"It's the wood that should fear your hand!"

We don't do much, or really anything, that involves contact in class. At least we don't in Level 1. So unless someone accidentally hits you in line, the person most likely to hurt you is, well, you. Now and again I've noticed I get shin splints from landing wrong in my jumps or bruise my feet from hitting them during caijiao/lunbi caijiao, but mostly these things go away after a bit of corrective modification. The last few classes my latest pain has come from stomping. I first notice a little pain in my right leg when I'm landing erqijiaos, straining my calf from landing too hard. Then immediately after, during the pubu chuanzhang, whilst stomping, the pain shoots up the back of my calf making it near-impossible to resist grimacing. This pretty much sets up a series of identical, and increasingly sharper pains during the stomps in forms, until I have to "air-stomp" and easy my way into gongbus to avoid doing myself a serious injury. Silly Hannah, what are you doing?

Richu made the comment that I should be hurting the floor, the floor shouldn't be hurting me. That made me think of "Kill Bill" where Uma is putting her fist through the fat hunk of wood. Now, I don't need to be punching through walls or beating people up, but the point remains, what good is any kind of strike if I'm just hurting myself? I'm not quite sure what I'm doing wrong, and I don't know why it's manifesting as a pain in my calf instead of a shin splint or something. Still, I will make a concerted effort to figure out the logic of hurting the floor since the last thing I want to do is limp through testing. Or really limp anywhere. If I have to, I will stomp right through to the cafe below us. More chi! Stomp harder!

PUSH!!!

As I mentioned recently, testing is October 6th-7th, and time is a-ticking. So I am inching my way forth in erluquan, a good number of moves past five kicks now, and some tell me I am oh-so-close to completing it. I have avoided focusing on the end, preferring to work on what I'm being taught at that present moment. But as the days draw closer, I am forced to ponder it some more because it is becoming more apparent that I'm really not that far. It is do-able...right?

Part of my reluctance to look too far forward is a desire to learn it right, meaning, waiting patiently for someone to teach me during class, in Temple. The natural progression of things. But that also means sometimes going through an entire two hour session without learning something new in erluquan if I'm not called upon to work with someone. So, I've found myself trying to study the folks ahead of me as they do erluquan, hoping to pick up the next move or two. I am not confident in my ability to 'fake' my way through, however.

So, is it cheating when I ask someone outside of class for a pointer or two in refining what I've picked up myself? Am I breaking the rules, specifically, #16, which states that we ought not ask other students to teach us? (Although, a loophole would suggest that these are rules of conduct during class, thereby making anything outside of class okay -- I'm such a lawyer!) Or, is that part of the game too -- using my own eyes and brain and body, and pushing myself to learn versus just being passive and waiting?

I am conflicted. My primary goal is to learn erluquan correctly, and it should be done regardless of whatever deadline is looming in the future. But, such a deadline can be useful if it serves as the impetus for me pushing myself to train harder. And it's not about being competitive with others, but with myself.

In tossing this all about my head I am also wondering if my hesitation is due to a fear of failure. If I don't push myself to complete erluquan, I therefore will not be able to test for it and will therefore fall back onto another six months of Level 1 training. While another six months of training would do a body good, I don't want to think that I'm somehow tricking myself into forgoing this opportunity to advance by being complacent -- by hiding behind the idea that whatever happens, happens.

Instead, this is how I think I'm gonna approach the upcoming weeks: no matter what, I want to learn erluquan because it's been long enough, dammit. I can totally do it, and I will (I hope). And I'm not gonna give up on executing it as well as possible. Even if I don't have the entire sequence of moves down, I don't have to forget about being crisp and sharp. Whether I pass or fail is irrelevant to my desire to push myself and train harder in attaining the end of erluquan. But I will do it, to give myself a chance.

As I lay me down to sleep...

I've been thinking a lot the past few days about why I train. As this blog has established, training makes me very happy. Usually, I'm not one to question happiness, I'll take what I get, but it's curious that something that can hurt so much, that can be so challenging and exhausting keeps bringing me back. I love everyone at temple, of course, but what it really comes down to is how I feel during class and how it makes me feel outside of the temple. There's the obvious: I feel in shape, I feel strong, I can eat all the cupcakes I want without (too much) guilt. While I'm in class what I feel is hot and tired. But those things are all the surface aspects of training. What makes me happy are the things training churns around underneath. All the things we're asked to do, train harder, be honest, push yourself, and so forth, have done a lot to get me to understand myself better, and though in class I am panting and dreaming of lemonade, underneath I'm thinking about challenging and mastering myself and so forth, and that has turned out to help me in and out of temple.

I know it's different for everyone, but to me, training is about seeing yourself very clearly; you're forced to be honest, whether learning something surprising about yourself or seeing things you already knew but can't always admit. In my case it's knowing when I'm cutting corners, knowing when I am focusing on the wrong goals, being too competitive, being unfocused, and being impatient. But also understanding when I'm happy and what things actually matter to me. I focus on those things as I train, and now I'm better able to identify them in my daily life as well. It's not about "finding yourself" in the after-school-special sense. It's taking the self you have and, as Niederwelt has said, clearing away all the b.s. and understanding what you've got left. I know that's not a new concept or anything, just tonight I guess it really struck me, with testing coming up, and me trying to focus on all the little problems in all my moves and forms, and consequently doing so at work and at home. Coming to the realization that, while you don't always learn the things you expect or want to know, you end up learning the things you need to know. So for now, I guess that's why I train and why I keep coming back for more. That and the cupcakes...

Heng Ji's Post Shaolin Retreat Wrap-up

Amituofo! Heng Ji has so graciously decided to share her experiences this past weekend at the retreat with us via a guest entry!

I sit here smiling, trying to stretch out my left hip, my right shoulder blade, my shins, wrist and neck, all of which are aching in response to the first of what I hope will be many Shaolin weekend retreats. Already, I am happily mentally preparing my bags for the next one.

The ten t-shirts and three uniforms I felt would be more than plenty proved to be woefully insufficient by mid-day Sunday when I was already down to two t-shirts and had lunch, another kung fu class, a Buddhism class and a certificate ceremony to go. For lunch I ended up wearing my bikini top under my night shirt, and for the rest of the day, a tank top under my sweaty uniform top.

For the next trip, I will add sixteen tops, six pairs of socks and two different types of training shoes. I will require alcohol swabs, Aleve, band-aids and a flashlight. I will leave the alarm clock, books, iPod and cell phone at home.

As everyone experiences things differently and lessons are learned as they are needed, I will share some I have discovered/rediscovered this weekend:

Lessons Learned:

(1) Shaolin Time is not subject to 9,192,631,770 oscillations of cesium atom's resonant frequency (thank you, Shifu).

(2) Shaolin Time should not be limited to only Shaolin experiences.

(3) Honor the gifts which Shifu offers us by reviewing and living those daily (thank you, Shifu).

(4) Practicing five chi kung movements for five minutes in the morning is roughly equivalent to ten minutes of weight training.

(5) Stopping for cupcakes should be part of the outing (thank you, Heng De).

(6) Creating personal challenges while training helps you experience it in a different way (thank you, Heng Han)...

(7) ...as does focusing on keeping a foot grounded while holding stances during forms (thank you, Heng Wei).

(8) GPS systems rock (thank you, Richu).

(9) Talking to your friends are beautiful meditations and can guide you to answer questions you didn’t realize you had (thank you, Heng Jian, Heng Shang, Heng Li, Heng Fa and Janice).

Goals:

(1) To work on my strength by practicing five Chi kung movements twice a day.

(2) To be able to take a few steps on my hands by the end of year.

(3) To work toward getting at least 6 hours of sleep per night.

The Yin and Yang of Training

This weekend's training for me represented an exercise in night and day. I had slept very little both Thursday and Friday nights, so hauling my ass to class on Saturday was a challenge in itself. When I got there, it was a ghost town -- mostly due to the retreat. By the time class started, only 13 of us lined up, led by Xu. And boy, it was rough -- the group was mostly comprised of students less experienced than me, so I ended up second in line after Shen! When we settled into the latter half of class for forms, pretty much only me, Shen, Zheng and Mo were rotating through for the hour, taking our time in hopes of catching our breath. Yikes!

Sunday was a nice contrast -- first of all, I managed to get 8 hours of sleep, so that did my body good. And more people attended -- 20 or so, and I'd say at least 2/3s were more or less in the same boat as me, plugging away at erluquan. (Btw, congrats to Sucheela for finishing erluquan, and to Niederwelt for beginning!) With the larger group, we were better able to appreciate everyone's progress, like watching Leo improve his sweep kick dramatically. And, happily, Xu worked with just about everyone, so I pushed forth a little bit more in my march towards completion. Just ask the witnesses at the Bowling Green station who might have seen a sweaty chick with her iPod on acting spastically on the platform around 3pm yesterday afternoon!

I keep going and going and going.....

As per my last post, there are lots of external factors contributing to how difficult/easy a training session feels. And even though I know I'm stronger, have more endurance, and can train harder than when I began, I still find myself panting and dripping sweat at the end of every class. Don't get me wrong, it's a great feeling, and I know it's a result of pushing myself and not relaxing into a comfort zone, but it does sometimes make it hard to be aware of my progress. Yesterday was no exception, but later that evening, after eating, going with some folks to watch the Blue Vipers for a bit, meeting up with a friend, going grocery shopping, and then going home and cleaning my apartment and working, I realized I NEVER could have done all that when I started.

In the beginning, class left me comfortably wiped of all thought and all energy; whether I got to got to the park or I had to go to work afterwards, I spent the remainder of the day in an exhausted haze. In the mornings I rarely did anything. If I wasn't sleeping then I was lying very still on the sofa, reading and conserving my energy. Now I can wake up, run an errand or do some chores and then go train and have plenty of energy left to not waste the rest of my day. Or on a weekday, get through 8 hours of work then jump on the train for class. Usually around 11pm I get a second wind and want to go out and work on whatever it is I worked on in class that day. On days when I don't train I'm able to get much more accomplished before curling up in my bed. This lets me know, that while I'm never going to make it through a class sweat-free with no shortness of breath (and what would be the point?) I am getting stronger. Heck, right now I'm up two hours early making cinnamon rolls. Hopefully that energy and endurance will also help me make it from one end of erluquan to the other.