Sorry, couldn’t think of a good title.

Went to another qigong class at Small Steps last night, and enjoyed it. I’m coming to the end of the classes I’ve prepaid, and after that I think I’ll switch to the baguazhang classes to get some work done on the applications side of it.

They also organize Friday-night lectures and events connected with Daoism; this coming Friday, they have a session of individual zhou yi fortune-telling, which will be interesting. Apparently, the teacher coming to do that is a bagua brother of Liu Lao Shi, who gradually became more interested in the philosophical side of things. I was asking Dalida about it; she told me that this teacher was nominated one of the best at a recent convention held in Beijing of zhou yi practitioners from around Asia. She has been given readings by him before, and says she found them extremely accurate, so I await Friday night with anticipation. S. is going as well.

I had planned to go to yiquan class this morning, but was delayed by unexpected visitors, to the point where it wasn’t worth going. Instead, after they’d gone, I had another go with Scott Sonnon’s Flowfit. I’d decided that I was ready to move on to Level 2. I bought a yoga mat yesterday in preparation. I’m already impressed enough that I ordered FlowFit 2 last night from Amazon; that one’s about falling and groundwork….

Wow, though, level 2 is tough! Saying that – given there are four levels of difficulty, it’s really obvious how unfit I am Great exercise sequence, though, I really feel thoroughly worked out – even though I only managed half of the time i was supposed to do, being sneakily glad that I had a call come in on Skype….

That also highlights something about neijia styles – from the Flowfit, I can see my lack of fitness, coordination and strength – and yet, in the tui shou sessions, I really don’t have too much difficulty holding my own. Thus: a good insight into how internal styles are great for those who are physically weak, old, etc….

I got up early this morning, and headed over to Ditan Park for a change, just north of the Lama Temple. As you can see, it was a beautiful morning, with large numbers of people standing below the trees – stretching, chanting mantras, meditating, and doing lots of different forms of qigong. I spent a while in zhan zhuang with my back to a cedar (?) tree, and facing a small pine, inhaling the intoxicating scent of an early northern hemisphere spring day…. ahhhhhhhhhh…….

I took the shashkas. The pictures will give you an idea of what they look like compared to my taiji sabre. What surprised me is that they’re heavy – much heavier than the taiji sabre; of course, they’re stainless steel, while the sabre is aluminium, so it’s natural, I just hadn’t thought of it. The scabbards are also steel, covered with a very thin layer of faux-leather, so it was quite a bit of weight to be carrying altogether! The handles are hard plastic. I think they may get very slippery if I use them in hotter temperatures than this morning; in addition, the grooves were really grinding the skin on my hands – I have a few blisters. I think that somewhere I have a roll of non-slip tape, and I may put that over the handles.

That aside, they were a joy to use; they handle really well. I can see that using these babies will be a good workout for wrists, shoulders, back and waist…. Once I get the hang of it!

OK, I’ll report more later; now I’m off to yiquan class, and then I think I may head off to enjoy a sunny afternoon in the hills….

Wow, I’ve been busy lately. Definitely feels like I’ve been taking part in the Red Queen’s Race. Hopefully I’ll have a bit more spare time in the next few weeks and can train and blog more!

I did get to yiquan class on Wednesday morning. There were a group of lads up from Hong Kong, staying for a week and training intensively. I met some of them last year, when they did the same. Very nice guys, and some of them very experienced in yiquan. It was great engaging in tui shou with them; in that class we we practising Pi Fa Shi Li, and at first I simply couldn’t hold them back at all, nor could I break through their guard. They helped me out, though, and explained in English where I was going wrong, and what I was missing; for example I wasn’t pulling my palm back far enough when I was pressing, so I wasn’t getting maximum force at the point of contact. A very good lesson; I really enjoyed it. Don’t know they’ll be here this weekend; I’ll find out in a few hours!

My yang-style taiji sabre has been languishing in my office since I bought it, propped up in a corner. Due to problems with our computer system, I had to unexpectedly cancel a class yesterday and I decided to use the free couple of hours to take a look back at the xuan xuan sabre form I learned from Nam Wah Pai in Singapore. I’m very rusty, but I have a video of the form on my iPhone, and muscle memory still seems to kick in, so I made a bit of progress – though of course it’ll take time to be any good at it again. It was very interesting to note that, although I was taught this form using a normal dao, the hand positions are absolutely right for using the yang-taiji dao. The copy of Zhang Yun’s book that I bought in Singapore is going to be useful, I think. Spring finally seems to be reaching Beijing, so it’ll be easier to train outdoors. I haven’t worked on taiji for quite some time, and was a little taken aback again by the difference in the experience from yiquan – taiji giving a much more general, diffuse sense of energy activation; I noted that every cell seemed to be tingling with a gentle warmth, my skin seemed to be suddenly expelling toxins and my mind was much calmer, straight away. I think I do need to devote more time to the taiji.

I’ve signed up for a basic tuina course, as I want to develop at least some basic capability in a healing art, and this seems like a natural match with the meditation and martial arts that I’m already engaged in. It’s going to be two hours per class, two classes per week for the next month. Only eight students are allowed per class, so I’m hoping it’ll be a useful experience! First class is next week, so I’ll let you know how it goes.

I went to see the new 3D version of Alice in Wonderland last night. I must say, I was underwhelmed. I enjoyed the earlier part, which stuck fairly closely to the original setting, but then it turned into a generic fantasy action adventure, which didn’t seem faithful (IMHO) to the nature of the characters, especially the Hatter. I enjoyed the sheer over-acting of the White Queen, but was surprised at the severity of what happened to the Red Queen, which seemed excessive. The dance scene seemed to have been dropped in from another film altogether…. Two stars out of five.

Here are some of the books that I bought while I was in Singapore. I don’t have time right now to write about them, but together they’ve kicked off a train of thought that I’ll go over in a post soon.

The Complete Taiji Dao: The Art of the Chinese Saber (Zhang Yun)

Martial Maneuvers: Fighting Principles and Tactics of the Internal Martial Arts (Phillips Starr)

Jumping Into Plyometrics (Donald A. Chu)

Psychophysical Acting: An Intercultural Approach after Stanislavski (Phillip B. Zarrilli)

Body Voice Imagination: ImageWork Training and the Chekhov Technique (David Zinder)

The Six Healing Sounds: Taoist Techniques for Balancing Chi (Mantak Chia)

I met Kong Cheng again yesterday at Zhongshan Park; it was cold again, but at least there wasn’t any wind. (Also: hooray for thermal underwear!).

Basically, I spent most of two hours still working on tang ni bu. I confirmed that there is a significant difference in stepping techniques between Sun Zhijun’s style (which is what I’ve practiced before) and Liu Jing Ru’s style. The former allows the heel of the rear foot to rise while stepping forward; the latter does not – the foot must be kept parallel to the ground, with the heel flat.

I asked a friend of mine, who’s a student of Sun Zhijun about this afterwards; they said that the heel-raise is part of the bagua qigong. Apparently, allowing the heel to rise stimulates the Bubbling Well Point, generating yin energy, and stimulating the kidney meridian.

However, Liu Jing Ru’s style, which I’m now learning, doesn’t do this; since Kong Cheng is a TCM doctor, I’ll have to ask him about this next time we meet. The fact remains, though, that I find it very difficult! Kong Cheng was kicking at my heel whenever it rose, trying to make the foot slip or twist, and I suppose from that I can see a combat application (though that’s just a guess). I have to say that it got very annoying – though the annoyance was with myself for not getting it right, not with Kong Cheng for kicking!

(I also have a feeling that there’s a difference in the way the two styles approach kou bu and bai bu, but I’ll leave that question for another time).

I found that I had to focus on two points. First, the Achilles tendon, allowing it to relax and lengthen; secondly, the muscles at the front of the ankle, using them to keep the foot raised. Essentially, that means that I was trying to keep my mind intent on a ring around the ankle. I’m still not sure that I’ve got this right. Well, since I can’t do it consistently, I obviously haven’t, but Kong Cheng does say that I’m improving. I’m going to make sure I can do it properly before I move on to any forms. Once that happens, though, I think I should progress fairly rapidly, since those are the forms I studied with Sun Ru Xian Lao Shi when I first came to Beijing.

I find that I have to concentrate on my feet so much that I’m not able to focus much on the rest of the body. Even so, I could feel that my posture is improving as I walk, and I was able to relax back, shoulders and tailbone more than in the previous lesson. Plus, my ankles are much more stable, and don’t wobble so much – this is definitely a result of the last year’s zhan zhuang, since before I started yiquan my ankles were very tense and rigid, which meant that they didn’t like carrying any kind of load. That, in turn, I think made my knees bear my weight, which wasn’t good.

We finished up with some more bagua tui shou, which is where I finally felt able to apply some of the insights from yiquan, specifically with regard to generating strength from the core back muscles, rather than the arms or shoulders. My right wrist hurt a lot during this, so Kong Cheng used some tui na massage on it, which helped.

By the end of the class, my thighs and hams really felt that they’d had a solid workout, and were tingling a lot!

I popped over to Wangfujing to do various tasks, and then headed back to Xinjiekou for the afternoon’s yiquan lesson. That went well, mostly practicing postures that I’ve done before but do need to work on much more. I was the only foreigner there, which hasn’t happened for a while. This class also finisihed up with tui shou, for about half an hour. This is the first time that I’ve done any serious yiquan tui shou since my accident, and I was comprehensively demolished by my partner – I couldn’t read his movements at all, or escape from any of the traps he applied to my arms. Ho hum, back to the beginning (again!).

In the evening S. and I went to the cinema at Oriental Plaza and caught the 3D version of Avatar. The 3D affect is brilliant, and the computer-generated world is stunning. The storyline is a bit hackneyed, and I’m too much of a cynic to enjoy the ‘happy’ ending, since you just know that the ‘Sky People’ will return in greater force, but hey, it’s a nice movie to watch with someone whose company you enjoy

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