If you’ve ever felt the strength of a small mammal, a squirrel, a small monkey – even a dog or cat – you might begin to wonder how weak your average human being is relatively speaking.

An ant can carry 8 times its own body weight. A cat can leap seven times its own height. A flea can leap 100 times its own height.

Given that people are evolved from primates, and the inherent physical power of primates, where is our strength? Chimps do not work out with weights. Cats do not jump up and down all day long in order to develop excessively muscular legs for leaping. Where do these powers – that are so commonplace in the natural world – originate?

Quite simply, correct natural use of body mechanics.

The use of the body to interact with one’s environment is an instinctual thing.  When a child is born, it will automatically use it’s body in the ‘correct’ way, the natural way. There is no differentiation between different parts of the body – a child has ‘body oneness’.

Through conditioning, sitting for extended periods, possibly even a mindset which needs to view each aspect of life (and oneself) as a separate entity in an attempt to understand it better, body oneness (and mental and spiritual oneness) become lost as the years go by.

The initial aim of an internal martial art is to redevelop this relationship with our own bodies, to refine the links between the parts to create a unified whole. This can be a time-consuming process; luckily our Kung Fu forefathers developed many ways to expedite this process. Special training excercises – ‘Gungs’ - intended to achieve fast results in developing a unified body structure. Developing this body structure is the first step in learning an internal martial art.

Correct, natural use of the body enhances one’s health; the body is once again allowed to function as it was intended to. Correct training develops focus and a healthy mind – self awareness comes as a matter of course, as ‘listening’ to the internal workings of your body is necessary to get the best results. Over time, each part of the body begins to ‘link’ to the whole.

Consider the nature of water; drips from a tap are very unlikely to cause physical damage. However, collect sufficient drops together in one interconnected mass like the ocean, and it posesses overwhelming destructive power - enough to crush rocks and even entire cities. Thus, using your body as a whole yields surprising results in terms of power; you will find very slim students overpowering much larger students easily – not by sweating and straining, but by utilizing correct principles of ‘body oneness’ and ‘linking’. This has to be seen and felt to be fully appreciated; in a school which teaches the correct way and the traditional way, you will have plenty of opportunity to experience this for yourself.

Training body oneness is a very personal path, as each student is different – size and shape, strengths and weaknesses – and each student will require personal attention from the Sifu. This is why class sizes are kept small when training a true internal system. In a large class there is simply no time for the Sifu to offer sufficient personal attention to each student.

Body oneness and linking allows us to use our bodies more effectively – and of course, we must learn to use our bodies well before we can learn to use our bodies to fight.