What are you training for? A Catch-22

In any martial art, but particularly (from my experience) in Yin Style Bagua (though this might be more broadly applicable to internal martial arts), there is a certain Catch-22 to good and effective training. It really comes down to what you're training for.

Re: Turning the circle, keeping it real (by me) on Yin Style Bagua -- Knoxville

If you've seen it, great. If you haven't, check out my post on the blog I made for our study group concerning circle turning practice: Yin Style Bagua -- Knoxville: Turning the circle, keeping it real. As the day went on, I thought more about what I wrote, and I have more to say about it. Since I feel that what I have to say about it is more personal than "official," I'm saying it on this blog instead of on the group training blog.

Mental discipline, turning the circle and other grinding

Because of my desire to improve that aspect of my Yin Style Bagua training and the resultant new year's resolution to turn more, I've been on the circle this week far more than what has (shamefully) been average in the last while. That, of course, has me thinking about turning more, and, for the purposes of this blog, that has me thinking about the challenges related to turning. Of course, these lessons are far more broadly applicable than this particular useful, if esoteric, practice.

Armchair Training

Training in an armchair? What the hee-haw? Before anyone salivates like I'm about to throw out some crazy awesome secret tip for how you can achieve development without having to get out of your comfy lazy-boy recliner (such tips do not exist in real martial arts or development practices of any sort), let me point out to you my predicament and the reality of this. I'm injured in a way where standing and walking are kind of out for the moment, except for bare-minimum requirements. It's absolutely amazing how much pain and impediment a toe can cause you, let me just say that.

So I have this rule: never zero that I've talked about before. How can I hold myself to "never zero" if I can't really even move around? Standing postures? Nope, not with this injury, at least not in full. Standing with wide legs or toes digging into the earth (especially that second one) is blinding pain right now. That's out until I'm healed up.

Well, while development is considerably lower, there are modifications of lots of the exercises that can be done while sitting. I even trained the saber! Several of the isometric postures with the saber can be trained without having to get up if your feet, knees, or legs are in no shape to let you train properly. Please note: this is not a substitute for proper training, you hee-haw, this is making the most of a crappy situation. While holding your body in an active, upright posture, the saber can be held out in a variety of ways to strengthen various parts of the arm and hands. Here are a few examples:

• Hold the saber overhead as in "green dragon shoots to the sea;"
• Hold the saber out in front, as in "black bear carries the mountain on its back" or "rooster stomps into battle;"
• Hold the saber out in front or directly out to one side as if completing a chop or stab;
• Hold the saber in front vertically, as in "monkey king offers incense;"
• Slowly move the tip of the saber from horizontal to vertical by flexing only the wrist, usually done out in front;
• Slowly rotate the saber from pointing left to pointing right, and vice-versa, using primarily the forearm;
• Hold the saber extended and turn the blade over without moving the saber much, as if working a screwdriver, as far as it will go one way and then back the other, trying to keep the tip stationary.

Other things you can do don't require the saber if you can't get on your feet but are otherwise healthy and able. For instances:

• Focus on other activities like strength training (using weights) or stretching (preferably both);
• Watch some YSB instructional videos and make notes. If you're training properly, this is an activity that is usually hard to make time for (if you're like me, you're more time-limited than anything else in terms of what limits your total training);
• Review your notes from previous training sessions, video viewings, seminars, or intensives. Reviewing them can mean compiling them as well, which is harder but very useful;
• Train your mind. Try to do techniques, particularly combos, forms, and applications vividly in your mind. Research shows that this kind of training is nearly essential for greatness in a skill. The mind should be central in your training anyway, so if your body is telling you that you can't train any other way, train this way;
• Do modified versions of exercises that accommodate your injury. For instance, standing normally isn't too bad for me now that I'm on the mend (but not fixed), so I can do isometric standing strengthening postures without putting any hard effort into my legs, and this practice isn't causing me pain. It is, however, giving me some development in my upper body and building skill in doing the exercises correctly on that half.

As I'm learning, letting yourself heal from an injury before pressing foward is critical or you'll lose more training time than you would by doing a bunch of halfed training sessions. I learned the hard way, when this injury was initially on the mend and got to "mostly feeling better but still injured" that doing a hard session too soon on an injury makes the injury worse. Instead of having to take another day of careful, controlled stuff like I mentioned above, I made things way worse and have lost nearly a week of good training time. One workout isn't worth losing six or seven (or more, depending on the injury)!

Thinking Practitioners

I read something a while back on a forum that was discussing an encounter between some guy and another, one of whom practices YSB. I guess they decided to play patty-cake and see who would come out on top, and YSB guy: not so much. Based on the kinds of things I wrote in my recent post: The Best Martial Art, I'm comfortable saying that I don't really give a crap about how things went there, though to the author's credit, he seems to have run into his own share of "our art is better then the rest" from the guy labeled "not so much." So why am I writing this?

Well, the dude that won this game of tag was the poster on said forum, and he carried an attitude that kind of irked me (as folks on such forums tend to do, hence that being about the fifth time in my life to have been on one). Moreover, he said something that I've been chewing on for a while about the type of folks that seem attracted to Yin Style, at least in the study group that he interacted with. I don't recall the exact wording and kind of refuse to look it up (because its ridiculous), but it goes something like this: "...with a white, middle-class, Nietzsche-reading philosophy major flair." He went on to say that he met He Jinbao one time and that he was thereupon "complimented on his Chinese" (and nothing more about the meeting). That amounts to a rhetorical slap (via a form of paralipsis) at the entire style that's hardly warranted, particularly considering how Jinbao probably acted in the actual meeting: cordial if not friendly.

This is strange to me. It's pretty clear that the guy's tone is pejorative in accusing these folks of being of the "middle-class, Nietzsche-reading philosophy major" ilk, not that this particular group of people is usually associated with fighting prowess. Still... I would guess it's fair to assume he means a particular kind of person by this description, that, devoid of other characteristics or demographics, I can't help but guess includes the descriptor: "intelligent."

But isn't that what one might want in a martial artist?

Though controversial enough in its own right, B.K. Frantzis (who also looks a bit like a white, middle-class, Nietzsche-reading philosopher kind), who is considered an authority on (internal) martial arts would argue so. His basic premise (as I read it in the book in the previous link) is that a big part of the idea of an internal art is to take fighting man as animal and elevate him to fighting man as human and then to fighting man as thinker. I think fairly he points out that while animals have a significant number of advantages in fighting, humans uniquely possess a degree of intelligence that grants us access to a sort of superiority. Furthermore, I tend to agree that by training an internal martial art, we connect that intellect with the fighter and grant him access to that superiority. I've heard a number of respectable folks say, "B.K. Frantzis... don't get me started on that guy," in tones that suggest that maybe I shouldn't read too much into what he has to say, but I've heard the same number of respectable folks, in virtue of those being the same respectable folks, say similar-sounding things to what I just attributed to Frantzis.

That leads me, as things often will, to a ponderance: Is being the thinking type really a negative in the martial arts world? and if so, why? I too frequently hear people talking about the virtues of being a "smart fighter," though a good bit of the time I wouldn't describe the person in question as being an intellectual. Maybe it's a matter of pragmatism: less theorizing and more acting because all the theory in the world isn't worth even a little bit of developed skill. In addition, there are a few too many white, middle-class, Neitzsche-reading, philosophy-major types out there that get into the esoterica of "internal martial arts" (typefaced as hoo-doo to illustrate their greater interest in the mystery of the Far Eastern occult than in anything concrete, particularly when "concrete" means difficult but worthwhile to train). Of course, I label those people as "kung-fu tards" and seriously wish they'd get real and stop giving the rest of us a bad image.

Ah well... I suppose this post was a rant as much as anything. Being an intellectual that enjoys martial arts (and white and middle-class, though not so much into Neitzsche but well-read enough to be able to say that), maybe I just had a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to reading that, or maybe it ate at insecurities that I have thanks to growing up a bit nerdy. On the other hand, I see direct value in chewing on (mulling over) what I'm training as well as the potential end result of that approach. Perhaps having seen that end result explains the apophatic rhetorical style of the author of the post that prompted mine. As a number of respectable folks would say: "Whatever gets you to sleep at night," I guess.

When Time Is Short: Training Ideas for When You're As Busy As I Am Right Now

I'm crazy busy right now. In fact, the only reason I'm typing on this is because I temporarily have a mental block on what I'm working on: preparing to defend my thesis. I've been given the task of preparing the entire defense by November 9, which is barely over two weeks away. I think usually people have the date pretty well narrowed down a few months in advance, so I figure this can only go "well." In any case, the posting will be a bit lighter than usual during this time, but when I'm kind of burnt up for the moment (as now), I'll find time for this sort of thing when I'm not squeezing in some training, which seems to help unknot my fatiguing brain.

I know a lot of folks are crazy busy much or almost all of the time, and so I think this is an appropriate topic, even if left drastically incomplete. As usual, I invite folks training other martial arts to comment and add in ideas, though I'll focus my post on what kinds of baguazhang-related training I squeeze in when my time is short.

Generally speaking, I think when your time is short, you're going to get the most out of picking one or two basic things and drilling them in bursts during your free time. Perhaps you really want to get better at a technique or a movement, nothing as large as a typical "form" or "kata," unless you practice something like Yin Style which has just short of a billion very short forms in its canon. You also want to choose things that provide a lot of bang for the buck, which means that you're taking time to carefully master one fairly complex movement or you're blasting your body with an exercise that can provide a lot of benefit in a short period of time.

In Yin Style or any other traditional art, for me the exercise that fits the "bang for my buck" bill the most powerfully is standing strengthening, which admittedly I usually go a little short on in my overall training profile. Standing strengthening practice, one of the four pillars of Yin Style training, is by necessity a shorter-duration exercise than most of the other practices. It's difficult to get a good, worthwhile session of striking training in a five- or ten-minute break between other obligations. Five to ten minutes of standing strengthening is a pretty solid set of it for most folks. It also requires a minimal amount of space since very little is in motion: just the space of a yoga-mat-sized area is needed to really rock out some standing strengthening, and those fit just about anywhere. Unlike many of the other practices, as long as you're a bit discrete, standing strengthening is easy to "sneak in" in places like your office with less likelihood of being noticed (or having security called on you thinking you're an escapee from a mental ward -- true story of a member of our group) than doing something "absolutely ridiculous looking" like turning practice or strikes. Thus, when I'm in hard-academic mode, like now, I end up quadrupling (or more) the amount of standing strengthening I do while dropping almost everything else so that I can have back-to-back fifteen-hour work days for weeks on end (weekends included).

Drilling something complicated that I want to get a basic hang of is another favorite. I do this a lot (in my house or on a quick jaunt into the yard for some fresh air and breathing space, though behind a closed door can work too without drawing too much attention) when I'm trying to gain a new skill. The back-step drills that came out of Beijing this spring are a notable example: often enough I'd have time to really go drill them and other things, but right about then, I got academically slammed and had to hang a bunch of training up for a while. When I wasn't standing, I was trotting across some room in my house (en route to the kitchen for refreshment, bathroom for relief, or back to the office for more toil) going through those back-step drills as a means of locomotion toward my destination. I might only get 6 or 8 reps in each direction, but I got a lot more comfortable with the stepping pattern and coordination in the process, and since I'd take breaks about once every hour or so, usually with three runs of this kind of thing involved, I actually ended up with a fair number of repetitions in a day, 6x3x10=180 to 8x3x10=240, which is far more than I would have had if I just gave up and said I was "too busy" to train.

Weights are a temptation in tight times. You can feel like you get a lot of effect for very little time input (pick up your nearest 25-pound dumbbell and do 20-30 bicep curls straight with it, it only takes about a minute and a half and your arm puffs and cramps up like it's going to explode, split, or fall off). The downside to this is that while you get a little strength training out of it, you don't get any martial training. Since you're not going to have enough time to really bust out some seriously good routines of either sort, I think it's better to do an exercise like a drill that builds up a skill over time rather than something that just gives me a little pump in my arm or leg, although squats are a great way to revitalize you when you've been sitting for too long (so those get thrown in sometimes anyway just to get the blood pumping quickly). Standing strengthening really seems to be a better choice, though, another reason I like to hit it hard and often in these busy periods, because it seems to really open the body up and get things (Blood and Qi) flowing and moving smoothly. Weights never do that for me, and standing strengthening is really an all-body kind of activity, so it feels a lot more complete for that short amount of time (working your whole body in 10 minutes instead of two muscle groups, for instance). If I'm in the market for something heavy to balance out my desk job, five minutes of basic drills with the saber (if I'm working at home!) usually is enough to get a fair sweat going and make it feel like I've done something -- something martial!

Speaking of having a job that keeps you crazy busy, you might not have one like I have that keeps you sedentary while you're working. If you do, then these kinds of exercises are perfect and great. In fact, they're pretty much necessary. The sitting still really starts to take a toll on your body, mostly in terms of circulation and muscular tension, after thirty or forty minutes. Your brain gets sluggish after that much time of relative inactivity also because of the less smooth circulation of blood (and Blood and Qi). Getting up and doing something that promotes its flow on at least an hourly basis (I've been told half-hourly by several reputable sources) is almost a necessity, so don't think of it as taking away from your work to stretch out and move yourself around a little.

If your job is more physical, and you're crazy busy, then you're probably too tired to train much. What you need, though, is something that puts you back together. Ironically, if you can put the heart into it, standing strengthening is great for that, as is "running through" drills, focusing more on the mental aspect of mastering the inherent skill rather than the physical aspect of putting in power and ferocity (like "learning speed" practice). Another option, one that I frequently employ even as a mental worker at a desk, is to get up and do some stretching. It's just nice for opening up the flow (again of Blood and Qi) and making me feel better kind of all over. It's not as directly martially beneficial as training would be, but being physically wrecked makes for a difficult push into some training, even if it's light.

Finally, when time is tight, there's a time that everyone has free: just before they fall asleep. Even though you're probably tired by the time you hit the pillow, on days that I'm crazy busy, I usually am a bit wound still when I lay down. This is a prime time to be opting for visualization of the techniques, skills, combinations, applications, forms, and other practices in the art, which is a very valuable constituent of good training. Even if there's no time, energy, or will to get up and really stand strengthening in between job requirements, it's quite easy to get yourself thinking about your training and training in your mind. That, my friends, is better than nothing when you're really strapped for time.

That's some of the stuff that I do when my time is tight: more standing strengthening, more running through "confusing" drills in slow/medium-motion, a couple of sets of saber basics (when apropos), stretching, and visualizing. What do you do?

Mirrors and Training Martial Arts

I think a lot of folks are hoping for something different for my first real-content post after our seminar, but since we trained in an indoor facility equipped with mirrors, a first for me in training baguazhang, I was able to pause and think for a while about how the mirror was helping my training... and messing with it.

Here's what I've decided: mirrors are a great training tool as long as you can ignore them.

Mirrors are awesome for checking yourself out, so you can correct abnormalities in your posture that perhaps you can't feel so well. Once you correct them, you can learn what the proper posture feels like, be those standing strengthening, striking, or otherwise, and that gives a tremendous advantage in being able to get into the correct position or movement later on. A quick glance at the mirror can tell you if your wrist is bent incorrect, arm is too high or too low, hips are cocked one way or the other, or lots of other little mistakes that are really easy to make and make into habits. For that kind of correction, nothing short of video of yourself training or direct, hands-on corrections from a more senior practitioner can compare.

On the other hand, mirrors are awesome for checking yourself out, and don't we all like to see how awesome we look when we're training? That's really the problem with them! I found myself checking myself out far too often during the seminar, mostly because I could. That really started to help me after a while, not because of the little tweaks to my training it provided but rather because of the amount of extra attention it forced me to place on watching my hands while I trained instead of my sweet reflection. Mastering myself to that change in focus, however, was really difficult, so I can conclude that ignoring a mirror is far harder than it seems!

As far as other martial arts go (since I like reaching a broader audience), I know that in karate we are usually told to look straight ahead, instead of at our hands, as if we're staring at the opponent (during kata/basics practice) and at our opponent during sparring practice. I have no commentary on whether that's right or wrong at this point -- they're just different methods of training, each surely with its advantages. I also know that an awful lot of students doing both of those exercises are enchanted by their reflections, so I know it's just a dangerous and helpful a thing in many other arts to train near a mirror.

My verdict on the matter, then, is that mirrors are a good tool to help you train, but ultimately, you have to learn to master yourself an ignore it completely once you've used it for its purpose, and added difficulty comes from the fact that most people are quite fascinated with watching themselves do things.

Train FOR Something: Skills-Oriented Training

I've mentioned this kind of thing before, but it bears mentioning again and again. When you train, go train for something specific, in particular to get better at something specific.

Here are two examples of exercise-related/training-related goals, phrased in a fairly generic sense:

1. I'm going to work this exercise until I can do it 150 times without stopping!
2. I'm going to work this exercise until I'm very good at it, trying to pay attention to find and learn the proper mechanics and execution along the way!

Obviously, the second goal is a superior goal for a number of reasons. The first goal, first of all, is easier to meet because it's very specific. That's great if you're totally new to exercise or just trying to get some cosmetic results, but it's total crap if you want to actually master a technique, which is usually the goal of martial arts training. Who cares if you can do a technique 150 times without stopping if you can't do it once correctly? If what you're training is martial arts, then doing something wrong 150 times (while somewhat better than doing it none) is not going to do you much good if the (hopefully) unlikely situation that you have to use it comes up. Granted, if the exercise is something like squats (great for strengthening the legs and butt), you probably don't have to "use" it ever except as an accessory to a technique you're trying to perform, but still, doesn't it seem to mesh so much more deeply with the idea of training an internal or even just an intelligent martial art to extend those ideas to everything we do, exercise included? Of course it does!

Making your goals skills-oriented makes for a harder, more rewarding road. If you work hard and honestly to get good at something, chances are pretty good that you'll be able to do it several or many times in a row, but you'll have obtained more along the way: a deeper understanding of the technique or exercise. It's a difficult goal to meet, however, because it's abstract and lacks a clear finishing point. You know when you can do 150 squats without stopping (body-weight squats, of course), but you cannot know when you've honestly mastered a technique fully. Of course, that can be discouraging, but for a mature, serious person (like a good martial artist has to be), it's more of an opportunity than an impossibility. "Cool! I'll always have room to develop in this practice!" is the way you can look at it instead of "Shit! I'll never completely get this!"

Basically, any exercise you choose to do as part of your training can have benefit. The question you have to ask yourself is how much benefit a given exercise per unit of time that you have to train. Dr. Xie Peiqi apparently used to say something like "we're all given the same twenty-four hours in a day, so what matters is how we choose to use them." Realistically, with jobs and family and living, most of us might have an hour or two a day on average to dedicate to our training, which really isn't much (ten or fifteen hours out of 168 in a week, i.e. less than 10% of our time). That means our choices on how to spend our training hours have to be optimal. No matter which exercises you pick: standing strengthening, turning, striking, drilling, forms, dadao practice in any of those dimensions, applications, or accessory training like cardio, weight training, stretching, or what-have-you, you have to look at your goals in terms of developing certain skills. Stretching might seem much more valuable if you're too stiff to do certain movements (lying step, anyone?), and weights might really help you if you're weak. Weights can help you if you're strong as long as you're creative and serious enough to focus your weight training on meaningful exercises and routines that actually enhance your training, determined enough to make sure you put your mind into those exercises, and mature enough to drop the silly, empty, bullshit exercises that make up the majority of what is done with weights in the wide world of exercise -- no matter what they might make you look or feel like if you do a lot of them (is bench press really going to make you a better fighter? I somehow doubt it...).

Most importantly (in fact, so importantly that I'm going to repeat it even though I already wrote it), put your mind into your training, even if it's not a martial technique. If you're jogging to increase your wind, then put your mind into your breathing while you're jogging. That's the reason you're jogging, right? If you're lifting a weight to increase your ability to hit hard, make sure that the exercise you choose somehow uses the same muscles that are involved and that you focus on feeling those muscles, imagining how their strength translates into striking power. If you're stretching, then put your mind into your body and try to feel your tightness... and then try to let your mind help you release it. Bring your internal to your external, and you can really maximize what you're getting out of your training time.

Differences and Similarities

By request, I'm going to address some of what it is that I "got" about the similarities and differences between the sweeping and hooking palms as mentioned in my article. Really, the two palms are quite different, and that's important to note. In actuality, when you look at all of the forms of the sweeping palm and the hooking palm and take a careful look at the striking methods, you'll see that they're pretty diverse in both cases. Still, they're quite overlapping as well. Something similar exists for the cutting and chopping palms, I think. These things, it seems to me, are done particularly in the basic strikes, which are chosen to be representative, so as to help reinforce the ability to find and execute the forces of the strikes (which in lots of ways are similar in the big picture and yet different in the details).

The big themes of sweeping and hooking, in theory, are, I believe:

• Sweeping endeavors to create a sticky, scraping force and moves in a wheeling fashion. An opponent hit by a sweeping strike, particularly one that glances off or that is used to open the opponent, should be dragged off balance a little by the strike. This is accomplished by an idea of wheeling and scraping. Sweeping strikes also hit directly, cutting into the opponent like a sword.
  
• Hooking endeavors to move the opponent as if they were being snagged by a big hook. The name is dual in meaning: the arm is shaped like a hook and the arm is used like a hook. To use a hook well, one would have to stretch out and then come back, push and then pull, if you will. The idea is that the arm should be carrying the opponent somewhere as if he's been snagged by a hook, so there's a real idea of moving the opponent around with a hooking strike.

A couple of examples, I think, are useful to make things more clear. Ideally, what you need to do is pick a couple of the really similar strikes and do similar applications with them, trying to find how it feels different. First, let's think of inward sweeping and inward/severing hooking in the simple application that you've opened the opponent already and stepped in to throw him, leg behind his leg. The sweeping strike moves in a wheeling motion and therefore should turn the opponent some, but since it seems to hit more directly, I tend to get more "straight back" in terms of reaction from my opponent unless I *really* try to spin them around. It's not as straight as something like a chop, but it's pretty straight. In contrast, severing hooking seems to really spin the opponent because it's almost like you're lifting him up with the structure of your arm and really thinking about moving him out and away from you with a slight jerk back at the end. The opponent's reaction is very round.

In the second example, there's an application that's relatively accessible using any of rising sweeping, rising cutting, or opening hooking (the first and last on this list being quite similar in execution with that same slight difference) where the opponent's arms end up crossed while you stand behind him and put pressure on his arm and throw him down. It's in the Forcing Hand dvd, for instance, but the exact move isn't important to this discussion. Doing that move with sweeping until it's relatively comfortable, then with hooking until the same, and then going back and forth really underscored the difference. Hooking has a very strong "I'm carrying this guy around" feeling to it where as sweeping does not. Sweeping has more of an idea of knocking the guy out of the way but in a manner where there's still connection.

I don't think this is very clear, but I'm going to let it stand. It's quite difficult, I'm sure you can appreciate, to discuss movements and kinesthetic sensations in text, and as far as applications go, they never come out well when written down (at least I don't seem to think they do). The point is that the two palms feel different even though they have techniques that are done very similarly, and that those similarites boost development in the gross skills while those differences hone the mind to pay attention to and use subtle differences to achieve different results in the same or different situations. As far as I know, the only way to "get" it is to realize there's a difference, train how you believe that difference might manifest, try it out, revise, refine, and then train it and try it again and again. Baguazhang is not redundant (that would be inefficient and unneccessary), and so if they feel the same to you, then you're doing something wrong, i.e. it's incorrect to say or think or feel that "opening hooking is just like rising sweeping with a closed fist and slightly more bent arm." While on the outside, gross level that's largely true, there's different intent there that can only come about by looking for, focusing on, and then training the subtle difference in strategy and technique between the two strikes. Still, the similarity is strong enough to achieve the following two goals, in my experience: 1) getting beginners started with the hooking strike, and 2) to have a strong overlap in the "finding the force" effort in both strikes.

Some Yin Style Bagua Training Tips

It occurred to me last night that most of this blog is kind of an adventure in describing my trials, errors, and tribulations with training Yin Style Baguazhang, and since it's kind of giving me a slightly authoritative voice (or so I hear), I decided it would be nice to provide some tips for training. None of these will be too fancy, and it will certainly not be a comprehensive list. It's just a short catalog of some of the things that I've done that seemed to help me. I think it would be great, in fact, if anyone that's interested would post some of their own successful tips as comments to this post. I also think that many of these training tips would help folks that practice any martial art, or with a little more creative stretching, any endeavor whatsoever, so feel free to pass it along if you know someone that might benefit from it, inside Yin Style or out.

1. Never Zero
This is a rule that I've lived by for almost three years now, and what it means is that I do not let a day go by with no training. That doesn't mean, necessarily, that I'm throwing strikes or turning or even sweating every single day. Sometimes I'm sick. Sometimes I'm working a lot. Sometimes I'm busy or traveling (no, I didn't practice my sweeping strikes on the plane to London). Sometimes I'm just tired. On those days, I have videos I can watch, notes I can review, and an active imagination that I can tap into. All of that counts as training too as long as it's not the main body of your training. Of course, never-zero usually means sweating for me, at least thirteen days out of a fortnight.

2. Do Something
Yin Style Baguazhang has umpteen thousand things to train in it. There are four pillars, each of which is huge, plus saber. There are scores of forms, hundreds of strikes, at least a dozen stepping methods, eleventy billion postures to stand or turn in, and who knows how many ways to put them together. Sometimes that overwhelms me, and then I just start doing something. Almost always, I get into something that I really want to train, and things go great. It doesn't have to be organized every time you set out to train, and with so many things to choose from, sometimes it just comes down to choosing something and going with it.

3. When it Works, Capitalize On It
Some days, I feel like hot potatoes with my sweeping strikes, for instance. On those days, I work the crap out of sweeping strikes, and I tend to get a lot of benefit from it. Also on those days, I sometimes decide to work on something else that I'm not feeling so great at, and I've noticed that I don't get as much from it. Then, when I'm smart, I go back to sweeping strikes, or whatever it is that I'm rocking out, and crank it. Yin Style Baguazhang has a lot of things that need getting good at, and those things have to be developed one at a time. Working on things that are working for you is a great way to develop a lot in a short time, capitalizing on your gains for future gains. It's like compound interest of training.

4. When It Doesn't Work, Make it Work
I don't know how many times I've sat there and thought about it for a while, and then, with a look of disgust on my face, decided "I suck at such-and-such." I used to get discouraged by that. Now, I see it as an opportunity. "I suck at cutting strikes, so I'm going to go do cutting strikes until I don't suck at them," I might tell myself. Then I go do a lot of cutting strikes, looking for why I suck at them and trying to make them better. Eventually, usually over the course of drilling them like that for days, I don't feel like they suck any more and I start to like them instead of feeling discouraged. Then, I can go back to Tip #3 and make some serious progress.

5. If You Like It, Then You Should Get Good At It
Most of us are into Yin Style because we like it, right? That means there's something in Yin Style Bagua that we enjoy, and if we enjoy something, then we should do it a lot (that's what enjoying something means). When we do it a lot, we should be getting good at it. So, if you like something particular, like in Tip #3, do it a lot, get good at it, and capitalize on your interests and fancies. You don't have to train things that you hate all of the time. Eventually, we're each supposed to start making Yin Style personalized to ourselves, which means focusing upon and using mostly the things we like and the things we're good at. It's best if those things are the same things.

6. If You Hate It, Train It More
See Tip #4 for this... really, it works.

7. Concentrate Your Training
For me, it's been much more effective to spend most of my training time over several days or even weeks working the same form or strikes a lot of times. It seems like that would be dry and rote, but it's kind of the opposite. It really helps make the techniques improve which makes them likable which makes a feedback loop on training because it puts you back into the realms of Tips #3 and #5. It also seems to speed development more than choosing lots of different things and trying to work all of them. That latter method just feels too scattered.

8. Be Details-Oriented
The devil's in the details, particularly here. Pay attention to the details of the requirements of the things you practice, going over the checklist and trying to kinesthetically feel them for yourself. If you don't feel them, then they're probably not there or lacking. Look for proper form, execution, and economy of the movements, and you'll be on the right track. Ask yourself if it feels right: e.g. "does this form really feel like it's windmill?" or "this strike comes from the Lion System... my force should be heavy and full... would I describe it that way?"

9. Be Purpose-Oriented
Why are you doing the things you're doing? To get good? What does that mean? Looking back at Tip #8, you should be constantly asking yourself why you're doing what you're doing. Every part of every movement should be economical, efficient, and make sense in terms of use and application. You cannot get good by trying to get good; you can only get good by trying to develop your training to the point where it achieves specific goals that you are aware of: get stronger, more rooted, balanced, more powerful, develop a heavy and full force, be cold, crisp, and fast, etc. If your purpose is "to get good like Matt and JB," you'll never get there because their purpose was to develop each technique according to the rules with an active, alive, refined execution.

10. Watch Yourself
Pictures or (better) videos of yourself training are really valuable. You'll see that in a lot of ways you're lacking more than you think. Some folks post their training in private or public venues on YouTube or other such places. You don't have to. Just check yourself out and see what needs to be seen. No technology? No problem: try a mirror.

11. Train Themes
This is a training method I feel I've had a lot of success with: training material that's related by a theme. Maybe I'm into cutting strikes. I stand strengthening in cutting, do some turning in cutting (it feels different if you've never done it), do oodles of cutting strikes, and try to learn and practice several or all of the cutting forms from the videos. I might spend a few weeks or a month just on cutting strikes, and at the end of it, I have a new and real appreciation for cutting strikes. It really works. Maybe instead your theme is an attacking method, i.e. a particular kind of form. Fine... you're into Lifting and Holding? Do as many Lifting and Holding forms as you can. Try out different palms within an animal system, or, if you have the videos and a little background, try out some of the Lifting and Holding forms of a different system. It's adventurous and teaches a theme, and afterwards, you'll have a better grasp of the idea of Lifting and Holding, its use, its applications, and even, in this case, some small insight into the Dragon System. Cool.

12. Make a Routine and Do It
Write down what you want to train in a day and then go out and train it. You can get a really well-organized training session that way and develop a lot. Just be warned: writing down training ideas is far easier than executing them! Example: "Today's goal: 1000 tracing the saber in each hand." That was easy. Now go do it. Yeah right.

13. Mini-Intensive
Get your crew together occasionally for a mini-intensive. Plan it out ahead of time and make it long and hard, similar to a normal intensive or workshop day. Start early on a weekend, say at 8 am, and train until lunch. Come back after lunch and bust it until dinner. Try to cover all four pillars and make it as much like a day pulled from an intensive or workshop as you can manage.

14. Four-Pillar Days
Sometimes you should concentrate your training on just striking or just forms or just something. Sometimes it's great to try to hit all four pillars in a day and feel like you've really accomplished something.

15. Be Complementary
Yin Style Baguazhang is a complete martial art, so nothing extra is needed to develop. Still, in the words of The Man, "how could more strength be bad?" Add in complementary exercises to your routine. I, for instance, noticed that my shoulders were a particular sticking point for me in terms of dadao development, so I would do drills with the dadao and then lift medium-weight dumbbells in routines that benefit my shoulders. Then I'd pick the dadao back up and go again. Some movements and drills can even be replicated in slow motion using weights or semi-isometric contraction. Another particularly beneficial exercise I've incorporated is to hold dumbbells at shoulder height and do slow squats, starting off with holding a low horse stance and then holding it again every fifth or tenth (depending on the weight) repetition to increase leg strength. I've also incorporated jumping jacks and short sprints between sets of strikes to increase my aerobic capacity slightly. As long as the complements don't take away from the primary, these things can only help your training.

16. Turn a Lot
You knew it was coming. Turning is the cornerstone practice of Baguazhang, and it is in some sense the most simple and yet most profound exercise in the art. Training turning seems to benefit every aspect of development, and it should take years of hard practice with it to get really good (meaning you and I both need to turn more!).

Hopefully these tips are of some use. If you have some to add, please leave a comment. As I think of more, I'll make another post of this sort in the future.

Hijacked by my Brain

Damn it. My adviser found me. All this time, I thought I was cruising along in the "no news is probably good news" category, having not heard from him in a few weeks and awaiting his direction on what to fix next, but I was actually bobbing around in the "I haven't had/made time to look at your stuff this whole time" box. Now that he's looking at it, I'm back to awesomeness: my academic responsibilities turned trump on my training. I spent the first seven hours of my day, after breakfast today, looking for "careless incidences" of the passive voice and reordering things to make them less "misleading to the reader." Sometimes, the exactitude that my adviser wants from me reminds me of the degree of perfection expected of serious YSB practitioners. Then I go into this quandary where I'm taking heart that he wants things (like it and me) to be as good as they can be, and yet I'm losing heart over the fact that I might just not be that good at details until they're pointed out to me in bold italics with a note about how stupid I am attached, usually with the s-word underlined in red ink. That also reminds me, at times, of missing details in YSB.... I was definitely told at one point in the past, by The Man himself: "maybe you're too stupid to learn this," which is kind of a hard, spiky, bitter, hot-pepper-coated pill to swallow when you're doing a Ph.D. in mathematics. I get a lot of verbal shit from people at various times, but the s-word isn't usually on the list.

Speaking of brain-related activities, my brain completely hijacked my workout yesterday. I wasn't "distracted" so much as I became intensely curious. Instead of grinding out scores of repetitions of the various drills I had chosen for the day (having decided that the saber was breaking my precious skin and need not be picked up), I started to do that and then was prevented from continuing by the overwhelming need to think and feel my way through the drills. I had to understand what I was doing and why I was doing it. I did drills for the same amount of time that I would have otherwise, about an hour, but I did most of them quite slowly, as if feeling around in the dark, stopping and pondering them midway. Some of them I figured out. Some of them I didn't. Some others I invented, but only in a slow, meticulous way where I could see the application before I proceeded. I'm hoping that today will afford me the opportunity to go drill the ones I have, shelving the figuring-out of the others until after I've managed a massive sweat and feel solid and powerful in what I'm up to. Today, so far, I've had only one window in which to train (which I shouldn't have taken... I've still got five sections to get through on this run-through of my dissertation), and it was just long enough for a challenging but too-short turning session. Tonight, I have to finish those five sections (more than likely) and write a final exam (*sigh*), so I'm hoping a window will open up in the near future that lets me go bust some drills out.

Thinking It Through

Since my main partner in crime has been half a world away, I've had to turn off my "testing it out" engine almost completely and sink into total visualization to achieve my applications designs. This isn't too far from normal, really, since we really put a strong emphasis on visualizing what we're doing and how to make it work, including, when we really try, a subtle tactile understanding even though we're not making contact. It's been fun, and today, though not with Bradley, I got to give some of these things a go. I was pleasantly surprised again.

These techniques that today I was able to test/feel out for the first time on another person were surprisingly effective... much better than a lot of the half-forced drivel that I normally have to pass off as applications work. Things were smooth and effortless with a definite "one-two-three" feel to their balance going out from under them. The coordination was almost immediate on my part too. I was most happy to see it bouncing a 220-pound willing subject around a little with nearly the same, small amount of effort as it worked on the 115-pound other willing subject. The feedback that gave me made it more clear in which situations to apply those kinds of techniques as well as, in one case, the proper kind of stepping to use with it, and now I feel confident about drilling those moves ad nauseum, whereas before I wasn't entirely so sure.

For those of you that can do it, let me urge an active imagination. It serves as a brilliant proxy when a partner isn't around, and it's probably entirely necessary even when one is. In fact, it almost feels as if the partner is more of a "check" than a required part of the equation.

As for my tribute... it still continues, even though the intensive is winding down. Now it's a quest to get mighty as well as competent. Part of that involved taking a conditioning class last night, which was a pretty decent workout, though some of the exercises seemed to aggravate my hips. Once they're feeling better (hopefully in a matter of hours), I have a feeling that the saber and I are going to go have a few more rounds, even though I've got a pretty decent bruise on my right hand now (probably from the saber).

Worldwide Readership and No Time to Post

I've been meaning and wanting to post for a while, but finishing (please, please let it be true) a Ph.D. sucks sometimes. My teaching (read: grading) load has been abnormally intense lately too, so it comes down, frequently enough, to get in 30-60 minutes of training or type on here for a few minutes. I think it's fairly obvious which I've been choosing and why. I wish I could include a sweet example of the kind of crap I spend my days doing, but it's apparently a bad idea to publicly display any of one's thesis before it's done. Besides, I'm not sure how to load up the sweet math text into this thing anyway without pulling some screen-shot business. I'm digressing.

My newest bit of research into the art has been going well and is very interesting, at least to me. The thing is, I don't know if it's a good idea to be doing or not, but as I seem to be deriving benefit from it and am keeping it in its proper context, I don't think it will do any harm. I've been studying the forms, actually just two of them in-depth, and running through them while turning for nearly my entire practice time (30-60 minutes, usually) other than a few minutes at the beginning when I do a little static posturing. I also, of course, have a background-noise level of studying the basic strikes, popping out a few and trying to use what little mind I have while I do them, maybe for a minute or two here or there while someone else needs to use this box, preventing me from typing for a bit. In any case, I'm digressing again, which is what makes my writing so much fun to read.

After I do the form, with power, a few times, I'm investigating the techniques in it, including many of the transition techniques, sometimes on more than one level (different stages in the transition) by freezing and holding them in isometric tension as a static posture. I force myself to connect with the ground in a stable manner and feel all of the places I'm supposed to be applying force along with trying to recreate the sensation of an opponent being there to receive and be affected by that force. I then hold the position for 3-5 breaths and move on, slowly. Each time something significant happens, I try to hold that position and feel it and increase my strength and awareness of my strength in those positions.

For example, in Lifting and Holding from the Sweeping Palm, the first technique is the opener, so I hold that with strength, trying to imagine clearly that particular use of what is, in essence, an opening sweeping/rising sweeping strike. The "second" technique doesn't occur, though, until a bunch of things happen in transition. First, the opening hand changes, pushing forward and threatening while lifting the opponent's arm. I pause there and try to feel all of that clearly. Then the foot opens and the other arm comes in, lifting with the elbow. I pause there too. Then I execute the remainder of the transition into the "second" technique, sometimes pausing yet again at the point where I could conceive of my leg making contact or my hand/forearm of the top arm reaching the opponent's face, neck, or shoulders. Wherever I pause, I spend time and effort to apply the appropriate strengths and to imagine feeling and visualizing the effects.

Remarkably, I think it's helping develop my usage and development of power in the forms, particularly in that it seems to be really enhancing my ability to find out what I'm not doing well enough or fully enough and refine it. Usually I'll repeat the slow business once or twice to each side before going back to practicing the form in its usual, much more mobile design, trying to keep attention on all that I had put attention on by being slow and deliberate.

So, now I feel better that I've said something on here again. Now I can go back, I guess, to typing up things I don't really like typing up so that eventually I don't have to type it up at all any more and can turn my nose back to training much more seriously!

Don't Know Chinese

I keep getting all excited about the fact that I knew the Holding and Lifting forms are called "ping tua," as well as I could tell. My ability to hear Pinyin, though is about a 6/100. It's ping tuo, apparently. Ping means "to make level or even" and tuo means "to support with the palm or hand." Even if my Chinese isn't rocking, I am, at least getting better with the forms, I think. Fortunately or unfortunately (for who can say which), I think the English name is more clear in giving a methodological approach to the theory of the forms than the Chinese, but that may be because I don't really know clearly all the levels of meaning of the words. Hopefully the English name isn't misleading me, getting me to add to the form things that aren't there.

Since my back has been hurting, 90% or more of my training for the last week and a half has been done laying on my back in visualization. That's given me a lot of time to imagine going through the ping tuo forms on someone, and I'm really glad I took the time to do that instead of adopting an "I'm hurt" defeatist attitude. While I didn't get better at actually doing the form, I did get a pretty firm appreciation for how some of the techniques work and how some of the subtleties play an important role in making them work, and I was excited to play with those a little tonight at our (very small) get together, one in which I was mobile enough to do more than act the consultant. It was pretty interesting, to say the least, and I was sort of surprised by how clearly and quickly the techniques came to life for me after repeatedly doing them mentally for over a week. I particularly feel more confident in the "give them something to think about" technology.

One of the more interesting changes I've experienced since coming from Vermont really came to a point during this time too. I'm much better, I feel, at picking out subtle details and nuances of movement and usage from the videos than I was before this trip. It's absolutely amazing what a good teacher can bring out and change for a person in even a short period of time with just a little of hardly deserved attention. It underscored a lesson I've heard and even started to notice more clearly in my classroom teaching (math) job: if you attempt teach something to someone before they're ready to learn it, then they won't learn it (well?). So many things that I heard a year ago or more are suddenly more reasonable and accessible, in fact almost obvious in some cases, after seeing these things again with a new set of goggles on, so to speak. They were, of course, completely obscured to me before the change. It gets me very excited about what further changing and developing is available.

The update on my back is that it's *mostly* better. I spent a long day in a chair on Saturday and some time since then as well, and that's keeping it from being back to normal, which still isn't awesome. In any case, I've gotten to this point without the aid of a chiropractor or other manipulator. That is somewhat encouraging. Since I have an appointment for adjustment on Wednesday of this week, I'm optimistic about the outcome, and I'm furthermore absolutely enthusiastic about doing what it takes to reclaim my back from the degeneration it's suffered at years of what I've determined is goofed-up posture, probably since the accident that broke me as a teenager.

I'm going to try my hand at turning again tomorrow. I would have tonight, but such was the nature of my work day and our meeting together that it wasn't on the agenda. It seems weird to have gone this long without turning, and it hasn't been this long since the last time my back hosed me. I think I'll have to be careful not to overdo it, though. We'll see how I feel, I guess. Before that, I'm going to stand. Tonight. For the first time in what seems like ages!

Spinadees

The direction I've chosen seems to be a pretty good one, and after reviewing the ping tua forms in the sweeping, cutting, chopping, and hooking palms, I'm starting to see much more clearly some of the ideas in the sweeping form that Matt was attempting to elucidate for us. My sweeping strikes seem to be getting better too, though that general feeling of "heaviness" still is kind of weak. I'm not sure why I have such a hard time with it. I'm probably trying too hard. In any case, it's really strange how looking at those other palms on my own, which I cannot be 100% sure on whether I'm doing them entirely correctly or not, particularly with the stepping, gives better insight into the things that Matt was spelling out perfectly plainly for us a few weeks ago in Vermont. Weird... but good. Certain movements in each of the other forms have made it a lot more clear how valuable it can be to pay attention to these subtle details, and I'm glad I've undertaken the study and seen that.

Unfortunately for me, or fortunately as it may truly be the case, my ability in VT to participate was somewhat limited by the fact that I had hurt my back about a week earlier carrying some boxes. That put a slight limit on what I was and wasn't able to do, which sucked from where I stood because I would have been gladder to give a better showing. I thought it wouldn't be a big deal, but I could tell within a few hours on the first day that it wasn't going to not be a big deal. I just wish I hadn't put off the chiropractic I went to until the day before we left. Perhaps things would have been different. I still would have had to swallow a lot of bitter, but probably not so much as I did.

The title of this post is "spinadees," which is the silly and immature name my brother and I have given back pain after seeing a silly and immature internet cartoon talking about spikes coming out of a back as being "spinadees," spelling here is questionable but the one I've chosen to use for the purpose. Well, for whatever reason (probably desk-jockeying), this week my back went almost completely out after feeling almost completely recovered (as in my hips visibly weren't on straight: cocked to one side, twisted slightly, and tilted forward, with powerful muscle spasms to boot). Since this has happened quite a few times (it's come and gone since a jiu-jitsu incident about 7 years ago, though the actual triggering injury was almost definitely when I was in 9th or 10th grade (about 13 years ago)), and I was in a position to drop everything when it did, most of the damage was prevented, which is to say I was only mostly floor-bound (as opposed to totally) for 6-8 hours one evening until bed (instead of for 3-5 days) and painfully semi-mobile the next day. Today is the next day after that, and I'm about 70% mobile now and in relatively minimal, though constant pain, although "serious discomfort" is closer to the real sensation than "pain." It sucks for me, so far as I can tell, because I had just hit a real stride with my training, both in terms of what felt like positive gains and in terms of strong desire to put in extra time. Don't be misled, though: I'm almost positive what caused the back pain had nothing to do with the training (which I've never been sure of before) and a lot to do with 1) sudden progress at workin my research (which meant obscene amounts of time in desk chairs -- 13+ hours on Thursday alone), and 2) emotional factors (stress, frustration, irritation -- some from the sudden progress and much from the other aspects of my job, i.e. teaching, and quite a bit from my dealing with kids), which I think have more to do with pain than we like to admit here in the West.

In any case, I caught up a lot on my reading in the "down time" and realized a few elements that apply to general qigong training that should apply neatly as nuances to be used in standing practice. I look forward to feeling well enough to test that via hard training. I also spent a lot more time getting into my body through stretching and deep breathing, trying to get into touch with those emotions and tensions that were causing me the pain. I definitely need to put more attention into those two aspects of my training: breathing and stretching, as well as paying attention to subtle forces and changes within my body, even though those don't manifest plainly as being part of the martial art. I was also free to do a lot of contemplation, which was nice for trying to understand the forms. I spent a lot of time envisioning myself using the movements from the ping tua forms on people, much to my amusement and surprise, surprise at how clearly in some cases I could "feel" what would make the move succeed.

I'm really hoping that tomorrow will prove a better day than even today for my back and hips, and if it is, then I'm completely stoked about meeting up with the group and playing with some of these ideas.

Phases

More than ever, I'm convinced from my own experience about something I've suspected for a long time: we have phases. There are in our lives times in which our very approach to being and living is drastically more active, energetic, and vigorous. At those times, our lives are in a phase that is primarily yang. There are other times in our lives in which every endeavor seems a tremendous effort, particularly physical endeavors, where inexplicably, it seems, we sleep too late and then yearn for more sleep and the very idea of working out seems dreadful, preferring a nap that according to our programmed idea of "eight hours per night" we shouldn't need at all. At those times, our lives are primarily in a yin phase. We must live with both phases, and they are inescapable realities. In the West, we often try to ignore, repress, or push through the yin phases, wondering why our lives, efforts, and, particularly, workouts suddenly don't have the vigor that they had just weeks ago, attributing it to any number of causes. "Sometimes we're up, and sometimes we're down," might be the best explanation of all, especially if we notice that the changes are cyclical.

I've found myself lately in a very yin phase. My desire to train has slackened tremendously. Some aspects of my workouts have suffered, and yet the intellectual components of learning and developing in Yin Style Baguazhang have seemed to increase tenfold. I feel pulled to review the video material, taking it a step further to document and study carefully the requirements and patterns revealed therein, and I stare at my driveway thinking of doing strikes with tremendous disdain. I've only managed about 3000 of them in the last week, and the sessions were all forced, my power feeling like it had waned slightly; my will to continue diminished. I can feel it now, typing up this post... the desire to explore the art with my mind and to put my thoughts down is full. This afternoon, I stared out into the hazy heat, gazing at my circle with guilt for the lack of attention I've given it in the past week and flooded with exactly the opposite feeling that this post is giving me: dread. Faced with the reality of my training, though, I thought: an hour a day... not quite... not even close, though I did manage to turn most of the days. I thought about the near-90 heat, intense humidity (thanks to the remnants of a tropical storm moving this way and it being the Dirty South), and the mosquitoes, and I almost talked myself out of it.

After arguing with myself, I forced myself out onto the circle that I missed yesterday. Our study group was made fully official by the International Yin Style folks yesterday, and I had planned to celebrate with an hour or so on the circle and maybe a thousand or more strikes. I didn't even turn yesterday, though. Deciding that I should put in at least 45 minutes, not feeling up to the hour, I got on to turn. I finished my first go-around in each direction at 42 minutes, maintaining a good feeling the whole time and a fullness I hadn't felt in days. My desire to nap evaporated, and I figured doing just three more minutes was silly. Once more voyage each way got me over my hour, with three whole extra minutes on my little timer, and I felt great, very glad I had done it.

Now I realize that part of life is different phases, and that during yin phases, training is more difficult. I'm willing to bet that doing strikes wouldn't have gone nearly as well, though static postures earlier in the day had been quite successful. Forms feel good when the power is kept low, but doing them hard just doesn't feel right. Perhaps part of training in an art like Yin Style is learning to recognize the phases of our lives and adapt our training to them accordingly, asking what is natural of our bodies at the appropriate times instead of blindly trying to force ourselves into a rigid mold that bucks against those cyclic changes. Still, many of the exercises of Yin Style are performed well in yin or yang phases, like turning, and the different aspects of the practice in the different phases can and should be explored -- through practice. The different phases, though, do not permit laziness, however.

An old saying is "between two and five, the training is real," where the two refer to yin and and the five the five phases/transitions/elements/states of traditional Chinese medicine and philosophy. That saying indicates to me that learning about the phases of the body in terms of both yin and yang is part of training Yin Style and a critical part of development. I can only wonder and hope about what revelations and realizations will come about concerning the five with further effort.

Perhaps with attention and through diligent training, I will continue in this way until I can feel the yin within the yang, and vice-versa, with the phases of my life and continually adapt my life to those subtle influences, which is likely a stepping stone to "the five." I look forward to such a day and am thrilled that Yin Style may offer such self-knowledge.

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!

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.