The Living Kwoon

Every year at this time, we shut down our school for a week to allow everyone to prepare for the start of the academic school year. Being the start of a new school season, there is a sense of beginning anew and enrollments tend to peak.

We take advantage of the annual downtime this week offers us to conduct renovations and maintenance on our kwoon. This project gives everyone the opportunity to connect with and take some ownership of their training hall. It is no coincidence that the most motivated and dedicated students are also the ones that devote most of the labour toward this project each year. There is a reason why in the Chinese arts we call our training hall a kwoon (temple). A personal, spiritual connection to the kwoon is a very important aspect of kung fu training and we must stay mindful to foster and reinforce that connection. Those who I see putting a piece of themselves into the walls of their training hall tend to excel over those who approach the kwoon as if it were only a gymnasium.

When I enter our kwoon, my mind is instantly calm and clear.  The walls reflect my black belt, thick with my sweat and my blood. My connection with the kwoon narrows my focus and peaks my awareness. I know exactly where I am and what I am doing.

“The man who works recognizes his own product in the World that has actually been transformed by his work: he recognizes himself in it, he sees in it his own human reality, in it he discovers and reveals to others the objective reality of his humanity, of the originally abstract and purely subjective idea he has of himself.” - Alexandre Kojève (1902 - 1968)