Swigging down some hard-core humble

This weekend past I took part in my first Tui Shou tournament. I have always avoided tournaments, a dedicated 17 years of avoidance to be honest. Generally because I feel they bring out the worst in us and don’t really help with fighting, rather we learn the minutiae of the rules and thats no use on the street. This time i changed my mind on competing mostly because i wanted to try and see if i could feel the chi of students outside my school and to try to learn from a more competitive and tense situation. In a nebulous way I hoped to avoid a rampant and crushing defeat but knew it was unlikely because of my inexperience and the very particular (eccentric?) rules of tournament tui shou.

I am in the 90kg-100kg category, so there were not many other entrants, most of the competitors fell into the 60kg-80kg categories. When I say not many, read as one other guy.  Interestingly he came from a school which focuses almost exclusively on external training so he was big, and very very strong and did not practice Tai Chi.

The first thing i discovered after linking-up was he was stiff like braided steel cable, the second was he was strong enough to bodily lift me off my feet and third he taught me that being soft and flowing can wind up with one being hurled around like a 95kg rag-doll.

He was stiff from the moment of linking-up, so much so that he ‘owned the space between us’ my guard hand was almost touching my chest and the only way to stop him from trapping my guard hand and lifting me off my feet was to use external strength to match his so that I could keep our hands equidistant from our chests (not very internal, right?).

So I figured, root my legs, drop my Dan Tien below his and use leg and core strength to get him off balance. 😀 When I did that, I also dropped the palm of my hand onto his chest and pushed with both legs and my core and my arms and, surprise surprise, I didn’t move him. He then pressed down so strongly onto my shoulders, that despite trying to root his pushing energy down into the ground he simply pressed hard enough that my feet slid out of the ring.

Needless to say I wound up using external strength against him, which worked to some extent and helped me avoid a total white-wash, but every time I went soft and tried to guide or re-direct his energy he came down on me like a pile of rocks and threw me easily.

So I lost, abjectly so. However I also learned a great deal: I have a lot of work to do before I am able to redirect a strong opponents energy. I learned that sensitivity to Chi does not empower me to ground out massively strong incoming energy. That my legs are not necessarily stronger than my opponents arms (and begs the counter-intuitive question; should I be engaging in strength training to improve my Tai Chi and subsequently my Tui Shou?). That softness is very easily defeated by a strong muscular opponent and it looks like a great deal of internal skill is required to redirect and ground out strong muscular energy.

Lastly I have a great deal to discuss with my Sifu on this point because there are no students in his school with the same power-lifter muscular power, we are all soft and yield easily to each other, and being hard and stiff generally gets one thrown easily, unless it seems one is strong enough to lift one’s opponent with one’s arms. Then you’re simply lifted up during the throw attempt.

I’m sure now that I lack greatly in skill and I have an ocean of learning ahead of me to be able to effectively deal with very powerful opponents and I’m glad I took part because my perspective has been corrected.

Yes, I can feel and direct my Chi, yes I have started my lower Dan Tien rotating and yes Lao Gong, Yong Kwan and many other points are open and my Chi flows strongly and easily, and Hell No it doesn’t help a whit against a strong powerful opponent. That said, there are probably endless depths I just don’t know about that enable one to direct one’s chi to upend 100kg’s of lean muscle. ;D

Trying to find the Dragon inside a Tiger

One and a half years of Tai Chi with a reputable teacher and I now realise there is no way to squeeze ‘internal’ from my first Art. I can apply the internal principles I’m learning at Tai Chi with fair success, but I was foolish. I was trying to find a dragon inside a tiger, but the deeper and harder I looked all i ever found, ever could find, was a tiger.

Now I’m truly feeling my chi flow strongly, sometimes like a hot wind out of Lau Gong or a cold wind in my torso and arms. My rooting is as strong as some of the senior hard-form students, after a mere year and a half. My chi is beginning to undoubtedly connect me to the ground.

Interestingly I find Chi is like Mindfulness, when one tries to exert direct control over it, it behaves like mist, insubstantial and impossible to grasp. When one forgets and softly intends, the strength of it leaves me in shaking in awe. If I relax and softly intend, the power I generate transcends anything i can produce using external muscular strength. I’m still learning the principles but Tui Shou with external strength simply doesn’t work and when i move softly (not to be confused with slowly) from my Dan Tien, I’m astounded by the strength that can be brought to bear.

I have wandered for years, searching for my path. Touching here, stopping there, never seeing the truth. First I grasped after material wealth and power, having held both I found them empty. I disconnected from people and lacked any empathy. Thinking that emotional people were weak, contemptuous and easily controlled. Sounds like any corporate climber, right? Pride and power over others are like the rainbowed surface of a bubble. Enticing, distracting, hollow, and ultimately harmful to both the autocratic Leader and his followers. Leadership is not about being a hammer and anvil (although sometimes it requires a firm hand), for me leadership is now about guiding people, helping them, not driving them or hammering them into my chosen mold.

Secondly, I aggressively pursued the Martial Arts. Learning how to physically overpower in compliment to intellectual and emotional dominance. In that phase of my life all I needed was a trigger event. Thank the Buddha i made it past all that.

Finally I found the Buddha’s teachings (funnily enough as a way to manage and control my Fury at the world). I was looking for a mechanism of control over myself and through direct experience in meditation I glimpsed the incredible foolishness of my attitude and approach to the world. Seeing that when one is hateful and angry one cannot be happy and making the decision to be happy, I could see the blindingly obvious, one cannot be happy and angry. I had to choose and so I did.

Make no mistake, leashing my inner sociopath and developing the Eightfold Noble Path is a daily struggle, but truly seeing my inner nature empowers me through Mindfulness to take control and walk the Path I know is mine. There’s a great deal of peace and contentment in that.

Now I practice mindfulness, the Dharma and Doasim to deepen my empathy, my compassion and slowly like glacier melt trickling downhill, I am finding my way.