This Is Why I Train

It changed over the year. At the beginning, it was to stop thinking - for at least two hours during class. I was obsessed with my doomed relationship and self-pity. I was on a verge of depression. I learned to be present and mindful of things around me rather than just stayed in my own head.

And then I got over it.

I opened up and got to know more people at the temple. I realized I did not have to pretend to be accepted and liked. I could have friends I liked and liked me back for who I was in New York City! At the time, I trained because I was lonely. I wanted to make friends. I learned to open up and be comfortable with myself.

And then I started liking myself. I didn't need to be around people to not be lonely anymore.

Then it's because of Kungfu. I kept training because I wanted to be good. I wanted to kiss my toes and do all kinds of cool things other people can do. I liked learning and pushing my body to do things I never imagined doing. I remember the first time I did Ceshoufan. I had a surgery on the left shoulder not more than a year prior. I was mortified. But I did it. I liked the rush I had after the class - the feeling of accomplishing something difficult. I learned to be humble and confident at the same time.

And then that stopped too. I have been training only in Level 1 with the same routines over and over. I hardly do anything new anymore. I learned to find ways to improve what I know. I keep telling myself I can always learn - not a new move or a new form - but about myself. But that sometime wavers.

I still keep training at least 3 times a week. And I ask myself - why? What do I like so much about being there that even crumbling knees cannot stop me?

I think it's the positive energy - the chi. It's infectious. It makes me a positive and happy person. Maybe I do believe that through training I will one day understand myself. Or maybe I'm just addicted to pain.

Why do you train?

Wait...Is that ME I'm looking at?

As I walked through the Temple's doors on Saturday, I was immediately struck by two things -- Number 1, there was a PBS television TV crew for the Program Religion and Ethics at the Temple doing a special on 師父 (Shifu). And number 2, there was nobody in class. Well, I think the final number was around 20, but only FOUR Level 2's (Heng Bao, Me, Heng Po, and Aubrey). 師父 obviously would like to have a huge class to show our chi and so I was pumped for class because I knew I would be responsible for not "losing face." (丟臉) When we have guests, 師父 seldom takes the time to introduce them before class starts. This time, they were introduced right after we lined up. You can tell from 師父's face that this was important to him.

I immediately jumped to the front of the line with Heng Bao leading the other side. We walked quite a bit. ( I lost count how many times.) 師父 wanted good technique instead of speed. I don't know how well I did in this department. I am quite comfortable being in front of a camera for my acting, but when the camera was at Temple, I got all flustered and my eyes kept darting towards the camera. And perhaps being too vain, I messed up a few moves. It just goes to show that I have a while to go before I can be comfortable doing Kung Fu in front of a camera. Hopefully, they didn't notice too much or at least can edit my stupid looks at camera out. I'd bet they thought I was some amateur. Sigh...well...luckily, we had Heng Yu pumping everyone up with his chi.

After basics, while in the changing room, one of our temple brothers said, "Nothing like Vanity to pump up your chi, eh?" Class was supposed to have been difficult. I was still sore from the Level 2 class the night before. But class felt invigorating. I had a blast. The best part was at the end when they interviewed 師父 for about 30 minutes. The topics the interviewer tossed were intriguing, and 師父's answers were enlightening. I especially remember this:

Interviewer: "Is there anything difficult that you do?"
師父: "Nothing is difficult. Nothing is easy."

師父 went on to explain that if you want to do it, difficult is easy. If you don't want to do it, even easy things become difficult. This statement really hit home for me. Too often, I rank tasks by order of difficulty, not by whether or not I want to do it. Take my obsession with the Tornado for instance. It is a difficult move, but because I really want to get it, it is almost within reach! Every time I fall, I feel I am getting closer. I look around my life and I definitely don't do that enough. It's time to break this bad habit. If I don't, sooner or later, my life will be surrounded by difficulties too challenging to overcome.

Speed up, Slow down

Tonight's class was fun, though small. Only 10 of us, which is funny, because not so long ago 10 would have been a big L2 class. Lately, what with slowing down a little to help out my butt-sword/trying to train with renewed post testing chi, I've begun to value the importance of both going faster and going slower. The trick is, trying to figure out when to apply which approach.

For my biantuis, slowing down is helping me refine technique and build strength and balance instead of kicking desperately and ineffectually. For my bawang zakui, speeding up and really punching with chi have helped enormously in overcoming my choking in the ceshoufan. Speeding up my tornado tonight seemed to help it a little too (though admittedly it is still a disaster until I can jump higher). Slowing down my forms in places has helped me find where my stances are still weak and my body is not extended. Speeding up in others has helped me discover now power in some of my kicks and strikes.

Though depending on the move and your particular obstacle sometimes one is more helpful than the other, probably every move can benefit from a little of each technique. Speed overcomes the over-thinking, the slowness cultivates a precision that is lost in speed. The one thing that doesn't help, which I found myself doing tonight during one of my xiao hong quans, is going at a speed somewhere in the middle. In a desire to not just walk through my form but also not go at full chi and over-extend my dumb hamstring I was doing my form at sort of 60% pace. When I finished I realized that I had really gotten nothing out of that round of doing it. I was just going through the motions without focusing on speed or accuracy or chi. So I took myself back to chuji quantao and worked through it sharply, with chi, but very slow to be sure I wasn't glossing over anything or forgetting details. It definitely helped me find where I was missing extension and correct form. So slow down, speed up, but no giving up.

Status Quo -- Ouch!

After Tuesday's class, I wrote about a nagging Shaolin sword injury that has plagued me for the last few weeks. To detail it better, I've found that the Shaolin sword appears when I'm extending my right leg out straight and at an angle, so a little pain comes when i'm doing caijiao, lunbi caijiao and zhengtitui fully, and during cetitui, waibaitaui and lihetui, cos they involve some kind of rotation/angling of that leg, but it is most apparent during pubu, most likely because I am actually putting my weight on it. I am frustrated because if I do pubu and dip to my left, I can extend my hand to my foot quite easily now, but going to my right, I cannot dip down all the way and am hesitant to shoot my palm past my knee. Gong bu seems okay. The actual pain itself? I feel like some fingers are digging into my leg just under my right buttcheek and pinching really tight. Curiously enough, when I am just walking around, I feel no trace of my injury.

So during yesterday's training, I once again struggled a bit with finding the right balance of training to build up my chi versus being careful not to injure myself further. Not easy! I deliberately got in line last for basics to force myself to slow down so I wouldn't feel the pressure of anyone at my back. I started out doing kicks with my right leg at half mast, but then for the later kicks, I opted to work only the left leg, forgoing any further lifting of the bum leg. During stretching, I did what I could by myself and tried to do a little with my right leg. For forms, I did what I could as well, avoiding dropping into a full pubu on that side during yiluquan and doing a full kick, which must have looked a little funny to those who might have watched me.

It's not easy because I love training and putting my all into it without thinking too much about whether or not to go full chi, whereas now, I have to be careful not to let my right leg fly. Focus and control are even more key. Also, being last in line means slowing down significantly as I am behind people who started training after me. And while I do not consider myself fast by any means, even in my injured state, I am able to go faster for some of the basics and have the endurance to use more of the carpet, so it's caused me to be even more mindful of others who are training near me.

All this slowing down has made me appreciate the fact that I have indeed progressed in the fifteen months or so that I've been training. It also forces me to know my body and listen to when it's going OW! I guess it's another instance where I've got to be patient and allow myself to progress at a pace that's right for me.

Room to Breathe - On the Side

I was on the wider side of the carpet yesterday during the basics. I intentionally picked that side because I didn't like the dry hot air blowing from the heater above the changing room. It was wide and comfortable at the beginning. Towards the end when a few people got sent to the side, things got a little tighter.

I got sent to the side once when we first moved to the new temple. It was almost impossible (for me) to do tenkongfanyao in that space. So this time - I tried to give them space. The problem was that the space that was left in the middle got so narrow I could do only 2 or 3 moves and I would run out of space.

So I would like to ask anybody who happens to read this and trains on the wider side of the carpet next time to turn the line a little sooner - to be mindful of people training on the side while waiting for our turn in the line.

And for the people in front of the line - please be aware that the space gets narrower - if you can, please move a little bit toward the middle - try not rush people in the back of the line or yell at us to move to the side - because there's not much space on the side...