Obey My Blog

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.