Shaolin and Wudang

Recently, In the spirit of martial camaraderie I accepted an invitation to train with some Shaolin chaps for an evening. I had gone along, mouthguard in bag, expecting some sparring, but we kept it quite mild-mannered and focused on some martial drills instead. The key to these seemed to be stances, mainly based on quite a wide and deep step which is somewhat different to my usual ambivalent stance. These stances were used to generate extra power, something which we don't pay too much mind to in our approach, beyond using the right mechanics  for the job (and perhaps conditioning). The long stance did indeed feel powerful, but also slightly immobile and ripe for sweeping. There were similarities also, with both Seven Stars and Nine Palace Stepping being part of the Shaolin repertoire, albeit under different names. The drills were lively and energetic, and utilised a range of punches from angles different to those I am used to, but my "kickboxing"(!) approach to them seemed to serve me well enough.
The martial approach of these fellows seems to be "quickly in, quickly out", a kind of sniping approach if you will. Sifu Tim was able to demonstrate some great combos and evasions. By contrast, our Tai Chi way is more akin to throwing a weighted net over someone, or like a cloud of bees that you just can't get away from.
It was interesting to me that the teacher referred to my movements variously as "kickboxing", "boxing", "bagua" but never "tai chi". In fact he was of the opinion that, of all the things they teach in their particular Shaolin syllabus, the Tai Chi would be the one I'd most benefit from, which only goes to say that our ideas about what Tai Chi is are rather different.
The main difference really is in the approach: these Shaolin soldiers were training for the ring, whereas in our Tai Chi, we are inspired by the notion of usage in  "real" martial situations.

Thanks to Tim, Jon and Rich for a great evening, huzzah for the Shaolin style!

The Samurai Game©: a Daimyo's reflections

Of all the roles in the Samurai Game© , I was quite, quite certain that the only one I definitely didn't want was that of daimyo, the leader of the clan. So, when, after much change and hesitation, the other members of my clan silently lined up in front of me to indicate their choice of leader, I was filled with horror and surprise , but perhaps too a little gratification.
I won't go into to much detail about the rules of the Game out of respect for its integrity, and so that those who go on to do it afterwards don't have too many preconceptions. But let me make it clear: the way that the Game is set up makes it feel very real. Once I had welcomed my samurai to the clan, the challenges started in earnest. Initially, fate was on our side and we didn't suffer any deaths for a short time. But then, the tide turned and the deaths started to pile up. Warriors eager to prove their mettle rushed into the fray, only to be killed and find that, even in death, they were racked with disappointment, frustration and grief. One of my clan said that, whilst dead, she couldn't get over the feeling that her soul would be stuck in limbo as she couldn't let the manner of her death go, she couldn't let it pass. There were also moments of great beauty: one of my samurai gave a great poetry reading, but then killed himself in deference to the spirit of his opponent's reading. A champion from each clan was selected at one point, and there was held an epic twenty-minute long battle of endurance and heart, which was proclaimed an honourable draw.
Every decision I made had an immeditate tangible effect: at the start I had to choose a sentry, a role which requires the utmost mental vigour. Whoever was chosen would battle with themselves and the Game. I made the decision many times to send someone to a battle which both I and they knew they would lose.  I saw my clan furiously try to assert their strengths, only to be challenged on their weaknesses: when they could turn the odds, though, there was cause for somber celebration.

In the end, all my samurai fell. I sent the sentry in for his one and only challenge, for which he'd waited the whole war. He lost, and I was left to face the enemy daimyo and her clan alone. We met on the field of battle and she fell. Her clan chose to kill themselves rather than ally with me, with the exception of one, and so it was that only we two were left alive to savour the rather bitter taste of victory.

If you wish to find your edge, to step into another world of life and death, I heartily recommend this great Game which I know will stay with me for a long time. Advice? Enter wholeheartedly and there will be a victory of sorts. Only it may not feel like it.

The Samurai Game©: prologue

Tomorrow this Palace Guard goes to play The Samurai Game©, the famed training tool developed by the late and great George Leonard. I really have no ideas what to expect, and I'm trying hard to lay aside my pre-conceptions, which I'm finding impossible. It might be better just to play  with my preconceptions fully in place...
I always want to "do things well". This self-evidently has its positive sides, but the negative sides are pretty strong. It means I worry a lot about how I should be in any given situation. I feel I need to be impressive, and that is quite a lot of pressure to live under. Undoubtedly, the Game will poke at this tendency and a whole lot besides...

I will give a full debrief upon my return, although I'm under the impression that they like people to keep the details private. I shall abide by whatever they say. Until tomorrow then...

Hand-to-hand experience

In Zen Buddhism, they speak of the transmission of the Buddha mind as being accomplished "warm hand to warm hand". Similarly, in the sphere of martial arts, and more particularly in tai chi, there's no substitute for a real, live human teacher.  Due to the wonders of technology online courses in tai chi are now appearing. But don't you think we already spend quite enough time messing about in front of screens? One of the reasons I love tai chi is that it points away from all that. I love that, to learn this art, we have to stand up somewhere with a teacher, and move our bodies and minds around until we really feel it. Two hundred years ago in China, it was done the same way. The context and the surroundings may be different; but our efforts in training link us bodily to those largely unsung tai chi ancestors.

Tai chi is one of the most tactile activities around. The visual element of it is purely incidental. The passing on of quality tai chi depends on feel, upon contact with someone who knows the art deep in their bones. One of the online courses currently available offers "in depth workshops", but how in-depth can we get with a screen? I'm all for making tai chi accessible. But at the same time, when someone does get into tai chi, I want it to be worthwhile, for the "game to be worth the candle". Tai chi is one of the few things which conforms exactly to the dictum "you get out what you put in". I am reminded of Keanu's immortal line in The Matrix after he downloaded hundreds of fighting style directly into his brain: "I know kung fu!". But kung-fu of any kind isn't known: it is felt, and it is lived.

War drones and fish without fuss

I came upon a strange thing in my local supermarket: "NoFuss Fish!" it proclaimed. "No smell, no mess, all the taste without the fuss." My heart sank,and then leapt up again. This kind of thing makes me realise just how much I love tai chi chuan, and the martial arts in general.

I'm no Sgt Rory Miller (whose books I implore you to read ): I don't deal in violence for a job. Nor do I live in a dangerous neighbourhood. I have an easy life. I get up, and have hot water at my disposal for a shower. I have water from the tap for drinking. Food is readily available. I earn my money in a civilised and mostly stress-free way. No-one has ever pointed a gun at my head, or forced me to become a refugee. I like this modern life, and I realise what a lucky bubble I inhabit. Which is why it's important to do something like the martial arts in which this bubble is at least acknowledged : my life is free from violence, but violence is always a possibility, and for many, a daily probability. In the martial arts, you can't avoid responsibility: no-one else can do your defence for you. There may not be anyone else there when you need help most. So you train, and take on the duty of being at least semi-aware of the dangers of our society,as well as the responsibility for your body and your reactions.  This brings me to the drones, articles about which can be found on the Guardian website here and here. Now, I don't know what the "average" soldier might think about the use of unmanned drones in warfare. If it makes their job easier, they may agree with it. But I wonder if there isn't part of them which feels that it may be wrong to kill individuals in this manner from a distance. One of the arguments  for would be that we already have many "impersonal" weapons: laser-guided and smart bombs, missiles and of course nuclear weapons. But the intent is different. Where these are designed to be used against installations, buildings and vehicles, the drones are for use against individuals. It the military equivalent of the NoFuss fish. We want the taste, but not the mess. To take an individual's life must be a terrible thing indeed, but I can't help but think there are ways of doing it which will heap ignorance and denial on top of the already steep cost of killing. The drones I think will do this. Hitler will of course crop up in the counter argument: "Would you have used a drone on Hitler?" But then of course, we have to imagine the situation if Hitler had been the one in charge of the remote control.

It seems to me that the further we put our bodies from dealing with suffering, the worse that suffering becomes. I'm lucky that in my life that manifests as NoFuss fish. I'm lucky that it doesn't involve someone I love being murdered by a flying, semi-autonomous killing robot.

Softly, softly...

The best recommendation I can make if you are trying to convert your "Handform-only" tai chi practice to a martial one is to take it slowly and softly,which we should have no problem with, right? You would think that after years of doing the Handform, all that flowing and relaxed movement would cross over into our martial training...
In my experience, people who do mostly Handform, and then get into a bit of Pushing Hands, tend to be stiff, tense, overt strength-users intent on "winning". This is a very curious thing. Often, they will do everything  in this way, whether it's compliance-based or not, whether it's a drill or more free-flowing.
Now "softness" is a terrible term, but it's the word that has become symbolic of what tai chi practitioners are trying to achieve. There's a reason for this quality of softness. It has nothing to do with chilling out or going with the flow or magical chi energy. It has to do with the fact that "softness" is better for fighting with than "hardness". People may become confused at this point. They may say "well softness is fine for defence, but what about when you have to put someone down to stop them hurting you?" Yes, softness is also better for that. It isn't that softness is yin, and hardness is yang, or that softness is defensive and hardness offensive. Softness can be present in both attack and defence. Which is also not to say that you don't need strength. You do need some. We might  rather say that good structure is required, which in turn requires a certain amount of trained strength. People have a tendency, especially in Pushing Hands drills, to approach them as if they were in a Strongman competition: their arms are tense, their movements mechanical, their listening skills non-existent. Four Directions or Seven Stars is not the place to train strength. You should have conditioning training for that. These drills are for training sensitivity which is best discovered through slow, soft and awareful (I know that's not a word but it ought to be) movement. An old Wudang maxim is "Fine work, neatly done." So it is with martial training. Of course, we then need wilder, more intense arenas in which to test what has been taught, but the "structured" training is best done soft and slow, unless its aim is particularly geared towards pressure testing, in which case it needs to be free enough to let the learner discover for themselves if it works or not. Put another way: one drill cannot test everything. You can't elicit dexterity, strength, spontaneity, aggression and cool-headedness from just one drill. Everything we do in the martial arts is a drill, because it happens in a controlled environment (unless you really are putting yourselves in danger) so you have to think: what is this drill for? Do it softly, and find out.

The Gentleman's Art

There are far more brutal arts than tai chi that one can study. An art like Western boxing undeniably grants swift access to fitness, and simple, potent technique. A study of MMA would almost certainly give someone the tools they need to defend themselves more quickly than if they studied tai chi. If we are pursuing our martial interests through tai chi chuan, then clearly we have other aims in mind, and I would go so far as to say higher aims.
For a start, I believe we are lazy: but I don't mean this in a pejorative sense. What I mean is that we aim to use our energies in the most efficient way possible. Our way is to put up a sail, rather than to row. So first of all is to consider this: what level of violence is your life likely to contain? And of what type? Of course, violence can explode from unknown quarters. But we are taking a measured risk in deciding the intensity of our training. Unless we are in a very dangerous situation,  it doesn't make sense to spend every waking hour in training, if only because there are so many other things of interest in the world. We certainly don't want to incur too many injuries in the course of training, because avoidance of injury is necessarily top of the tai chi person's list. What is the point in learning to defend ourselves only to become our own worst enemy? The enemies of bad health and boredom are probably more relevant to most of us than actual physical, combative humanoid foes. This however should not be taken to mean that the martial element can be ignored. I conceive of tai chi as a study in martial movement, that's to say the mastery of one's physicality in the most testing of situations, namely "a  fight" for want of a better word.  In tai chi we aim to keep our manners even in the roughest situations. This means calm amidst carnage. We may not  always succeed, but we start from a place infinitely more nuanced,and more suited to a legalistic, litigious society than the "ground and pound" of MMA, for example. This civilised approach is not based on spurious issues of honour and chivalry, but rather on the long tactical view: the more enemies you make, the more dangerous your life becomes. If you can deflect or defuse an attack without incurring wrath, revenge or the attentions of the Law, then you have saved yourself making an enemy.  This is our craft. It is no mere survival tool, whipped out in a hurry when we are backed into a bad situation. I mean, it can be just that. But it isn't merely that. It is a lifetime's study into the most mannered way to move, in the most pressing of circumstances.