Right Understanding

[Steve Bobs]

This is a quote from Sikung's book, "I Liq Chuan - Martial Art of Awareness" (p.97).

Things are conditioned; and are not pre-determined. You can change your own condition as well as your environment by understanding what is good for you as well as what is good for others.

I like this as it invites you to consider how much involvement you have with life as you're living it. You are responsible but the idea is to understand it, by expanding your awareness to notice the flow of changes and to adapt.
It brings to my mind the sayings ' the path of least resistance', ' be as flowing water', 'stay in the moment' and using the feeling of harmony as the basis of the quality of what is good. If we can increase our awareness of that feeling of harmony, we notice how the mind can be used to hold the body within the limits of physical harmony. By using the 13-points as a gauge the awareness can then be expanded to encompass the opponent, when you notice the conditions they are causing for themselves you can act accordingly. At this point it comes to your choice on how to finish the interaction.

Flow, Lead, Break.
Flow...
Stick and control the opponent.
Lead...
In order to lead you learn to feed the opponent the appropriate energy. Once you lead the opponent, he has got to stick to you.
Break...
Break is such that when you have control and lead, you can lead the opponent to a place where it is safe for you to break.

from the I-Liq Chuan System Guide, (p.20)

This all depends on our level of commitment to training and I think to how honest we are to ourselves. It comes down to, why are we training what we are training. All too often I find myself 'forgetting' what I'm doing and I focus on something else, in a sticky-hands interaction this means I'm either being lead by my 'monkey'-mind or the opponent.
Each of the 15-Basic Exercises are designed to bring awareness to a specific quality of movement which are to be built or gathered together to help form a cohesive whole. By training them you get an easier body-mind 'feedback loop' and the discipline required to be able to hold your concentration.

Respect,
Steve Bobs