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).