Weakness With a Twist

I wish there was a simple way to explain this.

I’m not genetically flexible and although I did train martial arts before puberty, I didn’t do enough to make me significantly more flexible than an average guy you might meet on the street. So at seventeen when I really got into dance for the first time, I started stretching a lot, everyday. And when I say everyday, I mean, everyday–I didn’t miss a day of stretching for probably 5 years.

All that yoga prop junk is just for people who are short on time, if you have the time to stretch you don’t need a prop. (There is one exception; sometimes a coach will advise a prop because someone is stretching unevenly, for that it is an extremely good idea.)

Stretching the same muscles day after day while doing kicks and jumps that use your maximum range of motion is painful, but it’s muscle pain, it’s the kind of ‘hurts so good’ pain that all athletes love. It’s not debilitating pain, it’s not nagging pain. Who am I to tell people not to do it?

I’m nobody. If you do it and you like it, keep doing it. But I have a duty of another order. I’m here to be a voice for another way of thinking and experiencing life. I’m here to represent the unique study of Chinese Internal Martial Arts and their relation to a Daoist view of what a human being is.

About 13 years ago, the idea of internal flexibility started to take root in my body. It did not come from stretching, nor did it come from standing still or meditation. It came from doing what most people these days would call qigong. Specifically I was doing Tiandifu (Heaven Earth Contract) style of qigong. Most Taijiquan classes include this type of movement; expanding the dantian in all directions while extending the arms over the head and then drawing everything back in. The thing is I did more than most people do and I was really focused on lengthening the spine.

At this time in my practice I could do what they call in gymnastics a back walkover. But in order to do it I needed to do a lot of stretching, especially bridges. From doing the internal spine lengthening, the quality of my flexibility totally changed, I was able to do a back walkover cold. Cold means without warming up, without stretching out first.

Then about ten years ago I was on a backpacking trip and I fell with a heavy backpack on. I really hurt my arm and my back. For the first time in my life I was waking up in the middle of the night in pain. It took a long time to heal and I’ve never gotten back to the point where I could do a back walkover cold. Bummer huh?

The plus side is that now I have a lot of expertise about spine injuries. Also I’ve thought about and tried a really wide range of stretching routines.

So what is the difference between internal stretching and external stretching?

External stretching is when you put pressure on a joint or a muscle or a muscle group in order to get it to relax and/or lengthen. When we do this type of stretching we cut off the connection between our dantian and our limbs. If we do this kind of stretching we have to do the same stretches everyday because the dantian will automatically try to suck our limbs back into itself while we are sleeping. (If you don’t sleep for 24 hours you will likely be really flexible but also at higher risk of muscle/tendon/ligament tears.)

Internal stretching may not look like stretching. To stretch internally our arms and legs have to be a part of the dantian. Once a person has this feeling in motion, the stretches are easy to find or invent.

The dantian expands, condenses, rolls and twists. As it moves, so must the limbs move with it, as one continuous whole. You’ve probably heard that before, but are you doing it? Is the movement of your thigh the same movement as the movement of your belly? Is it simultaneous? Does it have the same quality?

This is one of those things which is so simple most people miss it. In order for a person who is flexible by training to develop internal stretching, he or she will have to give up what they are already good at.

Su Dongchen and Luo Dexiu are gongfu brothers from Taiwan.  They both teach Gao style Baguazhang, 5 Element Xingyi and some Taijiquan.  I’ve taken workshops with Luo and he is great.  I’ve seen a lot of video of Su Dongchen (someone gave me 4 hours worth a few years ago) but I’ve never met him.  Because they are both so good, both into fighting, both do the same stuff, and…yet have differences…they are interesting to watch and compare.

While most of these videos are designed to communicate basic stuff, I hope it is obvious that there is no way anyone can get this good without lots of spontaneity and experimentation.

Essence of Evolution is Su Dongchen’s site.

Watch his videos here.

Some of Luo Dexiu’s videos are here.

This is his site in English, in Chinese. Enjoy.

A Baguazhang student of mine has a job teaching Clowning to acrobats in Nanjing starting September 15th for six weeks.  Does anyone have information about martial arts schools or teachers currently in Nanjing?

Other interesting contacts would be welcome too.

Appetite and desire, what’s the difference?

Yes and O.K., what’s the difference?

Jing and Qi, how can we differentiate them?

When we give a name to something which is subtle and difficult to discern, we risk obscuring it, even losing it, because the hardness or fixedness of the name shines light on something which only exists in the dark.  This isn’t an argument against naming, only a reminder that naming is a kind of aggression.

Chapter 15 (Wangbi numeration) of the Daodejing,

The ancient masters of the Way

aimed at the indiscernible

and penetrated the dark

you would never know them

and because you wouldn’t know them

I describe them with reluctance

they were careful as if crossing a river in winter

cautious as if worried about neighbors

reserved like guests

ephemeral like melting ice

simple like uncarved wood

open like valleys

and murky like puddles

but a puddle becomes clear when it’s still

and stillness becomes alive when it’s roused

those who treasure this Way

don’t try to be full

not trying to be full

they can hide and stay hidden

This translation is by Red Pine and I think it is great.  He also translates commentaries on all the chapters, like this one by Ho-Shang Kung, “Those who aren’t full are able to maintain their concealment and avoid new attainments.”

What a contrary piece of advice:  Avoid new attainments.

What does someone who is “empty” look like?  Well, like they are walking on slippery thin ice without breaking it–very light, very delicate, precise with out being confident.

I think the phrase, “worried about neighbors” means attentive in all four directions.

Guests wait to be invited into action but help out generously if they are needed.

Melting ice is always becoming less.

The uncarved wood here is like big pieces of lumber, it is very useful but it is in a potencial state, uncommitted.

To practice being empty is a Daoist precept.  In martial arts emptiness seems like a pinnacle of achievement, but then I read this I’m reminded that fullness is hard to give up.

Empty and full, what’s the difference?

The other day in class I remarked that the cause of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is that people don’t extend and contract their fingernails when doing repetitive motions with their fingers or hands like typing. Needless to say, this led to an attack on my authority.

Have we entered the era of: ‘Everyone Is An Expert?’

To modify something my Indian Dance teacher was fond of saying, ” A little Google is a dangerious thing.”

Of course, it is reasonable to ask a teacher, on what basis they are making a claim. Unfortunately, thirty years of martial arts experience seems to be about on a par with one feisty Google search.

Beware of any problem ending in “syndrome.” That means it is difficult to diagnose because there are many things which could cause the same symptoms. In this case what we are talking about is a narrowing of the Carpal Tunnels in the wrists accompanied by swelling, pain and numbness or tingling. 9 tendons along with nerve flow and blood pass through each Carpel Tunnel. Surgery for “fixing” this syndrome involves the cutting of the ligament(s) that contain the underside of the wrist.

I’ve never had Carpal Tunnel Syndrome myself, and I’ve never cured anyone of anything. (I have offered suggestions for treating problems in which it was later reported back to me that, do to having followed my suggestion, the problem went away– but I will always remain skeptical of my own ability to invoke healing.) I have had students who were diagnosed with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome before coming to study with me, but it is very hard to say with any confidence that a recommendation I made was more important than the 20 other things they were doing to try and cope with the problem. One student I recall was convinced that wearing wristbands with magnets in them completely cured her Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

This all came up because I was teaching a two person partner exercise called joint pulsing (kaihe), the opening and closing of the joints. When I first started teaching this years ago, nobody had seen anything like it. Then one quarter a student who was an assistant chiropractor said his boss had an expensive machine that he hooked people up to which did the same thing. Another quarter, a student said she worked with autistic children and the staff had been taught to pulse the children’s wrists and elbows because the compression was calming. This quarter a student said she had already learned joint pulsing as an assistant physical therapist. UUUgggghh.

Of course, nobody had been told that this information came from Chinese internal martial arts. Nobody had been taught that the purpose of pulsing the joints was to have a passive experience of what one’s body can do naturally, on one’s own. That is, that the manual experience of having one’s joints pulsed reminds us of how we moved in the womb, as toddlers, and even up until age 5 or so. Once we are reminded of the experience of this quality of movement, we can recover the ability to move this way at will.

The ability to move and animate our bodies the way we did in the womb is sometimes called Yuan Qi, or original qi. While becoming a human rubber band is a cool trick, the purpose here is to make our movement simpler. Simpler movement is more efficient. Efficient movement is more sensitive. Sensitivity to the ways in which we habitually waste qi, allows us to conserve qi. Conserving qi, is the equivalent of non-aggression- wuwei.

Needless to say, none of these student “experts” had learned the easiest part of of joint pulsing which is extending and contracting the fingernails. In Chinese practical anatomy, the nails are considered the ends of all the tendons (Perhaps sinew is a better term because it is more general but tendons works fine for this example.)

1. Place any finger tip on the side of the index finger of the opposite hand and then place the thumb on top of that finger nail.
2. The thumb needs just enough pressure so that if it moves it will not slip but will maintain traction on the nail.
3. Gently move the nail inwards for 3 seconds and outwards for 3 seconds, repeating continuously for up to 20 minutes per nail. The motion is gentle and fluid, not forceful. It should feel like you are a cat that can extend and contract its nails/claws, albeit, much less movement than a cat can achieve.

After practicing this for a while, you will be able to extend and contract your nails at will. This is fundamental to internal martial arts training. For instance, in Taijiquan, the fingernails extend during ji and an, and contract during lu and peng. (Note: This is Jin level training. At the next level up, kaihe is left in a potencial state.)

When extending the finger to push down on a typing pad, one’s nail should extend out first. For most people this is normal, unconscious, and happens at lighting speed. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is caused by unconsciously contracting (or drawing in) the fingernails while performing some repetitive finger motion like typing. I know this because when I contract my nails while typing I can feel my carpal tunnels narrowing. After a while they start to swell from the internal friction. But I’m not going to give myself carpal tunnel syndrome just to prove it to someone else’s satisfaction, and I don’t know how to cure it once damage has been done to the nerves. So I’m not claiming curative powers here, just that I can teach people a skill that if maintained, will insure they don’t get Carpal Tunnel Syndrome at some time in the future.

Traditional Chinese long life practices have for centuries been a source for remedial knowledge about the body. Unfortunately the modern tendency to seek out individual methods, fractured from the source, results in a loss of information at best–and a complete obscuration of purpose at worst.

Everybody who has ever studied with a traditional Chinese teacher knows the expression, “Tasting Bitter.” A standard Chinese prejudice against Americans is that we have never tasted bitter and although we may have talent, be clever, or even achieve some semblance of self-discipline, we will never understand things the way a Chinese person does. This is all due to the “fact” that we haven’t “tasted bitter,” we haven’t experienced profound hardship.

Well, this article certainly spells it out. We ain’t changing!

Performers have complained that they sustained injuries from slipping during rain-drenched rehearsals or fainting from heatstroke amid hours of training under the relentless summer sun.

Cheng and 2,200 other carefully chosen pugilist prodigies spent an average of 16 hours a day, every day, rehearsing a synchronized tai-chi routine involving high kicks, sweeping lunges and swift punches. They lived for three months in trying conditions at a restricted army camp on the outskirts of Beijing…..(snip).

North Korea is No. 1 in the world when it comes to uniformity. They are uniform beyond belief! These kind of traditional synchronized movements result in a sense of beauty. We Chinese are able to achieve this as well. Though hard training and strict discipline,” he said. Pyongyang’s annual mass games feature 100,000 people moving in lockstep.

Performers in the West by contrast need frequent breaks and cannot withstand criticism, Zhang said, citing his experience working on an opera performance abroad. Though he didn’t mention specific productions, Zhang directed an opera at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2006.

NOTE: I maybe posting in bunches for a while until I fix the timer on my blog.

Long time readers have heard me say that the greatest source of medicine is war.  Where else do you have the resources to do big experiments?  Where else can you get the experience of having more injured people than you can possibly treat?  Where else do you get huge numbers of sick people?  (Historically, more people have died from illness, starvation and disease during wars than through trauma.)

Chinese medicine is no exception.  Check out this article from Military.com called Battlefield Acupuncture.

If you have ever seen the over-the-counter Chinese Herb Yunnan Baiyao you may have noticed that this ’stop bleeding’ formula has a tiny red pill to be taken only in the case of gunshot wounds.  The story is, Yunnan Baiyao was in the North Vietnamese first-aid kits.

Check out a great post from Martial Arts Blogger Jianghu 2.0. First he gives his explanation of keeping one’s tongue on the roof of the mouth and then how one should conceptualize baguazhang’s mud walking.

I was taught an additional reason for putting the tongue on the roof of the mouth:  In meditation/stillness, it allows saliva to pool and then descend down one’s throat with out creating the gag reflex or having to actively swallow.  Not particularly useful for pure martial arts though.

Perhaps because of my California coastal experiences with mud I think of baguazhang mud walking happening in sticky mud, instead of the slippery or calf-deep mud he describes.  The advantage of sticky mud is that it emphasizes the opening and closing (kaihe) of the joints while giving the same emphasis to the back foot that calf-deep mud would.

Of course, if you have been practicing with the slippery mud idea that has the advantage that you don’t rely on a fixed root; a higher level practice actually.  I suppose the next level up might be walking on top of quicksand, or really high level–water.

Self-defense, narrowly defined, is the ability to hurt someone quickly and get away. How someone carries themselves, how we are perceived by others, is not generally considered part of self-defense, but it should be the main subject. Usually this aspect of ourselves is unconscious and people will resist paying attention to it. Taking stock of how we carry ourselves can be life transforming.

All of us have known people who manage to get in fights on a semi-regular basis and seem oblivious of the possibility that the way they carry themselves, or the way they smile or use their eyes, may in fact be provoking these fights. And we’ve also all known people who just act like victims, and because of that, such people often end up making life choices that shield them from contact with potencial perpetrators.

Both of these behaviors are true for all of us. To at least some tiny degree, we all at times slip into victim, challenger, and perpetrator roles.

There are some theatrical and real life extremes which are worth considering. Gilligan, of Gilligan’s Island fame, is a character which was adapted from Comedia dell’arte. One of Gilligan’s qualities is that he never gets hurt, he is plastic. His clothes don’t fit, he slumps, he flops, he swings, and he is always over stepping the Captain’s personal space and getting whacked. He is a great protagonist because he can innocently go anywhere, do anything, get in a whole mess-o-trouble–and yet he maintains this, “I’m not worth it” stance. His physicality tells us that he is just too weak, too accidental, to bother holding accountable–he is just not worth biting, boiling, or beheading. As he trips over the most important prop in the scene and lands face down in the lap of danger, he says, “Just pretend you don’t see me, I’m not really here, heee, hee, heee.”

Now compare that to a model on a catwalk. “Pffff, if I need to describe it for you…YOU obviously aren’t in the know…is this like, the first blog you’ve ever read???”

O.K. most models don’t even think WE are worth talking to, but that’s what they would say if they stooped down to our level. The model flaunts her vulnerability with high heals, a tight skirt, and a long bare neck.  The model is provoking us to attack, like an alpha wolf sticking out its neck. We don’t dare bite.

Like our untouchable model, the male alpha wolf dares by jutting out its neck, “Go ahead, hit me, I’ve got nothing to lose, how much damage could you possibly do? You’re going to be reeeeally sorry, but heck, its your call, throw the first punch.” Dirty Harry did this with the line, “Go ahead, make my day.”

The physicality  of the vulnerable wolf and the physicality of a bumbling Gilligan can both be used to get out of a fight.

In the old days when you captured someone, stripping them naked was a way to make it difficult for them to run away.  With the invention of prisons and work camps and some forms of slavery, hobbling a person with chains, which restricted the length of a person’s stride, became a common way to keep people from running away.  But with the advent of guns, chains became less important.  I’m not sure where the idea originated, but the Russian Gulags, as early as 1920, gave every person a pair of pants that was too big for them.  With no belt, if you wanted to run you had to do it naked or with one hand holding up your pants.  This also made it really difficult to fight because if you let go of your pants to take a swing at someone, your pants would fall down.

Since that time prisons everywhere have adopted the over-sized pants techniques.  American prisons are no exception, prisoners here wear baggy Levi’s with no belt.

And thus the fashion of sagging was born! At first, we knew a person had just escaped or been released from prison if they were wearing Levi’s half falling off their ass.  We knew such people were probably dangerious.  But then it became a fashion thing.  Pre-teens started doing it to imitate their dangerious uncles.  What a mess.

From a fighting point of view, having your pants hanging halfway down your ass is just stupid. Sadly, the two worst prejudices against black men are that they are dangerious and stupid.  Sagging perpetuates both prejudices.  Since this is obvious to everyone, we have to ask, why do they do it?

The central deity of religious Daoism is the god of fate and the North Star, after which I’ve named my school.  The actual god which sits in this central position at the North Star has actually changed several times in Chinese history.  The current deity is called Zhenwu (the perfected warrior) or sometimes Ziwei, or Xuande.  Before Zhenwu sat on the throne, it was occupied by the Jade Emperor, before that it was Laojun (the source of the Laozi), and before that it may have been Xiguanmu (the Queen Mother of the West).

But our interest lays in Zhenwu before he got promoted to the throne at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty (1368 CE).  Zhenwu, the Perfected Warrior, wasn’t always perfected.  Before he was perfected, he was just Fearless.  At that time he was depicted with wild hair and barefeet.  Now-a-days if you see someone with wild hair you think, “Homeless dude,” but in those days it meant something different.  It meant you were a crazy shaman warrior who answered to no lord.  It meant you were so far out of conventional thinking or morality that you were beyond nobility, rank, or status. You were fearless because you had no attachments, no loyalties, nothing to lose.  Zhenwu in those times was also depicted with a straight sword in his hand and no scabbard.  His sword was always out.  In fact he usually dragged the tip of his sword behind him on the ground as if to say, I’m so dangerious I don’t even care about keeping my sword sharp.  “You wanna test me…bring it on?”

In my experience, when I do my Zhenwu routine in front of a couple of isolated  young guys with sagging pants,  they  usually start doing their  Gilligan routine pretty fast.  But if they are being watched by other people from their neighborhood, they’ll jut out their neck and say, “Shoo…you wanna start something?”

I see sagging as an attempt to project an image of fearlessness.  It communicates, “Look!  I have nothing, no loyalties, no morality, nothing to lose. If you are seeking status or power or even a quick buck, I’m not worth attacking! I may look vulnerable with my pants hanging down, but if you do attack me, I will fight you fearlessly to the death.”

If I felt trapped in a dangerious place, where the people around me were seeking power through direct violence and intimidation, I have to admit, sagging might be a good strategy.

As cults go, I find the cult of sagging pretty horrible, but perhaps in the next era we will promote these deities to a higher court.

I said in the previous post that I would compare the philosophies of George Xu and Adam Hsu. 

Orthodox thinkers generally regard the received tradition as so vast and rich in its depth that with dedication and perseverance the full range of knowledge from the past can be revealed. 

Reform thinkers tend to view tradition as a source, but as a broken source.  They see inspiration and knowledge from the past as either lost, obscured or inadequate for the current era.

People often make the mistake of thinking that orthodox thinkers are inflexible, but that is not true.  They simply take traditional sources as the guide and measure of change and innovation.  It is clear from Adam Hsu’s book that he is an orthodox thinker.  He is a creative innovator who sees orthodoxy (or orthopraxy if you prefer) as the source.  He tells us that because most people do not have time for traditional gongfu we should find ways to accommodate them so that the arts will continue to have broad appeal.  However, the heart of gongfu is in preserving and passing on what our teachers’ practiced.  Through our practice of tradition we have a direct link to the past.

Reform thinkers run the risk of being shallow in their perspective.  They tend to oscillate between lofty goals and pragmatic dogma, so they are easily sidetracked.  Still, if the reform thinker is correct in his assessment that traditional lineages are a broken source of knowledge, then he is also correct in seeking to rediscover the original source of inspiration outside of lineage transmissions. 

While I was studying 3+ hours everyday with George Xu in my twenties, he was constantly seeking to unravel the mysteries of a legendary past while simultaneously looking to improve on the practices of his teachers.  He was convinced that his teachers had not just hidden information out of a misplaced obsession with secrecy, but were actually transmitting errors because they were cut off from the sources of inspiration.

I’m an orthodox thinker by nature, given a choice, I’ll usually choose depth and discipline–accepting that the results are somewhere on a distant horizon.  But those years of listening to George Xu took their toll on me.  It occurred to me that there must have existed at one time a milieu which was capable of producing the internal martial arts, and it was pretty clear that neither my teacher nor his teachers had experienced such a milieu.  This insight slowly lead me away from George Xu because the questions he asked tended to keep him focusing on the simple and absurdly pragmatic:  Is it good for fighting?

Of course George Xu was/is aware of the pitfall of shallowness; given a choice between two methods of training which have the potential to produce comparable results, he would invariably choose the one likely to be better for one’s health.

George Xu now claims to have corrected the major errors of his teachers through his own experiments.  His writings are difficult to understand, as literature they are more rant than poetry or prose (you may find yourself trying to translate them back into Chinese).  Yet, I find them brilliant and compelling. 

Still, he has not rediscovered or recreated that mileu of the past which inspired these arts.  He has more or less solved a puzzle, found a mathematical proof.  My interest still lays in that original mileu.  In the end I reject both of these teachers nostalgia for the distant past.  I hold to the notion that the complete source of inspiration is available to us right now, contingent only on us letting go of aggression.  (I know, it sounds weak right?)

While we need not draw battle lines between orthodoxy and reform, ensconced as we are in traditional practices, we must walk a path, consciously or unconsciously, which privileges one of these two views.

Between the ages 20 and 22 while I was studying Northern Shaolin with Bing Gong, I had the habit of practicing each new movement of the forms on both the left and the right sides. So that by the time I had finished a form, I could do the mirror form just as well. I had the appetite of a lion.

So Bing decided that I should study with someone who could give me more. I scouted around a bit over a month and we had several talks. He decided that he would give me a formal introduction to either Adam Hsu or George Xu. Although Bing was a senior student of Kuo Lien-ying, he had studied with Adam Hsu long enough to learn a very beautiful Heaven & Earth Sword-Tiandijian, and thus I was already familiar with some of Adam Hsu’s basics. But because I said I really wanted to test and prove my real fighting abilities, he ended up introducing me to George Xu.

So this past week as I was reading Adam Hsu’s 2006 book, Lone Sword Against the Cold Cold Sky, Principles and Practice of Traditional Kung Fu, it was with the idea that I almost had the fate to be his student.

The book is an enjoyable collection of essays, and many others have reviewed it in the two years since it has been out. Adam Hsu and George Xu were/are friends so some of his students came to visit our class and occasionally someone would switch teachers. Adam Hsu himself would sometimes stop by and the Shifu’s would practice tongue fu. Adam Hsu’s movement was like his voice, soft, lively and clear. His voice as I remember it comes through in his writing. I also had regular opportunities to watch him teach and watch his dedicated students practice because for years his outdoor weekend class was about a block from the tiny room I rented during that phase of my life.

Adam Hsu’s love of Chang Chuan or Long Fist is a love I share. What he calls Long Fist, I tend to call Northern Shaolin, but I do that because that’s what my first teacher called it– but Long Fist is a better name for it. He makes the case, and I agree with him, that there are many layers and levels of Chang Chuan practice. Over the years its logic, depth and stored-up power reveals itself in unexpected ways. At one point he criticizes the “opera style” high kicking of the first style of Chang Chuan I learned (from Bing), saying they serve no purpose outside of performance, they have no application. He would have a point, if that was all I had learned, but I would counter that those “opera style” kicks hide not only some unseen training advantages (not applications) but also the true origins of gongfu, nay of Chang Chuan itself– in a religious milieu in which performance was a central function of the art.

He also asserts that Taijiquan is a form of Chang Chuan, and I find myself agreeing with him. The Taijiquan Classics do use the term “chang chuan” at one point to describe taiji. The opening of Chen style also has the same exorcism feel as the opening of a Chang Chan set. A modified Big Dipper step no doubt.

His sections on Baguazhang are also fun to read. First off he suggests that Bagua Zhang has an alternate origin in a system called Ba Pan Zhang. The name means Eight Plates Palm. He explains that the term “pan” actually means “round” or “turning,” the steering wheel of a car is called the steering “pan.” But I was struck by the obvious performance implications of this name.

Both Baguazhang and Indian Classical dance use a particular type of movement quite frequently which is also used in the circus. The movement involves moving one’s palms over and under the arm while keeping the palm facing skyward. If done with actual plates of food, it is possible to spin the plates around without spilling the food. The first time I saw this I was about 9 years old at the Pickle Family Circus. A waiter was trying to get two full plates of spaghetti to a waiting customer while being chased around by a gorilla!

In another essay he explains that the purpose of the Baguazhang Linking Form is to transmit the uses of each of the eight palm changes in conjunction with eight stationary posts. He says post training is very important. I wish I had a place to plant eight posts in the ground, I would try it out. I usually just practice with a single metal post on the playground, and even that not so often. I see why he thinks it is important, but I think perhaps there are other ways to get comparable training.

Probably my favorite part of the book was when he writes that the purpose of Baguazhang forms is to teach us to improvise. That’s what the forms inventor’s were doing! (They mainly come from the second and third generation after Dong Haiquan.) Adam Hsu gives us a challenge:  He says that when we really know all the palm changes we should improvise our own form! I’ve been improvising for years but it never occurred to me that I should be making my own form. I think I will. My thanks to Adam Hsu for that idea and for the book!

(Tomorrow’s Blog: The philosophical differences between Adam Hsu and George Xu.)

Honestly, when I started this blog, I had no idea how easy the writing part of it would be.  I mean heck, where does all this material come from?

One of the things that has made it possible for me to write 340 posts in a year was the invention of the notebook and the mini-ball-point pen.  Actually they were invented before I was born, but I only discovered how valuable they are in 2007.  They make it possible for me to stop what I’m doing at anytime of day and quickly jot down my thoughts.  With out a notebook the blog would be impossible.

There is a rule of thumb in management circles (so I’m told),

“If you want to make sure something gets done, give it to someone who is busy all the time.”

I have a corollary to this rule of thumb which I discovered through Daoist experimentation,

“If I want to make new people I meet hate me,  I tell them I’d really like to meet with them again–at any time they are available because my schedule is totally open.”

You may be thinking at this moment, “Mr. Weakness, where are you going?”  And honestly, if I were asked, I’d have to admit, I don’t know.  Improvisation also makes blogging possible.

The management rule about giving things to busy people is counter intuitive, but true.  I’ve been really busy this year, and so if I wanted to have any chance of blogging everyday, I had to schedule the time very carefully.  Since I’m less busy this Summer, I haven’t had the obvious need to schedule, so I haven’t.  If I have 8 hours free tomorrow, why do I need to schedule?  It will be easy to squeeze in a an hour of blogging, right?

Not so fast lefty!  That 8 hours can slip by before you even know it!  Gone!  With out a blog!

It’s a mistake many martial artists make, they think they can “find the time” to practice.  Nope, in my experience, it doesn’t work.  You have got to schedule that time, you have got to pre-designate that space.

And with that I have a brag/confession to make.  I have not missed a day of practice in five years…until last Friday.  (Do long international flights count?)  I missed practice on Friday because I had food poisoning so bad, I forgot that I even practice gongfu.

So what about that rule of thumb above that gets people to hate me?

Well, about 10 years ago, I started taking various Daoist precepts.  It turns out that what makes keeping precepts difficult is not in the nature of the precepts themselves.  The difficulty is in the hundreds of conflicting commitments (call them accidental precepts if you like) that we accumulate over our lifetimes, starting at about age 3.  Some of those “accidental precepts” are small, personal and childish like, “Why should I go to bed,” others are big and idealistic like, “We hold these truths to be self-evident….”

So, following this line of thought, I just started saying “No” a lot.  The less “other” commitments I had, the easier my Daoist precepts would be to keep. My first internal response to a request was no.  Then I would think, “Is this necessary to maintaining other commitments that I’ve made? (like paying my rent, and not overly worrying my loved ones).  Is there a simpler way?  Is there a more flexible way?”  After saying, “No” for about six months something very unexpected happened.  I suddenly had an enormous amount of free time.

Most people will say they want more free time, but believe me, it can be a scary thing for an American.  Anyway, the free time allowed me to slowly make new commitments that were more appropriate to my true nature (de).

And then came the shocker.  When I was saying “no” all the time, people just kept coming.  But when I tried to get new and interesting people to meet with me for projects or to talk about ideas, I got no takers.  Conversations would go something like this:

I’d say, “Wow, you’re doing really interesting stuff, would you like to get together and X about Y.”

They’d say, “Sure, that sound fun, especially the Y part.  When would you like to do it?”

I’d say, “Well, I pretty much have an open schedule, we can meet anytime you’re available.”

They’d say, “You know…I’m really just too busy.”