wujimon taiji blog

Ohh.. these infamous little exercises that are so often glanced over by many, including myself. Like I had posted before, I’d much rather work on the form than do silk reeling. Ultimately, I believe this way b/c to me, silk reeling is SO HARD to do! It appears quite easy from the outside, but when you start to consider the angle of hips, the amount of shifting, the end placement of hip to thighs and not to mention all the other stuff that’s happening, it can be quite overwhelming! Some days, I’d just rather do the form and try to focus on something easy like being relaxed and feeling the flow. However, ultimately, I know I cannot really progress until I get a good understanding of silk reeling or chansigong.

Ran across a snippet on one of the discussion lists I follow:

IMO, without the total rebuild of the spinal axis not much can be done, and what’s done is puny. That’s (IMO) why Wu teaches the way it does.

The spinal rebuild can not be attempted until a yao rebuild, and that depends on open qua, and that depends on pelvic re-positioning .. lots and
lots of work before any complex (clean) ovement pattern can be attempted …

Source: TCCList – Silk Reeling Jin and Chen/Yang/Wu

OUCH! Another person noted this was the core process of taiji for at least the first 7 years! Man.. if this is the case, then I’m quite far behind in terms of progression b/c I’ve been doing taiji for roughly 6 years and I just started working on the pelvic repositioning and opening gua aspects!

That’s it.. time to buckle down and focus more on zhanzhuang and silk reeling. I’ve said this to myself before and I’m saying it to myself again and again and again and hopefully some day it will really kick in!

BTW.. when it is too hot to train? I only lasted about 15 mins yesterday at lunch before I couldn’t take it anymore. Just way too humid and hot outside. Felt like I couldn’t really breathe. Then after I get inside, I find out there’s some sort of EPA alert about air pollution and how the city is recommending folks to stay inside! GREAT! Wonder what I sucked down yesterday, luckily I was around a lot of trees so perhaps my air was filtered a bit. Same thing today.. EPA says stay inside and don’t mow the lawn. I can live with that

I’ve often read of the different types of meditational practices out there and was quite curious about them but just haven’t really made the time to give them a try. I tried to do seated meditation (zazen) before but that slowly started creeping back as now for meditational work, I mainly do zhanzhaung or the standing variant. Tho… blah blah blah.. that has become less often as of late.

With all the chores and things to do at home, ti’s difficult to make time to do zhanzhuang. I’ve tried to add it to my lunch workout but I think I’m still caught up or too cautious to be doing zhanzhuang in the universal post posture in public for long periods of time. I can do wuji no problem but I become a bit too self-judgemental when I try to do the universal post right now in public. Perhaps, that’s even more reason for me to work myself through it.

There is a lot of value in doing meditation and I KNOW that I need to do more of it. With all the daily stresses and things we face, I know a lot of us could use the calm down time. It’s just way easier to do the form than it is to stand. It’s just way easier to do double handed silk reeling than to do single handed. It’s just way easier to do single handed silk reeling than stand.. ultimately, the hardest thing to do is the most simplest, the one the requires the most mental work and the least physical. I started thinking about this more after running across Biology News Net: Meditation skills of Buddhist monks yield clues to brain’s regulation of attention, where researchers found evidence that the skills developed by Tibetan Buddhist monks in their practice of a certain type of meditation can strongly influence their experience of a phenomenon, termed “perceptual rivalry,” that deals with attention and consciousness. Based on the article, it appears the “single pointed” meditation is the one that does the trick, and is it surprising that for me, it’s one of the hardest forms of meditation. The goal to stop that mental chatter, to calm the monkey mind. I think it was a smart idea of TT Liang to incorporate music in his practice to calm the mind, but ultimately, I think that needs to stop. Music used as a stepping stone to slowly phase the approach. Reminds me of how I used to watch TV while doing zhanzhuang b/c I couldn’t do it otherwise. Then I would just listen to music, now I don’t use any stimuli and just try to be with myself.

81 Degrees outside with a nice subtle breeze. A great day to take a stroll over to the park and just stand in the shade to soak in the rays and wind. As I was standing in wuji position for some time, I noticed a little birdy was chillin on the ground near me. It was pretty cool b/c it felt as if he knew I posed him no harm.

I then moved into the second position (of 8 within the yiquan cycle, refer to Warriors of Stillness Vol 2 for more details). As I was standing there, I felt the calm cool breeze of the wind. I heard the leaves rustling and the birds chirping behind me. Gone was all the commotion of the work day. I was in the park.

Slowly, I shifted into position to begin single handed silk reeling exercises. As I stepped ot with my right leg and with the qi intention in my dantien, I noticed the little birdy there. He may have flown away and came back, not quite sure but it left a positive imprint in my mind to notice he was still there. As I shifted to the second position and with the intention in my uppper back, again I felt the wind blow slightly across my face. Shifting to the third position with my intention traveling from my shoulder to elbow to hand, I settled calmly, relaxed and held the posture, letting my tension melt down from my torso.

The whole session today was quite good. It was calm and peaceful. At the apex, I did a 25 min duration of the laojia yilu, going slowly and calmly focusing on my body, scanning for tension, minding the shifting and alignment of my hip to outer thigh. I ended the session with 5 mins of zhanzhuang in the wuji posture. I let the wind cool me down by drying the thin layer of sweat on my face.

Well.. I think what appears to be the easiest is often the hardest to do. I recall a conversation I had with a friend and he told me that his first and foremost is to do zhanzhuang and then if he has time left over, he’ll do the form. At first, I thought this was a bit strange but it really emphasizes the importance of foundational training. Sure, doing zhanzhuang or drills may not be the most exciting thing in the world, but believe me, it works.

I recall a couple of summers ago, I got really big into zhanzhuang, doing it daily on a regular basis. I then came home to my hometown and my teacher had commented on how much better my form was and asked me what I was doing. I told him zhanzhuang and he just smiled saying that’s the key that nobody pays attention to and then he proceeded to show me other postures that I could work on during zhanzhuang.

Lately, over lunch, I only dedicated about 25% of the time to zhanzhuang & chansigong! After some chatting with one of my instructors, I think it’d be much better if I adhered to these past wisdoms and flip flop that. I plan on dedicating at least 75% of the session to zhanzhaung and chansigong and 25% on forms practice. I’m gonna give this a shot for 3-6 months to see how things come along.