Well the heat here in Beijing has been fairly steady, punctuated by the occasional violent thunderstorm and torrential downpour. That, combined with waves of hungry mosquitoes, has made the daily training somewhat of an added challenge. I recently counted the number of active and healing mosquito bites on my legs and arms and arrived at the startling number of 74. And yes, they itch :-/
With the killer humidity around here, it is not unusual for my sweat saturated clothing to be literally dripping from the exertion. Even doing my standing practice, sweat drips of my arms, forming small pools of sweat on the ground around my body. So these days, I wring my shirt out five or six times during practice, each time forming large puddles on the ground. I have had people see me after training and exclaim with surprise, “Oh, I didn’t know it was raining!” Alas, no, it is not.
But, otherwise, the routine remains largely the same as when I arrived, nothing too exciting. In my free time I keep up with the e- mail, occasionally do a bit of programming work if any comes up, and chat with Zoe and other friends on Skype (a godsend!) to catch up on the home front when I can. As I mentioned earlier, I went to Hong Kong just over a month ago, and that was very nice. George and Montse opened their wonderful home to me for a week and I got to explore that exciting island at my leisure and also got to hang out with their friendly beagle, Rufus. I also went to Tokyo to visit a cousin of mine who is a few years older than me, and I had quite a bit of fun exploring that urban jungle and some of its more famous neighborhoods (pictures are in the photostream).
But my time and attention is still dominated by Yiquan, which is still going well. Despite the work involved, it’s truly a luxury to be able to completely focus on nothing but this stuff, and I am slowly seeing the dividends from all the time invested so far. These days, I spend about two hours every day doing standing practice, which in the world of internal martial arts, is the vital foundation practice to developing internal power. Training continues for another 4 hours with slow movement exercises, explosive issuing power, punching drills, footwork drills, pushing hands and full contact sparring. I am realizing that just 1 month of this concentrated daily training is probably equivalent to 3-4 months of normal pace training, which gives some insight into how some of the past masters attained their skill, given that they trained at least this hard, if not harder, for a period of many many years. There simply are no shortcuts.
One general aim of Yiquan is for the practitioner to develop “Hunyuan Li”, or “omni-directional combat power”. This ability, when developed, allows you to discharge explosive power from any part of your body whatever its position, as if your entire body is a giant coiled spring ready to strike in any direction. Yiquan accomplishes this by coupling powerful mind visualizations with repeated neural- muscular coordination exercises during standing practice. Slowly, through the training, I am beginning to understand something of this fascinating power. It is a real revelation, however, to have my teacher, Master Yao, demonstrate the real stuff as he casually sends me or my fellow students flying into trees and over benches. It’s quite amazing to experience.
Training with Yao and all the other students here at the school, while often hard, tedious, and challenging, has so far proved to be everything I had hoped it would be and more. This is not a martial art for sport competition, or devoted to the mastery of countless intricate forms. It is an art simply devoted to the science of health cultivation and effective bare-handed combat. A system that, stripped down to fundamental principles and essential practices, starkly reveals the truly profound depths to which one can travel. It is definitely one of the most robust and accessible systems I have ever studied.
Although there are certainly obvious physical benefits from the training, the rewards for me have also been of the mind and soul. I have found the training forges and hones my spiritual dimension, as I am often confronted by issues arising from my own ego and fear as barriers to my own development as a martial artist. To succeed in combat one must forget oneself, disappear, and simply move with the opponent, without regard to win or loss, mind unclouded, moving swiftly without hesitation in the face of danger. It is this rather elusive state I seek, in training and beyond. I think in this way, martial arts can be a valuable means of mental self-cultivation, especially in these increasingly strange and chaotic times.
Anyway, looking outside, it seems the rain has stopped, which means that I should be off for yet more training…
Hi from Canada!
We too are experiencing a steady heat here near Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The far east of the province is in a drout, but only an hour North of Toronto we have had storm after storm, followed by the brutal humidity. When outside training we can come in from a run or cycling and have a shower and come out of the shower sweating as hard as when we trained. Our storm activity is higher than usual. August is drier, but in June and July we had record rain and record heat. We have experienced 5 tornadoes already. Now the cool wind is making it down from the north we can expect more. Our days are still between 30 and 40 degrees Celcius, but our nights started to cool a bit these last 5 days.
Stay Cool, Be Well