The east side of the park is where the crowds are; loads of elderly Beijingers practicing ballroom dancing, Beijing Opera, that weird taiji badminton, kicking feathered weights and so on and so on… There was a new one I hadn’t seen before, of tossing large rubber quoits at one another, and trying to get your head through the centre so that you build up a set of them around your neck like some strange African tribe…. Past all these, and the tourists (both Chinese and foreign), past the vendors of chilled water bottles (yi kuai wu! yi kuai wu! Harlo! Two yuan!) Hehehehe, past the surreal flying saucers of the temple itself, and over the the quieter west side – more open and forest-like. Here, every grove seemed to have its own group of martial artists… One group, near where we were headed, were practising xingyi and bagua; young, heavily muscled, standing motionless in santi, or gliding in circles….

Then I joined Liu Lao Shi, Dalida, and a group of others, who had been there for a long time before I arrived! I was set to working on some of the qigong postures, including a long stretch of zhan zhuang. By the end of all this, my shoulders were really aching! After that, a session of the bagua ‘tea cups’ exercise, which I haven’t done in a long, long time! It was fun, though. All too soon, it seemed, the session was over, and we all went our separate ways.

One of the other students, the Canadian I mentioned, knows something about systema, and we’ve chatted about it before. We agreed yesterday to catch up some time to try training together; I think we could work on some of the exercises from Scott Sonnon’s Softwork DVD….

I went pretty much straight on to my afternoon yiquan class, pausing only for a plate of baozi. Mmmmmm, there’s a branch of the Qing Feng Steamed Baozi chain just around the corner from Yao Lao Shi’s school, and I often eat there on my way to class.

There were four of us there; two foreign, two Chinese. It was a good session, pretty strenuous towards the end. I managed to get in a tui shou session with all three of the other guys, and was feeling pretty strained afterwards; one of them is a lot taller than me, so I had to work pretty hard. Luckily for me, he has a habit of locking himself into a position and then pushing, so he’s pretty much unshiftable if you push against him – but with a swift change of angle, he can’t defend himself. He’s going to be tough to beat once he figures that out…

Then, on to Zhongshan Park. I worked on the ZMQ-37 as usual, giving it a few rounds. Next, the wuji long xing bagua form of Master Zhou – which I haven’t done for a good long while, and needs a bit of refreshing. That’s got a move very similar to one in the ROSS systema ‘wave’ DVD, of stretching out the arms and sending a wave rolling from hand to hand; something got a bit crunchy in my left shoulder when I tried that….

After that, a bit of xuan xuan taiji dao. Mentioning that, I should note that on my way to the park, I’d noticed that my bike was shaking unusually when I braked, so I stopped at the Drum Tower to get it fixed by the bike repair man there. It turned out that the rim of the front wheel was a bit buckled, so that needed changing. While he was building the new wheel, one of his friends noticed the sword bag slung over my back and wanted to know what was in it, so I told him it was a taiji dao. Oh, he said, a taiji jian. No, a taiji dao. Is it long? he asked. Yes. Ahhh, it’s a bagua dao. Sigh. I got it out of the bag to show him. Hahaha, it’s a Japanese sword, not a Chinese sword, he told me. Sigh. I gave up.

In the bag, I also had my shashkas, of course, and I ended my training session in the park with a spell using those.That, and trying a few simple Cossack dance moves…. I’m getting faster and more accurate with one, and a bit more coordinated with two. I don’t think I’m being too forward if I say that I can already do a lot of what this guy is doing (not as well; not as smoothly; but getting there, bit by bit); what I can’t, I should be able to do soon….

My left wrist is going to take a while to train up to be as strong and flexible as it needs to be, though, and my shoulders definitely felt the strain. The left, in particular, is still too tight; it’s difficult to let the sword in my left hand swing naturally. Hehehehe, and one day I must get someone to take a picture of me doing that while a platoon of PLA soldiers marches past, staring at me in curiosity whilst keeping perfect step….

Oh yes, and I mentioned recently that I was still working on finding the correct way to grip the shashkas. Well, since I bought my new MacBook I’ve switched my default browser from Firefox to Chrome, and discovered with great pleasure that it’s got an auto-translate feature by default – which has seamlessly made a whole lot of YouTube comprehensible… Thus, I found myself looking at this, which kind of answered my immediate questions:

Anyhow, I went on to the yiquan class, and was really glad I went.

I’ve been working for a while on the mo ca bu stepping; trying to engage the kua as I step.. I think I’ve got it working fairly well now, at least in the slow shi li stages. I notice that when I get it right, I’m really rooted on the back leg, so the forward foot is both weightless, and slides naturally along the curve that Yao Lao Shi shows us.

There are a couple of German lads visiting; they train with Yao Lao Shi’s student who’s set up a school in Austria. There were also a few young Chinese lads, whom I’ve seen before but not for quite a long time.

The tui shou session was great. First, I trained with one of the Chinese lads, who was very good. He landed a few slaps and punches, but I delivered a lot more, I think. Then, I went straight on to partner one of the Germans, who was a bit better than me, but not by a lot. He managed to turn me and uproot my a couple of times, but on the other hand I was able to slip through his defenses with punches fairly easily and often.

So, in review: both of these guys were much younger than me and train harder than I do, but I think I acquitted myself well enough. My rooting is generally pretty good, and my defenses are strong. The German, as I say, turned me round, but I think I know what I did wrong. My use of my kua is good in the slow testing, but I keep forgetting to do it in the heat of tui shou; once I can remember that, I’ll be better placed to use fa li. I’m getting much better at staying focused on my partner’s centreline, and at redirecting force away from mine. I’m a bit too passive, and tend to just stay on the defensive.

Not a bad position to be in, and I have some clear areas for improvement.

Master Yao asked me to write an article about my experience of being a student at his school; it’ll go on his web site, and also in a magazine that will be published soon (not sure exactly what that is). Yikes! I need to think about what’ll be the right tone and approach to take for that….

After the class, I went to Beihai Park instead of the hills, and mooched around for a while. I hadn’t realized how close it is to my apartment if I cut through the hutongs! I finally saw the famous nine-dragon screen…

I took one of the shashkas and found a quiet spot to practice some more with that, alone except for the impassive gaze of an old man and his caged songbird….

I haven’t written much about the yiquan lately, but I’m still going. In recent lessons, I’ve been concentrating on the kua a great deal.

Master Yao has called me out a few times in the tui shou practice for relying on strength too much, as opposed to technique – and he’s right, of course.

I’m doing quite well in terms of using core muscle strength rather than arms and shoulder – though even there, a stiffness is creeping back in, as I haven’t been doing sufficient solo zhan zhuang practice recently. This isn’t enough: I’m pretty good at sensing my opponent’s force, but not fast or powerful enough to properly use technique to uproot them. I also tend to be too passive, not attacking often enough when a gap opens up in my opponent’s posture.

Speed will have to come through more practice, for which I need to start attending the large-group classes – which is where tui shou is practiced more.

In terms of power – as opposed to strength – I’ve been improving a lot at using my kua as the gates that instigate movement in the whole body. It took me a long time to get the muscle movement right, so that the kua could open and close without straining my knees, but I think I’ve got more or less got it now. In the testing-force exercises and mo ca bu stepping it seems to be effective at getting more power into my moves, but I’m not succeeding in using this in tui shou. Well, as always, more practice is needed…

After class last Saturday, I cycled down to Zhongshan Park again, where I took these pictures. I worked on my ZMQ-37 and taiji xuanxuan dao forms; I’m slowly making progress with the latter! I concentrated on the kua again in these forms and it seemed to help. I attracted the attention of a very short and very sweet Chinese lady, who came over to watch for a while. She wanted to know all about me, and how long I’d been studying taiji. She said she was in her fifties and had been studying taiji for a few years; she found it very good for her health. She was studying the jian, and hadn’t seen a dao form before. Quite rightly, she told me off for forgetting it!

A friend sent me a link to a bagua school I hadn’t heard of before: Small Steps Neijia. They have some clips on YouTube, and I thought it might be worth checking them out as the integrated qigong is relatively unusual and the lineage is uncommon. I called the contact, a Serbian woman, but she turned out to be in Europe – with call-forwarding on, so I reached her but it was 5am there. Ooops!

More on the tuina soon.

So yes, it was another great yiquan lesson yesterday. I was reminded of the need for constant attention and awareness of where both I and my partner are moving and directing our energy. Master Yao drew my attention to some errors in the way I was pivoting my arm against my partner’s; I can see that what I was doing was wrong, but can’t quite see how to do it correctly, so I’ll have to work on that. I was thrown when I had a partner on the run because I didn’t stay focused on his centre-line, so he was able to redirect my force and send me into the wall. I can feel it all today, with a sore head, stiff shoulder and a certain soreness around the tendons of elbows and knees.

It’s all good; this is how we learn to be effective martial artists.

In the evening, I revisited J. P. Lau’s Beginner’s Guide to Yiquan, and was even more impressed than before at its quality. On the other hand, I think I must have made a fair bit of progress recently in order to appreciate the meaning of some parts. As an aside, it’s almost convinced me to buy an iPad – to assist my own learning, I would quite like to make a mashup of sections of the guide and his essays, combined with the still pictures and videos from Master Yao Chengrong’s website, plus my own annotations. I rather think that the iPad would do all that rather well, plus the touch-screen combined with a Chinese dictionary (I use DianHua on my iPhone) is the tool I need to kickstart my language studies / learn the Yiquan terminology…. God, I’m such a geek…

Oh, and I’m really appreciating the practicality of yiquan; I haven’t been studying it long – and even that period has been interrupted a lot by travel and injury – but I can see real, significant improvements in my health and posture, and in my ability to protect myself in a fight. I had a conversation recently that involved people who have studied for years in other arts, and learned all their teacher’s forms, but have never been taught any applications. One of these people told me that if they practised the form enough, that was all that was needed and in a fight their qi would naturally make the moves effective. Ummm, no. To be honest, when I first got started in taiji, and was reading every book I could find, I think I probably felt the same way. My experience in the Zhong Yi Yiquan Wuguan has demonstrated to me, though, that regular hands-on experience with an unpredictable opponent is essential even in the internal arts. (In Singapore, if you really want to learn neijiaquan for combat I recommend, as always, Zhou Yue Wen).

This is my third Qing Ming in China, wow. And I only planned to be here for four months….

It’s an auspicious weekend: SPRING has finally arrived! At last! (Cue manic laughter and many exclamation marks). The trees around the lakes at Houhai are starting to put out flowers; soon we should see the first faint fuzz of green, and this unusually long and bitter winter will slip away into memory…

Only one of the Hong Kongese guys was still around yesterday, not one that I’d trained with on Wednesday. It turned out to be a really good session. The second hour was all tui shou again. First I partnered with a new person whom I haven’t seen before. He’s obviously trained in yiquan before, so he must normally go to one of the larger group classes. Chinese, young, pretty strong but not yet subtle. He was pretty keen to have a go and attack, which was ok with me. I didn’t have too much difficulty deflecting his power and spinning him, but there were times when he was pressing hard, and I was soaking up the force in my qua and the tendons of the arm…. and he suddenly took his arm away; with his force released, my arm just sprang forward, so he got smacked in the mouth. Going to have to watch that…

Afterwards, I partnered a German guy – also young and very strong, plus much taller than me. I was pleased about that, because as I posted recently, I rarely get the chance to try out tui shou with people who are not my own height or shorter. On this occasion, we were fairly evenly matched.

Oddly, after an hour or so of vigorous tui shou, my muscles weren’t acheing. Even today, there’s not really any stiffness… Maybe it’ll hit me tomorrow…

Master Yao ended the class by reminding us how the yiquan training system works: first you work on the standing techniques, thinking about what you feel. Then you practice the testing-force exercises on your own, mentally working out the applications. Then you train with a partner, to see whether you were right, and identifying where you’ve got things right or wrong. Then you go back to the beginning.

After class, I took my sabre and cycled down to Zhongshan Park. I forgot to take photos, doh! It was a lovely spring afternoon, with quite a lot of people about. I found a quiet corner looking across the moat towards the red walls of the Forbidden City, and practiced my taiji. I worked on the first quarter of the sabre form, going through that about a dozen times, and also on the ZMQ-37 set, doing that five or so times. All I’m going to say is that it was great to practice on it outside, and there is significant room for improvement!

A good day.

Fingertips.

Sorry to those who already knew this, I’m a slow learner.

During the standing practice, I was working on my right ankle. In recent classes, I’ve noticed that if I make a slight adjustment to the angle between the foot and the ankle, a muscle (or something) that runs down the left-hand side of arch starts taking weight; it get sore quickly, indicating that it’s not accustomed to taking weight. The right foot is the one that always twists outwards when I’m training, both in yiquan and bagua – in fact, Kong Cheng commented on that a few times during our lessons. If I focus on the ankle, making sure that this muscle carries the weight it’s supposed to, then the foot stays straight. It’s amazing that I’d never noticed this before; on the other hand, I suppose it demonstrates that one of the benefits of training in an internal martial art is that it does develop this kind of sensitivity to little sensations in the body. In addition, it may be a coincidence, but I became aware of this after I started wearing my Vibram Five Finger shoes in class (to Master Yao’s great amusement!). I bought a second pair while I was in Singapore, and wore them during the retreat and in Bangkok (they got a lot of attention on Khao San Road, as did my Obamao t-shirts, hehehe).

Speaking of Kong Cheng, I contacted him after I got back from Thailand in order to start my bagua classes again, but the next day he was flying off to Europe again to teach there; he’ll be back in June.

The other thing that happened yesterday was the tui shou, where I got my groove back. I’d been mulling over why things went so badly last week. I recalled that I’d been doing alright for a while, and then everything fell apart, but why? I didn’t suddenly lose my strength or skill, so why the sudden collapse? It must have been a mental thing, a change in the mind. So, yesterday, I trained with two different partners. One of them, I’d partnered last week. I managed to hold my own this time, but realised that my arms and shoulders were hurting a lot. I focused on the arch of my back, trying to keep my tailbone tucked in and the connection strong between back and legs. Then I had an insight: my mind was in my arms; I was directing it towards the points of contact with my partner’s arms. That meant that I was primarily using the strength of arms and shoulders. I switched my attention to the line between legs and back, down into the soles of my feet; my arms became mere appendages to this, simply conveying and extending the movement there. In other words, I suppose, I really did visualise myself as a tree, swaying from the root with the branches moving in turn… Anyway, boom; I was in control. For a while, I carried on the tui shou with my eyes closed; I could feel exactly where my partner’s strength was and neutralise it, and suddenly it was much easier to spin or uproot him.

Next, Master Yao partnered me with a relatively new student, a short, barrel-shaped guy who was physically very strong. Here, I practised my footwork a little more, sliding away from his power at a slight angle, and retreating just in front of it. I worked on using ‘bouncing’ power here to uproot him. this worked, and I managed to get him ‘jumping’ with both knees up high. If I can work out exactly how I did this, and then do it consistently, I’ll feel like I’m making some progress!

Master Yao pointed out that I tend to keep my hands balled in fists during tui shou when I should have them as open palms; he demonstrated how the spread fingers help uproot your partner. My first partner also pointed out that I’ve got a habit of gripping his wrist to control him, which is bad practice.

Sorry, this isn’t going to be too interesting to anyone but me, but I feel like I learned a few things yesterday and I want to note them down!

I’ll talk more about the vipassana retreat some other time, but there are two things to mention. First, I came down with a bad cold while I was in Singapore which stopped me sleeping so, combining that with the sleep debt accumulated over the past year, I was pretty groggy during most of the retreat. This made it really hard to concentrate during the meditation. Secondly, when you do these courses for the first time, you usually sit in a group in the main meditation hall, or in your room in the dormitory. Towards the end of the course, you are assigned your own windowless meditation cell in the main meditation building, next to the meditation hall. When you have already participated in one retreat, you get your cell from the first day. This was my third retreat.

I struggled. Retreats are always challenging, but because I was so tired going in, after a few days of rising at 4am I was really not keeping a clear or focussed mind! In one of the evening dharma talks, Goenkaji suggested that if you’re tired, you might leave the meditation hall, and try meditating while standing. Aha, thought I.

So, for the rest of the retreat I spent most of my solo meditation sessions in my cell, alternating between sitting and zhan zhuang. I tried not to mix techniques, so I didn’t really use the yiquan visualizations (springs/water/etc) but just held the posture while performing vipassana.

One morning, listening to the tropical dawn chorus, I had something of an epiphany when, for perhaps the first time ever, everything fell absolutely into place, and all my weight was being held and transmitted solely by tendons and ligaments, which creaked and cracked as I swayed gently like a ship under sail with no weight on muscle or bone.

Since I got back, that’s really been a guide for me, and I’ve found that I’ve really been noticing small things that make a big difference to posture. I’ve continued to do most of my meditation practice in a standing pose, often with steel rings on my wrists. I do a lot in my office when I need to take a break from the screen – though since my office has a glass door I don’t doubt that rumours and gossip are now rife in my department!

In class, I find that as my sensitivity to where my weight is being held increases, I’m finding it easier to see how full-body power develops – which is not to say that I’m achieving it but, for example, I’m maintaining my balance much more during some of the exercises. I’m also feeling how small changes in the position of my feet have big effects elsewhere.

Last week, during a tui shou session I really felt everything fall into place; my back formed a perfect bow shape, everything connected and transferred power and weight smoothly, and I was able to really control my partner, who I think has done a fair bit of yiquan training.

Pride comes before a fall, and in today’s class I was totally locked down by three different partners. It was very frustrating. Interestingly, they were all taller than me by at least a head; that’s unusual – I realised that until today I’ve almost always trained with partners who were about my own height or shorter. I came to realize that I now had my arms at completely the wrong angle, so there was no connection to my back and legs. No wonder they were able to overwhelm me! I’m going to have to think about that.

Still, I am more convinced than ever that yiquan training and vipassana meditation go together very well indeed. More on that soon.

Added later:

I think I may have reached the point where I’m ready to start taking an interest in yiquan applications. That may seem a strange thing to write, but it really hasn’t been a focus of mine up until now. Ever since I started blogging, I’ve been complaining about the tightness of my shoulders and lower back, and lack of mobility in certain ways, and I’ve mentioned several times that it’s only the yiquan practice
that has had a significant effect on them. As a result, my focus in my yiquan practice so far has been on the health effects more than anything else. I still have a lot of work to do here, but as you may guess from what I wrote above, I feel I’ve made immense progress, and I think now I can pay more serious attention to the combat side of it – which means getting started on strength and endurance training. More on that soon as well.

In brief, the yiquan has been going very well, and I learned a lot during the holiday that’s led to some improvements. I’ve been meditating, and last night got time to attend an improv acting workshop, which was cool.

Lots of ideas are buzzing about in my mind, hopefully I’ll get to write something about all that…

Sorry if these photos are getting repetitive, but I want to keep a record of what the scene is like every time I go to train; over the months, it should track the progress of the seasons – and, hopefully, remind me of progress in martial arts!

I’ve been practicing, and my mud-stepping is improving – Kong Cheng only had to kick my heels a few times. I did a few circuits under the eaves of a park office (where a thick-set Chinese gentleman of senior years was also practicing some qigong; we politely ignored each other). After that, it was circle-walking for two hours, winding up again with a bit of push-hands.

Such a simple description of the lesson but, internally, quite a lot happened. Kong Cheng had to remind me repeatedly about posture: leaning forward or to one side; wiggling my hips a bit too much; letting one arm (usually the outer) collapse in a bit too much… It’s all good; I think these are superficial issues that will vanish as I develop the internal work.

What do I mean by that? Well, as my stepping becomes less of an issue, my mind is able to move more freely around the body as a whole, identifying tensions. In particular, my shoulders, upper arms and upper back have a clear tendency to tense up, and only relax when I send my mind to them.Of course, once I do that, the lower back is free to sink in and under, the kua can move more freely, and the stepping gets more fluid and correct. So: it’s all in the mind – and, in keeping the mind present, calm, and aware of the body. Once the mind wandered (for example, ahem, composing a first draft of this post…) then everything tensed up again…

This awareness of tension is something I just wasn’t able to do before beginning yiquan, and the standing pole practice of zhan zhuang. As I mentioned before, that explains why my bagua before was so lousy – I simply couldn’t do it before because of the tension in the areas I just mentioned, so I guess I just compensated by go fast, relying on momentum and sloppy technique…. Kong Cheng mentioned that martial arts masters say “It’s easier to learn than to fix”, but there we are: I have to fix by bad habits before I can progress. Madam Ge Chun Yan often used to say that my root was weak, and I see clearly now why she said that.

If the zhan zhuang took me quite a long time to get into, the xing zhuang of circle-walking is tougher yet – maintaining mindfulness while walking is not easy! By the end of the session I was perspiring freely, and my ankles were aching from the unaccustomed strain; I lost a lot of weight when I first trained in bagua in 2004 – with luck, the same will happen again! It’s this kind of train of thought that makes me think that finally I am on the track for learning proper neijiaquan; above all, it’s the awareness that’s important, not the form. I didn’t have that when I was training in Singapore, or indeed when I first came to Beijing. Again, it’s only since I started the yiquan with Master Yao Cheng Rong that the penny finally dropped.

So, on the whole, I’m feeling quite positive about it all at the moment.