Weighty Issues

I simply haven't been able to get back into my training routine. And it's been going on so long that not training is really my routine. I can't remember the last time I consistently did 4+ days a week continuously. But never fear, I have found the solution. A scale.

Now before you start posting lots of comments about how scales are bad, you're not fat, blah blah blah, let me clarify some facts.

I don't need people to tell me I do or don't look fat -- that's not the point of this post. Yes I know I'm tall; yes I know muscle weighs more than fat; and yes I know my hobby is baking cupcakes so that would account for any extra poundage. But the trickiness of buttoning my winter coats made me want to take a look at the scale, and muscle or no, what I saw was a quite a lot more that what it should be.

And yes I know weight is a number; and yes I know muscle weighs more than fat and yes I know there should be fewer cupcakes in my diet. My greater concern was it was a clear sign of how little I've been training, and that does makes me feel low on the self-esteem, the lack of follow through in my training. Also, I am very much concerned about what that extra weight must be doing to my joints every time I jump. It's not just a few vanity pounds when comparing last year to this, and I really don't need to handicap my jumping height or make any part of training that much harder on my knees and ankles and back.

So this is a lesson I wanted to share, don't let a passion for frosting and cake distract you from taking care of your body: both in how much you consume and how many nights you take off to bake more. Not only is one's body a temple and all of that lovely stuff, when you line up, it's all you have to work with; and lighter, well-conditioned things are so much easier to make work for you. Plus, think how much higher you'll jump.


(No, these aren't my feet.)

Orange Crush

It is no longer an object of fancy for your humble Narrator; I finally got the call to the big leagues, to wear the orange robes, and no, I couldn't wait to try them on, as evidenced by the photo above. :)

It has been a mighty struggle for me, especially from the time I blew out my knee to not passing erluquan during testing six months ago. Well over a year had transpired since I finished erluquan, and I had to find ways to understand why I needed to be in Level 1 for another six months after not being elevated to Level 2 this past April. Of course, one can always polish and refine what one has learned, and one can become stronger, but the challenge also became a mental one.

Mainly, I had to fight to maintain my motivation. This was not about going to class and having Shifu motivate me with his barking. Rather, this was about me pushing myself, in spite of myself. I have witnessed several of my dearest friends who started after me get to Level 2 ahead of me, and while yes, I know it's about the individual journey, and not comparing yourself to others, most of us have enjoyed success in our lives largely due to a competitive sense. I wanted to be able to train with my brothers and sisters, learning new things together, like we used to. I admit to feeling traces of jealousy at times when hearing my fellow dorks discuss new moves. I felt bad for feeling simultaneously proud and envious of them for progressing through subsequent Level 2 forms while I remained stuck on erluquan. And so, when I cried like a baby after last certificate ceremony, it was for a multitude of reasons, none of which were hugely attractive.

But I had to keep reminding myself that I'd get there eventually. Maybe it'd take me a little longer than others, but I needed to keep plugging away. While I was recovering from my knee injury and couldn't train and missed my friends for two months, I remember thinking, geez, I can't wait to train kung fu again. Just to be able to caijiao and mabu again with my peers would be a wonderful thing! And it goes to show that it's not about how high you kick, or how fast you fly, but that you're doing it, and you try and try again to do it better. The action is meditation itself -- it's not about what you're doing, necessarily, but the doing itself.

We see people come to train at Temple with varying skills. Some so very amazing and lithe, others needing much training. But we judge not how well people do in terms of ability, but how hard they try, vis à vis their expressions of chi. I hope, for me, that ability to express my chi never dries up. As long as I can move my body, I hope to keep moving forward.

Thanks to all of you who've been so supportive. I am so glad to have had you along for my ride. All week long before yesterday's ceremony, I promised myself I wouldn't cry again, yet surely I did, but at least this time they were tears of happiness. I was one of the first Kung Fu Dork bloggers to write; I am the last of the bloggers to move to Level 2, and to that, I say, better late than never!

So, in five minutes, I shall depart my laptop, and jump on the subway, for what will be my very first Level 2 class, which promises to be scary and fun and challenging. I cannot wait to train harder, to learn new things, and to continue forth with the next chapter of my journey of getting to know myself.

CHI!

Congrats!!

Congratulations to everyone who passed their forms!

It was a pretty gratifying ceremony, with tons of cheers and a few (happy!) tears. I'm still mildly curious if there was a Xiao Hong Quan mix up. I can wait another 6 months to find out though. After all, I did add an extra move to my form during testing, and sadly the error was not just chalked up to my expressing myself :)

I'm just hoping the confusion related to faulty record-keeping is not a foreshadowing of any dubious voter-calculation activities which may want to rear their ugly heads tomorrow.

One more time: Congratulations!

AND DON'T FORGET TO VOTE!

Food for Thought

This past Sunday, after testing, Sifu's comments were that we were getting sloppy and slow. Not exactly the summary one hopes for. "Sifu!" I wanted to cry, "I had the stomach flu! I've barely eaten for 5 days!"

I managed to refrain. my only goals going into testing were to not pass out or throw up. But his words stuck with me, especially as he repeated them to the seven lonely people that showed up for Level 2 Monday night. He added, "No more. Starting today always be strong. Always be sharp."

"But Sifu!" I wanted to cry, "I had the stomach flu! I've barely eaten for 5 days!"

I couldn't bear being a disappointment, but instead of protesting, I shut up and began class. It was awesome and totally bizarre. After ten minutes we were still working on caijiao. By 7:30 we had gotten through three basic moves. By 8:00 we had finished going over 6 moves, all L1 basics.
You can imagine the intensity with which we were executing and fine-tuning the details of every kick. It wasn't at all frustrating but instead rejuvenating to get the tough love and be forced to go back and do those very first basics upon which we constantly build. During stretching, Sifu made a side comment, "Push yourself -- if it was easy everyone would be a master."

By the end of class something clicked. I didn't need to cry my excuse to Sifu because it didn't matter. I should have approached testing with as much chi as ever. Sure I had been sick, but I was kidding myself if I couldn't admit that part of the problem was the week I took off before the bout of illness. Before that I had taken another week off from an earlier bout of flu. There may have been sickness mingled up in there, but I was indulging it and more than the dehydration from stomach flu, the only 2 days of training in a span of nearly three weeks was more to blame. You can only lie to yourself just so much, before you realize your making excuses to make yourself feel better about something you feel guilty having done. I needed some time off; that was fine. But that was my choice and I can't milk an illness to justify that choice. You have to be confident in your decisions and then won't feel the need to justify them later.

So I can't go in and say, "I had the stomach flu!" and then settle for making it through without passing out and throwing up. That's trying to cover the fact that I was not feeling right about my choice not to train before that point. I needed to have gone in there with the highest level of chi I could muster. The same goes for class. I choose to come. As Sifu says, "Don't waste your life. You come to temple, then train harder." So I shouldn't come to training without giving it 100%. Even if physically or mentally I'm not at my optimum place, I can give all of whatever I have. Doing that, I'll have nothing to regret, nothing to reprimand myself for, and there won't be any reason not to be proud of every choice I make. I won't need excuses and I won't to worry if Sifu thinks I'm training hard enough; I'll know I am through being honest with myself and he'll see it. So, to sum up this public moralizing, let's try to do what we profess and train harder.

A few words from Heng Ji (Branden)

With testing coming up this weekend for most, I thought a little reflection might be appropriate.

- If your body is strong but your mind is lazy, you lack the mental discipline and focus to train harder and push your body further.

- Finish stronger than you began.

- True happiness come from a life that is fulfilled.

- A truly happy life is a life of action, not distraction.
True happiness comes from mastering and polishing your life.

It comes from self-respect and self-confidence, from developing harmony and balance so that you can savor 'THIS' moment, here and now, for the beautiful gift that it is.

- Happiness is spreading peace and love to the people around you.

That is the warrior way.

- Be fully mindful of the moment.

- Commit yourself to training everyday.

Good luck to everyone!

It's good to be back

Taking a break has its own benefit. For one thing, my knees were pain free until I started training again. But it's good to be back. To see people I know and with whom I have at least one thing in common. To feel welcome.

Tonight was my third class after being away for one and a half months. The pain and stiffness were still there. The flexibility hasn't come back. The first 20 kicks still hurt like hell. But it's OK. There was chi in the air. At the front of the lines, there were Xu, Khalid, Zhou, Randy and moneyfoot. It was beautiful and inspiring watching them training - especially when it's time for Tengkong Fanyao.

After the class, Heng Zhou's parents and sister showed up. They were such delightful people. One bit of wisdom from Zhou's mom that kept coming up in my head: She said she learned a lot since Zhou he started training. It's not because he brought anything new to the table. It's because they started talking more about the meanings and reasons for things. Subjects that everybody already realized but never brought up. Just by talking about it makes you learn.

Test Prep

Yesterday was disciple ceremony, and as a result, class was cut a little short. But not before I was able to pound through some forms with re-ignited chi.

It was strange, I didn’t get all that much sleep, and I was pretty sure I was coming down with a cold (confirmed today) but there was no way I’d skip out on class before Disciple Ceremony, especially when I had only been to 3 classes this week. Heng Mo and I met up to walk to the train together and both of us were feeling a fair amount of indigestion from the unaccustomedly obscene amount of meat we ate at Qbertplaya’s BBQ birthday the day before. Our one consolation was that, at least the meat might give us chi (if we didn’t get sick first…).

I guess it worked because we both agreed that it was an excellent class. When forms time came I was able to attack them with a level of chi that I had been lacking since coming back from China. Or maybe we were both just feeling the chi in anticipation of Disciple Ceremony. But it was a relief, because with testing coming up, feeling exhausted during forms is not a good sign. Only so much endurance can be regained in 3 weeks. I am really looking forward to testing both XHQ and DHQ, but they are not walks in the park, so I will need all the preparatory chi I can get!

Back to Back

I love our Shaolin community. When packing up after work yesterday I saw two new voice messages on my cell. The first, was from fellow dork Heng Mo’s boyfriend, who was locked out of their apartment. (Mo and I also happen to be neighbors so I have her keys. Sadly, I wasn’t around to be helpful. Still, it was a nice reminder of our compatriotism.) The second was from fellow China-traveler Livia, who had just finished taking day class. The contents were, roughly, “Oh my God class was so rough! I know you trained yesterday, I wanted to see if it was as bad for you!”

Livia has more chi than several people combined, so if she was tired you know it must have been rough. No worries, Livia, you were indeed echoing my sentiments from Sunday. As I touched on in my last post, because of weird jet lag, I was up at 6 am Sunday, so decided to hit training and get it out of the way. In spite of appearances, we didn’t actually do that much “training” in China. We learned a lot, we hiked a lot of mountains. But none of it was really comparable to training an intense 2 hour class. And combined with the amount of un-nutritious eating and hours and hours of being sedentary on buses and trains, well, it didn’t spell for a triumphant return to training. All in all, her message, combined with the previous day’s training, left me with an ominous feeling as I headed to Level 2 last night.

As 6:45 rolled around and warm bodies remained scarce, I was really wondering where everyone was. I knew that Sunday I would probably be the only lunatic to come train. (Actually, Zhou was there too. More chi!) And I knew Monday might be somewhat sparse, but again, only one other China comrade, Richu, was in attendance. Now, I am not feeling superior for being stupid/crazy enough to train two days back to back immediately after disembarking a 13 hour flight. I was scared about what would happen if I started procrastinating. Plus, I missed it. And, in the end, despite the dubious mindset I went in with last night, class was more mentally enjoyable than it had been for awhile before leaving. I couldn't move so well this morning, but that's the price you pay.

Tonight, I'm not training, making sure that I get back in the swing methodically and without injury. (Plus I am still not totally unpacked…) But mentally, I would still love to go. There are lots of folks I have yet to see since returning, and there is much to review, both from the trip and in preparation for impending testing. But rest is probably wise.

Long story short, it hurts, but it’s great to be home!

China

Well, I know everyone was hoping for consistent, exciting updates from our journey into the Middle Kingdom, and when it became apparent that wasn't going to happen, began eagerly anticipating the promised deluge of posting that would follow quickly on the heels of my return. Now, you're patiently making excuses for me (jet lag, unpacking) for why I haven't yet provided the details on the China training. You're reading this now with joy and wondering when the heck I'll get on with it and talk about training. Here's the thing, there is just too much to even begin trying to capture it all in blog posts. Even when I leave out the stuff not strictly kung-fu related there is more than I can wrap my brain around telling everyone, and I feel inadequate to convey what happened without losing a lot in translation. I'm overwhelmed just thinking where to begin.

I can tell you that I learned eagle claw and sword, and that others learned tiger, mantis, and 7 star fist. But just from that I could devote an entire post to describing what eagle feels like, or what it's like to be taught by an instructor who doesn't speak any English. I could wax poetic for pages about the wushu schools, and watching the armies of children training on expanses of bare dirt doing rapid fire caijiaos and butterfly twists and intense stretching exercises. I have a whole post in my head about watching our instructors at Sifu's brother's school do 10 backflips in a row and suicides on a cement floor, jumping higher than any of us could if we had a sprung floor under us. I could talk about how we couldn't drink the tap water so I was never fully hydrated. How it felt to train with perpetual low grade indigestion.

Then there's all the spiritual moments. Climbing Drum Mountain at the Shaolin Temple; seeing the places we hear about in Buddhism class. I want to talk about the irony of watching a monk talking on a cell phone and the different feelings and thoughts that evokes. Or seeing the classic monk-coming-down-Bell-Mountain-stairs-on-hands-and-feet. Then there's the experience of meeting our Sifu's Sifu and how surreal that felt.

I can talk about the bizarre jet lag that had me training yesterday, about how totally whipped I was in class and how much endurance I lost in two weeks. the list is endless. So why don't I? Instead of summing up all the things I COULD talk about, why don't I just talk about them, you wonder? Besides it being an overwhelming amount of blogging, besides not wanting to bore the pants of everyone, and besides feeling unable to do it justice, honestly, I myself haven't totally absorbed everything or straightened out all my thoughts and feeling about everything I did and saw. Note the excessive run-on sentences in this post.

So, while I set it all in order in my mind, I invite you to ask any questions that I hope I can compile into a single "Answers here" post. For the rest of it, expect lots of anecdotes and references to crop up as I move forward in my posts. I beg your patience in this endeavor. In a way it's like looking at my photos, looking at them all en masse can never convey the experience and deadens your senses, whereas seeing one picture has its own story and its own impact it couldn't otherwise have. At the same time, the single picture isn't enough to express the whole trip. So as I move forward it will be like seeing the photos a few at a time, and I think it will provide the best story.

Learning to Fly

Before we learned to walk, we all repeatedly fell down over and over again until we were able to develop our muscles and coordination to the point where we can balance ourselves precariously on two feet. It is after millenniums of evolution that humans have become one of a handful of creatures that has chosen to walk on it's hind legs. And now, I'm on a quest to further that evolution. I want to aerial, butterfly twist, and TengKongWaiBaiLiang as my only mode of travel from Point A to Point B.

I feel like a child learning to walk again. Oooo...boy! I sure have the bruises to prove it too. On Wednesday night Level 2 class, I walked in and both John and Heng Ji (Branden) said to me, "So you landed an aerial, eh? Let's see it!" They proceeded to pull out the big mats for us to play on. We had about 20 minutes worth of jumping and fumbling through the air trying our best to land our aerials and butterfly twists. None of us landed it but it was nice to have the mats and not have to worry about landing too hard on the ground. It does pose an interesting question. Is it better to learn how to land it on a mat, build the confidence there and then land without it? Or is it better to venture out onto the real surface where we will be doing the aerial anyway? I suppose it comes down to personal preference. Do you want bruises now or later? You are going to fall a few times. It's a fact. It's overcoming that fear of self-preservation. It's letting it all go and just fly. During class, I put that philosophy to the test. Heng De let us do BaiWangZaiKui for about 10 minutes. I think the way I was falling was scaring some people. "Leo, when you land fall, it's like seeing and hearing a sack of potatoes fall on the ground. Ka-Boom! But you do it with no fear though. I don't know if I can do that..."

My body is still a little battered today. I am not sure if it is from the falling or my muscles getting used a new way of coordination and use. I would like to think it's the latter because if I let my fear control me, I will never be able to fly. It really isn't about the falling down. It's about the getting back up and trying again after you just failed. But maybe I should invest in some protection, just in case. A wearable airbag. I sure could use that!

Even though I wince in pain every step I take, I can't wait to get out there and learn to fly again.