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Writer's pictureSifu Molly Kubinski

Understanding Heart-to-Heart Transmission


heart shaped sunrise between bare trees shaolin wahnam twin cities
Valentine's Day is as good a day as any to talk about this concept

Heart to heart transmission. Sounds beautiful, doesn’t it? This concept forms part of the bedrock that is the teachings within Shaolin Wahnam. No matter what a student is learning- be it Qigong, Kungfu, Taijiquan, or Zen- they are receiving these skills through heart-to-heart transmission, whether passed directly from Grandmaster Wong Kiew-Kit himself, or through one of our many instructors.


Understanding the concept of heart-to-heart transmission helps to explain just why our Shaolin Arts are as powerful and effective as they are, although admittedly, experience is far better than explanation in building that understanding. But since Valentine’s Day and all matters of the heart are once again upon us, I’ll do my best to explain this lovely phenomenon.


The simplest explanation of heart-to-heart transmission is just that: transmission of a skill, technique, or concept from the heart of the teacher to the heart of the student. From an intellectual perspective, it’s a combination of clearly conveying ideas, creating personal understanding of those ideas within the student, and the sense of trust between both parties so that the recipient is truly absorbing what is being taught on an energetic level.


And of course, like all high-level skills, it also defies intellectualization. Like being in love, it’s better understood through experience rather than words.


Many of us have had incredible experiences, even within the first few days of our training, which other practitioners have not attained despite years of consistent practice. While much of this is due to the high-level skills being taught, just of much of it is also due to heart-to-heart transmission, or the way in which it is taught.


Whether you’re in mine or another’s class, we always begin by entering into a Qigong State. From this place, our mind relaxes and our energy flows, and we literally soak up what is being taught, so we benefit immediately from our training, even if every detail isn’t perfect at the outset. I’ve watched, over the years of my own training, students from all over the world attend Grandmaster Wong’s courses, taught in a language which they either barely spoke or didn’t speak at all and still achieve the same benefits as any other English-speaking participant. How? Heart-to-heart transmission.


If you’re still having a hard time wrapping your head around it, think of it this way: have you ever struggled to understand something? Over and over, it’s been explained to you, perhaps in many different ways, and yet it still makes absolutely no sense to you. But then one day, somebody either explains it in a new way, or better still in the exact same way someone else did, but for whatever reason, in that moment you understand it perfectly, it clicks. Perhaps it’s a superior way of explaining, or perhaps it’s simply the open-heart state created by the explainer, which has finally made you clearly understand something which had previously eluded you for a long time.


I admit, I’m probably a long way from using heart-to-heart transmission at the same skill level as my teacher, and yet, I can’t deny how much it benefits my students, whether I’m teaching them in person or online. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why I love teaching so much. It’s more than just sharing awesome skills. It’s a true exchange of energy from one heart to another, and that’s as good a valentine as any.

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