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.