Breathing with your feet

Can you breath with your feet, or your hands? That's a crazy idea, right? There is no nostrils on your feet, how do you suppose to breath with your feet, fools? Well, you see, I think it is more a symbolic term. It is not breathing in the same sense that your lungs do but if your Dzung-tuyen cavity on your feet or your Lao-gung cavity on your hands are open, each time you breath, you can sense the chi moving in and out of our hand and feet. The Dzung-tuyen and Lao-gung points are the point where universal chi entering and exiting your body so when you breath, your Yi move the universal chi in and out of your body, creating a sensation that you are breathing with your hands and feet. This two points are very important in chi training. The people whom have these points opened have to be very careful to protect them from bad enerngy (chi) from entering your body. I had an experience with this to share with you. One of my Aikido brother, Mr. Quang had kidney cancer last year so my friend and I came to visit him at the hospital. When we were leaving, both of us shake his hand. I felt a strong shock in my hand when I shaked Quang's hand. It felt like someone stick a needle at my Lao-gung point and it last for a good 5 minutes. So the first lesson learned is protect your Lao-gung points when you are near sick people. Doctors and nurses probably have a certain God-given chi/energy protection to protect them from their sick patients. The second lesson for me is people whom have cancer some very dark, bad, strong energy that you don't want them in your body. The good news is my Aikido brother, Mr. Quang beat the cancer and healthy now. Yeahhh!

The Joy Of Doing Form

Today my teacher teaching us a couple techniques from the Wu taichi form. He used to tell us not to pay attention too much to the form, but now he said we are getting better, stronger with our chi so it is time to do form. He took a couple techniques and break it down. He said external kung fu styles like Shaolin use forms to learn the body motions. However Taichi we use forms to learn about our own body. A simple movement like wuji or holding the pi pa is not so simple. Each movement is now broken down to many sub moves. We move, listen, move again, listen, adjust, feel the change in our body. This is very different than how I used to do forms. I used to use muscle to move the arms, the legs, trying to complete the motion and move on to the next one. Now each movement is deliberate. Arms float up by itself without using much if any muscular strength. Feel like floating on air. We were working on "Slant Flying Posture" and he told us to put one hand under the other arm's elbow, the other over your chest, let them float up and cross each other, spread them out like an eagle spreading its wing. When I put my hands in the under elbow position, I suddenly feel like I was holding a small balloon full of air on each hand. When I moved my hands and they were crossing each other, the balloons seems to interact, like there are some atraction forces between them. It seems to me each posture was created to stimulate a certain chi channels, certain chi flow in some part of your body. Some movement we run the hand over the arm channels. Some movement we collect the chi in the kidneys. It reminds me of Hatha Yoga posses and how each posse suppose to stimulate some prana (life) forces in your body.

I was so joyful, keep on smiling. I now can feel something when I do form. Form now has life. There is an essence into it, not just empty flowering movement. It has a purpose. Joy oh joy, the joy of doing form.

Januanry 24, 2010

- Choke hold. Engage with your neck. Use leverage. Feel the clamp. Go with the direction of the force. Redirect it back to your opponent. Unbalance.
- All in the mind. Hold your ground. Breath using your back. Open your mouth. You can do it.
- Taichi form. One hand under elbow, one hand over and above your heart. Feel the chi ball. Feel it. Spread the eagle wing.

Jan 23, 2010

It's all in the mind.
You can do it. not a problem. No fear!
Keep the arm at 45 degree
No wiggling
Let the force come to you. Don't change it. don't wiggling. Receive it, knowing they lost their balance already. Why be afraid?
Keep it solid. Solid. SOLID. relax? solid? why relax?

Feel it coming to you, learn to feel it, not changing it. Fish, bait.

Sunday Jan 17, 2010

Turtle back
Solid all but one.
Focus the force on the arm, the elbow, send to the hip and move it.
Lock and open and lock and open
Elbow up practice: lock body, engage elbow, engage his wrist. Top of elbow down to heel in one straight line, move by the wrist, relax.
Only move one part.

Holding the ball. Turtle back. Don't take off. Keep the pressure.

Should I learn forms?

Many people start learning taichi by learning taichi forms. Yang style long form, simplified 24 techniques Yang form, Chan family form, Wu form, you name it. But is this the right approach? For me, I started out learning Wang-ping Village Yang style form with a full 64 techniques. Then I went on learned the simpilfied Yang style form. When I met master Canh, I learned a couple more Trieu family Taichi forms. But I feel after learning so many forms, there is something missing. I could do the forms really smooth, make it look like a dance but somehow I felt they are empty inside. What am I missing? Master Canh knows a lot of forms and willing to teach me more but I resisted. I did not want to learn another taichi form that I will forget 5 years from now. Why there are so many forms? How many do you have to learn before you know them all? Is there a common denominator to all the forms? What is the essence of doing forms?

When I met my master Anthony Ho-Nan-Jie, he could care less if I learned form or not. All he told me is to listen, to clear your mind. That's what I did for two years, most of the time just listen and analyze his taichi teaching. He repeats over and over a certain point. The funny thing is something he said a year ago make no sense at the time. You have no idea how to make it work and suddenly now it make total sense. He kept saying "Forms are not important!". But couple days ago, suddenly he told me to practice forms. Is this a contradiction? I thought it was odd and then suddenly it dawned on me. There was a story that in the old day in China, an internal style sifu would make his students doing stances and chi-kung for two, three years before he would start teaching any techniques. This is where internal martial arts is different than external martial arts. External martial arts styles learn doing forms and techniques immediately. Internal martial arts, in the old day, it probably takes a few years for the students to build up their chi before they can perform their forms or techniques properly. And this usually only taught to indoor students. In the 18th century, when the Ching dynasty told taichi masters whom are Hans to teach taichi to the Ching officials and their families, legend said they taught them only the forms with no essence. So you can see how it got diluted from here. In mordern days, it is also hard to imaging for people to spend a couple years to learn "NOTHING" (take note of the word "NOTHING"). So the teachers are either taught a washed down version of taichi or just teach forms with no essence to keep most students happy. If that is what the taichi teachers learned in the first place so it's not really his fault because he just re-transmitt what he learned.

So should I learn forms? Or may be I should rephrase the question: "Is form important or not important?" The correct answer is ...

My First Experience with Chi (and I did not even know!)

It's funny that I trained in martial arts for a long time, always looking to find what is chi but did not know I actually experienced chi a long time ago, back in the 1980s. Back then I was a FOB (fresh of the boat) refugee, living in Phoenix, Arizona. I was attending a vocational school called Job Corps in that city. The school had a gym and offered marital arts training to their students as physical education training. In the 1980s nobody heard of Brazilian Jujitsu and the Kungfu series was a regular show on TV. The style the school picked to teach was Karate, in particularly Okinawan Karate-Do. The sensei (master) was an African American. He was about 40 years old, big tall dude, over six feet tall and weight probably about 250 pounds. He looked like a linebacker that nobody want to mess with him. He learned the Okinawan Karate when he was stationed in Japan, and continued to learn it when he was back in the States. He has a small dojo North of Phoenix that I visited a couple times. Anyway I enrolled in the class and learned basic stands, punching, kicking. I spent hours and days to perfect my techniques. I also learned something very special called sanchin kata (or san-ti). Basically sanchin kata is a set of techniques that you practice with a pigeon stance which means you stand with your feet are about shoulder width, one foot in front of the other and both toes turn into each other (see this picture}:

Sanchin stance

My sensei would go around, punched you in the stomach, chopped you on the shoulder, kicked you on your thigh, hit you hard on your arms, your neck and you supposed to be able to take the hits and not hurting your body or your internal organ. We trained to breath in, breath out, coordinated our breathing with the attacker's punch. First he hit us lightly and the slowly increased it until we can take a good punch or good kick from him, a 250 pounds man. I trained in this sanchi kata for about a year, may be a year and a half. Slowly sensei kept on missing classes or showed up late. One day we did not see him anymore so I think the school got tired of his tardiness and let him go.

Anyway, after took the sanchi training, I have been in many sparrs and fights where sometime I took a good punch or two from my opponent and I just shake it off, suprised my opponent. My pain enduring level seems to be a bit higher than normal people. I seems to recover very quick after being hit and don't normally get internal injuries. One time I was in a soccer game in Phoenix. When the game was over, one guy came over and told me that he ran and bummed into me during the game and for some reason he bounced off. In his words, he said like "ran into a wall". I told him I did not notice that at all and that was true, I had no idea that he ran into me. I did not even know there was someone hit me during the game. Another time it was raining and I was walking downstairs at some public places. May be because it was wet I slipped and fell down the staris for about 10 steps. Since I learned how to roll in Judo so I did a roll over 10 stair steps. The funny thing is I did not feel hurt from falling downon the steps at all. Not sure if the sanchi training "gave" some kind of protection or shield at all but I was glad that I wasn't hurt.

Years later I watched an Okinawan Karate demonstration and some black belts performed the sanchi stance. Other students took 2x4 stick of wood and hit them on the arms, the thigh, the stomach. The 2x4 snapped in half and they were ok, no problems. Many years later I learned Trieu Taichi training with master Bui Duy Canh. I asked him to teach me chi kung and he agreed. He told me the chi-kung he teaching me is called "iron shirt". Basically I would do horse stance or cat stance and he hit me with bundle of wood sticks. I suddenly realized the Chinese iron shirt training is the same Sanchi training that I had when I studied Okinawan Karate. My taichi teacher Canh was surprise to see that I was able to take very heavy strike for a beginner, not knowing I was trained on something similar. We supposed to train for 90 days but my master just open up a restaurant so he got busy and we stopped.

Anyway, looking back, that was my first experience with chi kung training and I did not even know. I guess the Sanchi trained me on breathing, somehow condition my body and allow me to be able to take heavy strikes without being too badly hurt. Some people said the training bring the chi inside your body to the outside skin, especially wherever you are hit to protect you from injuries. This is what the Chinese called "ngoai ki`nh" (external chi training) versus "noi ki`nh" (interal chi training). Internal chi training suppose to be stronger than extrnal but that is a subject of another blog.


Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanchin

Is this Kundalini?

Kundalini awakening is the phenomenon that your life force (chi, ki, prana) is raising up the spine and up to your brain. When this happened, it supposed to clear up your channels, fill your body with energy and some says it can bring enlightenment? I am not an expert in Kundalini but you can google it up. There is so much information available online nowaday. I just want to share with you my experience and wonder if this is what Kundalini feels like.

You see, about a year ago I was practicing some intense chi-kung training. I was doing 20 minutes to 40 minutes sesssion a day and was doing that for about 3 months. One day while doing standing chi-kung, I felt a very strong force of energy starting from my Hyu-In point (the area between the anus and the sex organ) going up my back. Actually not one force but two, like two snakes coiling up from the root of my spine, each one twisting from one side of the back to the other, always opposite each other. They moved up the spine, twisting and turning my back. While they were going up my back, there was another force going straight up from the bottom of my back, up the spine, really really strong. It went up about half way of my back and like hitting a road block, it slammed onto it and stopped. When that happened, I felt like there was a jack hammer that shooting up half my back and hit a complete stop, so powerful, so strong. I got scare so I stopped my chi-kung practice. I went and lie down on my bed and the same snakes-coiling-up-my-back happened again, as strong as it was before, but I did not get that jack hammer feeling again. Too bad my taichi teacher was in China at that time so I could not ask him or ask for help. I asked a couple senior student in my taichi class and they could not explain it. Nobody has experienced anything like that. One guy suggests it might be some form of kundalini. That's how I learned about the word kundalini. The senior students told me to take it easy and wait for teacher to come back from China which I did. I stopped doing intense chi-kung training and waited for him. When he came back, 3 or 4 months later, when I asked him about it he said something happened too fast and he think I need to slow down. Not sure if he made any adjustments to my channels or not but I have not experience that anymore. Anyway, that was really interesting and a little bit scary when it happened. Well, I guess learning chi-kung has its moments.

Feeling Chi

I was going to chronologically write about my taichi journey but I will jump ahead and talk about what chi feels like because I feel compel to write about the chi feeling that I had about 2 weeks ago.

You see, about two weeks ago during the taichi session in one of my Sunday taichi class, my taichi teacher, Mr. Anthony Ho Nan-Jie, told me to focus my chi and the middle of my body starts to sway strongly. He told me to put my hand together like a praying hand, press them hard. The body swaying got stronger and more violent. I felt like someone hold my mid body and give it a strong shake, make it go circle around. He told me to guide my chi to move it from left to right six times and then from right to left nine times. I did that and as I guide my thought, my body would move clockwise or counter-clockwise depends on if I was thinking going left or right. Then he told me to bring everything back to my Dan Tien and resolve everything to the Universe. I did that and it took another 5, 10 minutes before my body calmed down. That was quite an experience once it was over. Later on my teacher told me the chi in my body is strong and possibly can be used to help heal people. I was happy to hear that but also confuse because I still cannot guide it or project it at will yet.

From that day, most of the time, when I do chi kung, I feel my hands are warm at the Lao gong points. My buble-ling well points on my feet feels warm too. I feel a tingling sensation at my fingers from time to time. When I do standing chi kung or just laying down doing meditation, I can almost feel something like an opening, a channel of energy that going up and down my legs, going in and out of my buble-ling wells, like I was breathing with my feet. My lower back feels warm around the kidneys and the Minh-men point. When I breath, I could feel a sense of energy going up my spine. I know my teacher was standing next to me while I was doing chi kung and probably helped open up my Minh-men point so now I can feel my back breathing.

So I guess that what chi is felt like. Very interesting.

My First Taichi Blog

I started this taichi blog to record the journey I am taking in learning Taichi, a Chinese internal martial art style. Taichi is also called as taichichuan, taiji or taijichuan. Many people called taichi a form of moving meditation but Taichi is indeed a very deep internal martial art systems. Its purpose is to cultivate your chi to improve your health, prolong your life and is a very high level, effective but "hard-to-learn-and-apply correctly" self defense art. Taichi has many self defense applications but not usually taught to the open public. Many people practice taichi for its health and aesthetic aspect. To most people, taichi helps relax your body, relieve stress and improve your health.

I have learned taichi first with Valerie, a taichi teacher at Orange Coast College, back in the 1990s. She teaches the Wang-Ping style of Yang Taichichaun which consists of 64 forms. It was a community service class and offered once a semester, for 6-8 weeks long. Each week we study a few techniques at a time and build up from that until we finish the form. I remembered it took almost two years for me to finish the form. I like her teaching because she take time to make sure we do each technique right, standing in the right stand, has balance and the do the movements correctly. I can't hardly remember how the form go but I remembered I could do it very smoothly. I trained in Shaolin, Karate and Aikido so doing the taichi movements wasn't the hard part because it is similar to most Shaolin moves.

So that was my first experience with taichichuan.