Serious Training

Orion looms large over the schoolyard at 5:00 am. Its head, arms and body spread out across the black sky. Neighboring stars sit, suspended in time, not even twinkling. It is as though they are holding their breath waiting for the dawn to swallow them up. Three roosters crow; they are starting later now, about 4:30, as winter approaches.  A bunch of dogs bark in the distance.  It is cold but fresh and crisp on the balcony where I stand; taking in these sights and sounds. I turn to go back inside but realize for a few more days I am in no hurry to leave the night for the to-dos of my day. I linger a bit longer. I notice the Moon. It is a curved sliver of red, weighted at the bottom of its orb. I stay until it fades a bit more into dawn.  An alarm chimes. A toilet flushes. Someone coughs. The school dog wakes up and barks its thick throaty bark.  The roosters crow in earnest.

I joined the many others for evening practice last night. The rains had left the atmosphere clean and crisp and it was a perfect temperature. I tossed on my black fleece hat, hand knit fingerless gloves, magenta Patagonia puff jacket and joined the practice foray of teens, kids, and adults, many of whom still had t-shirts on.  It gets cold quickly here in the plains of China. David, who has been here at all times of the year told me that the kids still practice outside in the winter and you know they don’t have fancy designer gear to stay warm. After I practiced I decided to see what was going on outside the school gate. To my delight there was a group line-dancing just a few hundred feet down the road.  A couple dozen folk and one just walking toddler all stepped in perfectly coordinated rhythm to a young woman in pink singing live.

Back inside everyone was still practicing; people take their training seriously here in the Village and the longer I stay, getting into the rhythm of it all, the more I feel this.  We took our group picture at the beginning of our training when everyone was still fresh and David said, “serious faces.” Since I like to smile in all my pictures, I asked him later why “serious faces?”  He said one photo is always serious faced because real training is serious. When he put it that way it made total sense to me.  Of course it is. Why get on a plane and come all this way, why devote ones entire life to a practice and not be serious about it. A few days later David and I shared our favorite excuses we hear from folks for not training. One of his is, the “I had to iron” excuse. A student who had been training for about four years missed class and later told him she did because she had ironing to do.  One of mine is, “Its too far for me, can you open a class closer to me?” Nine out of ten times this excuse comes from folks who live only a couple of miles from my school.

It is not that serious training is only for a certain elite. Our group, like most groups is diverse. We all have something going on with our bodies, some healing injury or knee problem. There is one woman who is still in cancer treatment. And almost all of us are over 50 but here we are in the Village. David I both also share stories of our training rock stars.  One of his students was in the hospital for weeks taking hours of chemo a day.  When he was not hooked up he went to the courtyard and practiced.   When you see what is possible, and that it is possible within yourself, excuses fall away.  Training is not a matter of finding short cuts or the right packaging.  It is a matter of sincerely working within your art. It is a matter of asking yourself who you are, who you want to become and going for that with all the intention you can.

For a while I have been of the opinion the art of Taijiquan is promoted too simplistically. It shows up in arthritis commercials with people dressed in orange and dogs barking around them. It is promoted as a light fun activity that is good for everything from depression to weight loss. There is Taijiquan for x, y and z and people are making a lot of money packaging and teaching it as such. This is not necessarily a bad thing to spark an initial interest but the reality is that Taijiquan is not a magic bullet. I think all of us who teach see frequent shock in the new student when we sit them back into their legs and adjust and their posture. I suspect their first thought is usually, “THIS is Taiji?”  It is not the new student’s fault; a certain type of mass marketing is a disservice to the reality of what Taijiquan actually is, of its true potential.  

I have always respected the Chen Family and on this trip my regard for them has deepened, especially for Chen Xiao Xing.  It must be a grueling job at times, teaching his family art to foreigners who come from cultures that understand the body, its sensations and the mind in different ways than his cultural and artistic inheritance.  But he does not succumb to that, making it easy or simplified for us; I do not see him entering the practice hall devising ways to make sure we are comfortable. His method instead is to simply impart his family’s art and all the traditional integrity within. In this way he draws us up towards his level rather than coming down to ours.  I think he really enjoys it too. Serious training and serious teaching are not joyless; on the contrary, there is nothing more joyful than working without compromise right at the heart of human potential.  

I return to the balcony. As the stars fade into dawn the beauty of the school, this place of tradition and depth, penetrates my body and my soul.  I can hear fajin, a staff hitting the ground, a sword cutting a path through the air.  This training symphony is continuous from before dawn deep into the night. I didn’t bring my big camera this time because I wanted this trip not to be about the right picture but about sinking into the authentic experience. There is a beautiful view of the school out the training hall and during class time I glance at it now and again. Then I go back to serious training knowing with every thigh burn, every silk reeling correction that is exactly what I am getting. 

Kim 

Comments

[Dahveed]

Kimbery, this evocative blog post deepens my respect and awe for your tai chi practice.