Summer Taiji Camp

One from last summer, my pre-blog days, that deserves to be posted...

Notes from the Taiji Campground

Episode II: Return of the Bleary-Eyed

Dear Taiji Brothers and Sisters,

Our intrepid hero (me, the enthusiastic novice, “Padowan Phil”) had a rough launch to camp in North Carolina last month. The stars (or perhaps the dark side of the force) seemed determined to keep me from getting to camp on time. There were meetings at work that I couldn’t get out of, crises in my side business, and, the night before I was supposed to leave, still not packed, with a dirty house and no ride to the airport, my house flooded! I woke at 1:00 am to the sound of water pouring in through the ceiling courtesy of a broken pipe. But, after the wonderful experience I had at my first camp the previous fall, I was determined to get to Blowing Rock and train once more with Master Yang.

After a difficult journey, I found my way to camp some time around midnight, and was greeted graciously by the cabin mate I woke up on my way in. The next morning, all the stress of the preceding week dropped off me like blossoms from a cherry tree in late spring as I practiced the grand opening and washing the organs with Yang and my taiji family. I don’t remember the first two sessions of “lying” qigong as I fell asleep as soon as Sharon directed us to pretend we were caterpillars dissolving in our cocoons. (Or was I practicing “sleeping qigong”?) Very quickly though, I settled into the rhythm of camp: up early for morning qigong, breakfast with old and new friends, sword form practice, lying qigong, lunch, break, and then it starts all over again: qigong, forms, qigong, with push-hands squeezed in somewhere, and a final talk after dinner. With each passing day, I feel stronger, happier, and more energized, and, at the same time, calmer and more relaxed. A spirit of convivial camaraderie quickly infects everyone in camp, as our collective practice produces unanticipated synergies and magnifies the energies of everyone’s efforts.

I think the camp experience is a little different for me than for many of the other students. They are mostly old students of Laoshi’s, and/or have practice with another Chen-style teacher at their homes. I don’t have a weekly class, and only have the camps for time with a teacher. For me, camp is about learning as much of the forms as I can as quickly as I can, so I can then go home and remember enough to practice it on my own. At least, that’s how my intention has been set going into each camp. But by the end of camp, though still determined to pick up those beautiful forms, my approach and goals broaden and deepen in unexpected ways.

At the end of my first camp experience (fall, 2006 at Allerton Park near the University of Illinois), I was brimming over with excitement over the feelings of vitality and well-being I had cultivated over just five days. I consulted with Yang on how I should best keep up my practice after camp. I told him that I was most interested in forms and push-hands, and wondered how I could do those on my own. He counseled that, of everything he taught me, those were the least important things. “My advice to you,” he told me, “is to spend the next eight months practicing sitting qigong and standing qigong. Don’t worry about forms and push-hands at all.”

That’s exactly what I wound up doing, and it had a terrific effect. Regular practice of qigong made a profound difference in my life during the last eight months. I figured, with all that “gong” I built up, I was going to get those forms down at this camp for sure. Well, never one to read the fine print, I was surprised to learn the first day that we weren’t doing the 48 forms I had studied at last camp at all. Sword forms would be the focus of this camp. “Taiji has swords?” I asked the first morning, as everyone looked at me like I was nuts, and wondered whether I wasn’t with the special needs group with whom we shared the campgrounds.

At first I was a little disappointed, because I was looking forward to making progress on the forms with which I was already familiar. But I quickly realized that swinging a sword around with the class was a blast—very satisfying and totally Jedi! Swack, swing, stab, phwack! Take that, evil-doers! What could be more fun?

The summer camp happens to attract a lot of highly skilled students (I’m guessing that close to half of them are teachers themselves), which means that every time the leader turns around (meaning I turn around and can’t see him anymore) there is someone in front of me to follow no matter what direction I wind up facing. I always target two or three students in strategic areas at the beginning of form practice whom I know to look for as soon as we turn in a particular direction. I found lanky Stephan Panzilius particularly good to follow with the swords. It was a little like imitating Gigantor on a Jumbotron. I could always see exactly where my arms and legs were supposed to be by looking at his elongated limbs, and he tended to keep even pace with the leader (mostly Keith Boswell, Bob Schlagal, or John Jenkel), making the transition from one model to the other that much easier. Knowing nothing of the sword forms, but surrounded by students who knew it well, a regular guy like me with very little training could actually feel pretty graceful and competent.

Thanks to lots of help from fellow students, I got sort of good at doing the sword form movements with the class by the end of camp (by my standards, and in my mind’s eye, which makes me look great! And dashing!), but I can’t say I learned them well enough to keep going on my own to great effect. I wanted to learn the whole routine, but wound up, like last time, focusing on something really basic. Really basic. This time, it was, believe it or not, get ready for excitement fellow warriors: standing and taking a step. I find it very difficult to simply stand in a solid “santi,” and then take a step and find it again, with my heels in different lines in relation to the direction I am facing.

I want to learn to fight and defeat ten guys at once, and instead I’m spending a lot of effort trying to do this one tiny little thing… Thinking intensely, with all my concentration, about how to do something I didn’t know that I didn’t know how to do: take a step, correctly. One simple step. Because I find I can’t quite get it right consistently. So I practice it over and over. And that is typical taiji—grand extreme, putting a lot into a little in order to make a little into a lot—a little intention, a little movement, a little energy, into a lot of force. It is about practicing slow, small, and simple as a means of becoming fast, grand, and powerful. Eventually. Later. Be patient. For right now, just think about putting your foot exactly… right… here… Then do this. No, hips here. And drop your shoulders. Drop them. Drop them. Then turn the body by rotating the dantien… Sink your qi. Elongate. Relax…

Relaxing in my movements was the other theme of particular focus for this camp. Really relaxing. Moving with power, but economically conserving power. Expending as little effort as possible to produce the greatest energy possible. Keith graciously took some time and helped me with that, after first making me stop doing something I was really enjoying: deliberately exhaling air in strong puffs to punctuate every move I made as I swung my sword: phew, phew, phew! It gave me a sense of strength, and added what I thought was a fetching dramatic flourish to my performance, like a soundtrack in an action movie, which is probably where I saw it in the first place. But it’s not taiji, it wasn’t adding power to my movements, and it had to go. Keith pointed it out to me and told me to just relax and breathe normally.

After that, I started observing his technique more carefully, and realized it was relaxed. Very relaxed. Almost casual. I call it “Walking To the Kitchen for a Doughnut Kung Fu.” There is a total lack of tension. You can see he moves with a lot of power (“cocked and locked,” in his own words), but all the power is in the relaxed, effortless intention of the movement and the direct, uncluttered focus of the energy. No dramatic flourish there--no movement or exertion at all extraneous to its own purpose.

There is a teacher everywhere you turn at the summer camp, and that is a great advantage for a motivated beginner like me, because you can get a lot of constructive critiques from multiple perspectives. Sometimes, though, I find myself resisting an aspect of taiji pedagogy. I’m sure I’m not supposed to do that (based on the deep wisdom of Chinese culture I absorbed from watching the 1970s American television show “Kung Fu” as a kid), but I can’t help it. What I sometimes resist is, while learning a portion of movements, making sure each and every itty-bitty aspect of a movement or posture is down exactly right before I allow myself to move to the next position. At the beginning, I just want to “rough out” a general sequence, get an overall pattern down first, and then work on refining it later. I think that helps me remember what to do next, and creates an opportunity for some fluidity and dynamism as I shift from one position to another. I can be thinking, “okay, now I punch this guy over here in the nose, break that guy’s leg, and spin around that way and stab that guy in the heart,” and then refine the movements within it.

I asserted myself a couple of times along those lines with instructors and insisted to be allowed to do a whole sequence wrong ten times in a row just so I could get a sense of the flow, and memorize the big movements. I think its okay to do that as a student sometimes, because only you are in your own head, knowing what you’re having difficulty with. On the other hand, the movements are very precise, and you will never be able to find the right position for move number two if you aren’t in the right position for move number one. John and I almost butted heads over that at one point while he was trying to show me something, and insisting that I learn it correctly (and slowly!), performing each bit correctly before he would let me make the next move, the way a musician learns to play a song. I think, in the end, he was right, and I need to slow it down and be very patient in learning these forms. On the other hand, one way or another, you just have to do it wrong a bunch of times before you can do it right.

One big advantage of camp is that students get to spend time with Laoshi and hear stories of his life that deepen our understanding of taiji. (And Yang generously tells us that camp deepens his own understanding of practice.) Dr. Yang is on a mission to bring taiji to the west, and to use western science to reveal the true benefits of taiji practice. He was told that the west coast is the most receptive to taiji and Chinese medicine, and that people on the east coast were close-minded with regard to the health benefits of taiji. So, typical of his nature, Yang decided to open a branch office in New York City. What follows is the true story of one of Yang’s first days in the city, told to his students and interpreted by me. The facts are Yang’s, the descriptions mine. The truth belongs to all of us.

Knowing no one, and without a specific plan, Yang chose New York because it’s America’s dantien, the center of her energy. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, and Yang wants to bring taiji everywhere. Why not start at the greatest, most concentrated city, and circulate out from there? But New York is a tough place to live. Yang was shocked at the difficulty of simple things, such as finding a studio. Landlords want a year’s rent up front. Just navigating the city was a challenge at first. Doors were difficult to open; appointments hard to get. “Breaking in” and bringing his method and mission to the New York scene of scientific health research would be a daunting task. The mighty Yang had a moment of doubt and feeling of tired defeat. Did he make a mistake?

Sitting at a street corner with his sister Ying, lost in glum thoughts, Yang was suddenly set upon by a group of adolescents, asking for money. Yang told the boys he did not have his wallet. In response, one of them poured a soda on Yang’s head. From deep in his wuji, qi rose. Master rose. Boys fled. Yang pursued. Ying screamed. In the distance, a siren wailed.

How I long to tell my dear readers and fellow students that what ensued resembled a scene from a martial arts movie, with Yang elegantly dispatching the perpetrators, each in his turn, with the cool aplomb of a Zen master, releasing energy in one direction, then another, giving us all an inspiring lesson of the potential greatness of taiji fighting power. Instead, Yang draws other lessons. First, there must have been something simply in the way he rose. Small of stature, great of qi, he projected something when he stood up that inspired the would-be assailants to run rather than face him. That something, and the instant chase that followed, were the products of the unthinking reflexes and automatic confidence produced from years of taiji practice.

But more significantly was the second lesson of Yang quickly giving up the chase. “What did it matter?” he asked the class. “Soda? It is nothing.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Just… Let it go. Give it nothing and it is nothing.” He smiled. He told us he returned to the street corner and sat back down next to Ying. She was upset that he chose to chase the boys at all. He thought of his training and what lessons there were for his present predicament. It was time to find his quiet center and practice taiji.

He woke up early the next morning and spied a lovely green lawn in front of the grand white building across from his hotel. It was wide, open, and flat, without a solitary soul tramping across it. The morning sun shone crisply. The dew sparkled on its infinite blades, inviting Master’s practice like a verdant carpet splayed out just for him. Master sat in the center and quieted his mind. He gathered qi through qigong practice. Then, in the center of the world’s busiest, most energetic city, Master swung his sword. Coiled energy spiraled out of him. Hidden lenses blinked to life. The sword pushed expanding planes of energy as it arced its way through the path of Yang’s intention. Electronic impulses activated networks of power. Guards mobilized. Sirens, in the distance, drew closer. A helicopter, seemingly caught up in the vortex of Yang’s silk reeling power, circled overhead. Laoshi, it turns out, had chosen the lawn of a federal building to practice his sword forms. In the post-9/11 age, Yang’s ying drew an equal yang from American Homeland Security.

Master remained calm as police approached. He had checked in with the guard at the front of the park, and asked if it was alright if he “exercised.” The guard did not notice the sword wrapped in Yang’s blanket. Of course, it was all okay. Yang was not in trouble. The police laughed it off with Yang, and admired his sword. I found something significant in the image of the gentle, humble man, pushed here and there like a cork in the powerful river of New York City, stopping, calming, quieting, and then generating an energy that, for a moment, made him the most important thing in the city. And then, drawing all that power toward him, avoiding it, deflecting it, simply stepping right out of its way. Who would arrest Yang?

After that, things changed for Yang in New York. A studio was secured. Doors opened. Appointments were kept. Soon Master was giving presentations at major research institutions, one contact leading to another, and he was moving through the city as easily as he moves through his forms, guided by a relaxed, positive intention.

Phil's Excellent Adventure, Parts 1 and 2

Phil’s Excellent Adventure


Part 1: “Do You Smoke Herb?”

As many of you know, I am on my sabbatical year, and have taken the opportunity to get out of Utah (bless it’s heart) and go “somewhere” to “write.” The “plan” was to bop around the Hawaiian Islands for a while and then check out some other areas in the Pacific Rim until I found the perfect spot to hole up and hammer out paragraphs, while also spending time practicing tai chi and learning to stand-up paddle board.

I have had a long fascination with Hawaii and surfing, going back to my childhood when I used to watch old surf movies on broadcast television (the “Gidget” movies, the Elvis movie where he went to Hawaii, other 1960s Hollywood larks), and then, more recently, obsessively watching the documentary film “Riding Giants” about the cultural history of big-wave surfers, particularly Laird Hamilton (married to former volleyball champion and super-model Gabrielle Reece—more on her later) and then seeing the episode of the Sundance Channel series “Iconoclasts,” featuring Hamilton hanging out with his pal Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam.

Laird takes Eddie stand-up paddle boarding near his home in Hawaii, which I only recently realized is probably not more than 3 or 4 miles from where I ended up. (See “Iconoclasts,” Season 2, Episode 1, available for download for $1.99 on iTunes.) Stand-up paddle-boarding is basically standing up on a long surfboard with a long paddle and… paddling. Wherever you want to go—around a bay, up the coast, into a wave. Moving through an environment under your own power reminded me of mountain biking and hiking. When I watched that episode of Iconoclasts, I thought, “I can do that. I WILL do that.”

My plan was also not to have much of a plan, other than the intention to seek out good opportunities as the dharma path revealed them. Quickly, dharma took over. After weeks of logistical challenges too boring to recount, I eventually beat back the clamoring horde of demands in Utah, and opened a window in time appropriate for making my departure. I went on line looking for the cheapest, one-way ticket to anywhere in Hawaii I could find, figuring I would check out any island I could get to cheapest first, find good deals on inter-island travel after I arrived, and take it from there.

Of course, last-minute Phil didn’t find the cheapest flight to Hawaii in history. Indeed, most of the flights were over $1,000.00. But suddenly, after searching flight after flight on travel site after travel site, a bargain flight popped up--a one-way ticket to Maui for less than $500.00, with one seat left. Wham-bam, thanks Pan-Am, and I had a ticket booked for November 3, ensuring that on November 4, 2008, no matter what, Phil and America would be in a whole new reality.

It proved a propitious day for all of us. Once I got to Maui, everything became easy. It was like floating into a heaven full of big-breasted seraphs and fruit-laden cherubs—all soft, warm, and welcoming everywhere I went. I would realize a need or desire for something, whatever it was, a funky place to stay, a cheap car, an expert paddle-board teacher, whatever, turn around, and it would manifest right there in front of me--again and again.

Before I left, I arranged to rent a tipi on an idyllic yoga retreat center—a compound of cabins, the tipi, a communal kitchen, and a living, jungle-version of a Stonehenge-type space, defined by a large empty circle of tall, straight trees, perfect for group rituals, shaman circles, and dancing naked around a bonfire at night. The compound is off the grid and away from it all, accessible by a rutted “pineapple road” on Maui’s north coast. It has a series of deep, natural spring fed pools, with water running down rock steps from one pool to the other, a freshwater oasis in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by foliage so thick it is like a giant green-walled room with the sky for a ceiling.

The largest pool, the “King’s Pool,” is the source of the water and perhaps infinitely deep. A long knotted rope dangles from a branch overhanging the pool from a large tree at the edge, perfect for a dramatic swing and leap into the center--a big build-up of tension followed by a silent, double parabola of a body on a rope first swinging down with gravity, then up with momentum, and then, letting go at the top, the ropeless body finishes the second curve on its own, the hushed “whoosh” of the whole ride punctuated by a spectacular cannonball splash at the end. Kawabunga.

The owner of the retreat, Danya, was traveling in India when I arrived, but Stephen-rhymes-with-Kevin, who lives on the site and works for her, was available to pick me up from the airport in the beater Ford Explorer I rented my first few days on the island. I arrived exhausted but happy with the afternoon sun still high in the sky. Getting out of town, including packing up all my belongings, putting things in storage, gathering my research materials for the coming months, and packing for the trip, were really difficult, challenging things. I could not have made it without the major assistance of Jennifer, Shelvie, Ashley, Timmy, Cathy, Jeff, Bob, Christa, and Cathie Webb. So, great gobs of gratitude to all of you, and I owe you all t-shirts. (Organic hemp, of course).

Utah was wet and cold the morning I left. I watched summer end, and felt winter on its way. The days were growing short, with daylight savings kicking in, bringing sunset repressively early. I was glad to get away from the thin mountain air and the long cold nights of northern Utah’s winter, anxious to leave before the arrival of the polluted inversion layer that settles over the valleys every winter.

As soon as I got off the plane on Maui, the warm, thick, salty-wet island breeze caressed my skin and filled my lungs, and instantly I felt better. Every day the clean, oxygen-rich air, the verdant fecundity of the island flora, and the ionized atmosphere at the beach, sink deeper into my bones.

My mystical friend Hans is convinced that the islands, sprouting up dead-center in the middle of the world’s largest ocean, the tops of the past and present tallest volcanoes in the world (and the tallest mountains in the world, measured from their bases at the bottom of the sea), each island essentially a giant fountain of geo-energy, function together like diffusion points for all the “qi” circulating in the whole Pacific Ocean. It comes in from all directions and spirals up into the sky, following the trajectory of the mountains themselves. It feels like the most nurturing, health-generating environment imaginable.

Everywhere I turn, my eyes are met with a wild profusion of life and color. Everyone’s yard is an explosion of exotic-looking plants, crazy-shaped flowers, and palm fronds bigger than a man, bending languidly this way and that, splayed out and effortless. At night and in the morning, a cacophony of birdsong fills the air.

In that weird, hazy, just popped out of the turbulence of moving and traveling and everything suddenly stopped climactic anti-climax that comes at the end of a tough journey, I sat blinking and bewildered at the arrivals pick-up area of the Kahului airport, an airport seemingly without doors or walls, just a huge roof and lots of support-posts. Up pulled the old Explorer. “Steven?” I asked the grizzled blonde surfer-looking driver. “Stephen,” he said. “Rhymes with Kevin.” And we were off.

I sat in the passenger seat of the old SUV with my arm out the window while it snaked its way along the coastal highway, and it all unfolded in front of me: rock cliffs, sand beaches, surf, and the dazzling infinite blue carpet of the Pacific. Sunlight danced and sparkled across its surface clear to the horizon. Stephen is one of those guys who will maintain a steady stream-of-consciousness oration if no one else is filling the void with words. I was silently bedazzled. I know I got an autobiography that I don’t remember at all, and a lot of impressions of Maui. The parts that stuck with me are that Maui is “all soft” compared to the hard, sharp rocks of the big island and that the “aloha” spirit is very strong here.

I think “aloha” has a lot to do with the relative isolation of the islands, the fact that no matter where you are in Hawaii, people, even in a crowded town, are in fact quite rare relative to the reality of the vast expanse of ocean around you. When you meet people, there is a subtext of “wow, fancy bumping into you in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I am really glad to meet some one else. I really hope I like you.” But we all know, if only subconsciously, that if and when the grid goes down, things could go all “Lord of the Flies” pretty damn fast. Along with the welcoming spirit, there is also its darker flipside, a sense that “I really hope I don’t DISLIKE like you,” accompanied by an unacknowledged intention to find out which it is right away. First impressions are everything around here.

On the way to the tipi, I guzzled in the new views unveiled after each bend in the road like I was quenching a life-threatening thirst. We passed through the funkiest little hippie/surfer/former plantation town called “Paia,” and I had a premonition similar to the one I felt in 1998, when I drove through Utah County with my cousin Mike, before fate moved me there the following year. I just instantly loved the little town, and the faces and energy of its afternoon main street. That got me thinking about social things, including scoring a little of the local green. I turned to Stephen, thought about asking him, and decided against it. He finished his latest observation and asked, “Do you smoke herb?”

By the time I got to the tipi, I was loaded with fresh local papayas, avocados, micro-brew, and sticky bud. My second night on Maui, November 4, was the night of the best election ever. With no television, radio, or internet connection, I sat enjoying Maui’s finest with Stephen at the open-air communal kitchen and we heard a woman yelling somewhere in the jungle, “It’s over! We won! It’s over!” and we both knew that Barack Obama had been elected President of the United States of America.

I was drawn to Paia like a horny bee to a fragrant flower, first to the grocery store, “Mana,” the greatest grocery store in the world! Its narrow aisles are packed with inventory and a slow-moving river of happy, good-looking shoppers periodically erupting in excited discussions about the produce, and knowledgeable hippie stockers eagerly slicing open delicious fruits for amazed tourists to sample. It’s not that people are “Hollywood beautiful” here, it’s that everyone looks like the absolute healthiest possible version of themselves that they can be. Half appear to have just come off the beach or a board of some kind, and are dressed, or not dressed, for whatever it is they were last doing. And the bank isn’t much different. No shirt, no shoes, no problem at the Bank of Hawaii. If you’re a local, you don’t even need your i.d. Everyone knows who you are.





Part 2: Gabrielle and Me


I saw Gabrielle Reece at the Mana.

She smiled at me in front of the deli case.

I tried to play it cool.

I think I smiled back, blushed, and looked down.

But I’m not sure.

I might have swayed back and forth and scratched myself like a little monkey-man.

Or perhaps I jumped up and down and shouted,

“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!”

She’s like a statue of a Greek goddess come to life, except taller and more imposing.

Seven or eight feet, at least.

All I know is, I was face-to-face with her ass.

At least, that’s what my eyes claimed.

Her ass was draped in loose-fitting shorts.

But she couldn’t hide its power.

It was round and firm and high, ready to burst out of those shorts like the Incredible Hulk if danger called.

It looked like it could kick my ass!

And not just my ass—I mean my ass!

So, if you’ve ever wondered if you could take Gabrielle Reece’s ass in a fight--her ass mind you, not the woman herself--the answer is “no.”

Just her ass alone could wipe the floor with all of you.

She stood next to me again at the check out line.

She smiled again.

I looked at her sheepishly, and thought, “please don’t eat me.”

Then I thought, “maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad way to go.”





© Philip Sherman Gordon
December 5, 2008