Obey My Blog

I’ll soon be practicing Tai Chi with a big ‘ol ball.

Yes, that’s right.

A ball.

The (almost) lost art of Tai Chi Ball Exercise strengthens your core muscles and helps develop the qi in your dantian. It can also significantly improve your Tai Chi practice.

I kind of think if I just practiced more, though, my Tai Chi would improve, but my life has been rather busy lately. I only make time to meditate.

Which means my body, while centered, is getting a little flabby. Oh no!

Must. Work. On. Core. Muscles.

Maybe you think that’s strange. Maybe you think, Robin, why do I need some stupid ball to improve my Tai Chi?

Well, maybe you don’t. How should I know? But…Tai Chi Ball Exercise was the first part of the workshop that Grand Master Chen Qing Zhou taught while he was in Austin and I completely missed it. Mostly because it was a Saturday and I wanted to sleep in. But still, I realize that this is pretty important to the practice of Chen Style Tai Chi.

Look, I mean, even Lance Armstrong does it! Well, okay, not exactly, but it’s on his website.

So there’s that. But first, I’ll be finishing up part 3 of my Chen Tai Chi Old Frame 1st Routine class.

That’s 75 forms!

75 forms that I still haven’t really embodied. So I’m thinking of taking the whole class all over again.

I know, crazy right? But I love Tai Chi and I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface.

I briefly considered moving on to something new, but these days, I’m not sure I particularly enjoy starting over quite as much as I used to. I think perhaps starting something new provides some initial excitement, but lately I’ve become more interested in discovering what’s beyond the newness. What’s there that I’ve been missing? What have I overlooked or not appreciated?

Could be interesting…

Now that my legs have fully recovered from the workshop with Grand Master Chen Qing Zhou, I have more blood available to my brain to write something halfway coherent today. Yay!

Grandmaster Chen caused me great pain. Pain, I tell you! Yet, I willingly went up to him and allowed him to demonstrate several moves, like twisting my arm back in on itself, throwing me to the ground, etc.

This was starting to hurt after a while and I wanted to defend myself. But how?

At one point, as I was hurtling to the ground in another one of Master Chen’s vice grips, I made a desperate and feeble attempt to lightly punch Master Chen with my other, less compromised arm. Just to prove that I wasn’t an imbecile who was going to sit there and take it.

And then it hit me.

Robin, what the hell are you doing? You’re trying to punch Master Chen?!

And then I thought, but he’s trying to hurt me – I must defend myself!

I wondered what Master Chen would think. I wondered what my teacher would think. I was suddenly both horrified and foolishly proud of my reaction.

And then I looked up into the eyes of these two teachers.

And they both burst out laughing.

“Do not resist!” Master Chen said.

In Tai Chi, one of the worst things you can do is resist. Still, this is the hardest thing for me to accept. In the two years that I’ve been practicing martial arts, you’d think I’d get this by now. But no.

At the end of our day together, Master Chen encouraged us all to keep practicing. He also emphasized the importance of hard work. Which made me happy. Seriously. A lot of people want to obtain good health, strength, agility and even enlightenment through Tai Chi without doing any of the work. Unfortunately (or fortunately, rather) it doesn’t work that way.

But, I have to admit that even this misses the point. As strict as Master Chen is (and he is), he loves what he’s doing and has fun doing it.

This is what impressed me the most, I think. It wasn’t his expertise or his quick moves. It was the fact that he was not in it for himself, if that makes sense. There was nothing I could say or do that would put him on the defensive. He knew who he was – and he knew who we were.

Before saying our official goodbyes, Master Chen half-jokingly stormed around the room, going up to each one of us and looking us in the eyes – showing us his spirit, he said. Watching him and the other students’ reactions was fascinating. Some backed away a little (understandably so). Some stood their ground and looked right back at him. When he came up to me and I looked him in the eyes, I simply softened. I was surprised. I was supposed to be afraid and yet I couldn’t see anything scary in there. Weird.

I’m not sure when Master Chen will be back. But in November, Grandmaster Chen Zhenglei is expected to be in Austin to give one of his workshops. I’m giddy with excitement because I’m much more familiar with his style than with Grand Master Chen Qing Zhou’s. Hmmm, perhaps this means I won’t screw up as much in his class. One can only hope… But then, that might not be as much fun.

I had this whole other rant ready to post, but lo and behold something happened this morning.

I discovered I can punch like a muthafucka!

Okay, it’s Tai Chi – I’m not exactly punching people. But when you do punch in Tai Chi, it’s supposed to come from your gut – your center.

I have been struggling with this a lot. I repeatedly try to punch from the shoulder, from the wrist…which is all kinds of wrong. But I just haven’t been able to generate any force from that warm, squishy center, the dantian.

Until today.

Today, that beautiful squishy center o’ mine generated a PA-PA-PA-POW! And totally surprised me.

I did it again. Just to see if it was a fluke. It wasn’t. I did it again and again and again. Oh. My. GOD!!!

I’m not sure what finally did it. Maybe it was just simply practicing. Maybe I was finally able to stop sucking in my gut (a habit most women are familiar with I’m sure…hmmm…maybe some men too…). Maybe it was a combination of these things.

Either way, I am happy as a clam to finally – FINALLY – understand what my teachers have been talking about.

And it only took 2 years! Woohoo!

And now for some video from one of my favorite martial artists… She makes it look so easy. But keep in mind as you watch this (if you watch this) how strong your legs have to be to do some of these stances. Pretty frickin’ strong!

Okay, so as much as I like that video, I realize it’s probably not very useful for this post about punching. So, here is a video of Chen Xiaowang demonstrating the appropriate way to punch (fajin y’all!). I’m not even close to being able to punch like this, but it is what I’m aiming for.

A few weeks ago I moved into a new place. It was stressful! I experience a lot of anxiety when moving, despite the fact that I’ve moved a lot in my adult life. Weird. But anyway, I was feeling stressed and wanted to partake of a frosty beverage and a cigarette (my sister talked me into it – it’s all her fault!).

I couldn’t even finish it. I got halfway through and had to put it out. I used to smoke all the time when I was younger and now I can’t even finish one lousy ‘ol ciggy. I’m not sure if this is because I am getting older or healthier. Hmmmm…

But it got me thinking about my breath. I spend a lot of time focusing on my breath these days. It’s what I focus on when doing Zazen and it helps guide me as I practice Tai Chi.

Just this morning, as I grew increasingly frustrated over a move I haven’t been able to get down, I remembered my breath. The whole room suddenly got quiet and I was able to do the move flawlessly. Okay, not really, but I did it without being frustrated. Which is a plus for me! I kind of got excited and jumped up in the air a little.

How is it that we pay so little attention to such an important thing? It’s not even a thing really – it just is. You breathe. Period. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this right now.

Then again, what’s the big deal? Is it really necessary to be aware of something that is just a natural part of life?

In Tai Chi we do breathing exercises where we stand with our palms facing our abdomens and exaggerate pushing and pulling our hands with the movement of our bellies (It’s a bit unnerving to look over and see my belly fully extended, but I don’t get any points for looks in class. So there.). This is meant to strengthen and cultivate awareness in the abdomen or dantian.

But it’s also meant to cultivate an awareness of the breath.

If you think about it, breath is pure action, without thought (wait, then maybe you shouldn’t think about it). When you breathe, you are automatically connecting the mind and body.

Sometimes, as Jan Diepersloot points out in Warriors of Stillness, students are told not to worry about the breath. They are told simply to focus on the movements and the breath will follow. But many students – myself included – find it useful to use the breath as a way to integrate the body and mind and the upper and lower torso. What one can discover later, Diepersloot explains, is that it is possible to just use “yi, awareness or intention, directly to achieve integration.”  This method, colorfully coined as, “suck and tuck,” amounts to “tucking the pelvis under, forward and up and sucking the abdomen in.”

Many beginning students are so stiff and frozen, though, that attempting to use yi, or awareness, can simply result in more tension. Thus, Diepersloot finds it more beneficial to emphasize the conscious use of the breath before introducing the more direct method.

Personally, I’m still not quite ready for such a direct approach. And honestly, I kind of enjoy focusing on my breath (is that weird?). But the more natural my breathing becomes in my practice, the more relaxed I become.  And the more relaxed I become, the easier it is for me to just be aware.

But I still have a long way to go…

This time last year I was a mess. Okay. Not completely. But I was seriously stressed out.

I look back and I realize how incredibly hard I was on myself. I also look back and realize that I had no earthly idea what I was getting myself into as far as Tai Chi and Zen were concerned. No clue!

Well, sort of…but not really.

I was trying so hard. I really was. Getting into Tai Chi and Qigong and then Zen was supposed to help me. They were supposed to help me become the person I wanted to be – stable. Or at least just not insane.

And they have definitely helped me accomplish this. But what I didn’t realize at the time was that I wasn’t insane. I was actually stable (sort of). And I was actually okay. But I thought I was supposed to be something I wasn’t. I thought I was supposed to be someone else. I thought I was supposed to be this ideal I kept in my head – this perfect, unattainable ideal comprised of god-only-knows what.

How wrong was I! Well, as it turns out…very!

And so I set out for ways to reach this. And I ended up -

Right. Back. Where. I. Started.

Apparently I’m just supposed to be me. Nothing else. Nothing more.

Really??!

I try not to write too much about zazen here, because that’s not what most of you come here for. You come here to read about Tai Chi (I think). But I learn so much from zazen and I have found it helpful to bring what I learn into my Tai Chi practice and vice versa.

Many times I have stood in Standing Meditation and been overwhelmed with an emotion I had been trying (in vain) to suppress. Many times I have come home from a Saturday morning at the Zen Center utterly exhausted and in tears.

These activities are not to be taken lightly. And yet they are some of the gentlest ways to get back into your body – to become aware of the things you’ve kept buried in the muscles of your back, shoulders, neck and head. Move these things around a bit and you start noticing things come up. Sit or stand in meditation with nothing else but you and your never ending thoughts and see what you find. It is amazing, horrifying, humorous, delightful, scary, pleasant, gorgeous and sad.

This article was supposed to be about the breath. Uh…whoops! I do still want to talk about breath and Tai Chi. Next week then. I’ve been thumbing through Warriors of Stillness by Jan Diepersloot and it is quite interesting…

This year I became a pescetarian.

I know, a what?

I usually just tell people I’m a vegetarian since pescetarian sounds kind of pretentious (and fishetarian just sounds gross). Which is silly really. I usually end up having to explain it anyway. Regular folks  just look at me in bewilderment and vegans nibble on their quinoa and silently judge me.

I don’t feel it’s necessary to identify with my diet though. I’m not interested in wrapping my whole identity around being a crunchy granola person. Really, all I’m trying to do is be conscious of what I eat and conscious and appreciative of where that food comes from.

Just as I try to maintain awareness of my body while doing Tai Chi, I try to be aware of what I put into it. It’s all about balance and that differs a little for everyone.

There are all kinds of diets out there – the Yin and Yang diet or macrobiotic diet being the most talked about among martial artists it seems. But are these really necessary? Do they make a difference?

According to the macrobiotic diet (or the Yin and Yang diet),

“…people living near the freezing North Pole (Yin) eat mostly animal foods (Yang) to stay warm and ‘contracted’. If someone is living in a hot (Yang) climate and they eat a lot of animal protein (Yang) they might find themselves too ‘contracted’ and uptight (Yang).”

Which kind of makes sense when you think about the very obvious relationship between you, your food and your environment, but I have to agree with William C. Phillips over at Patience Tai Chi, when he suggests that it’s probably best not to be too dogmatic about diet, since everyone’s needs are different.

Personally, I find that simply eating more natural food makes me feel better in general (they make me feel like a natural woman, hahaha).

And it also seems pretty obvious to me that I wouldn’t last very long in my Tai Chi class if I gorged on pizza and sweets every day (mmm…pizza).

It’s not just that though. I care about where my food comes from. Your food becomes you – literally. So to me, it’s worth giving some thought to… Not only has Tai Chi made me aware of my own body, but it has made me more aware of what’s going on around me. The food on my plate and the fact that it was once alive (unless you’re eating canned cheese) would be one of those things.

So, I try to be conscious of the foods that I eat. Whether they are yin or yang, I don’t know. But I do know that certain foods make me feel more balanced and healthy, not to mention, by being aware of the food in front of me I actually enjoy eating it that much more. And that to me is enough.

It’s always awesome to discover you’ve poked fun at a video that just so happens to be by your teacher’s teacher. Who also just happens to be Grandmaster Chen, Xiao Wang.

D’oh!

I still think his video is funny though…

Anyway.

I recently finished reading Women in the Martial Arts, edited by Carol A. Wiley.

Let me just say, that this has been extremely hard for me to write about. One, because it is immensely personal and two, because some men (not all!), when they see the word “Woman” in the title of a book or article, run screaming for their lives. I’m half-kidding. But it does seem like a lot of men (not all!) are allergic to the female perspective. Why is that?

If it’s any consolation to my male readers, I won’t be beating you over the head with feminism. I also promise not to talk about “moon cycles” (oops – just did!).

To say that this book inspired me would be an understatement. Many of the women got into Tai Chi, Aikido, Tae Kwon Do, Karate and Baguazhang to learn how to defend themselves. Several of the women had experienced sexual and physical abuse and others had friends or relatives who had been abused. All of them needed a way to heal and be strong and self-sufficient in the face of overwhelming self-doubt, learned passivity and sometimes horrifying violence and pain.

Self-defense was never the reason I got into the martial arts. I was considerably stressed out and Tai Chi seemed like the most obvious way to deal with it. That was all. But the more I delve into the martial arts the more I realize that the mental and emotional strength that is gained through practice is the foundation for self-defense (even against stress).

Because if you lack confidence in yourself and you do not feel you have a right to the physical space that you occupy, how can you effectively defend yourself?

You can’t.

A lot of women may think that empowerment only comes from being tough and aggressive but the conclusion that almost all of the women came to in Wiley’s book (and what surprised them most), was that the mental and emotional skills they gained through practice far outweighed the physical strength and agility that was a result of their training.

This is the conclusion I have come to as well.

Tai Chi puts my awareness back in my body and out of my head. When I do Tai Chi, I am not led around by my thoughts, worries and fears (okay, sometimes I am. I’m only human.). All the pain, worry and stress I feel loses it’s power little by little and as a result, I feel confident, more relaxed and less anxious. I don’t feel the need to react to everything around me.

And this is what is needed to properly defend yourself – relaxed awareness. Not a tight fist, a bloated chest or sinewy biceps (I just wanted to use the word sinewy). But it’s difficult to come to this realization without first going through the process of being defensive, aggressive and trying to prove yourself.

I commend these women for having the courage to take the path of martial arts, because it’s not always an easy one.  But because they did, they were able to heal and discover strength in themselves that they didn’t know they had.

I remember in Baguazhang watching one of my classmates struggle with some of the circular movements. But his struggle was different from mine or any of the other students in class. I couldn’t quite figure out why, until our teacher began talking with him and asked him if he was a Tai Chi practitioner. He could fa jin and the teacher could tell.

I may not be a newbie-newbie any longer, but I certainly haven’t cultivated  fa jin, or “releasing power” (also referred to as, “issuing power”).

When you first begin Tai Chi, you are constantly told to relax (well, I was anyway). So much so that you start thinking oh my god I can’t possibly relax anymore or I’ll fall over. But this relaxation should not be taken too literally. I think Westerners are probably told to relax more often simply because most of us don’t know how.

But true Tai Chi practice requires a balance between relaxation and tension.

You are not one or the other.

I came to this same conclusion when trying to explain to my sister what Zen meditation was like for me. I had thrown down some lettuce on a nice meditation cushion and was complaining that all I got in return was back pain.

“But I thought meditation was supposed to be relaxing?”

“It is not relaxing!”

“Then why do you do it?”

“Because it helps me.”

“But then you’re tense?!”

“Not exactly…I’m somewhere in between.”

“You’re just aware.”

“Well…trying to be, actually, yeah!”

I heart my sister…

Fa jin, of course, is not meditation. But by relaxing, oddly enough, you generate power, jin (not to be confused with jing or “essence”). Which you can then use to fa, or issue. You don’t get this by being a tough, macho guy and you certainly don’t get this by languidly flopping your arms around in the air.

To quote Laurie Cahn, from Women in the Martial Arts (which I am just finishing up and would like to review here in the near future!),

“Jin is not just power, but a special energy or force, one that is lively and spirited and contains all your essential elements. When you fa jin, you use everything at your disposal, you don’t hold back.”

In order not to hold back, you have to become like a baby. This doesn’t mean you should start drooling on people or attempt to stick your toes in your mouth. It simply means you have to be open, unafraid and completely uninhibited.

This is not easy!

But when I think about releasing everything I’ve got in one punch, I get goosebumps. When I think about being unafraid and uninhibited, I am reminded of why I got into Tai Chi in the first place.

Will I be able to fa jin some day?

Only time and lots of practice will tell…

Matt over at Ikigai Way challenged me to a meme. Because I have way too much pride not to accept this challenge, here ya go.

The meme works as follows. You post five things about yourself. Four are untrue. One is true. All are so outlandish, implausible or ridiculous that no one would be inclined to believe that any of them are true. And despite the pleas from your readers, you never divulge which is true and which are fabrications. You then tag five other people (four seriously and one person you are pretty sure would never participate).

Fact or Fiction:

1. I have a black belt in kicking your ass.
2. I once drank a beer with David Carradine in Heathrow Airport.
3. Upon meeting him for the first time, was told by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh that I was “awesome.”
4. Used my Qi energy to save a group of innocent children from a mob of bloodthirsty, ninja unicorns.
5. I was taught Qigong by a famous Chinese movie star.

I’ve had one crazy life. no?

Okay, gotta tag some peeps. Walt, if you had a blog, I would tag you. Suzy Kohout come on down, Mike at MyTaiChiLife you’re the next contestant, Steven at Real Taijiquan (I know you’re still out there!), Taylor Shanklin at T-Shanks Cycles you’re up chica,  and last but not least, Wujimon.

Lately, I’ve started taking meditation more seriously. Meditation has been a part of my martial arts experience since I started, but it has never really been discussed in much depth. In my first Tai Chi class it was a small part of our warm up. In Qigong it was what we did in the last ten minutes of class. In Baguazhang…well, you’re supposed to reach a meditative state while doing lots and lots of drills. But even though it has never been seriously discussed, we are all, as martial arts students, expected to slough off our everyday minds so that we can be at one with the movements. So that we can become the movements. But what does that mean exactly? And what does it really mean to meditate? How do you know if you’re even doing it “right”?

There seems to be a lot of mystery surrounding meditation. At least, that was my initial impression. There is a prevailing belief floating around that meditation is supposed to take you somewhere, but where exactly would that be? For the purpose of martial arts, this isn’t really helpful. Meditation for me means remaining in the present moment. I don’t want to be anywhere else. Where would I go? I want to be here, practicing Tai Chi or Qigong or whatever else I’m doing. To become the movements, it is necessary to be in the moment completely, so that you no longer even think about yourself and completely forget you even have a self.

In Tai Chi I learned Standing Meditation. In Qigong we did short guided meditations where we visualized moving our qi up and down through the central meridian (or whatever meridian that is…). In Zen meditation – Zazen – which I am learning now, we sit facing a wall (this is Soto Zen, to be more precise).

I have stuck with both Standing Meditation and Zen meditation, or Zazen, because they have one thing in common – no one is telling me what to do. Also, while I enjoyed the guided meditations in my Qigong class, I cannot do them on my own at home, like I can Standing Meditation and Zazen (okay, technically I can, but it feels silly). And so I have developed my own routine – Standing Meditation and Tai Chi in the morning, Zazen at night before going to sleep.

But how do you know if you are doing it “right”? That’s the thing – there is no right way, really. Which I was kind of surprised to discover. There’s also nothing mysterious or magical about it. It’s simply a way of being in the present moment, being aware of your breath, the room around you and the thoughts that go in and out of your head every day and almost every moment.

It sounds so simple, yet can be so incredibly difficult sometimes…Still, meditation  is an integral part of the internal martial arts and is actually one of the things I enjoy most about my practice.

…

While I don’t follow him, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche has an excellent video on the Shambhala International website that sums up the basics of meditation very nicely. Also, Patrick Reynolds, of Zen is Stupid, has a really great (and funny) video about how to do Zazen and what to expect – see below.

Happy meditating.