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