During an interview about his discovery of the Nim Tau point, Chu Shong Tin said a quite remarkable thing. He claimed that when he accessed this point in his brain he did not have to think about how to do the Wing Chun movements correctly. His body would naturally move that way. This is an extraordinary statement. What is going on? Is there a part of the brain that naturally knows Wing Chun? How does this brain section know? Who taught it? Is there a certain nook that stores Yip Man’s teaching? While all of the above makes little sense, I do believe that a particular part of the brain is activated when the ‘Siu Nim Tau condition’ is achieved.
When asked how he knew that he was using this Nim Tau point, CST simply motioned to his head and said that he could feel it. What exactly could he feel? In my experience it is a slight pressure like a finger gently on that area in the brain. For me it is a very clear physical feeling. I felt it the very first time that CST managed to correctly raise my spine. This was preceded by about two years of me attempting to do so with no outcome.
This first occasion was during one of my regular visits to train with CST. A few of the students there had, according to CST, activated this point with his help. Before I travelled, Nima King suggested that I take a week off training, as in some cases this seemed to be a precursor to achieving this goal. Nima was very helpful during this period. He probably sensed that I was becoming a little jealous in regard to the progress that was being made by, in some cases, students that I once had taught. As it turned out, I travelled to Japan for the week preceding my arrival in Hong Kong. For the first time in at least ten years I spent a few consecutive days doing no Wing Chun at all. I believe that may have helped.
CST was a qualified Chinese bone-setter and he had friends in the medical profession who told him that this part of the brain dealt with involuntary body movements. This indicates that the phenomenon is to do with our sub-conscious. When I am teaching a student and find that they are stuck and cannot relax enough to perform a technique, I sometimes trick them by asking something totally unrelated: “What are you doing this weekend?” More often than not they are suddenly able to perform the Tan Sau, or whatever it may be that they were failing with. At the moment of distraction their subconscious is given room to activate.
I feel this may be a relevant point. Going back to my week off in Japan. If I had been about to undertake an exam I imagine studying and practicing would have helped rather than hindered. In this case I needed to take my conscious mind away from the task.
Analytical people are extremely hard to teach, their minds are locked into the wrong part of the brain. I find artistically minded people are easier; they seem to access their sub-conscious more readily. The more we actively try to concentrate the more we fall into the wrong brain pattern.
In the early days, for many years we trained in CST’s apartment. He would always have the television on. One time a visiting student asked him if it would be better to have quiet so that people could concentrate. CST simply smiled and said, “It’s not that kind of concentration.”
~ Mark Spence