It’s been a bit of a rough week; I’m mentally drafting a blog post about it, as it’s required lots of soul-searching. Not sure if I’ll publish it, though.

Anyway, I’ve been feeling bad about how my practice in both martial arts and meditation has been kind of sidelined in the months since I came to Beijing - which wasn’t entirely unexpected, but I didn’t expect the extent of it! So this week I’ve been trying to change conditions to let me get back into the groove.

Buying a bike was a good, and much overdue, idea. I’ve been able to explore parts of the campus I couldn’t easily get to before, and it’s helped me to find a place to practice. Previously, the only place I could find was on the edge of the sports field, surrounded by large areas of concrete. The qi felt really bad there, plus I was in full view of the crowds of students hanging out there, which was a bit awkward. On the bike, I’ve found a courtyard park area in the midst of the older staff apartments. It’s private, shady, and the air is really good. Lots of birds singing in the trees above, and a few old people doing qigong in the morning. It only takes a few minutes to get there by bike - although, going by bike means I have to use a shoulderstrap on my sabre’s scabbard, and sling it over my back. I look like some sort of demented bicycle cavalryman as I whizz around campus; it’s surely only a matter of time before I get arrested

So, I went there this morning - first morning practice for a few weeks, made easier by the new timetable. (I’m able to re-use stuff from last semester now, rather than getting up at 6am every day to start researching & writing on the day’s new lecture material). I started with 15 min or so of zhan zhuang, then went into a couple of sets of CMC-37 taiji. After that, I tried the xuan xuan broadsword set for the first time in ages, but got a mental block halfway through. Now worries, that happened from time to time even back in Singapore, when I was doing it regularly. Experience has taught me that when this happens, it’s best to just stop, rather than keep banging away at it. Next, a few reps of the moves I’ve learned so far of the ba da zhang, working on some details that I’m finding tricky. I followed that with a first attempt in ages of Master Zhou’s wuji long xing baguazhang set; I’m very rusty, but I really need to get back into it. Not sure why yet - I’m sure it’ll bubble up from the subconscious at some point - but having started a bit of zhang zhuang, I think there’s some sort of strong connection with the wuji set. Anyhow, I finished up with a couple of sets of the bagua needles form, before cycling back home through the crowds of students who were by then on their way to the day’s first lectures.

Back home, a met a technician who’d come to fix my computer, which was getting badly clogged up by a couple of years’ worth of Singapore and Chinese dust; it’s now running much cooler and faster. Hooray!

I didn’t write up everything that happened last week when I went to the Yiquan Academy, because there were a few things that happened that called for a little more reflection before I talked about them.

You can’t knock around the world of internal martial arts for as long as I have without learning, even by osmosis, that the masters consider the root and power of their arts to lie in zhan zhuang, or standing practice, rather than in the form. However… I haven’t particularly practiced zhan zhuang, and few of my teachers have put much emphasis on it. My taijiquan practice is what’s given me a feel for it, I guess, and particularly the taijigong taught by Nam Wah Pai in Singapore.

Yiquan, of course, is all about the zhan zhuang, with no set form at all. When I went to the Academy last week, H. told me we would just practice what I know as the basic “holding the tree” posture, with some mind work to accompany it. I’ve tried this posture a few times over the years, and have a few books that talk about it, but in all my solo work I’ve very rarely practised it - time always seemed so short, and I needed to work on the forms I was learning before I forgot them again!

So I stood in this position for about half an hour. After a few minutes, of course, muscles started to ache. My shoulders are chronically stiff, so they hurt. The long muscle or whatever that runs down the right side of the spine was also really tight as well; that’s the result of all the desk-work lately. What to do? H had shown me a “relaxation posture”, where the hands are moved to the back, next to the kidneys, to use if I got too tired, but it seemed better to me to try to get through the pain while keeping the same posture.

I decided to do what I learned on Vipassana meditation retreats; when experiencing physical pain, don’t seek relief by moving the body - instead, send the mind to the pain, and try to find the exact spot where the pain is located. The result is that the pain just goes away. It worked. That let me carry on doing the other extra practices that H. had mentioned. Glenn had also reminded me to form my back into a bow shape in order to tuck the coccyx underneath, so I remembered to work on that and on sinking my weight. After twenty minutes or so, I as tired, and a funny thing happened - it really felt that my arms were being held up not by strength and muscle, but by intent and will.

It as at this point that we tried out the sparring. I’m usually very bad at this; I think too slowly, and easily get my balance messed up. My partner/opponent was quite a bit bigger than me, stronger than me, and about fifteen years younger than me. However, the effect of the standing practice seemed to be that when he issued force, it just seemed to pass through me; I didn’t need to have to consciously react to it, and it didn’t affect me. My awareness was still intense in my arms, and I could sense changes in his strength and respond naturally, without thought. At one point, he got through my guard and pushed me forcefully on the right pectoral, which would normally have sent me flying backwards. On this occasion, I could just sense exactly where the power was, and was able to pivot around it and step behind him; he went flying forwards instead, as his strength didn’t find anywhere to land.

This is very uncommon for me! In fact, it was just total beginner’s luck.

Still. This is the first time I’ve ever managed experienced what taiji, for example, is meant to be all about - to use softness to defeat an opponent who was actively seeking to throw me hard into a wall. To experience why the internal martial arts are powerful beyond qinna and other physical techniques. Heh. I know that some of the people who read this blog are very good internal martial artists and will be saying “At last! It took you long enough!”. I know. I’m a slow learner, but I’m just trying to learn at my own pace - bear with me!

A related event occurred the following Saturday, when I went for my bagua pan guan bi class with Sun Zhi Jun and Mi Lao Shi. I’ve revised the form, and can go through it without many mistakes now. They were telling me, though, that it looked ugly. How could I change that, without being able to see myself? I just did it again with more focus; putting more intent into the movements as if I was surrounded by opponents. Much better, was the response. Hmmm. So “intent” was what improved it…

As usual, none of this leads up to any particular point. However, it is an important breakthrough for me to discover that combining standing practice with a meditation technique did clearly, and immediately, show results against an aggressive training partner. Heh, apologies again to those of you who’ve been patiently waiting for me to “get it”!

I need a holiday to recover, how am I going to face work tomorrow…?

As I mentioned, the Piper guys were passing through town for a few days; I managed to catch up with them on Thursday night at a seminar they gave at a local school, and then again on Friday night - after my class with Master Zhou - as they explored Chinatown. Very, very nice guys. More on that in a later post.

Yesterday was taken up with a small part of the seemingly endless preparations for my move to Beijing, followed in the evening by Ch’an meditation. Our sifu instructed us in the different kinds of meditation, and their purposes. I am still hung up on the koan of “What is a butterfly?“. Katz!

Today was the second in my interview series as I sat down over lunch with Madam Ge, and asked her about the Beijing wushu team, life in the movies , and the future of Chinese wushu. Many, many thanks to her for her time - and even more to my gongfu brother Jono, for translating.

A bonus was meeting up with a visiting Taiwanese master, Mr Liu Pang Yao. We had much difficulty understanding each other, but it turns out he’s expert in at least Cheng Man Ching taijiquan and Cheng-style bagua (and probably much else besides). He gave a few demonstrations of applications, which were very, very cool - and which I will appreciate a lot more once my back and shoulder return to normal Very, very, effective, let’s put it that way! He gave me a few flyers for the World Cup Tai Chi Chuan Championship, to be held in Taipei in October this year. Email tccass at ms35 dot hinet dot com for more info.

Now, it’s home again, and settling back into paperwork before work tomorrow…

What to do in Beijing? There’s no shortage of options, in terms of teachers, forms, and so on! On the other hand, I have a massive list of things that I need to get done while I’m in China - and most of them are career-related, rather than martial arts…

So, right now I’m starting to work out what I want to get done. Here’s a few thoughts:

• I’ve trained with Master Liu Jing Ru before, and would like to do so again. He’s very well spoken-of as being traditional in his styles. However, he lives far away from where I will be based, and his styles are different to what I’ve learned. Do I want to start a whole new set?
• Master Sun Zhi Jun is Madam Ge’s main teacher; he’s the one to go to if I want to maintain my current knowledge - namely, the ba mu zhang, the sword, and the needles. I’m hearing different things, though: some say he’s one of bagua’s best fighters, others say that his styles have too much xin pai (performance style) in them. He does live much closer to my base in Haidian than Master Liu, but it’s still quite far.
• Professor Huang Zhen Huan lives very close to where I’ll be, and I have his phone number. He was a student of Wu Tu Nan for twenty years, so I’m guessing he practices Wu style, rather than the Yang-based forms I know. On the other hand, I may well ask him to help me work on developing softness, and push hands…
• I am very tempted to learn another obscure form - bagua fan I know that Zhang Sheng Li of the Beijing Milun School knows at least one fan form, and in any case I want to contact him to review the Long Xing form he taught me…

Here’s two examples from YouTube:

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