Core-e-te or Core-fu?

You may have to say that headline out loud to get it.  Core-e-te is an attempt to combine Karate with core strengthening workouts.  I learned about it from an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Now the old me would have said, "That is the $#%^*ist, P#@#$$ng, thing I've ever heard!"

But the new me has reach a higher level, I am now teaching all my students Core-fu!™  Sometime last year a student asked George Xu what he thought of core strength.  His response?  "Great! We have the best core strength, we can gain maximum relaxation power through shrinking, expanding, spiraling and rolling the core!"  Hmmm, I thought, "But George, when they say 'core strength' they are talking about strengthening individual muscle groups, isn't that antithetical to all internal martial arts training?"  George smiled, "Yes, of course....We have the best core training."

My martial arts training up until now could have been called  Submit-Proofing™, that is how I'm trained, one can always keep fighting.  But today, I'm submitting.  If you know someone who wants to do the best core strengthening training this side of the Mississippi River, send them to me!

Super-extreme-ultimate-core-maximum-powerizing = Core-fu.™

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Looking at the Core-e-te article it appears that they are doing an hour twice a week of core strengthening combined with some Karate, some stretching, some meditation and some tea drinking.  I tend to react to these things, but honestly I have no idea what that little of anything does.  It might actually be good for you!  Especially the tea!

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I went to a giant Target last Sunday night.  Wow, that place was packed with people and deals.  If we as a nation can just do with Medical Care and Education what Target has done for consumer goods we will enter an era of prosperity beyond all reckoning!

But I  was at Target to work on my Daoist neidan practice.  As I hinted in an earlier post, my practice has taken a new turn.  I feel the only limitation on my practice at this point is social stress.  Some of you may laugh and say, "Is there any other kind of stress?"  I'm not sure actually but social stress is huge.  Anyway as I wandered the aisles, kitchens, bathrooms, sports, electronics..., I noticed different sorts of social stress, ghosts you could say, rising up in my body as tension.  And as fast as the tension took hold, I released it.  But then I went, with my half-wife, into the women's section and all hell broke loose!  What is that tension?  Some childhood memory of being with my Mom and two sisters bored out of my mind shopping for hours and then getting into trouble and punished for shooting an elastic bra like a slingshot?  I don't know, if there is some recognizable content there I've blocked it out.  Still the tension was extreme, I was only there about three minutes but the tension didn't dissipate until I wandered into the section with compression athletic shirts.  I bought one, by the way.  It doesn't work for cold weather workouts, however, as it flattens down my insulating body hair, but I do like the compression feeling.

Monga

Monga is the latest blockbuster movie from Taiwan and it is playing twice on opening night of the Taiwan Film Days festival put on by the San Francisco Film Society.  This gangster movie by Niu Doze has several male heart throbs in the lead roles and tons of hand to hand group fight scenes--Thus making it a great date movie!  But maybe not a first-date because it is actually quite complex.

The fight scenes are a lot of fun.  The choreographic style is not classic kungfu, it is loose and even sloppy.  But that's a good thing because the characters doing the fighting are talented fighters, not skilled fighters.  The free-ness of the choreography tells us the protagonists are young, a bit crazy and that they clearly love fighting.

The plot basically follows the emotional development of a few young men-of-prowess, a band of brothers, as they deal with more and more confining choices and harsh fates.  The plot has some twists in it, some are fun, and some are brutal.

But what is really important about this film is that it attempts to deal with the historic role men-of-prowess played in maintaining a social order outside of government control. This is what makes the movie special.  The action is centered around a temple.  The temple itself is martial, and the lead characters are all devoted to a martial god.  The film beautifully illustrates the thesis of the scholarly work Bandits, Eunichs and the Son of Heaven:  In order to keep commerce safe enough to keep thriving in such a vast country, Chinese civilization has depended on complex sometimes haphazard alliances between men-of-prowess.  The central government was never strong enough to control banditry or rebellion on it's own.  Magistrates were spread thinly throughout the country but righteous heroes, often centered around a temple to a martial god, were easy to come by.  These rough independent men tended to walk a fine line between community service and community extortion.  (More posts on this idea are here, there, over here and here too.)

The film can also probably be viewed as an allegory for the conflicts between native Taiwanese and the Mainlanders who came with the Guomindang in 1949.  It can also probably be read as an allegory for the influence the current Mainland Chinese have on Taiwanese politics, specifically the conflicts over independence between the KMT and the DPP.  But honestly I probably missed most of the nuances of these allegories, you'd have to be steeped in Taiwanese politics to get them.  Hopefully one of my readers is steeped and will enlighten us in the comments below.

The film Monga (Taiwan, 2010) is showing a 6:15 PM and 9:40 PM this Friday, October 22nd, 2010. It's at the New People theater which is a fantastic new theater in Japan Town.  Check it out!

Vacationing at Home

Been vacationing at home for the last week and a half.  Whatever it is that holds "me" together is unraveling.  Gone on a no wheat, no rice, no potatoes diet--experimenting with all the great fruit and vegetables in season.  Now, slowly going down a list of things to dispatch and discard.
It's a lot easier to walk in the clouds when you don't have somewhere to be.  It's even easier with this new coat I picked up on ebay.

And these retro-shoes--Net 80's, they started making again.

All good, but that which is closest to the skin matters most.  Drawstring boxer briefs from Cottonique.

Haramaki

Haramaki

I've been wearing a haramaki everyday for two months.  The fashionistas among my readers already know that this ancient Samurai undergarment is fast becoming a must have.  Here is the Wiki page.

I can think of no other article of clothing more likely to improve your gongfu than a haramaki.  They help you establish a "frame" and relax the dantian.  My advice, toss in the towel with all that core strengthening gobbly gook and just get yourself a haramaki!

I have one wool and two stretch cotton haramakis.  This is the type I have, (Item No. mn-1002, mn-1003) scroll down...find the products second from the bottom!

You can read more about fashion and health benefits here, and here, and then there is Haramaki Love.

In China the generals used to wear a very heavy tiger skin attached where the haramaki is, it would hang down to their knees and probably felt something like an x-ray apron.  A softer lighter version was worn by children and used by women for the month after pregnancy, when they were most vulnerable to spirit invasion.  The tangki, or spirit mediums of Singapore and other places where Hokkien culture is strong, wear this kind of bib (tou-ioe) when they are possessed by war gods and when they are possessed by baby or child gods.  The tiger skin is worn ritually in Tibet and of course Shiva wears one too.

For internal martial artists the image of the heavy tiger skin apron is a reminder to first let the muscle mass of the lower body hang heavily before the mind moves the qi (and the mass follows the qi, of course).

Tibetan Ritual Tiger

Red Haramaki

Sensory Integration Disorders

I took a short workshop on working with Special Education students last week. It got me thinking about how common low-grade Sensory Integration Disorders are. A Sensory Integration Disorder is a developmental problem, meaning it appears as a child ages.

Special Education is constantly redefining and re-categorizing its terms. These categories also have a habit of overlapping. Even highly functional people can show signs of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Asperger syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder, or my favorite-- Learning Disability.

I've known quite a few martial artists who were Obsessive about martial arts to the point where they really could not handle someone changing the subject. In some sense, it is people who have an insane ability to limit their focus that can also achieve greatness in a field which requires discipline. Some of them really can not sit still. I myself had no patience for sitting in class and listening to a teacher after age 14.

What was interesting about the workshop is that I realized that there is a significant percentage of people who love martial arts because they have some kind of Sensory Integration Disorder. Martial arts practices make these people feel good!

For instance, many people who have Sensory Integration Disorders like to hold or squeeze things in their hand. Squeezing their hand into a fist (or the knife hand shape) feels good. Holding a difficult stance while the teacher or another student pushes against one's body, testing "structure and root," is also the kind of thing that feels good to a person with a Sensory Integration Disorder. Wearing weights, armor, or very particular clothing is also helpful.

Part of what characterizes a Sensory Integration Problem is not being sure where your body is, or what your body is doing. So conditioning exercises which put pressure or impact on the skin and bones actually feel good, they help a person with this problem integrate. Building up muscles may also feel good. As does wrestling, or even getting caught in a football style pileup!

When you think about it, fighting is the art of giving other people a sensory integration problem! I'm not just talking about clocking someone-- the head fake, cross hands, the spiral punch, shrinking/expanding-- any kind of unexpected or unpredictable movement can cause a sensory integration problem in your opponent. All martial arts also teach us to improve our sensory integration so that we are not "phased" by what ever tricks or surprises are thrown our way.

Push-hands really, when you think about it, is a bunch of games that develop better sensory integration. When you lose at push-hands, especially to a far superior player, it feels like you just floated off balance. Often you can't really even figure out what happened. Often beginners are so sensorially disoriented that they don't even notice they have lost!

The Wind (Xun, or third) palm change in Baguazhang uses a particularly unnerving technique to disorient the opponent. We brush very lightly over the surface of our opponent's skin/body, not usually hard enough to move them, but very quickly covering as much body surface as possible. The effect of these quick light swipes is that it is hard to feel where the opponent is, and that moment of disorientation often effects balance too. It feels like you are fighting a ghost.

The therapeutic aspects of martial arts should be more widely acknowledged. Learning to fight is good.

300th Post & Business News

The Three Hundredth post of this blog came and went recently. Maybe I should go out and celebrate, but instead I'm at home cleaning and organizing my room/office.
When I started the blog last year I had a business plan in the shape of a triangle. In one corner was my regular website which promotes my classes, another was the videos on my Youtube page, and the third was this blog. The idea was that they would all be mutually supporting, people who looked at one would be drawn to the other two.

My success has been modest. One of my videos has had 90,000 viewers. Combined with the others my videos have been watched a total of 145,000 times. I haven't made time for more videos in 9 months. My goal for the summer is to produce a video I can sell, and to make more videos for Youtube.

I've also got a plan to make some cool t-shirts to sell through Cafe Press or some such site.

My regular website has basically been doing its job of informing people about my classes and getting me new adult students, but I've done almost nothing to improve it, so that is on my list of things to do this summer too.

Over all I've been happy with the look of my blog but disappointed in my abilities to do more with it technically. I made about $15 from Amazon books linked through the site for the whole year. I'm considering having a separate book reviews page that will sell books, but I've decided not to have them on the main page.

I would like to go through all my posts and put them into new categories so that people can follow the themes I have covered over time more easily. However, that is a big project and I may not get to it for a while. I also want people to be able to see the most recent comments, but the software I'm using has resisted that change, so I may be changing software. Perhaps I'll attend a Wordpress camp or something.

The various tools I've tried for counting how many people read my blog, and how often, have been frustrating. At one point in the spring my yahoo counter was telling me that I was getting 2000 hits a day. Now it's way down at 150. Go figure. Still I'm happy for even one reader. When I started I had no idea whether people would be interested in what I have to say.

San Francisco is usually a great place to practice outdoors all year round, if you don't mind wearing long underwear . At the moment, however, San Francisco has been covered in smoke from fires burning all over California. It's been like this for a week. After practicing outside I come back in and cough. I hope the fires end soon. Despite the fires, my practice has been taking new turns and is a great source of excitement. Of course when that happens it means I change from being a wuwei master who is content with his faults, to striving for transcendence. In other words, I'm back on the track of striving for perfection which leaves me feeling imperfect.

One of the difficulties of teaching children through the schools is that I don't have a way to keep them together after the residencies end. I would like to have a children's performing troupe but for that to happen I think I will have to have a dedicated space, which is really difficult in San Francisco because renting space is so expensive. Most of the martial arts schools either shoot for huge numbers of students, thereby lowering the quality of teaching, or they have a lot of teachers in the same style, or they run their space as a business that rents to yoga and other simple fitness stuff. Renting to other teachers is a whole business unto itself, one that would take away from my role as a teacher. Still the thought lingers.

In the past I've done workshops during the summer but this summer I'm laying low. I'll probably do a couple of ad hoc workshops for my students in push-hands and roushou but by next year I should be ready for something on a larger scale.

The article I wrote in the Journal of Daoist Studies in now available for purchase in electronic form or hard copy.

Thanks to all of my readers, this year has been a great beginning.

The Foot Fist Way

I had to go see this movie, The Foot Fist Way.

It is about an American Tae Kwon Do teacher named Fred Simmons. He says and does all the wrong things. As a teacher myself, occasionally something inappropriate has come out of my mouth while I was talking to a parent or a student. When that happens, immediately I go in to back peddle mode, I do everything I can to try and take it back. If I can't do that I apologize, or deflect, or change the subject. Fred Simmons says and does inappropriate things and then he just keeps going, he makes them worse and worse and worse.

It is a painful movie to watch. It is funny, but not in a way I recommend. I mean I had to laugh to keep my sanity, but I wouldn't wish that pain on another. At one point my friend was bent over with his face in his hands while I was laughing and pounding on his shoulder blade with my fist--If I have to watch this, you have to watch this too.

On my very worst days as a teacher I have thought to myself, "People laugh at me when they hear I'm a martial arts teacher. What am I doing with my life?"

I'm a pretty happy person, I love what I do, those bad days are few and far between. But this film made me think about them. Skip it unless you want to pass through the "Seven Rings of Pain!" (Movie title with in the movie.)

Auto-Blogging

While I was out exploring the Mt. Lassen area for a couple of weeks, my blog was posting all by itself.  So if you commented or sent me an email during the last three weeks, I have finally responded to all of them.

Thanks for all of the great comments.

Best Products

Occasionally I do product reviews. Lately I hear people worrying about the "economy," which I think is silly. If the economy slows down, it's like it's doing taijiquan. We notice where we're wasting energy, we discard excess, our appetites readjust and become more refined, we redesign our interactions for the space and things we use everyday-- generally we simplify our lives.

That being said, of course, most of the people reading this blog will not be effected in any significant way by the Economic Tai Chi Effect.

In fact, since I'm getting between 1 and 2 thousand hits a day, by my rough calculations, there are about 20 people reading this blog once a week who make more than 50 million dollars a year. One man's economy, is another man's splurge.

There are a few products I have purchased over the years which out class all the others for their sheer usefulness and contribution to my simple life.

The first is my skateboard, and I make no brand recommendations.

The second, my weapons, which will each get their own reviews at some point.

The third is my programmable rice cooker which has a setting for porridge (jook, congee). I've got a Neuro Fuzzy.

The forth is my Japanese warm spray toilet. I love that thing. I love it so much that when I go camping I now bring a hand held high-pressure squirter. (Saves money on toilet paper too.)

The sprayer I bought was cheap ($72 on Craigslist), but heck, if you're saving money by moving to a smaller home or something, you might consider spending $13,000 on this new toilet by Inax!

The blog where I saw the toilet also has an Auto Healther--massager that would be a welcome addition at most schools. In fact, it would be nice to have one handy to put my Kung Fu students in when they are acting like monsters.

Update: After posting this, my reader numbers suddenly dropped suggesting that perhaps my calculations were wrong.  200 Americans made $50 million last year. That number could be almost doubled if we include the whole English speaking world.  So I was assuming that 1 in 20 were reading my blog, and that is probably too high.  It is probably closer to 1 in 200-- which comes out to 2 very wealthy people.  It would be safer to say that there are 10 people with assets of 50 million or more who practice taijiquan, have an interest in Daoism, and sometimes read my blog.