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In the moment

Sifu told me a while back that the purpose of the throwing hands training was to teach us about the completeness of the moment. Well, my brain melted and I had no idea what the meant. He asked, "Does that make sense?" I replied, while my mind was stupified, "Yeah, yeah." LOL NOT! But, I have been thinking on this and I found that in each movement I am also carrying the tension of the previous moment into that movement. Or, I am anticipating and becmoing tense in another unecessary way.

Yi and chi and doing as Sifu says

So, apparently I have been training incorrectly since I began... Due to my previous training, i was used to using my intent to will fully lead my chi. In other words i focused on a certain action or direction to move in order to PUT my chi there. I thought this was the right way, but Sifu had said from the first lesson that we set up the conditions and the chi knows what to do.

12 Sep 2012

I'm practicing some of the material that Sigung covered in the workshop as well as some of what I could remember for the Student Level 1 test. Sifu, if it's okay, I would like to try and test in the Spring. I'm not sure if that means I need to have completed Stages 1 & 2 by then, but I pretty much want to go all in ILC. Any Taiji classes that I have to teach for the remainder of what I hope will be a long career in Internal Martial Arts and Rehabilitation will have the philosophies and principles from the Chin Family martial arts injected into them.

8 Sept 2012

I'm really tired and not in the mood to fight with this laptop, but I wanted to write some quick thoughts before I hit the showers, do some reading, and fall asleep. I'm going to say this, though...ILC has everything that I've been looking for in it. I have dabbled in a lot of martial arts, but if I could live in a community with ILC people, I would gladly drop everything. 

Chi Feelings

  • This Is a conversation that I had with sifu about chi. He thought it would be best to share it so that people with similar questions could benefit. Also, feel free to add more questions.

  • Do we actually increase the amount of chi that we have or does our awareness of it increase, or both?

28 AUG 2012: On Teaching

I meant to write this entry last night, but I did not feel like fighting with the on-screen keyboard on my iPad. Oh yeah, some of the strange typos in my other entries are from my iPad's autocorrect feature.

Going deeper?

A few things: When feeling for the dropping down the front, I am finding that if i let go of the abdominals i can feel this"one more thing" to let go of that almost feels like something sliding downward inside as if Iswallowed something and it falls all the way to dan tian. Everything feels condensed on the front lower mass and gets hard it feels hard without flexing. Is this right? Also, i have noticed that my tongue feels heavy at times, or as if it is slightly tingly. Is that a good sign?

16 AUG 2012: Q's about Sitting

I am hoping that Sifu and some of the more advanced students in AZ may chime in on this entry. It is something that I have wondered about for years. I have been getting mixed responses from people on this subject which is the importance of seated meditation.