KUNG FU (gong fu)
Perhaps everyone has already met with the word “Chinese kung fu, wu shu or čchi kung. At the beginning it is necessary to explain these three general terms. The term kung fu is the general term, under which it is possible to imagine the purposive and effortful exercising (from military terminology), which got into the subsonscious mind of people in relation with the Chinese martial art thanks to films and books during 1990´s. Accordingly with increasing popularity, individual applicants could try exercises of different styles by themselves in some of at least tens of kung fu schools that operate in the Czech Republic nowadays. Therefore the correct term, which expresses the martial art, is the term wu shu, when in the half of 1990´s this term has been connected with (and lasts till now) a sport form of traditional styles of Chinese kung fu that was arranged into logically continuing techniques so that the exercise would be for a spectator as the most interesting as possible from the point of view. But exercising of these sets, often very motionly strenuous, is rather suitable for very gymnastically capable exercisers and is focused at demonstration on competitors , which are especially very popular in China nowadays. The International Chinese Federation I.W.U.F created the sport set (Nan quan, Nan dao, Nan Gun, Chan quan and other) for every branch, which is determined by exactly set movements and rules with pointing at their performance by individual competitors, who are evaluated with points by judges. Nowadays some schools of Chinese kung fu just concentrate on teaching of modern wushu sets with the aim to their learners to participate in competitions of these gymnastically-fighting sports , and other schools keep a form of traditional concept of Chinese kung fu teaching of different styles including teaching of practical self-defence arising from the conception of their style.
And finally Čchi kung .... Čchi is the Chinese word that means the breath in connection with the human body. In the military terminology, čchi means the vitality, life strength or energy. The traditional Chinese medicine has been built on theory that the health is the result of harmonious čchi flow through the whole body. The sense and purpose of čchi kung exercising is then to support the flow of internal energy, which is controlled by own mind. All diseases result from the lack of čchi, its imbalance or interruption of its equal flow through twelve meridians (lanes) in the human body according to Chinese medicine.