One of the methods students develop the concept of soft strength at Austin Kung-Fu Academy is through the practice of “Blending Energy”.
The idea of Blending Energy is to go with the flow of an energy that is coming your way. It could be a person’s attack, it could be some object coming towards you, or it could be someone just talking to you!
This concept involves going with the initial direction of the momentum that it was coming towards you. From there, you can change the direction by simply moving in a different direction than it was going. But you don’t want to go against the direction it was coming from. In general, you move it a little to the right, or a little to the left, or a little upwards, or a little downwards.
Our goal is to have the students develop the reflex to automatically understand the direction of the energy, and how to blend with it, initially, and then change the direction (if need be). This can be a little challenging at first, because it is natural to freeze up when energy is coming towards us. But with a little practice, it can be very easily developed.
We do it in such a way, where it is a fun game, and we isolate each angle of energy direction so we can properly study it and develop the blending response.
When students practice like this, they are more likely to take this idea and mindset and apply to day-to-day interactions with people. Going with the energy that they feel, and then redirecting with their response. We avoid a lot of force-on-force training. While we do train students how to absorb energy, it is ultimately for the purpose of neutralization and/or redirection.
It is a beautiful principle that has the potential to approach situations that we might have previously been intimidated by.
Contact us to try a class!