kungfu | - Part 6

February 29, 2012

Back in Training

I returned to my master’s school in Wudangshan a week ago. The time since has been spent catching up with friends and shaking off jet lag. More than anything, however, it has been spent coping with what I shall call, “Week One Syndrome” (hereafter WOS).

WOS is the inevitable period of adjustment necessary to go from part-time training, no matter how rigorous, to full-time. It goes like this:

The first day, you feel fantastic. Maybe your moves are a little rusty, but your muscles are fresh and loose and ready to go. Maybe your stances aren’t as low as you would like, or maybe your kicks aren’t as extended, but with all that stored-up energy, it just feels great to move.

Second day, however, you wake up in agony. You drift up out of the warm darkness of sleep, try to sit up, and—BAM!—hot knives in your thighs, abdomen, back, chest, calves, and everything else. Particularly sore are the muscles at the front of your hips. Trying to raise your leg to step into your pants is impossible. The test I use to gauge how traumatic WOS is going to be is stairs. If I can still walk up or down the stairs normally, one foot in front of the other, I am doing pretty well, even if it is a struggle. If I have to cling to the hand rail and haul myself up step by terrible step, it’s going to be a rough couple of weeks.

You want to rest, to recover, but day two has all the same training that did you in on day one. Except this time, your muscles are killing you, and on top of that, they have tightened into these angry knots like twisted tree roots. Day one, you could touch your toes. Day two, you wish you could touch your knees. You’ve lived through the WOS ordeal before, though, so you know that if you get yourself thoroughly warmed up and stretched out, you can make it through and even recapture some of the joy of motion that you felt in day one.

Day three and onward continue much like day two, but the muscle pain slowly falls into a weekly pattern, peaking in the training week and slacking in the rest day. Pain and stiffness are still at a high, but slowly they reach a barely manageable level, where they will remain for the duration of your training. At the same time, however, injuries that you had thought gone after your vacation start to crop up again, and your reserves of energy are being drained. By the end of three weeks or a month, your emotional and physical resources that you saved up during your vacation are running low, and every day of every week is a struggle to replenish your strength at as fast a rate as you burn it.

After that description you may not believe this, but it is amazing to be back. Maybe I am a sucker for suffering, but this place feels like home and there is nowhere I would rather be. I can feel myself calming down after the faster pace of life back in the U.S.

And as a sign of my growth, WOS gets a little milder every time I endure it.

January 22, 2012

Thoughts While Home

This week has been crazy and awesome. As I sit down to write about it, I realize one of the major differences in my life here and my life training in Wudang. There, when I train my mind is either off or focused on what I am doing, and outside of that I have fairly few demands on my attention and I have plenty of time to reflect and plan. So writing a blog happens fairly naturally.

Here at home, I work at an architecture firm, I teach, and I do demonstrations and talks about Wudang. There are always demands on my attention, and reflection often has to wait. So while in Wudang, the physical side of my training seems my prime concern, being home is a training ground for my internal art. This is where the theory meets reality.

That said, I had a wild but fun week. Thursday night I attended a Chinese embassy celebration of the Chinese New Year at the Meridian Center in DC. Definitely one of the neatest evenings I have had in a while. There were a lot of diplomats there, a beautiful musical performance, and two Chinese art exhibits, one of woodblock prints and one of modern paintings on porcelain. I was there with my kungfu sister who is working hard to establish avenues for the sharing of Wudang culture and wisdom with D.C. and the U.S.

Friday was spent at the Bullis School in Potomac. I did a collaborative demonstration with two Shaolin monks. Of course, they were masters and I am still a student, so it was quite an honor to share a stage with them. I really enjoyed meeting them and other amazing members of the kungfu community in the D.C. area. It was wonderful to meet other people who dream dreams like my own.

December 31, 2011

January Qigong Seminar

January 9th through February 14th, I am pleased to be offering a seminar in Qigong at Balanced Life Skills. Qigong has been one of my favorite discoveries in the course of my martial arts education, and I am always excited to share my love of it with others.

What is Qigong? Imagine the practice of martial arts as a line. One one end is fighting, and on the other end is purely health oriented exercise. Qigong would fall near one end of the line, and it might look like this:Literally “Chi Work,” Qigong is a kind of moving meditation. In a series of dynamic poses combining breathing, flexibility, strength, and mental focus, it seeks to nourish the internal health of the body. It is adaptable to the level of the student; a sedentary newcomer and a conditioned athlete will both find challenge and growth.

There are uncountable permutations within this broad category of exercise, each with its own focus, theory, tradition, and practitioners. In Wudang, I have learned a few different Qigong practices. My favorite is Five Element Qigong.

In the seminar this year, I will be focusing on Five Element Qigong, but will range as well into other aspects of my own practice that have informed and enhanced the experience of Qigong.

The seminar will be held, January 9th – February 14th, on:

Mondays 5:0o PM and 7:00 PM

Tuesdays 11:00 AM

Students should plan to attend at least one hour-long session a week, but are welcome and encouraged to attend additional classes for more guided repetition. Those interested are welcome to try a class in the first week for free. Seminar fee= $10/week

December 6, 2011

Why Martial Arts?

I’ve had the chance to try a few different kinds of exercise and methods for improving the body and mind. Soccer, PE classes, lacrosse, yoga, running, swimming, and other pursuits. My experience here in Wudang has helped me understand how vitally important maintaining your body is (I’ve come to think of it as rather like brushing your teeth- you feel better if you do it, and if you don’t, you won’t have much to work with a few years down the road). But so much of my training here is only tangentially martial in nature. So sometimes I wonder, “Why martial arts?” Couldn’t I be just as happy studying yoga or some other art that would keep my mind and body connected without the occasional traumatic punch to the face? Why do I instinctively feel that there is something special about martial arts?

I have quite a few answers for myself, but recently I have been thinking about a new way in which the “martial” bit of martial arts is crucial. What it does is it teaches, in very clear, black and white terms, the lessons of personal responsibility and acceptance. Under the supervision of an attentive teacher or master, the dynamics of a fight or sparring match (and the preparation for such) strip away excuses and provide clear consequences. Getting hit stinks. You quickly learn to want to avoid that at all cost. But if you got hit, it is because you let your opponent hit you. Hitting you is your opponent’s job. There is no, “I wasn’t ready,” no,” That’s not fair,” no, “Can we do that over?” At the same time, you can’t dwell on the pain of the last hit. You have to accept it instantly and move on, or experience it again, and worse.

Under a good teacher or master, this acceptance of pain and responsibility spreads from the fighting scenario into daily training, and from there into daily life. If you got hit, you need to prepare better, train harder. If you didn’t train hard enough, it’s because you felt ill because you ate too much or didn’t sleep enough the night before. If you didn’t sleep enough, it’s because you procrastinated at work or school and had to stay up late to finish a project. You are %100 responsible for all of these things. At the same time, when once you mess up, you have to accept it and use it to get ready for next time, because next time is coming. There are other ways to learn these lessons, but the martial arts are teaching them to me in clear, non-negotiable terms.

November 17, 2011

Adapt to Survive

Kungfu stage show by a local performance team

As I mentioned in my 5th International Wudang Taichi Tournament post, traditional martial arts are undergoing a period of change. Well, more accurately, they are constantly changing, not only from generation to generation or year to year, but from moment to moment. I will not try to define traditional martial arts, because to do so would be to limit and diminish them. But I can talk about the faces the art presents, the way it adapts to narrow niches in order to survive in the material world. Survival means that the narrow but popular and materially viable niche thrives and sustains the art so that a new generation can be trained in the deeper traditions.

From the stories our Master has told us, kungfu schools here in Wudang a few decades ago resembled nothing so much as street gangs. I speculate, but it seems the art was still reeling from a loss of relevance. Individuals were still trying to exist as they had when fighting was the daily test of the art. But in truth modern combat, in warfare and elsewhere, had no place for them. Still speculating, but I think the turf fighting between kungfu schools that our Master has spoken of was evidence of Wudang kungfu’s displacement. While a few individuals kept the spirit of the art, its true face was lost behind an outdated mask. Kungfu schools attracted few students and slowly dwindled away. After all, why send your child to a school if the only future it offers is violence and eventual imprisonment?

More recently, traditional kungfu has adapted by taking on new appearances. It caters to entertainment, tourism, sports, and health. Each of these outlets are, as I said of the Taichi tournament, narrow but necessary expressions of kungfu. Movies and TV keep the art alive in the popular imagination, though they twist the image so as to be more attractive. Performing for tourists and teaching them for a few days at a time brings in a little much-needed money, and wins the support of political and economic leaders who also profit from the tourists. Making a sport out of the art provides an publicly acceptable competitive outlet, the same thing the old street gang kungfu schools failed to do. Kungfu also appeals to those who search for a well-rounded health practice, though this too is only a small facet of the larger practice.

But if the art only exists in these outlets, it is lost. No one of them (or even all of them together) encompasses the breadth and depth of the traditional teachings. Nonetheless, we who want to preserve the old ways must accept both the necessity of these outlets and the responsibility of maintaining the integrity of our practice. And hope that someday the world will once again value this hidden treasure.

November 9, 2011

Yuxugong Temple

I thought I’d post some pics of the temple where we train every day.

This is Yuxugong Temple. It was built in 1413 by the 3rd Ming Emperor. Today it is hard to imagine what it must have looked like then, rich with ornate buildings and lush gardens. It was expanded in the 1500s, and over the following centuries it has burned down, been rebuilt, and burned down again.

Workers are now in the process of renovating it. In 2008, when I first came here, they had just re-roofed the surrounding wall and some of the remaining stone structures. They are now rebuilding the main altars, wood structures of which nothing was left but the footings. In a few more years, it will be a proper tourist trap and we wouldn’t want to train there anymore even if were permitted to. But for now it is beautifully run-down in places, and an inspiring place to train every day.

Keyed locations: 1) Entrance gate 2) Red gate (with inner and outer courtyards where we train) 3) Location of newly rebuilt minor altar 4) Location of newly rebuilt main temple building 5) Former hospital buildings which are now our dormitories.