Tai Chi And More...

Learn Tai Chi, Bagua Zhang and Yi Quan in the heart of Exeter...

2011-07-26T08:17:00.000-07:00

Despite its ancient roots (or perhaps because of them), Tai Chi has more relevance for your life today than ever before.
Tai Chi is not a 'combat sport.' It is an art that encompasses the strengthening of body and mind, which as a martial art obviously includes self-defence. But the real essence of the art is in the expression of its unique qualities.
Few other disciplines, if any, can offer their practitioners such a holistic way of self-cultivation.
Below you can see just some of these qualities:
1. Postural strength.
2. Improved balance, coordination, and efficiency of movement.
3. Better concentration.
4. Enhanced body-awareness.
5. Self-control over stress levels, tension/relaxation states etc.
6. Fortified will-power and inner resolve.
7. Self-confidence.
8. Robust health and increased energy.
9. A deep sense of centredness and personal power.
10. A realistic capacity for self-defence.
11. Mastery of physical movements that are both beautiful and powerful.

In a hyper-paced, often overly stimulated society like ours, there's never been a better time to let Internal Martial Arts guide you to a more successful, healthy, centred and empowered way of living.
Contact Damien on Tel: 07939-121-356
or
Email: eightpalms@hotmail.co.uk
or just pop by spontaneously in some comfortable clothes to try it out.

Standing around...

2011-06-20T02:58:00.000-07:00

Over the last 10 years I have spent a considerable amount of time standing around. Unusual you might think, for someone whose life is so involved in martial arts: allow me to explain.

Near the end of a previous ten years of training in Shaolin Kung Fu, I had a chance meeting with a Bagua Zhang teacher. I had never really got the idea of ‘Qi’ and exactly what is was supposed to be, or how you were supposed to know if you had it. Like many martial artists, I had a vague notion of it being something almost supernatural, like an ethereal energy unknown to the laws of physics. Amazingly, there are practitioners, even within the internal arts, who still pertain to such a notion, but I digress.

This Bagua teacher introduced me to a form of partner work called ‘pushing hands’. He wasn’t a big guy. In fact, he was a small guy with a comfortable middle aged spread, which is highly relevant, because these facts only added to my surprise when I found I couldn’t lay a finger on him. I tried and tried again until my shoulder was on fire. He seemed perfectly at ease. He hadn’t even reddened.

‘How can it be, after so many years of bag work and weights and forms training, that I can’t push you off balance?’ I asked eventually.

‘You’re not relaxed. You need to relax,’ he replied.

As it happened, I moved away from the area, so I only saw him a couple of times after that, but it was the most refreshing experience I’d had for a long time. I was a beginner again. This Qi thing, whatever it was, clearly had some kind of grounding in reality. I emptied my cup, and went in search of this Holy Grail.

I found the Grail when I met my present teacher, Mark Leonard, of the Bristol Tai Chi Association. Again, when I first turned up on his door step, I thought I’d got the wrong address. Here was an unassuming, quiet red-head of gentle manners. I liked him instantly, but was he really going to show me the secrets of internal power?

Not being the sort to show off, I never really learnt just how powerful Mark was until fairly late on, my disillusionment through the previous Bagua teacher had made me want to forget everything I had known before, so I was in a pretty open-minded kind of mood. And so, we embarked on my training in Yi Quan.

On our first session, Mark had me stand with my feet only a little apart, and my arms raised as if to hug an imaginary beach ball. Then he told me something I’d heard before; he told me to relax. That was it, well, apart from the occasional postural adjustment he would make from time to time, when he felt I was willing, or relaxed enough, to go with it. This continued for one year. Yes, a whole year training one exercise where I didn’t throw a single technique. There is a saying, ‘when the student is ready, the master appears’. If I had met Mark ten years earlier I wouldn’t have given him the time of day. Thank God the timing was right, for what a treasure I would have passed by had it not been.

The strange exercise I had been introduced to was of course the famous ‘zhan zhuang’ training method, or ‘standing’, as we commonly call it. This single exercise has given me so much in martial power, health and energy, that I cannot underestimate its value. Through it, I discovered that Qi is not a mystical or supernatural power, but something that anyone can attain through will, patience and a deep level of self-knowledge. So what is Qi? Well, that’s another story. Suffice to say, standing around is still the core of my training, the main focus of my time with my teacher, and the benefits of its practise seem to me like an eternal spring.

If you live in Bristol or surrounding area, train with the best. Mark can be contacted via his web-site at http://www.bristoltaichi.org/

Still like a mountain.

2011-05-20T03:29:00.000-07:00

“Be still as a mountain, move like a great river.”

This is a quote from the Tai Chi master Wu Yu-hsiang. The master has encapsulated so much in such a simple sentence, which for me has to be a statement that came from someone with a profound knowledge of Kung Fu. Thanks to popular TV and film, it is sayings like these that have taken on a certain cliché quality. That should not deter the student from taking them seriously, as I hope to show.

There is a distinct and very tangible sensation that is experienced after the Neijia artist has reached a certain level of physical refinement. The experienced teacher can make the subtlest of adjustments to the student’s muscular-skeletal alignment whilst they hold a specific posture, resulting in a precision of balance and organization around the body’s centre of gravity that would be hard for the student to achieve on their own. Why should the student not be able to achieve this alone? The problem is, one’s subjective feeling of balance is heavily influenced by what the brain has learned to interpret as ‘normal’. Often, when I correct a student’s posture, they actually feel less balanced. This is on account of new neural information being unfamiliar to the brains assumptions. Sometimes I even have to prove that I have in fact improved the postures efficiency through certain tests before the student will believe me.

Once the posture is well aligned, a fertile ground has been achieved, whereby the conscious intent can begin to have an effect on the body’s physiological processes. Through the use of certain visualisations and attention to the ‘body feeling’, deep rooted tensions that could have been held in the body for years can be released. This in turn further solidifies the student’s internal structure. The result of these two qualities of balance and relaxation is a sensation of being ‘rooted’ to the floor. Like a mountain, one feels anchored to the floor, as if one had suddenly put on a huge amount of weight. Like the peak of a mountain, the top of the head and spine are still erect; there is no slumping in the posture, and the senses are alert and acutely present.

Of course, mountains aren’t the most mobile geological phenomena, so how do we reconcile this quality with ‘move like a great river’?

The two states of structural strength and fluidity are completely compatible. The force of the great river, as a metaphor for the force generated by the Neijia artist in movement, is only possible because of the initial ‘mountain state’ conditions. It is the coordination of the joints in motion, and continued organisation of the internal structure around the centre that allows for a harmony of strength and fluidity. An internal structure capable of channelling force from ones root can emit a tidal wave of energy, which if released against a target can have a very powerful effect.

The image of water also gives a clue as to the kind of strength in use here. A stiff, tense strength will not result in the same quality of force. In Neijia Kung Fu, excessive tension is regarded as a weakness, making the body aero-dynamic, and therefore light and vulnerable to being thrown or controlled.

Now we come to the psychological level of the saying.

‘Being’ like a mountain, and ‘moving like a great river’ refers to two important qualities of mind for the Neijia artist. To be like a mountain is to have ones conscious awareness rooted in the present. Strength of concentration will have been cultivated through training, leading to a rock like intent. But the present moment is not something static, but dynamic and ever changing. A mind like water is capable of adapting to ever changing circumstances. In the context of pushing hands, for example, it won’t be enough to have a rock solid posture if that posture cannot adapt to cope with a variety of oncoming forces, all seeking a way to disrupt the artists balance from a variety of angles.

The harmony between the mountain and the river is the dynamic balancing act between yin and yang within the body and mind.

Be still as a mountain, move like a great river. In this sentence alone there are years worth of study, practise, and continual improvement.

There are no secrets

2011-05-14T12:23:00.000-07:00

In the world of Chinese martial arts, it has long since been the master’s tradition to encode the secrets of his or her art in poetry. Much of this poetry is elegant, and rich in metaphor and symbolism. To the uninitiated, the grandeur of such writing could easy suggest a fair dose of exaggeration and ‘poetic licence’.

There is a popular saying, often quoted in martial arts magazine articles, and then disseminated by their readerships. It is claimed that ‘There are no secrets.’

To look at it with a generous spirit, the statement could be taken to mean that there can be no substitute to hard, dedicated and persistent training. So far so good: martial skill doesn’t develop by itself. However, the wording is wrong. Whoever popularized the saying had clearly missed the numerous ‘aha’ moments that are the milestone experiences of the traditional Neijia Kung Fu artist. There are secrets, and what they unlock can never be attained by any amount of lifting weights and hitting stuff.

Paradoxically, these secrets are not hidden: they are ‘open secrets.’ Nor are they difficult to comprehend as ideas. I can, and have many times, explained these secrets in plain English to many a student. Intellectually, they are immediately understood. But the ‘secret’ is not the idea. The secret is not a word, but a flower of realisation, that with deep attentiveness to ones practice, may blossom. This blossoming is the secret coming alive in ones body and mind. The philosophy of ‘no pain, no gain’ is superseded by the secret of ‘effortless power’.

The old masters of course, understood these two different types of knowing. So they passed on their secrets in the form of stories, poems and cryptic monologues.

Every now and again, I go back to the classics, read them, and laugh at myself. It is the same every time, ‘Ahh! Now I understand!’

It is the same every time.

Will the journey ever end? I hope not.

A taste of things to come.

2011-05-13T14:41:00.000-07:00

A warm greeting to you all. This post is more of an announcement than anything else. As part of the Exeter Kung Fu site, I will be writing a series of posts on relevant issues: discussing traditional martial arts philosophy, poetry and practice, answering common questions, and addressing common misunderstandings.
As the archive grows, I hope to build an open source to stimulate reflection on the deeper meanings of our practise.
In the next post, I will begin an exploration of Neijia Kung Fu's literary tradition through the writings of both historical and mythical figures.
Join me, and join in - the comments box will always be open!

Yours, Damien.