Monthly Archives: November 2005

Need: Voice Recorder?

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I think I need some type of voice recorder. I admit, I’m one of those ppl who *sometimes* makes calls while driving… (BAD, BAD, BAD), but it’s one of the few times that I can actually make calls and follow up on things. The hardest part I have about the whole ordeal is how to capture information after the call. I don’t want to bust out my note pad and write something down as that’s dangerous. I’d like to have some type of voice recording feature but not have to carry another device around.

I tried to call my cell phone and leave myself a message but that didn’t work. When I call, it recognizes it’s me and goes straight into my voicemail inbox. I checked the admin features but there is no option to “record a message”. One thing has worked and that’s calling home and leaving the message/note on my home answering machine. But the bad part of that is I don’t want to call and leave a message if my wife is home and she accidently pick up the phone. I think some other folks actually carry around a voice recorder for this purpose. I guess I could do the same but don’t really want to.

What would be cool is if I could find some type of service that allows me to call and have that call be sent to me as an email! That would be super cool and it’d be a great way to make sure I check the inboxes. Any ideas or suggestions?

ZZ Total – 7 hrs 15 mins

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Slowly trudging along like the turtle I am, persistent yet slow.. ;) The zhanzhuang session went really smooth last night as I incorporated a new tool. I was having difficulty determining the length of time I was standing and ran across a link for PocketDoan which is AWESOME! I’m planning to modify my zhanzhuang session a bit to include a 1 minute intro and exit with three 5-minute sessions in between. At the end of each session is a little chime and when I hear it I change my hand postures. This is quite nice and I really like it.

After the zhanzhuang, I stretched and did some single handed silk reeling. That felt pretty good and I wanted to play around a bit more with the meditation stuff so I sat down for a 15 session of zazen. This one didn’t go quite as smoothly as my previous zazen session as I started to feel some tension in my mid-right-back, kua region and ankles. I adjusted my postures a bit but I think it’s just my body adjusting to the position. I know when I first tried zazen way back when I encountered similar pains but never really worked through them. I think perhaps I need to add more height to my makeshift cushion (folded up pillow and blanket).

After that I worked on some forms training. Basically alternated between yang and chen and did the first section of the long form. The first rep was holding the postures for both styles then I went through them again with a more continuous flow. I’m still feeling a lot more connected and feel as if I’m doing whole body movement with the yang as opposed to the chen. I’m really starting to wonder if that’s the “eternal teacher” (to quote a buddy of mine) trying to tell me something…

Breaking Structure

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Wow.. I can’t believe I have totally missed the fact that I often break structure! One of the structural elements in taiji is that between the knee and toe. Generally, the knees are not supposed to go past the toes, however I’ve modified this a bit and changed it so the knees do not go past the instep in my case. I used to have a lot of problems with this and I attribute a lot of them to my wushu days where the goal was to see how low one can go.

Anyhoo.. after viewing some footages of some notable chen folks like Chen Xiao Wang and Chen Zheng Lei, I noticed they do not let their knees go past the instep region or the bubbling well point of the foot. I’ve been trying to incorporate this into my own training and it’s been quite difficult. To get a deep stance and not break this structural alignment requires a flexible and loose kua. To me, it’s easy to go low, but it’s hard to sink. Sinking into the stance is difficult and painful.

I first started paying closer attention to my structure when I started to hold my postures for counts. I’d do the form and hold the posture and adjust. At this time, I was mainly focusing on the end result or the end posture and that was pretty good, though I’d often make adjustments here and there. One of the adjustments I would tend to make is the position of my hips/kua in the buddha warrior pounds the mortar posture right before I step up with my right foot.

Anyhoo.. I then started to play close attention to the lazy tie coat sequence and I realized that when I do the “pull back” or “deflect” posture right before the six sealings four closings, I would often move in such a way that my knee would go beyond the plane of my toes!!! Not just beyond the instep, but beyond the toes!!! I then adjusted my posture and really focused on this and it is very difficult to do this pull back and not go beyond the toes. It’s easier if I maintain a higher stance, but I tend to try and go low when I do chen, so this will take a bit of an adjustment.

Now that I’ve spotted this, I’m really gonna take some time to analyze ALL OF MY TRANSITIONS and to see where the structure is breaking!

Washing Dishes

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Washes dishes presents us with a great opportunity to train and practice. Not only is it great for meditative and zen purposes, but I often use this time to practice my taiji.

I do the initial washing in a horse stance with my body positioned in the middle of the sink. When I pick up a dish I shift my weight to the left side and practice my stance training. This position would be similar to that of Single Whip in most taiji traditions. Then when I move the plate to the other side to site before rinsing, I shift the weight over the the right side, similar to that of lazy tie coat or grasps swallows tail.

Rinse and repeat.. hehehe… in the end, it is quite a workout and a great way to train.

Seated Meditation

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Fong Ha has his “100 hrs” goal in that he encourages everyone to do at least 100 hrs of meditation, whether that be seated or standing. I’ve never really gotten into the seated part before, but last night my feet started to hurt with about 4 minutes left in the session so I decided to sit down. I found some blankets near me and sat on top of them in a crossed legged position. I glanced at the clock and began the sitting meditation. The next time I glanced the clock, close to 10 mins had passed! I was a bit shocked and surprised as time really doesn’t fly that quickly in standing meditation as it did in seated with little to no effort.