Originally Posted by
bawang
Thank you sir for your explanation about "escape from daily life".
For what I consider "not resolving personal issues", is the superficial aspects of kung fu that is not time efficient, which is linked to its commercialism. The following is my personal anecdotes:
I have had a number of kung fu mentors/classmates/teachers over the decades who have unstable personalities, job, and family life. The daily form training, camaeraderie in the gwoon, and sparring has not helped them resolve significant, underlying personal issues. This is compounded by the fact that modern kung fu can be quite time consuming due to its commercialism (built in training inefficiencies to provide the sifu security of livelihood). This further reduces the time that some (not all) people should spend to address their personal life issues. This is compounded by the superficial philosophical/spiritual concepts taught at the gwoon. However this experience does not universally proscribe for all practitioners, just what I have encountered.
Many (but not all) east asian marital art practitioners eventually find that their emotional support from the gwoon stops when they stop attending or paying tuition. But this is not an outstanding issue, no more different from other modern hobbies where one pays to have temporary friends.
In the qing dynasty, kung fu schools were boxing fraternities where the classmates economically supported each other, and also provided mutual aid against violence. This is where kung fu became a part of daily life. And this is also why there was less milking and training of redundant and inefficient, time consuming exercises like stance training and acrobatics.