Siu Nim Tao put into practice...

It is the unemotional, reserved,calm, detached warrior who wins, not the hothead seeking vengeance and not the ambitious seeker of fortune.

~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War

It's really hard to keep control of your emotions when someone pops you in the nose and you see your blood splatter.

When training Wing Tsun with a partner, whether practicing chi sau, sparring or various fighting drills, one of the most important lessons to learn is to not compete with your training partner.

Sounds kind of weird that a system of martial arts that prides itself as a relentless, even ruthless fighting method, would espouse such new age silliness. What next? Do we need to join hands and sing Kumbaya?

To be effective at WT, it's vital that the WT student learns to relax. In order to do this, we must adopt the concept of cooperative training. If we see our training partner as our adversary, we won't properly sink into our stance, our shoulders will be hunched up, instead of relaxed down in their sockets, our arms will be tensed up and will be unable to properly process the forces being applied to them when we make contact with our partner's arms.

If instead we see our partner for what he is, our fellow student, our friend even, then we're able to better relax. The stance will sink, the shoulders will relax, and the arms will be able to hear what their partner's arms are telling them.

If you do happen to catch an accidental pop in the chops, (and you're going to get popped in the chops, it's not ballroom dancing ), shake it off and keep going, don't let it get to you. If you're unable to control yourself in a controlled situation, where no one is trying to really hurt you, then how are you going to keep your composure in the real world when someone is really coming at you?

An effective way to develop this is diligent practice of the first form, Siu Nim Tao. As you practice SNT , don't see an imaginary opponent, just focus on the body mechanics. Monitor your breathing, get rid of undue tension in the body. "Little ideas," that's all we're doing, whether as a solo exercise or with a partner standing in front of us.