Getting the Shocking Force

Today I was reminded of an important lesson in training. It's simple, but there is a story, which is good for people that come here to read stories.

I've felt for a while that my shocking strikes, particularly straight shocking and turning the body shocking, have been a bit weak. Not only that, but I felt they kind of made my back hurt, so I figured I must be doing them incorrectly. Discouraged, I reacted by doing fewer of them. The situation did not improve.

Finally, I've decided this situation is not acceptable any longer, and that aspect of my training must take priority and be addressed. I broke out the Lion system videos the other day and watched. Then I thought about them and played with them, but I still only had a little success. Then I did it again today, taking time to write down the requirements of the strike that are presented on the video, the physiological methods by which the shocking force is generated, and my observations of things not spoken about but plainly done in the execution of the strikes. After studying my lists for a moment, I set to doing the strikes, and I did a gracious plenty of them.

I had to start by doing them essentially in slow motion, feeling my way through them, trying to discover where the change from 'slow' to 'fast' occurred and determine what my body should be doing to make that happen. Pretty soon, by remembering the video (in which I saw things that I hadn't before noticed), paying attention, and experimenting with myself, I started to feel what seemed correct. A few more strikes later, paying close attention to what I was doing and feeling, it started to set itself like concrete. Before I knew it, I was at a regular striking cadence, feeling strong at least three out of four times, and glad to be doing it. One of the kids asked me if I knew I was making the whole room shake.

Then I rested and did it again later, and again later, and again later, etc., performing all-in-all around five hundred straight shocking strikes interspersed with the shocking palm strengthening posture in the middle position. Then I applied what I was learning from it to the turning the body strike, and it made my back hurt from the word go.

Experimenting and remembering old lessons I had learned about the proper positioning and use of the waist and then contemplating the physics of the situation, I realized my problem almost at once, tried the strike again correcting for it, and felt no pain. Within a few strikes, my power was increasing, though it's not yet to the level that my straight shocking is. I did a few more of them a couple of times, but I've decided to focus primarily on the straight shocking to build the foundation before moving on. By the end of the week, though, I expect to feel the strength I've been missing for over two years of training those strikes.

The big take-home lesson I got was something I already preach but wasn't intelligent enough to practice in this case: if you want to get better at a strike, review the requirements and then do it, a lot, intelligently.

Shocking Power

We got together again this week to train, meeting for the second time at our new home, which is a pavilion on public land near a school. We appreciated a thunderstorm from the wall-free enclosure last week, and when we got there today, it was hot and humid but certainly not raining. Immediately we kicked it off, getting in some good basic training and a little group turning before investigating together the methods of generating and using the shocking force, studying the Lion System strikes of that palm and trying to feel and find it carefully, sharing our insights with one another when we had them. It's weird to be hit with, that's one thing. For what we could do, which isn't much I'm sure, it is startling and off-balancing with kind of a residual desire to exhale when hit in the chest/shoulder area. Taking it in the arm fairly well hurts; in fact, it felt a bit like a concrete slab being dropped onto us, that discomfort seeming to build with repeated strikes, leaving the arm-under-fire feeling heavy and dead. The shocking strikes and our experiments with them were evidently our rain dance this evening.

Just as we were feeling like we made some progress with the the strikes, a thunder-bumper broke out around us, this time much windier than before. In fact, our concrete training floor was soon inlaid with streams and ponds from the wind driving the water in (I read online when I got home that roughly 1.25", 3.2 cm, fell while we were there). Then it calmed down, the lightning receding as we counted the brighter strokes off to estimate their distances: less than a mile... a mile and a half... just over two miles.... Then, all of a sudden, just as we really got back into investigating some of the forces contained in striking, sharing what nuggets we had each gleaned in previous workshops with He Jinbao in the falls past along with what we've come to understand since those times, what could only have been a microburst hit us. The wind and heavy rain came essentially from nowhere, and if I had to guess, the blast, which lasted probably for two or three minutes straight, was in the 80 mph range (130 km/hr), numbers roughly confirmed from another online weather map. It came from the east-northeast, and in that direction is a small hill that lays only feet from the pavilion, rising higher than the structure's approximately ten-foot roof. The wind and rain were so intense that they actually came in from that side, despite the hill, and blew straight through, coming out the far side, absolutely soaking us in the process. My shoes, in fact, are essentially a swamp, but I was soaked to dripping from head to toe. That ended our party pretty much on the dot, though we stood there together laughing our heads off over the sheer power and surprise of the thing, and, if you'll pardon the pun, we were all three feeling pretty charged-up by the whole thing.

The moral of this story, I guess, is that sometimes we should be careful about which rain dances we choose to do... or that we should accept what nature gives us and enjoy it!

Welcome Back, Old Friend II

Again I get to welcome back an "old friend" to my turning scene, only I'm not sure how excited I am about this one. The other day I noted that I was lucky enough to turn for two and a half hours straight because of a combination of fortunate events, one of which was a reduction in the temperature. So much for that.

The old friend I'm referring to today is heat. Though the NWS disagrees with me, the thermometer in my yard tells me that it was floating right around 95 (F -- 35C for my non-American readers) this evening when I got out on the circle to go right round, baby, right round, like a record, baby [sorry... it just popped into my head and had to be typed to keep it from getting stuck there!]. I was sweating rivers! Training in 90+ (32+) weather is tough. It's also a cold, hard reality (HA!) in this neck of the woods.

To make matters even more awesome, the temperature decrease on Friday night was actually due to an impending torrential downpour arriving Saturday morning. The extra moisture has had two wonderful effects: 1) raising our relative humidity to "won't evaporate sweat but will stifle and limit visibility," and 2) calling forth every mosquito that apparently ever lived. I turned for about twenty-four minutes last night, being bitten at least a dozen times in uncomfortable places like the middle of my back or on my kidney, and tonight's twenty minutes saw the same thing. Both times, my hanging it up from the turning was caused by being eaten by other creatures, which I declare (at least at my level) to be a justifiable cause for hanging it up. I will note that due to my soreness from the marathon on Friday night, I would have been pushing it to get forty good minutes either day today, but if forced I probably could have done an hour at least on one of them.

One interesting side-effect of all the turning, though, has presented itself via the annoying insects. When they bite, it's the same as for everyone else (I assume). In the last year or so, though, since my training, particularly my turning, has really been elevated, the bites don't seem to itch for very long, maybe an hour or two. Usually, in fact, within an hour and a half, I cannot even find the place where I had been bitten, the swelling having more or less subsided completely and the itching having been forgotten. I'd like to attribute that to qi, but I'm not so hasty. Still, reading rather heavily on the matter last week unveiled to me that the reaction to the mosquito's saliva that we experience as an irritating bite largely has to do with how the immune system responds to it. Initially, when we're quite young, apparently, we get little or no reaction, but as we experience increasing amounts of exposure to the compound, our reaction intensifies. This, I think, is typical in children who seem to be driven absolutely mad by the bites. Eventually, largish swollen areas replace the characteristic bumps of our youths, and this is known to be caused by a further increased sensitivity to the mosquito saliva, the immune system essentially overreacting to the stimulus. In a small percentage of adults, though, a phenomenon similar to what I'm experiencing now occurs, though no one's perfectly sure why, knowing only that it must have to do with immune function. If I'm not mistaken, the Chinese medicine approach to immunity has a lot to do with defensive energy, wei qi. Perhaps one of the side-effects of extended training in an art like baguazhang enhances that aspect of our energetic makeup, and perhaps it has some effect on the mosquito-bite phenomenon I experience now. In any case, I feel at least slightly justified in owing to my training at least a part of this small benefit to my life, though being bitten still sucks.

Changes in Turning

Life is sometimes tough on training, and sometimes it hands the opportunity to us on a silver platter. Today was a good day to me in terms of Life letting me arrange it to suit my burning desire to turn. First of all, it was very unlikely that there would be distractions. Second of all, it wasn't nearly as hot today as usual (a crisp 82 when I got started). Third of all, it was even vaguely overcast, so the sun wasn't likely to cook me, something helped even more by being able to wait until early evening to start.

So I got on the circle and I turned, having done only a few strikes and a few minutes of static postures earlier in the day (and twenty-some-odd minutes of qigong, but that's not part of this discussion). It started to rain. I turned. It stopped raining. I turned. The sun came out. I turned. It started to rain again. I turned. The rain stopped, and the sun came out again. I turned. The sun turned deep orange. I turned. The sun disappeared behind the school on top of the hill on my western horizon. I turned. Earth's shadow enveloped the atmosphere above me, turning it a deep color with shining clouds set in it. I stopped turning and got that weird feeling that my arms didn't belong to me again. I checked the clock. I had turned for one hundred and fifty minutes, approximately the first seventy of which were in the initial direction.

Now, I'm relaxing. I might do some strikes or forms, but I'm not sure how much power I possess. I'm very hungry, and my knees are a little wobbly from staying down so much (which it was hard to do during the last few minutes -- my inability to stay low was my main reason for stopping when I did). There's some vague soreness and tightness in my neck, and I kind of want to take a nap.

I don't know what tomorrow will be like yet, but I know it involves studying a lot of applications like most Saturdays tend to for me. I don't think I'll turn so long either. We shall see.

Back to Nature

I got lucky today. The fam and I took off for the Great Smoky Mountains for a hike up a little creek there called the Middle Prong. We walked about four and a quarter miles in to a nice three-tiered waterfall beset with picturesque pools and framed with rhododendrons whose blossoms are failing and falling now that summer is getting late. For some reason that I can only guess has to do with their mating game, thousands, and I mean thousands, of spicebush swallowtail butterflies were all over the trail and the falls area. Once to the "top," I ditched my shoes and rolled up the hem of my shorts and waded out into the frigid mountain stream, sticking my hand and then my head into the cold, hard-falling water coming off the first tier of the falls, each of which was roughly fifteen to twenty feet in height. Once I adjusted to the temperature of the water, I found a comfortable spot near the middle of the pool but still close enough to catch spray off the falls and assumed the Lion Opens Its Mouth posture and did my standing in knee-deep, chilly water flowing down from a mountain spring located no more than a mile or so from where I was (the top of the mountain wasn't that far away).

My point is twofold. When the chance arises, I like to take my training out into "nature," not just out in my yard, but out in a less-tamed wilderness with cleaner air and a fresher spirit, although I realize that usually my training there has to be rather limited. Turning where I was wouldn't have been advisable due to the terrain, and strikes seemed to not fit the ambiance in the least. Secondly, just about everywhere I go offers a special and unique opportunity to train, to feel the familiar forces in an unfamiliar and perhaps wild environment. It's refreshing and different, and (if you have a camera with, which I did not today) it makes for interesting photos.

Though it wasn't "in the wild," last night, I turned in the dark since Life robbed me of the opportunity to do so during the day. Here, by Life I mean the children, really the child, who chose not to follow simple instructions and led us into a day-long ordeal of sorts. By the time I had the chance to turn, I took it, though it was already quite dark out. The most interesting sensation that came up in the practice was the impression that my slight remaining irritation at the ridiculousness of the day's events seemed to make me feel as though I was revolving around my circle more quickly than usual. According to the clock, I don't think I was, at least not appreciably so, but the sensation was that the entire affair was going much too quickly. It was an interesting experiment in how emotions can affect the quality of a turning session. My take is that it's definitely something to keep in mind.

Rain and Shine

I turned today in the rain, though it wasn't raining very hard, and the change was nice. Typically in July here, it's between 90 and 100(+) degrees (F) when I turn, and the humidity is high. If it's not storming, there's rarely wind here (we're a "Wind Zone 0"), which makes it feel all the more stifling. I get wet from my sweat and eventually dry out from the intensity of the heat and "running out" of sweat. Today, the temperature was a much more mild 80-ish, and though the humidity was through the roof, sweat got me less wet than did the constant but light precipitation that was really helping to keep me extra cool.

It feels good, no doubt, to turn in the sun, and so long as it's not an unbelievable downpour, it feels good to turn in the rain. Incidentally, having decided to "suck it up" in one such downpour, I've come to the conclusion that it's not much fun to turn then. Indeed, about all that session amounted to was "sucking," big time (I don't remember if it was that time or another when I almost fell off my circle because of the insanely slick clay-based mud). Monsoons aside, I think what I'm really getting at is that it just feels good to turn.

Strangely, I can clearly remember a time when the idea of turning for forty or more minutes was more of an act appropriate to Superman or long-forgotten Chinese legends... something that few mortals could aspire to, and turning in the rain was downright ridiculous. In fact, the first time I attempted to turn for a half an hour, I immediately noticed that I was going to have trouble, particularly since I had to change sides for the first time after only three minutes, which I thought were agonizing. I don't think I pushed out the half-hour. Now, most days, anything in the range of twenty minutes to an hour (or slightly more) is more vitalizing than exhausting, and I'm thrilled at the change.

A Thunderous Beginning

Our group met again for the first time, this time in our new home, and there was a raging thunderstorm going on when we got there. It was most cool to feel the wind on our faces (without the rain) and watch the lightning while standing in the Lion posture (turning around when we switched sides so we could keep watching it). We did strikes and turning to the rumble of increasingly distant thunder, and by the time we started to work on some applications and forms, a fairly nice rainbow had spread across the Eastern sky. It was, I think, a fitting tribute to getting together again and beginning anew this phase of our training. I'm very excited about this, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone.

On the Prowl and China-Dots

Okay, so I know this is going to sound corny coming right out of the gate, but it's happened twice now. While turning, I've been getting this bizarre feeling that doesn't last really long where I can kind of imagine what it would feel like to be a lion (or otherwise predatory cat) prowling around, stalking its prey. It's something of a subtle, thoughtful feeling with all of the glorious underpinnings of being ready to pounce and attack. Looking at it in text, I feel almost more silly admitting it, but I want to be honest about where my training seems to take me. Less bizarre but also of note is that my ribcage seems to be very hard now, almost like rock or something (though I'm not sure I'd go quite that far... I just needed an analogy). It happened to a lesser extent last year, but now it seems rather pronounced. I'm curious if that's an aspect of the "bagua body" I've heard about.

That makes me think.. sometimes I'm glad I feel like such a beginner in this art. I've been working at it for about two years and a half now, and while I feel like I've come along, it seems like the art still expands infinitely in front of me. I'm starting to think that feeling like this is a gift, though, not something to be concerned about. Beginners typically learn new information the quickest, and I haven't the slightest doubt that such a capacity is almost permanently necessary to advance. I think I'll strive to be, in that sense, the consummate beginner. Had I any ego about Yin Style anyway, it only takes about eleven seconds in the presence of He Jinbao to correct that. I try to keep that in mind when I train... there's a long way to go, and even he is serious about the fact that the ancestors in bagua had even higher skill than we can hope for.

As I mentioned a bit of my workout and consider that a function of this journal, I'll comment a bit on it since I am a bit excited about what I consider a decent "four-pillar day." Like usual, I didn't just turn today, though I didn't turn as long as I wanted to. Before I turned, I did strikes and forms, touching on every single one of the twenty-four basic Lion system strikes before I finished, some of which I was glad to review. When I got to turning, I felt great and strong. The shadow of my posture on the ground looked good, and it felt powerful and correct. Unfortunately, an unannounced visitor that would be weirded out and who needs not to be weirded out showed up as I was crossing the half-hour mark, and I dutifully ran away to preserve a slight semblance of normalcy for the people that aren't really involved in my life that come by (but are involved in my wife's business in a client way). So life and turning don't always mesh neatly, but that's alright. We live; we train; we adapt; we get on with it. Personally, I made up for it with additional standing postures and strike work later before going on a quick five-mile walk in a local park with the fam.

Though it's off-topic, I'm kind of excited to see that my readership has expanded from essentially non-existent to something I might jokingly call world-wide appeal, including but not limited to Sweden, Michigan, the Pacific Northwest, New York, ?? in middle America, and last, but uncomfortably not least, Beijing (hi Matt). For several weeks I've been keeping my eyes open for "China-Dots" on my map, and lo, they've begun to appear.

Let's keep this in perspective, though. Maybe soon I'll actually hit ten distinct readers in a day! Here's to dreaming.

Trifecta... then Fail

I did not turn for an hour yesterday.

I did three days in a row, which isn't much of a testament to my level of commitment, and then on Day Four, it fell to pieces. Life and a meeting for applications conspired together to take first my time and then my energy, and my turning total was exactly ten minutes, all in Lion, all in one direction, all without faltering in my posture despite a fair amount of discomfort. On the up side, once my partner-in-crime arrived, I managed to do roughly an hour worth of strikes, twenty minutes of forms work, and a fair bundle of applications plus we both took the time to give each other corrections, something we really need to spend a bit more time doing when we're together. The absence of having a regular class or training place did, it turns out, rob us of more than just less-dedicated students. After tweaking our techniques, though, we were ready to go on some apps, and I think we made a fair amount of progress in understanding some of the theory of the human body (and how to destroy it in a smooth, powerful, and almost elegant fashion).

There is a major upswing to the three days I did succeed in pulling an hour-plus on the circle. I'm convinced now that I can do an hour turning a day for a fairly large number of days straight if I need or want to. It's another mental barrier that has been destroyed. Now to succeed in the double-kilo-circle (2000 rev., approx. 3.5 hours) or maybe just the three-hour turn....

Since I mentioned our homelessness, I think I should comment on it. Our "study group's" largest barrier to training has been homelessness, which has persisted now for roughly fourteen months. We lost our place to train together via a odd string of events, and our group of roughly seven or eight guys started to crumble. I think now we have just the three of us, though one or two of the old gang want to start again and a few new faces want to give it a try. Our commitment to Yin Style Bagua, we've decided, has been severely tested in this time period in which we rarely get together to work out or study collaboratively. I, therefore, think we are justified in saying that we've proven ourselves committed and really made a statement about our desire to study and learn Yin Style since for nearly a year and a quarter it's been a mostly individual affair for each of us.

"Why were we homeless?" you may wonder. Well, money. It's not that none of us have it, though we're certainly not rich or even "well-off." It's not that none of us is willing to part with it for training. It's that we've decided that money should not be part of our training. Classes have been, as long as our group has existed, and will continue to be free of charge. We say "you pay with your sweat and dedication." To get a location that charges us rent would be to upset that situation since none of us is financially powerful enough to just eat the cost of renting a space. Finding a place that will let you use a space free of charge is vastly more difficult that one might suspect, particularly since none of us belongs to a local church (the only avenue we haven't really tried).

Our current solution to homelessness may not be a great permanent one, I don't think, particularly because I don't know how it will hold up in winter in the evenings (since it's dark then and lighting is questionable in the facility), unless we adopt a daytime, weekend schedule in the cooler months. There's a pavilion at a school near here that is considered, according to the principal, to be a public park area after 6pm so long as nothing gets messed up. That's enough to keep rain off our heads, which is really all we're after, though we don't particularly want to mess up the grass in a public park somewhere with our turning. I mean, we think our circles are cool, but I'm thinking the city won't appreciate them being all over their park lands. In any case, I'm hoping our solution will serve to aid in growing our group again to a strong dozen or so. It's definitely more likely to work than responding, when people ask where and when we get together, "Well... we don't really, and it's a long story...."

So... keep heart! Training can be accomplished, albeit probably more slowly that otherwise, even if the approach has to be largely individual with very little group interaction other than phone calls to keep us encouraged.

Learning to Suffer

Today's turning was agony almost from the word "go." I suffered through it for a total of sixty-one minutes, satisfying this ridiculous "hour per day" requirement that we're sticking with until we either adapt to it or realize that it is, over time, too much for the body to handle. I was in pain today from about the fourth minute, and there were several times that I tried to talk myself into a shorter session. Still, I persevered.

The thing is, I don't think real development can occur in Yin Style Bagua, or really in anything for that matter, without enduring overwhelming suffering in one aspect or another. Turning like this leads to breakthroughs, if not breakdowns, and, inter alia, changes a person's outlook on what is and isn't possible. I think to make progress in Yin Style, sometimes it is just necessary to deal with it.

I realized immediately that heroics like those of yesterday were going to be nearly impossible today. The suffering and soreness were too intense for it to be otherwise. I decided to try to do fifteen minutes in each direction, at which point I would choose how to finish it. The first direction was rough, but the second direction sent thought after tempting thought my way, almost convincing me that what I didn't do "to the right" could easily be made up for the next time to the left. I didn't give in. In fact, I said at one point, fully aloud and to no one in particular: "Suffer, bitch!" Forty some-odd times around the circle later or so, I changed sides again. Almost instantly, it was agony. My course was then set: ten to the left, ten to the right; five to the left, five to the right. I stuck to it after that, save that I did six to the right on my final go-around. I kept the posture; I sucked it up; and I pushed through what I wasn't sure I could push through. Now I just have strikes and forms to do before I stand and go to bed.

Oh.. and I've come up with what hopefully is a partial solution to the mud issue on my circle: sand. We have a pile that I've been meaning to put to the purpose for almost six months, but for the past few days, I've been hauling a small bucketful of sand over to my circle and depositing it in the "yin side" before I walk. Hopefully, grinding lots of well-draining sand into the earth on that side will help keep the mud issue to a minimum. I can, though, turn indoors if need be.

Three days, almost two hundred minutes on the circle. I'd be lying to say I'm not feeling it, but I think I'm feeling it in a good way as much as I am sore.

"慢慢慢! 是, 好." (Màn màn màn! Shì, hǎo. -- Slow slow slow! Yeah, good.)

I started today with an hour on the circle... well, sixty-four minutes, to be precise, before I changed sides. After I changed, I didn't have a lot left for the other side, and by the time I finished, I had hit 76:10 for the day. I'm a bit sore, but I feel very alert and alive as well. It's nice, but I don't know how much striking or forms-work my shoulders and shoulder-related muscles are going to be up for. I'm keeping them relaxed, but my arms are heavy. In fact, it's not so much my deltoids as the supporting muscles and the tendons in my shoulders that feel worn, and nothing in particular feels tight. I hope that means I'm doing it correctly.

The reason for the title of today's post is that I've noticed that I've slowed down on my circle, and admonishments to go slowly are commonplace (and in Mandarin) in workshops with "The Man." Although I'm not sure I'd get it, I can definitely picture myself hearing the title from He Jinbao seeing that I've taken that advice. [Disclaimer: I used an online Chinese-to-English dictionary for the Mandarin. I don't speak Chinese and might have it very wrong. I apologize if I've insulted your mother or something else.]

A while ago, I was working twelve revolutions per minute like clockwork. Then it was ten. Now, it's slightly slower than ten... almost nine. At the same time, my balance and breathing feel more steady, and my waist feels more engaged. I noticed while turning barefoot yesterday that both of my feet automatically grasp firmly into the ground every time I step -- something that's hard to tell while wearing shoes.

An Hour a Day

The other day, I got all excited about turning for around forty minutes and then found an e-mail in my box reminding me of the importance of "an hour a day." That just sounds ridiculous, I thought, and I kind of got bummed out about my thirty-eight minutes of effort that I had just completed, something I'm usually pretty happy with. Then, to make me feel worse, after a long, effective applications session in which I cooked up a nice little escape from "the clench" (one a BJJ black belt thought was novel enough and interesting enough to make me teach to him when he saw me working out the kinks with it), life happened with a big ol' delicious hamburger, and turning did not.

Today, I got up with a varied schedule and managed to do a fair number of each of a couple of forms, emphasizing in my mind's eye various ways the techniques could be applied, and then ran through the three basic chopping palm strikes with plenty of power for enough time to make me feel like I had done something. Though I decided that for the rest of the summer, at the least, I think I'll be picking a palm and tearing up the basic strikes therein each day, I still hadn't turned as sunset began.

Sucking it up and avoiding the mud-pit my circle became after a heavy rain last night and three heavy rains this morning, along with the high likelihood of yet another heavy rain this evening (which came and has gone), I turned inside tonight, which normally I don't care for much (but it beats the driveway, hands-down). It wasn't completely inside, in the usual sense. Sure, there was a roof over my head, four walls around me, and a concrete floor under my feet, but one of those walls has essentially open windows all the time. Therefore, the conditions in that room match the conditions outside save precipitation and with a mite less wind (though with the doors into the room opened up and other windows open, it does have some airflow). It's nice to turn in, though a bit small. I got started, thinking I should turn for an hour at the least, and then I scared myself into actually doing it: sixty-one minutes, forty-eight seconds.


The way I scared myself was by thinking of another moving work I read about someone on another internal path. That character was set the task of showing up at his teacher's house every morning very early (dawnish), cleaning the house his teacher purposefully messed up just so it could be cleaned, and then would be told "stand in horse stance until I get back." The admonishment "if you don't, I'll know, and you need not come back here again" was added. The teacher would then leave for hours at a time, four or maybe six, and the student was left to suffer. When standing in mabu alone wasn't difficult enough, he'd be told to hold a bucket full of water while he stood. This went on for months and months. What I did tonight was remember that He Jinbao is 1) Chinese, 2) a high-level teacher, 3) of the old school, and 4) too busy and too good to fool with undedicated students. I imagined him telling me, "Turn an hour a day every day or you can't do bagua with us any more. If you don't, I'll know."

The hour was surprisingly easier than I expected. That's probably 99.99% to do with the state of mind I put myself in, 0.005% with the preparation I've given my body, and 0.005% with sheer gritty determination. Hopefully the same trick will work tomorrow!

Totally Stoked

Bradley, Rand, and I got together today for the first time in a long, long while, and it was completely awesome. After studying the Lion qinna techniques (from the video) and discussing a few other applications and drills, we left the situation completely brimming over with excitement for training. Our thinking is that getting together once weekly, or at least once biweekly, is very important to our development, and so we're going to try to continue to do that on a regular basis, particularly since we're not entirely 'homeless' any longer. I have to say that I'm greatly, greatly looking forward to it.

Also, it looks like Bradley might be doing the 100 days of standing while I do it. I haven't started yet because my wife and I have decided to do it together and will be starting in a couple of days, when it's a bit better suited to what's going on (and we're a bit more prepared for it).

Welcome Back, Old Friend

I turned again today for a little over twenty minutes.... I had intended a longer session, but the natives (read: the kids) were restless (read: fighting), so I had to hang it up earlier than I wanted. I'm impressed somewhat with how stable my emotions remained while I finished out my turning, wound it down, and closed it up... and then when I dealt with the offenders.

Before they broke into my turning time, though, I was glad to welcome back an old friend, one that's been so rarely present in the past six months that I almost forgot he existed. Last summer, for lack of a better term, I called this friend an "arm-leading feeling," and it is an odd sensation that I'm being led around the circle by my arm or that I'm turning almost automatically, though the sensation is powerfully of the "wheeling outward" sort on the lead arm. It was pleasant and short-lived, probably because I gave it attention (which almost always scares it off), but when it happens, it always gives me the impression that I'm doing something right. It's nice to have received some feedback directly from my body, I suppose, and it's particularly nice that the feedback wasn't "way to break me, stupid," like it is sometimes.

After that, I studied the moving with the force forms that I know and thought about their structure and application before stressing my body a bit with more lying-step drills. Finally, I came in and my wife, who happens to be a yoga instructor, inter alia, led the children and I through a brief yin yoga (meridian stretching) session. It was really great and went exceptionally well with the needs of my body until one of the children opened her mouth to say something stupid. My practice wasn't lost, but unfortunately, my wife's composure was almost utterly destroyed when one of the girls said, during a guided meditation, "Mama, it's much easier to relax when people aren't talking so much." I'm guessing, based on the amount of fidgeting, insomnia, and stress-related psychosomatic disorders that the child experiences that she's not much of an expert on relaxing, so I'm not sure where she's coming from. She's also, apparently, no better at tact than she was a month ago.

Soon, meaning tonight or tomorrow, I plan to begin a one-hundred day practice of zhan zhuang, basing my decision upon the obvious benefits it brings to me and the fact that in eleventy billion sources on neigong or (neidan) qigong, the practice is cumulative, each day building on the day before it. It's said that one hundred days will lay a foundation in the practice, and that missing a day requires adding two or three to make up for it. I'm going to test my yi and shen and see what I can do about committing to one hundred consecutive days of thirty or more minutes of zhan zhuang per day. In addition, I'm trying to keep an equal number of consecutive days turning, even if all I have strength or time for is five minutes. Since it's not strictly baguazhang, I don't believe I'm going to keep detailed track of the qigong on here, but I may mention it from time to time, particularly if it impacts my practice.

Gratitude

While my wife was doing a yoga video about an hour ago, I heard the lady instructing remind her viewers/students to always give gratitude for the opportunity to do yoga.

I think such gratitude is immensely appropriate for practitioners of Yin Style Baguazhang, and I'm very thankful for the reminder as well as the opportunity.

Man and Beast

Turning must be an interesting activity because it attracts a large amount of interest from both man and beast. First, there are the neighbors. I have several neighbors, all but one of whom have asked me what in the world I'm doing while I'm turning. All of those think it's pretty cool. One set, though, does not ask. Instead, when I'm turning, if they are aware of it, they come out to stare and point. Sometimes they stare and point longer than on other days (the time they spend is inversely proportional to the distance the temperature is away from 75 degrees Fahrenheit), but nearly every time they become cognizant of my turning, they come out to watch, like it's somehow a spectacle or in any grossly observable way different from on other days.

Second, there are the aforementioned neighbors' dogs, whom typically become aware of my turning about a quarter of the way through (after ten or fifteen minutes, usually) and begin barking at me from about one hundred yards away as if I'm trying to tear down their gate and plunder their poop farm of a yard. The dogs obviously (by watching their behavior much of the time) want more attention from said neighbors, and eventually, the rampant barking attracts them so that they can watch. It's quite the cycle. The dogs, it seems, have trained the people, but I understand that happens quite frequently in pet-owner relationships. The neighbors, nonetheless, are stupid. When their dogs bark at five, six, or seven in the morning, if asked about that behavior, they say that they couldn't hear it, though they were certainly awake (at least at seven) and that they must have been barking at "some kids out playing." How many kids are out playing at five a.m.? None. I'm not even turning then. In fact, I've never turned at five a.m. (though I have at six a few times, which did not get their dog going).

Third, there are insects. The South is a wonderful place for those, and various flies, mosquitoes, and several "other" category insects seem to have a wonderful time with a turner during the summer months. Sometimes, the sweating is so intense that an insect will land on my arm and , getting stuck, drown before it can take off again. None of it really bothers me except trying to keep the posture through being bitten by a mosquito, stung by a sweat bee, or have a humming mosquito try to make a camp in my ear.

Least offensive are the birds, which merely serve to distract me, particularly since they seem to be spending a lot more time a lot closer to my circle than they used to while I'm turning. They'll sit on the fence or even sometimes on the ground just a few feet from me and sing. It's hard not to choose to watch them because they're quite interesting and rarely so close. Today, for instance, a small gray bird came near, and I noticed that when it sang, it's entire body warbled with its note. I keep find myself wondering if one of these days a bird will choose to land on my outstretched arm or on the one above my head, and then I wonder if I could remain placid enough to prevent scaring it off if it did. It would be strange. Sometimes the birds distract me in other ways. Particularly, at least once a week I see some kind of National Geographic action involving one of a handful of species of native hawks or falcons. Occasionally, the bird of prey is carrying a small rodent or bird off into the distance, but more often it is being pestered and chased off by other birds, usually very small ones, although crows sometimes join in the sport. It's hard not to watch.

The kids, I guess, deserve a spot here as well now that they're back from their three-week adventure with the relatives. My training has taken a serious nosedive since their return, and it's not because I've been spending more time with them so much as it is because they're very noisy and almost needy. Constantly, it seems, they want or need something done, have done something poorly enough that it needs semi-immediate attention or remedy, or are carrying on, usually arguing with each other, especially at times when they think they can get away with it (like when I'm turning). That's quite distracting as well.

I think I remember talking about "the Tao" a few weeks ago and about how in the "modern" world such distractions are part of the training and should be embraced. I'm not feeling that way nearly as strongly right now after having had so much time without the kids, but I'm hoping I will again soon.

The Six that Contain the Eight.

I've felt all eight forces now, and I could describe them in a fair amount of detail, though I feel the seizing and grasping tend to be slightly ambiguous where one stops and the other begins. After mentioning this research to a fellow much further along the path than I, I was applauded for my attention and effort and admonished to remember the six much more basic forces that are vastly more important: drilling out, pulling in, rolling out, wrapping back in, dropping the elbow, and relaxing the shoulder. Those came with the line "Lion is Lion," followed by "sweeping is sweeping," and then et cetera is et cetera. Point taken, and those forces have been a new, actually easier research focus for the Lion posture. Thus, in the Lion posture, we could say that there are the six that contain the eight.

Actually, those six apply in all of the strikes to the greatest extent that the body can handle or manifest. All I can say is.. wow. When I feel them, concentrating on them, and strike, my power feels full and developed. When I forget them, I'm strong but empty. They are critical. Combining them, standing there, I immediately felt my forearm unify with my arm, my arm unify with my shoulder, and my shoulder unify with my torso, all of which is driven efficiently and powerfully by my waist. Amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Now to just successfully manifest it in more than 10% of the rising sweeping strikes I perform and in the remaining 100% of the other umpteen (we could argue twenty-three, but that argument is hollow) Lion System strikes.

Adaptation and Research

My body, I think, is starting to adapt to the new training elements. The leg routine is physically challenging but no longer destroys me. In fact, I can comfortably walk over six or seven miles now (my wife and I typically go for walks in the evenings), even after turning (30+ minutes) and doing stepping strikes and forms, so I think it has improved me. Furthermore, I can turn for more than half an hour again without extreme force of will being invoked, which I suppose means that my upper body is adjusting nicely to the gripping exercises and, particularly, to the zhan zhuang, and its crazy demands on my frontal deltoids and rhomboids. I wish I could say I can feel my energy level rising, but I feel mostly the same, if not a little calmer and more centered. Qi-related sensations have returned to my standing practice and meditation and even somewhat to my turning, though, so perhaps that's a symbol of progress, as is my highly increased ability to stand for longer periods. I sort of lament the fact that I don't have a high-level instructor in neidan exercises, though. If He Jinbao counts as one, then he's not offering any direct, overt instruction in the matter, nor is he doing any 'hands-on attunement' of the inner situation. It's said "when the student is ready, the teacher shall appear," so perhaps I'm less ready than I'm inclined to believe.

Since I am going this so alone (meaning without frequent direct contact with a teacher), as are most of the practitioners of Yin Style Baguazhang in the world right now, being that He Jinbao is only accessible to us for a very small fraction of the year, I've decided to stop 'practicing' bagua. Henceforth, there will be training and there will be research; the two being related since in any experientially based art, true training is an act of research. My first project is a detailed investigation of the most basic exercise in Yin Style Bagua, or at least the first one that I learned: the static Lion Opens Its Mouth standing posture, as well as that posture's role while turning. I sat contemplating last night what I would write about if I was asked to thoroughly describe the Lion representational posture, and I realized that my understanding of it must be somewhat weak. He Jinbao told us that all eight striking methods (sweeping, cutting, chopping, hooking, shocking, blocking, seizing, and grasping) of the Lion system are contained in that single posture. I'm almost certain I've felt the first four and know their location and method of action, but I'm more or less entirely lost on the last four. Finding those forces and focusing the mind upon them, either one at a time or all simultaneously, seems fundamental to the internal aspect of training Yin Style, Lion System. Therefore, I need to crystallize my understanding of the first four and develop an understanding of the last four. He Jinbao said, "Even if your body cannot produce all of the requirements of a posture or technique, focusing the yi on those requirements will eventually lead to the body finding them. Furthermore, while theorizing has its place, true development can only occur with practice and experience." Therefore, my method of research will be to search deeply mentally while focusing my intent on the requirements, trying to feel and thereby understand the forces in question. Eventually, also, I need more direct experience with what is meant to be felt in the waist and legs. Intellectually, I know this turns, that is tight, this one pushes, and that one pulls back, but experientially, I've barely touched these things.

In addition, I reckon my mind is a bit too active still, though it's much calmer than it was a month or two months ago. I may, soon, start to carefully document a huge proportion of my thoughts and thought processes in order to increase my awareness of them. I suspect my mind (xin) is still running the show and doing the job rather poorly, preventing my xin and yi from harmonizing (the first internal harmony). If I understand the source of the wildness of my xin, then I can marry it with my yi and develop much more deeply and effectively. This will require time, which luckily, thanks to my career, I have a plenitude of for the next month and a half (thought eventually, I'm going to have to start working on math again...).