So, just back from my second systema class, and in a thoughtful mood. Rather a frustrating experience, this one; through neglecting my zhan zhuang over the last few months, I’ve stiffened up a heck of a lot. We did a fair bit of light sparring tonight, and I was totally out of my depth. It’s OK, in a way. For one thing, as I’ve said frequently before, the training I’ve done in martial arts has never really been about the fighting. For another, I’ve learned a few things even so, but when you’re starting classes in a new style, you want to approach it de novo, with an open mind, rather than just breezing around with what you’ve learned elsewhere. So, there was an element to the sparring where I was holding myself back, trying not to apply yiquan or taiji techniques, and try to think about what a systema response would be. Nevertheless… just not at ease in the systema way of doing things yet. Hey ho, there’s only one way to get better, and that’s to practice.
Likewise with the hits… Boy, am I not used to taking punches, especially the deep, organ-level ones – the ones that you see Mikhail Ryabko demonstrating on YouTube… Ouch… Definitely, as I trained with the others – a bigger group this week – I found myself anticipating the shock, and tensing up. Something to work on…. The title comes from something Mark said during one of the exercises – to focus on the energy of exchanging punches with your partner, and to not worry about getting hit – indeed to love the hit, because when you get hit, you know you’re alive, you’ve learned something… Wise words, but not always easy to live up to!
One of the others in the group tonight is an instructor in his own right; he’ll be running Thursday night sessions, which I might try to get to from time to time.
Oh, and the chap who runs the gym knows Chris Crudelli, and thinks he might be able to get him to Cardiff for a seminar…
Phew: I made it to the meditation group at work today. This is actually the first time I’ve been since… blimey… June? I always meant to go during the summer and autumn, but I was always just too damn tired. It was great: even after such a long break, I got back into it. I could feel myself getting warmer, and a bit sticky as my body started to detox – always a sign that the meditation is working. For a brief time, I got really deep in to it; the world vanished, thoughts were absent, and there was just the breath… Man, did I feel better afterwards!
Also back into the zhan zhuang these last few days. There’s always something new. One of my fellow-students on the tui na course had commented on part of my right foot being really stiff – and it was too, I just hadn’t noticed, and was unconsciously compensating with my posture. So, I’m working on that and, slowly, painfully, it’s stretching and opening up. The standing is generally going well, though the creaking of ligaments and popping of tendons (or is the other way round?) remind me of the ground I’ve lost. Not to worry, I’ll soon be back to where I was, and then onwards…
Might be an opportunity coming up to get back into acting; that’ll be good, I was really missing the creative flow of those improv workshops in Beijing. Couple of other things in the pipeline, too, but I won’t mention them in case I jinx them. Systema classes starting soon; that’ll be cool.
Wow, it’s like a logjam, isn’t it, sometimes? You need dynamite to clear the blockages but then discover there’s a lot of cool stuff waiting to flow down to you….
There really aren’t that many resources available about Yiquan, at least for non-speakers of Mandarin. I’m basically trying to acquire everything there is, to assist me as I train solo and build on what I studied with Yao Chengrong Lao Shi. So, when I saw that Bruce Frantzis had issued a new DVD set covering Xingyi and Yiquan, my thought processes were along the lines of:
I can’t afford it right now
Yes, but it’s on offer for a short while
I can’t afford it
Yes, but it’s Bruce Frantzis, dude!
Bruce Frantzis doesn’t know yiquan. Bagua, taiji, and xingyi yes, but he’s never indicated before that he knows yiquan.
But you’re trying to learn xingyi anyway, so even if the yiquan material is duff, the xingyi material should be worth it.
I can’t afford it, though.
Oh, sod it.
So, I put my order in late on Sunday night. The package arrived early Tuesday morning. Good start…. I had some technical problems downloading the free qigong mp3 files, but the customer support team sorted that out promptly and efficiently.
Now, I’m busy, so I haven’t had time to watch the DVDs properly. Instead, I’ve had them playing in a small window floating in the corner of my screen while I get on with doing other things, so I didn’t give them my full attention. Thus, these are only my very general first impressions. So far, I’ve watched all of the yiquan DVDs, and the first xingyi DVD.
The yiquan DVDs were filmed live as BKF delivered a seminar. The camera shots are almost entirely of BKF sitting in a comfy chair. Occasionally, a student is brought in to demonstrate a stance. Each segment begins with a short sequence of BKF demonstrating one of eight zhan zhuang postures, while a voiceover explains the health benefits in terms of qi and the internal organs. A few martial applications are mentioned here and there.
Overall, this covers only 8 basic static zhan zhuang postures from the yiquan syllabus. There’s no discussion of testing force, and no stepping. If you are a complete beginner, wanting to learn zhan zhuang for health, you would be much better off buying Lam Kam Chuen’s books and DVD. If you know some yiquan, and want to explore the martial side of it in more depth, there is nothing here for you. I actually am pretty happy with it; my classes with Yao Lao Shi didn’t include any kind of qigong, and BKF’s background in this adds a lot of value for me. It’s nothing immediately useful, but there are lots of pointers for where further research could be done individually. I have to say, though, much of the delivery is pretty dry and there’s a lot of what seems like filler. I still rather get the impression that BKF has not done much training in yiquan but instead is bringing his background in the other arts and applying them to a crash course in the basic health postures of yiquan. As I said, though, these are my first and imperfect impressions. Verdict: not really what most people would be looking for, but very useful for me.
The bulk of the DVDs, though, are on xingyi. As I said, I’ve only watched the first one so far, but on this limited viewing BKF is much, much better. He’s clearly far more confident in his delivery, and demonstrates far more himself; there are also more shots of the students in the seminar and what they’re doing. I really get the impression that there’s great material to come in the rest of the DVDs. Verdict: wow, cool.
This came up in my RSS feeds this morning: Bruce Frantzis is bringing out a new product: Hsing-i Martial Applications.
I note that it actually says “In early August we are launching a Hsing-i Chuan and I Chuan product.” (My emphasis).
On the signup site: “In this illuminating and refreshingly honest, never-before-seen video, Bruce Frantzis explains the principles of of Hsing-i Five Elements, Santi and the postures I Chuan …… How specific standing postures open up your Yang merdians; the effect being both strength and health, even into old age.”
Well, I’ve just finished my intensive, 4-week CELTA course. When you apply for a place, you are warned that it’s intense; I was told that it would be best if I had someone else to do my cooking and washing for me, and that I could expect to routinely work into the small hours on assignments. As it happens, I don’t have anyone to do my housework for me, and I have commitments that sharply limit the hours I could commit… so it was a very hard slog indeed! I was routinely falling asleep at the keyboard, and basically only just scraped through. Still, a pass is a pass, and the qualification should be very useful indeed. I have plans… I also met a rather special woman…
So, where am I at? I managed to get a few training sessions in with the spear. I’ve now got that xingyi spear set down, on a broad-brush level. I need to spend a bit of time now working on the fine detail, to make sure I’ve got that right. After that, I’ll move on to a bagua spear set. The Sun Zhi Jun spear form that I’ve been discussing with Kim here is pretty complex; the more I work with the spear, the more I realize how tricky that set is. So, I think that as an intermediate step I’ll work on this form:
I’m still really enjoying working with the spear; it’s been a revelation to me. So much so, I had to acquire a Hanwei Yari. Apparently there’s been a fire at the Hanwei factory and all their inventory was lost, so all of the UK retailers are out of stock, and I had to get it from Kult of Athena (who were great, by the way: HIGHLY recommended). It took a while but it’s arrived, and I’m really pleased with it. It’s not as flexible as a waxwood Chinese spear, but hey… On that note, two more clips:
Jet Li vs Donnie Yen in Hero:
Yari vs Chinese spear:
My zhan zhuang went completely out of the window during the last month; I was far too tired and pushed for time. I’ve started again as of today and will be very regular, if only because I have to complete a 6-week diary of twice-daily meditation sessions. This is part of the ongoing requirements I need to fulfill in order to obtain the qualification as a teacher of meditation; you may recall that I went to Brighton in early June for the initial weekend training. At that time, I hadn’t even thought of doing the CELTA course, which was very much a last minute decision… Anyhow, the plan is, zhan zhuang standing meditation in the morning, sitting meditation in the evening. I also have to do two book reviews, which I’ll probably post here as well. That’ll take me to mid-September, at which point I’ll be off to Switzerland to visit the aforementioned young lady… After that, in October, I plan to start that course in tui na – weekends in London for so months or so…
Time has been too short in the last few days to do any work with the spear; even if I’d had time, it’s been raining too much (heh, so I’m wimpy – but even if I’d felt like practising in the rain, the ground is so wet that I would have trashed the lawn, so I needn’t feel bad about not going out!)
However… I’ve been getting a heck of a lot out of what I’ve been doing with the spear so far. As I mentioned in my last post, for someone without a training partner, spear-work really is a good test of whether or not the technique is generating power or not. In that video above, the key moment for me is at about 15 seconds in, when the performer starts full-body shaking, transmitting the power down the spear. Damn, I can’t do that! It really reminds me of a part of the longxing bagua form that Master Zhou Yue Wen taught, which also had a shaking move, very similar to what’s happening in the clip.
Looking at that, I think it seems to encapsulate the key element of what I’m striving to achieve; master that kind of full-body shaking power, and it can be applied in taijiquan, xingyiquan, or baguazhang… No problem. Again, and this is a purely personal observation, I have to say that the only path I’ve encountered that would lead me towards this is yiquan as taught by Master Yao Chengrong…
Well, things have been a bit intense lately; lots happening at work. We’ve also had a month of absolutely horrible weather, with unseasonable cold, strong winds that have seen off a lot of my recently-planted veg and flowers. Combine the two, and I’ve been very slack in my practice again. Thankfully, we’ve got some sunny weather again, and my spirits are rising: time to get out there and at it, there’s no time to waste now.
I should say something about what’s been going on in various spheres….
Taiji and bagua with Eli Montaigue: I put this temporarily on hold as I moved home, and ‘temporarily’ stretched to the point where the group would be so far ahead of me on the form that it wouldn’t be worth re-joining the class at this point. He does Thursday-night ‘application’ classes’ and that might be worth thinking about, but July is going to be frantic, so I’ll leave any decisions until August.
Systema: I was really enjoying the classes but, now that
I’ve moved, they are too far away. The founder of the Celtic Systema school, Mark Winkler, is still in Canada, where he’s training for six months with Vladimir Vasiliev. He’ll be back at the end of August, and will be starting a new group in Swansea, where I work. I’ll leave the systema on hold until then.
Capoeira: Some of you will have seen on Twitter and
Facebook that I’ve been attending capoeira classes. I’d realized that due to stress etc I’ve put on a lot of weight again; plus, for all the virtues of my hometown, it can be difficult to develop a busy social life. So, I thought I’d give capoeira a try again: very aerobic, plus lots of interesting people. It turned out to be true in both fields However.. I ran into the same things that caused me problems when I tried capoeira before: the principles of capoeira are competely alien to the principles of neijia, for one. That, I could probably adapt to; the other problem is that capoeira isn’t just a dance/martial art, it’s a lifestyle; the hard core expect you to get really into the music, the songs, the culture… and tend to get a bit pissy if you’re not as into all that as they are… In any case, as I say, July is going to be crazy busy, so I’ll defer any decision there, but I suspect capoeira is a non-starter. Pity, because there are some really nice people in that group.
Instead, it’s back to neijia… I’ve bought a wushu spear from Amazon, and have been moving from developing power with the zhan zhuang to testing it out with a xingyi spear form. This has been interesting; I can get the spear to bend more often than not; when I first bought a spear in Singapore, I certainly couldn’t, so there’s definitely been an improvement. I’m enjoying this, as with the spear the application of power is visible, so I know for sure whether or not it’s working.
In Jess O’Brian’s excellent book, Nei Jia Quan, there’s an interview with Tim Cartmell; he argues that there’s no difference between the three styles of taiji, xingyi, and bagua – they are just different ways of expressing the same principles. I’m going to go with that – I know for sure that in Beijing, my taiji improved dramatically after yiquan classes. So, I’m still focussing principally on yiquan, but I’ll be testing out the principles with the other three as well. Who knows, once I’m happy with my xingyi spear form, perhaps I’ll have a go at Sun Zhijun’s bagua spear form that Kim reminded me of recently
In other areas,I’m getting a real sense of urgency now. Globally, events seem to be accelerating towards a crisis. Greece and the Eurozone are staggering onwards, but the crisis is only temporarily contained. In the US, there’s bickering and posturing while the debt ceiling remains unresolved, natural disasters pile one upon the other, and state governments grind to a halt as their money runs out…
Here in the UK, there are also storm clouds building up. The government’s austerity program is just starting to be felt, and there are the first strikes and protests in response. There are also reports that crimes against property are rising again. The university sector, where I work, is heading for a pummeling as well, and there are rumours of redundancies coming…
So, dunno; I just get the feeling that bad times are going to hit soon; not this year, maybe next, or the one after that…
An anecdote: perhaps ten years ago, my parents and I were walking back home through a patch of parkland that lay between our house and the town centre. It’s unlit; not a problem for us, as we are so familiar with the path we don’t need to see our way. On the way, we met a rather jumpy policeman. Once he’d established that we were respectable citizens, we had a chat. He’d recently been transferred from a nearby large town. He was amazed; he’d been in our town for over a week, and nobody had tried to stab him… There are a lot of pretty deprived communities nearby, and nothing much has changed since then.
I also remember that in the last severe recession there were a lot of burglaries in our street. We didn’t get broken into – largely, I suspect, because we had a dog. I’m going to think a lot about defensive gardening now (don’t laugh!). Mmmm… time to plant sichuan peppers and roses… Spiky but useful…
Anyway, that’s why I refer to memory in the title for this post. I look at my students, and they’ve only ever known economic boom times; this downturn could be very hard on their age group. At least I have some memory of bad times to draw on…
Starting Monday, I’ll be working on qualifying to teach English as a foreign language. It’s a four-week course; very intensive, so expect radio silence here. It’s necessary for my job, but it’s also going to be really useful if things go pear-shaped at the university…
Re-reading (once again) Robert W Smith’s account of his time in Taiwan, Chinese Boxing, I note this passage in the chapter about the policeman Paul Kuo:
Kuo told me also of Wang Hsiang-Chai, famed but not liked in Hopei. Wang loved to fight and lost only to Shang Yun-hsiang. His method consisted entirely of circles; every block was an attack.
Heh. Wang Xianghai keeps on cropping up in books that I’ve had for ages, but I’d never noticed before…
I’ve just got back from a couple of days in Brighton, where I was taking a foundation course in leading mindfulness and meditation training. As I’ve mentioned before, once I’ve completed this qualification, I will be able to register for professional insurance, and to run training sessions for the public, as well as for patients referred by GPs (though at this point this latter isn’t something I plan to do).
It was a small group: myself, another bloke, and four women. We were a pretty mixed bag, from very different backgrounds, and with varied reasons for doing the course. We all got on very well, though, and I think that some of us got very involved with the experience.
It was certainly interesting, and definitely challenging. Although I’ve had a fair bit of experience in meditation since 2004, it has always been a personal thing; apart from here on the blog – which has a certain feeling of detachment and distance, since I’ve met so few of you in person – I rarely talk about it in real life. In Singapore and China, meditation was well understood, and even close to the mainstream; and abiding memory is New Year’s Eve, 2007, when I attended the 108 Bells ceremony at the Bright Hill monastery – where there were hundreds of people. Here in Wales… it’s not the same; I tend to not talk about it, since meditation falls into that extremely broad category of ‘weird’, as far as most folk are concerned…
Still, I was very surprised at how difficult it was to stand up and act as a leader in the practice, even when the ‘students’ were also course participants. Talking about the benefits of meditation in front of a group of strangers was surprisingly tough. However, I got into it fairly quickly, though all weekend I found it tough to control my voice in the way I’m used to doing as a lecturer. There you are, the mind-body connection in action…
We went through a fair bit of training as a group, learning how to explain the benefits of meditation for both mental and physical health, and ran through a number of “3-minute convincers” – exercises designed to demonstrate rapidly the mind-body link to people who might be sceptical. We also went through a number of group meditation sessions. There were also, of course, sessions where we had to lead people through a meditation exercise and into deep relaxation. The first two were 1-1 with another student; the second was to lead the whole group. For the first, I used a qigong visualisation that I learned in Singapore; while I was talking the other student through it, I felt that it just wasn’t working, but when we’d finished, she said that it had been really effective. For the second 1-1, I used a basic yiquan visualisation exercise tied to zhan zhuang. It wasn’t a great success, since I hadn’t checked for contra-indications. Fortunately, that session was only for a couple of minutes, and she was straight up about telling me she couldn’t do it. For the final session, with the whole group, I had ten minutes, and took care to point out the options for hand and arm positions; I then went through the ‘standing in the water’ visualisation for the holding the ball exercise. Again, I felt as I was doing it, that it really wasn’t working – but, when I finished, it got really good feedback. Even the course instructor mentioned that it anchored her in the body in a way that no other exercise she knew was able to do. Just goes to show: yiquan rocks
Another exercise was where the instructor, using her experience of working with patients referred by doctors, gave us an example of what it’s like to work with non-cooperative participants. In my case, she play-acted an agoraphobic woman, who hid her face under her jumper, and wouldn’t look at me or even talk. Blimey. That was hard. It showed me how complex it is it work with the genuinely ill, rather than simply those who have disposable income and are looking for help with relaxation…
It was a pretty stressful weekend overall. I was staying in London on Thursday and Friday nights; on Friday I got back to the hostel at 20:15ish, to discover that they had made a mistake on the computer, deleted my booking, and given my room to someone else… And no, they didn’t have another… I can now tell you with absolute certainty, that trying to find a room with no booking, late on a Friday night in London, really is not what you need if you were looking forward to a night out, or even for a quiet, relaxing evening….
There were other issues too… but nothing to do with the course itself. Very glad I did it; I learned a great deal and met some wonderful people. It isn’t over yet; I need to keep a daily meditation diary for a few weeks, write some book reviews, and record myself running a meditation session with ‘real’ people before I get the qualification. I may post the book reviews here.
It was a great confidence-booster, though; I start to believe that yes, I can teach this stuff – not just blog about it….
And so my plans make progress… Big job losses are happening in communities in my area… It looks like a wave of redundancies are coming in the organization where I work… Catching up today on the last few days’ news, it’s clear that changes are happening more and more rapidly, and none of them are good. Got to be ready…
I was practising zhan zhuang in the garden yesterday morning. Heavy but broken black clouds were low in the sky, allowing golden moments of sunlight to break through and illuminate the tops of the saplings I planted last month. As I stood, the blackbirds landed close by my feet, scraping caterpillars against the path to rub the hairs off. A robin came to investigate me, lost interest, and went to the next garden. A squirrel ran along the top of the fence at the end of the garden, paused for a short while to survey the territory, and then leisurely went back the way he came.
It occurred to me that this was the experience of those Daoists who developed the neijia styles. In their silent, stationary, meditations, they would have observed the life around them, just as I do; having stilled their minds, they project no emotion, no intentions, that would alert the beasts and birds around them. Thus, in the mountains, they would have seen the bears and the tigers, the storks and the snakes, going out their business with no fear of the observer.
That led me back to something I’ve mentioned before, the naming of taiji movements. In the West, names such as ‘Parting Wild Horse’s Mane’, ‘Fair Lady Works Shuttles’, ‘Stork spreads wings’ are regarded with amusement. How flowery! How poetic! But silly, after all; shouldn’t we give them names that explain how they’re used? What’s the, you know, practical application there, man? Of course, the answer is no, the names are perfect. They come from a close observation of nature, a clear understanding of the energies, the principles, the flow involved in that movement. It’s only our dysfunctional society, where children think milk is produced in factories, that is so alienated from the world of nature, that doesn’t get this.
Moreover, the ability to observe that nature, and the ability to express these energies in one’s own body… that comes first and foremost from control of one’s mind. To achieve that stillness. To know the body from inside. To understand how that flow of energy moves the human body to achieve that end… It’s the mind. All in the mind.
For me, I got that through yiquan, though of course I had a background in taijiquan before I got to it and, of course, I had completed several meditation retreats. For me, yiquan and taijiquan complement one another; the exact same principles, but expressed with yang energy in yiquan, and yin energy in taijiquan.
Thus, I agree with an awful lot that Tabby Cat writes about on this topic. I don’t agree that CMC-37 is the best, though of course I do also practise that form. He’s lucky, in that he found a teacher who led him to this insight. Not everyone gets that luck, and for them that form is not better than yiquan is for Tabby. For myself, it was with yiquan that I had the breakthrough. Horses. Courses.
But he’s right, though: it’s all about the energy. It’s all about the mind.
I also met a rather special woman…
However.. I ran into the same things that caused me problems when I tried capoeira before: the principles of capoeira are competely alien to the principles of neijia, for one. That, I could probably adapt to; the other problem is that capoeira isn’t just a dance/martial art, it’s a lifestyle; the hard core expect you to get really into the music, the songs, the culture… and tend to get a bit pissy if you’re not as into all that as they are… In any case, as I say, July is going to be crazy busy, so I’ll defer any decision there, but I suspect capoeira is a non-starter. Pity, because there are some really nice people in that group.
