A good ole' plug for martial Tai Chi Chuan lesson...

I've not mentioned it before, but for any of you out there interested in training with my teacher and I, we run a class on Friday evenings, from 1830-2000 in the Cornerstone Community Centre, on Church road nr. Palmeira Square, Hove.

This is a martial lesson, not a handform session, so expect to sweat a little and do some (light) contact work.

It's fun. Come along.

It's £7 for an hour and a half, roll up, roll up...

That's not a picture of either of us...

Wobbly weapons and the Police

We were visited yesterday morning, in the park where we train, by a member of the Constabulary. Apparently, the police had received reports that that there were men wielding metal swords in the park, scaring the kiddy-winks and causing consternation for the populous. The fact that some kind of criminal gang had been roaming about in Brighton had lent an extra edge to such compaints, and the police were duty-bound to investigate. We of course were not the offenders. We are sensible enough to know that using metal weapons is the quickest way of drawing the unwanted attention of the Law. We said we'd spread the word amongst our martial neighbours, and actually we had a pretty good idea who the perps might be. The thing is, the metal sabres that these cats use are of the wibbly-wobbly Bacofoil kind, which to my mind are completely unfit for purpose anyway. The idea seems to be that the wibbliness produces a noise not unlike a Rolf Harris Wobbleboard when you stab. The sabre, having a curved, single-edged blade, is primarily not a stabbing but rather a slashing weapon. So if you want a SWOOOSH you had better be generating it with your scythe-like cutting motion, not your stabbing or thrusting. The thing is if you use such a thin weapon, it will make a noise pretty much whatever you do with it, thus it is no indication of "fa-jin" or any other damn thing apart from the fact that the user is a teensy-bit of a show-off. Now that the Fuzz are on to them though, they'll have to use wooden sabres like the rest of us, which is simply better all round. Hurrah then, for both the fearful populace and our Police officers. To cap it off then, this is a public safety announcement: DON'T WAVE METAL WEAPONS ABOUT ESPECIALLY WAFER-THIN ONES for the love of God. It's bad news for us all.

The Needle At The Sea Bottom

The game of tai chi chuan is a very human one: evade, divert, escape and survive. What makes the game worth the candle, as the saying goes, I suppose, is the possibility that we may fail. As we are seeing in Japan at the moment, sometimes we face something that can't be played, something which no kind of human cleverness can address in any meaningful way. It's a hollow and horrifying way of learning it, but the best we can generally do is to really appreciate our lives and our world. We all know that we will  be swept away in the end, but to be reminded of this doesn't make it any less painful. For many of us, though, the game goes on. Keep training, keep moving...

The Big Martial Arts Con

The martial arts are a con. The carrot of "fighting ability" is held out on the end of a long, long stick: it's not uncommon to hear or read the following: "tai chi is alright but it takes at least ten years to be able to use it." On one level, there is truth in this. To learn the art takes a long time: the different forms, fighting concepts and so on. But to be able to use it shouldn't take the averagely fit and intelligent person more than a few months. I suppose it depends on your definition of "use".  If by "use", you mean to defeat a slew of assailants who are seriously intent on maiming you, using  the full range of aesthetically pleasing, identifiable techniques of your school whilst barely taking a scratch, you can damn well forget it. If by "use" you mean have the sense to avoid trouble, evade incoming undesirables whilst looking for a handy exit strategy, well you can achieve this relatively quickly.

The point is not to beat or defeat triumphantly and obviously. Life is too messy for this to occur with much frequency. No, the aim is to survive and carry on. Not very glamourous, I know. But tactically, legally and morally, it's the pinnacle of our art. Evade and escape.

It's not always possible to just evade and escape. Maybe you will have to do nastier things. But the odds will be tipped very little even by years and years of training. If after ten months of training you can't handle an attack by four or five assailants on a dark city street, the likelihood is that your way of training won't bear any more fruit in this particular situation ten years down the line. In fact, your own decent instinct to flee might be marred by the added confidence that many martial arts erroneously instil.

It may seem like I am suggesting that no-one need train beyond the initial stages. I am not suggesting this, but rather a change of viewpoint. We don't really accumulate martial skill, but rather we refresh it every single day, as my teacher says "You are only as good as your last training session." We cannot rest on our laurels. Everyday just the basics: evade, divert, disrupt and escape. This is the difference between learning the techniques of  a martial art, and living a martial art.

Why Kung Fu Panda was bad...

Okay,okay, so this film came out ages ago. But I hear there's a sequel on the way...

Kung fu panda was great because it looked beautiful, and it was pretty funny. Anything that features such a devout fan of the martial arts as the lead character can never be a bad thing.

But this panda was a great big fat dude. The Dustin Hoffman creature (was it a Red Panda?) used the panda's love of food to motivate him to train, which was just fine. But why oh why did he teach the black and white oaf to fight like someone slim,lean and with long legs? He'd have been much better at a cool grappling, Bruce Frantzis-style BaGua thing instead of some pseudo-Shaolin nonsense. Of course the message is, no matter what your bodyshape/ability, you should be aiming to do all kinds of gymnastic stuff, spinning kicks and the rest...which is dull. A big guy should train like a big guy.

What do you mean I've got too much time on my hands?

Anger management 101

I have been writing of late (not here...) about the possibilities of tai chi chuan as a way of being evasive and artful when it comes to conflicts of all sorts, verbal, personal and physical.
But the other day, when one of the Union reps at work slung his tuppence worth at me, I slung it right back with added venom. I yelled, I ranted, then I fumed for about a week. Not altogether the coolest way to handle things. Where was my evasion, my control? Nowhere to be seen. Our little contretemps then became an extended meeting with managers present, and I ended up dining out on humble pie filled with patronising jam and sprinkled with bullshit flakes. Boo. So I guess what I'm saying is: it doesn't necessarily translate. When being philosophical about the martial arts, it's great to entertain the broad possibilities of training.But just because you can duck a punch, doesn't mean you can duck an insult. And it's not wise to hit Union guys, however much you might want to.

The Big Qi Debate part II

So the trouble with chi seems to be that both chi-lovers and haters present or expect chi as being something special, something extra to the normal range of mundane experience. I would suggest that chi is little more than a category, different in intent and purpose to any other category in our "|Western" experience maybe, but still referring to sensations available to all people.  In my opinion, chi is simply a different way of labelling sensations, in such a way that one can use these sensations to concentrate, feel the tides of the body, and gain energy and calmness from this process. The human body is broken down by Western medicine into the respiratory system, the cardiovascular system and so on. But none of these is a discrete "thing". These systems are all interwoven and interlinked, labelled for convenience, and the expediency of medicine. What "qi" introduces which Western medicine tries to avoid, is some idea of faith. The dictates of qi say "do me, cultivate me, try me and then see if I exist or not." Western medicine doesn't care if you believe or not. Of course, we also know that if someone feels that they are going to get better, this seems to help the process. If you follow the dictates of qi, you will create qi, or you will create the results of the qi system of work.
Really, if we had to boil it down, I'd say qi is flow. I've never come across a use or definition of qi where it wasn't recommended that it should flow. So whether one is talking about hormones, blood, breath, artistic spirit, or martial intent, flow is key. Flow implies interconnectedness; it also implies that any work to be done is about clearing the path to let the stream flow, rather than carrying the water to the destination in a bucket. Whatever qi is, it is "already there", which speaks of potential in all places, situations and beings. We don't need to do Taoist alchemy to benefit from flow. It's not mandatory because it doesn't add anything that's not there, merely changes the way one looks at it. That's all for now on this topic.