My Nanquan Form

My introduction to Kung Fu was the 48 Form Set of Taijiquan that was created in the 1950's. I have only gotten the feel of actually channeling qi into martial arts movements, though, when I learned Shaolin Kung Fu.

That had led among other things to me creating a custom made Taijiquan form (The words "form" and "set" are sure to confuse a lot of people who do not study Kung Fu. Since Karate people call katas "forms", however, I also call Kung F sets "forms").

I was satisfied to have my Taijiquan form for practice of a Wudang based martial art and the 5 Ainimal Set as a faorm for practicing an art from Shaolin.

Then- as you know- I have started writing my book on Kung Fu forms. So- I have looked through my collection of martial arts material and found this video from a while back.  

Now... for a long time I was happy to practice my 20 katas from Karate, rotating them in groups of 2 to be practiced two days every week, but then I have decided to dust off my 5 Animal Set and to learn two extra forms. The form in the video was just named "Nanquan", but I have seen that Nanquan is actually a style of Kung Fu with more than just this particular form.

So- with the decision to learn 2 more forms for weekly morning practice I have taken to learning this very form.

While Shaolin Kungfu may be over a millenium old, Nanquan was created in 1960, by combining a number of Southern Kung Fu styles that were already in existence. Hence the name "Southern Fist" or "Nanquan".

This form has strong Shaolin elements that I really like and the similarity to Karate with that low sweeping block and punch/ palm thrust combination helped making learning this form a lot easier as it felt far less awkward to me than a Kung Fu form would if it had no similarity to Karate at all.

Only after having recorded the video did I realise that my stances are not half as low as this little girl's.

Nonetheless- I plan to be practicing this form many more times from that time on...