research has shown that it’s generally necessary to move faster for a more intense cardio workout and to make measured, controlled movements for building muscles. Other workouts, like mind-body exercises (e.g., yoga and tai chi), are somewhat harder to pin down. They aren’t cardio exercises, nor are they strictly muscle building.

The slow, flowing movements of mind-body exercises have been around for centuries, and they have been shown to help people develop balance, flexibility, and muscle function. Consequently, they’ve been increasing in popularity, both for physical therapy and personal enjoyment. While these exercises are widely practiced around the world, the biomechanical basis for their effects is not well known. To gain further insight, Ge Wu and Xiaolin Ren, biomedical engineers from the University of Vermont, chose to study how the unhurried steps of tai chi benefit its practitioners.

Experienced tai chi instructors like Ben Stanley and Leslie Edwards often remind their students that slower is better. Stanley says that “it’s about breathing and being attuned to the muscles as you’re moving. It’s important not to rush it, or you could miss the full benefits of the exercise.” In fact, Edwards pointed out that “the slower you go, the harder it is, and you definitely feel it in your legs.”

Tai chi can certainly be a test of patience for the inexperienced, as it is normally performed about 10 times slower than an average walk (2 mph), but it has a similar intensity to a moderate aerobic workout. Much of its direct benefits have been reported in the legs. To determine if and how the deliberate, gradual transitions in tai chi were responsible for these benefits, Wu and Ren employed a combination of biomechanical force plates, a camera-based motion analysis system, and EMG (electromyography) electrodes.

The 12 subjects, grouped as young (22-34 years) and old (64-80 years), performed a fundamental tai chi movement, “part wild horse’s mane,” at various speeds. Besides marking the participant’s motion from shoulder to toe, Wu and Ren measured the duration and magnitude of activation for six muscles that are key to ankle, knee, and hip mobility.

They found, as expected, that the duration of muscle activation was longer during slower motions in all six muscles. The effect was most significant for the rectus femoris (one of the quadriceps muscles) and semitendinosus (one of the hamstrings). When the participants sped up, these muscles lost this activation duration, while two muscles, the soleus (part of the calf) and semitendinosus, showed an increased activation. Thus, speeding up created an overall loss in muscle activation.

Age was also a factor in muscle activation. At slower speeds, younger subjects showed more muscle activation than older participants. This could be the result of older practitioners having a more limited range of movement. Stanley has often observed that it’s “difficult for older people to really sink down and fully extend in some of the postures compared to younger students,” but he has “seen posture, balance, and overall well being improve through time.”

Overall, Wu and Ren observed that speed had a greater impact on lower body muscles than other factors, like age or depth of movement. Their work demonstrate that slow, controlled movements can activate muscles more than rapid motion. The approach can also be used to study additional movements in tai chi and other exercises like yoga—a thorough understanding of exercise biomechanics should allow people to make more informed choices about what activities to pursue.

Wong Gong was born in 1928 and has been practicing and teaching Choy Li Fut Kung Fu for nearly 70 years.  Not only is Wong Gong an expert in traditional Southern Chinese Lion Dancing, he has also learned all of Choy Li Fut’s rare animal forms, and the founder’s special weapon the Nine Dragon Trident.  Wong Gong is also a highly respected Chinese herbalist and acupuncturist: he has practiced Chinese medicine as a full time profession since 1997.

With 6 generations underneath him and over 50,000 students worldwide, the Jiangmen Branch of Choy Li Fut under Wong Gong has become one of the most successful branches of Choy Li Fut in the world.

Here are Grandmaster Wong Gong’s principles for leading a long and productive life (with a little bit of modern science to go along with the ancient wisdom).

1.  Laugh a Lot Recent scientific studies show that laughter has the ability to increase blood supply to the brain.  Laughter also has shown to decrease the levels of the stress hormones cortisol and epinephrine and increase the level of immune boosting hormones beta-endorphins and human growth hormone.

2.  Practice Your Marital Arts Regularly The benefits of being engaged in a regular exercise regimen are well documented.  Exercise helps with weight management and the prevention of chronic disease like diabetes, improves cardiovascular function and even elevates mood.

3.  Avoid Alcohol and Tobacco Alcohol and tobacco abuse leads to a wide variety of chronic illness that include cancer, diabetes, and arteriosclerosis.

4.  Eat a Healthy Diet A healthy diet that includes lots of fresh vegetables reduces the risk of coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke and cancer.  A healthy diet has many, many other benefits too.

5.  Get Plenty of Rest Your body produces more protein while you sleep.  This helps to mend the body at the cellular level.  Getting plenty of sleep will also reduce stress levels and improve memory.  A good night’s rest can also help to control body weight!  That’s right, sleep helps to regulate hormones that are associated with appetite control.

Discover the benefits of Kung Fu and Tai Chi training in San Diego County: whitedragonmartialarts.com

Inside Kung Fu Magazine July 1996

There are as many different ways to train in martial arts as there are martial arts instructors. Some schools advocate forms training to develop form and power by fighting the air. Others stress the value of sparring freestyle. Some prefer self-defense techniques.

There is another option available - multiple person fighting forms. These are patterned forms, usually performed by two people, each one well-versed in his side of the form. One person usually attacks, while the other defends, turning the tables to make the match an even fight. Although the fight is a well-thought out pattern, two-person forms look like the real thing - a hard-fought, fast fight, done either with empty hands or weapons.

Superior Fighting

In Chinese martial arts, two-person forms or sets had their origins in ancient China, when martial arts schools needed to enhance their reputations and raise extra funds. At such times, schools put on demonstrations to illustrate the capabilities of their students. Along with the usual individual hand and weapons forms, kung fu schools presented fast moving, exciting multiple person fighting forms designed to heighten the audience’s interest.

Today, multiple person forms still exist in some kung fu schools, such as Nathan Fisher’s White Dragon Martial Arts in San Diego, Calif. Fisher, who teaches Choy Li Fut Kung Fu, is a product of traditional Chinese martial arts, through his own teacher, Doc Fai Wong, back to Choy Li Fut’s founder’s family.

“It’s probably more correct to refer to multiple person sets as two-person sets or forms, since, even though there may be three or four people in a form, seldom are more than two people fighting at one time,” explains Fisher.

“The sets are done at full speed and usually with full contact. Each person has to know his side well or he may get injured, especially in the weapons forms,” he adds.
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