Confusion, Grounded, Beauty

Phew, its becoming really hard to have things to write. I've been noticing alot in my training but its not things I can disclose or would want to at this stage. Suffice to say that sometimes the training is more about self, and can be difficult to understand let alone convey.

Tonight I was told that I am grounding well, or at least that I'm better than I was, or that I ground better than one might expect. I'm happy about this, compliments are nice. But I can't really bring myself to believe it, I'd rather believe that it needs much more work. Of course it does, and not being complacent I can keep at it. I wonder what has made the difference though? Is it a mental shift to being 'grounded' that I've made? Or have I become more flexible? or what??

Also, had fun tonight with basic practice, press, and an un-named technique. All in all we seem to be concentrating far less on techniques and trying to do something, achieve something. We spend much more time looking at the relationship and how small change mean big changes, so we talk about foot positions and weight changes and compression into this and that... Its all fun training.

This un-named technique - its beautiful, so simple and so effective, like a Judo throw with zero effort, you simply have to be thrown there is no other option. It is beautiful to watch, graceful to perform and both scary and beautiful to be thrown. Its movements like this that I love about Cheng Hsin. When something just is, and like a wave or a sunrise, is just perfect in its organic unfolding.

Relax

Relax Relax Relax Relax Relax Relax Relax Relax Relax Relax Relax Relax Relax Relax Relax Relax.

Keep training it.

Commitment

Sometimes we hear about people who are afraid of commitment. They feel afraid and therefore avoid entering into relationships in the first place, or they find them so hard that they end them before the other person 'gets too close' or 'is let in'.

It's actually the same with fighting, or at least, in the context we find it most frequently, in training with another person. It's still a relationship. It's still two people relating to each others movements, intention, forces etc.

Frequently, we are afraid of committing ourselves totally to our own actions, let alone to the relationship or interaction that is presenting. We feel afraid in much the same way, we don't want to open up, to get hurt. So we keep the other person out.

But by so doing, we restrict ourselves, keep ourselves out of the relationship. Committing ourselves more fully we are able to learn more deeply. We can let ourselves be thrown or hit, and relax and feel it, see opportunities to blend with it, we can become one with it.

In the end there is only one relationship, and one thing taking place, so let's dive in!

Transcending Self

I just signed up for the TS course, if my payment went through ok. I am guessing that the entire content will be a secret, as it is something you have to pay for. So I wont be revealing anything, but hopefully some of it still comes across, and I'll share my own ignorance freely.

For anyone interested (closing date for sign up is October 20th):

e-courses

Jiu Jitsu

Today I took my Gi with me to work, carried it around with me all day in the boot of my car. At 5pm I made my way over to where the Jiu Jitsu class was last week. On arriving I found that instead of the smaller 10 people training there was more like 40.

I enjoyed the class, I had too much to think about to really keep a great body being - or at least that's the excuse that I'm letting be there. It was cool though, a chance to practice rolling and breakfalls, I know mine need a whole lot of work. We also did a couple of throw on both sides, an O Goshi and another very similar one. I enjoyed the throws alot, enjoyed being thrown and trying to create an attitude of offering and allowing myself to be thrown, and then popping back up as quick as I could.

We also did some kind of arm trap things, I didn't catch what they called them, kind of he punches you block and turn his arm around and help him towards the ground. These were a lot of fun, using "Ba sic bo" (I probably spelled that wrong) footwork and leading to help them down. Then we did a kind of a block turn and allow to fall thing, this was fun too.

It's always nice to find a bunch of people happy to throw you around and happy to let you do some stuff to them, I spoke to a couple of people about my background too and suggested they google Cheng Hsin, it's too hard to try to describe what it is.

The main things I observed about myself tonight:

• I'm still getting afraid before being thrown
• I'm still too upright and not just allowing gravity to take me down
• Things go much better when I smile and create an attitude of welcoming the whole event, the whole experience of being there, rather than 'trying' to 'learn' or 'judge'.

More cool stuff to work on.

Determination

I've been thinking a lot today about the subject of perseverance and determination, meeting that wall that we face when we can't face training and keeping on going. It really seems like this lies at the crux of so many things, not just training a martial art, but doing the housework or all of life itself. I can't quote because I only heard from a friend, but apparently Peter Ralston said that he isn't more intelligent or more talented than someone else, just more determined.

Even just doing 1 hour of Taiji today in the park when my mind wanted to stop after 45 minutes... Its so easy to give in to the mind which says that's enough and not challenge it. After all the mind is just expressing an opinion and it may not even be a good one. Very often we don't listen to people who give us advice, but we always seem to listen to our own. It seems to me to be a good idea to just keep going, keep training, push past the limits of the mind's opinion.

"I tried to practice as much as I could today" - right there, it feels true to me, but it's not. It's dishonest to myself to suggest that I did as much as I could. But I did some, and crucially I did more than I could have. If I do more than I could have all the time then that would be a good start. I practiced rooting throughout the day, falling into my feet as an object in space and on the ground. I did the aforementioned 60 minutes of Taiji and I noticed a lot of mistakes.

I also visited the Jiu Jitsu club nearby, staying for an hour I watched them breakfalling and rolling. It seemed pretty much ok, a very cold room to train in - with air con even in the winter! A hard floor, but a clean square open room. I plan to go train next week, hopefully get alot out of it. Certainly being there made me feel tremendously motivated to invest some quality time in practice. To do as much as I can at home in private, in the gym, swimming, Taiji every lunchtime at work, and grounding with every step.

It is moments like these that feel so pivotal, I could use the opportunity to do what I love and improve myself. Or slip back into old habits, which are so hard to break without motivation. What I do now is crucial, what I do tomorrow when I wake up is crucial, but I am determined.

Perseverance

Tonight I had a hard return to Cheng Hsin. There were so many things that I noticed myself doing wrong that it is hard to compose a blog entry under a particular subject. I was holding myself up too much, not allowing myself to just fall. I was tensing when going into a sidestep and slap and not rolling along my shoulders right. I was focusing on the future and not the here and now, and I was too focused on the games and not open enough to possibilities. And that's just what I noticed. Added to this I had someone sidestep and slap into my head, and then proceeded to quite possibly break a toe while playing pressure no pressure.

It would be very easy to see tonight as a setback, a reason to quit or to just sit at the computer and not train. But I do want to persevere, to be able to overcome my own boredom, frustration, procrastination and etc. To do this I want to do more even now after driving home and just wanting to sleep. So, I'll leave it there and go do something now.

The Pros and Cons of being a student

I'm now a student again. And for the next 4 years, I'll be in the libraries reading books studying and so forth. Its going to be fun, and I get student discount.

The downside of this new lease of life is that I'm not going to be able to make it to week long Cheng Hsin camps for the next 4 years. The combination of working part time and having my girlfriend living on the otherside of the country. It's a pain but...

On the upside, I just found out that I can study Jiu Jitsu all year long for just £30, and Aikido similarly all year for just £30. The Shaolin Kung Fu club is a bit more expensive at £60 for the year plus £30 for insurance. Apparently Shaolin is more expensive because they do more weapons, and sparring. But anyhow, this all seems to be a great deal to me. Its an opportunity to do 4 years of these martial arts and see how I can be effortlessly effective while I do them.

I look forwards to having some fun.

T'ui Shou Workshop 30/11/08 (UK)

There is a T'ui Shou workshop planned for the 30th of November organised by Cheng Hsin Cardiff in South Wales (UK). I only just found out about this myself as I haven't been keeping in touch.

The workshop is from 11am to 5pm, at Sully Judo Club.
The trainer will be Kevin Magee.
It will cost only £30.

More details including contact details found here: Cheng Hsin Cardiff

New classes in Swansea UK

The classes running in Swansea (UK) which used to be just on a Tuesday evening for T'ui Shou and a Thursday evening for boxing have now expanded to include Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. 7 hours a week total, is this the most Cheng Hsin you can do in a class in one place outside of Texas?

Details can be found here: Cheng Hsin Swansea Classes

Returning to being

Today was the first day for a long time that I did any practice. Nothing much, just practising Taiji for 30 minutes on a small lawn between two wards of a local hospital. I could tell that patients, nurses, people were watching. I didn't even let this bother me. It felt good to do something again.

I haven't been unable to train because of some physical injury, but maybe a mental one. I got into a habit of doing nothing, or doing ineffective things.

But today, all day I tried to be in my body. I felt my arm connect with a door and how I swung it open more with strength than centre. I tried to fall into the floor as I walked and noticed how this slowed my gait, made it more rooted and able to turn more balanced. I sat down on chairs noticing every stage in my weight's transition from feet to bottom. I looked further and tried to feel my way all down the long hospital corridors.

Being more whole and total. Being mindful and appreciative. Today marked a return to being.

Know Thyself

Is it possible that when we try to perfect ourselves, try to improve ourselves by learning a skill or aiming for mastery, that our effort is counter productive?

I used to think that I had no 'catholic guilt', but when I didn't train, or things didn't go the way I wanted them, or some small thing happened like I missed the last post, I got frustrated. I should say I GET frustrated, because this is the way it is for me, right now. It's really very stupid but this is how I have become.

And these insights can be so hard for us to see, to see ourselves, know ourselves. It's taken my girlfriend knowing me so well to let me know these things, and it's a bitter pill to take.

Accepting ourselves for how we are - lazy, over-analytical, judgemental, introverted, not good at making friends... Maybe this is the true way towards perfection, acceptance. then again maybe I'm still trying to be perfect or just over analysing things.

Spirals

It can be tough to practice sometimes, especially when you get stuck in a daily grind and there doesn't feel like there are many opportunities to practice. Sometimes I feel like this comes and goes, sometimes it's easy to find the time, other times... it's not.

I've been finding though that there are really lots of opportunities if you just stay on the look out for them. I've been doing a lot of practice of spinning around, like walking through a door and spinning around clockwise or anti-clockwise as I go through. Its a pretty simply thing, and quickly done. But, it's really easy to lose balance or spatial awareness as you do it.

Think how many doors you go through, and how many different types of door there are. Some doors are tougher, some lighter. How useful is this? Sure it's nothing special but it sure beats the usual mindless way some of us go through our day. If training is only done for 2 hours once a week, we have 166 hours that we didn't use effectively.

The cost of living

There is a credit crunch in the UK at the moment, people are tightening their belts and finding the cost of living is getting higher. It's interesting to see how this has a knock on effect on the martial arts we do.

For most people in the UK, martial arts are a luxury. They are a nice hobby that we do in our spare time and we are happy to pay the cost of the classes. For most of us, physical combat is not something that we have to deal with on a daily basis so martial training is not all that important.

When you set yourself up as a teacher in this environment it can be hard. In Wales, the big sport is Rugby. So all the money goes into this. In the wider context of the UK, money is being channelled into Olympic sport. The cost of renting a room once a week can be £25 an hour, if you can even find somewhere with good mats as well.

It's tough, I was talking to a Systema instructor tonight. He said he has had to take a loan of £1000 just to pay for classes, and of course there is no guarantee of numbers. If it was Karate that we were training it would perhaps be another story. There seems to be no limit to the number of people happy to pay for Karate. Indeed many Karate instructors seem to make good money from their classes. Why then is it so difficult to attract the same numbers of people to arts like Cheng Hsin or Systema?

I suspect that part of the reason is that they are a bit more demanding and require a certain amount of insight into self and interaction that perhaps Karate does not. Maybe more promotion of these arts will make a difference. What is clear is that in these harder times financially people will spend less on luxuries.

I would like to argue though, that Cheng Hsin is not a luxury. The art of Cheng Hsin is one which touches all aspects of a student's life. One can't justify not doing it because of the cost unless one didn't really have the commitment in the first place, or didn't really understand what the art was. I recently missed a whole camp because of the cost, so I am lacking a lot. But I can't give up on this practice, to do so would be giving up on myself.

Games of Cheng Hsin

Formoseaneijia recently added a brief description of two of the games of Cheng Hsin to his blog. The link is here:

http://formosaneijia.com/2008/06/26/opening-up-your-push-hands-with-games/

I'd like to give descriptions of things like this myself, but I don't feel qualified to do it justice so I am just pointing the way.

Travis' Somatic Systems Blog

I thought I would share this. http://travisblog.somatic-systems.com/
It's a link to Travis' Somatic Systems Blog. Travis is hosting Peter in Japan next year, now there's a workshop I'd like to get to...

Actually there isnt a great deal in the blog, but at least its out there.

New article link: "Re-thinking Cheng Hsin"

Dojorat has released a new article on his blog that I thought people would be interested to see, its always good to get perspectives from outside of Cheng Hsin. To quote Dojorat, Peter Ralston

displays his incredible ability to control the movement of his opponent, primarily by using superior positioning, yielding skills and impeccable timing. This is what sold me, and opened up new avenues of thought about blending with an opponent.

http://dojorat.blogspot.com/2008/06/rethinking-cheng-hsin.html

Japan workshops 2009

This was tough to find, but here is information on some workshops that Peter Ralston is doing in Japan 2009:

February 11th - 13th 2009 http://newsevent.somatic-systems.com/?eid=719252
February 14th - 22nd 2009 http://newsevent.somatic-systems.com/?eid=729285

Hungarian Translations

I'm not sure which book this is, but clearly at least one of Peter's books is translated into Hungarian with a different cover to the English versions. Details (in Hungarian) can be found on this website:

http://lunarimpex.hu/konyv.php?id=46

An article by Klaus-Heinrich Peters

Published in TCC Magazine summer 2005, this article gives a Tai Chi perspective on Cheng Hsin.

http://www.taichiunion.com/magazine/chenghsin.php

Wikimartialarts

Here is a description of Cheng Hsin from the website wikimartialarts
To me it seems like a simplistic description:

Ralston used his experience in Karate and other striking arts to make a Cheng Hsin style which would enable its students to deal with Karatekas and other strikers.

It's suggestive that the author of the article may themselves be a Karateka. Its another interesting perspective.

http://wikimartialarts.org/main/index.php/Cheng_Hsin

A Cheng Hsin training day review

In March 2008 there was a Cheng Hsin training day in Sully, UK.
Mark Walsh has written a review of his experiences of it for his own blog. You can find the review here:

http://integrationtraining.blogspot.com/2008/03/effortless-power-cheng-hsin-uk.html

Holland Camp 2008

Epi van de Pohl's website: http://www.epitaijiquan.nl/page4/page4.html gives details of the forthcoming Holland Cheng Hsin camp Jun 27th - July 11th 2008.

I'm not sure about the prices, and it's short notice now.

Swansea UK Camp 2008

Peter has been coming to visit the UK since the year 2000. I have been lucky enough to attend the past 3 years, unfortunately this year it seems like I wont be able to. I recommend this 7 day camp to anyone. The camp itself is from Saturday 12th - Sunday 20th July 2008. The following is from the organisers website:

Since 2000, Peter's yearly visits to the UK have turned into a tradition. His unorthodox approach and no-nonsense teaching style have made him a favourite of experienced martial artists and newcomers alike. He is an authority in his field, the Muhammad Ali of the internal martial arts. After years of intense investigation of his own mind, body, and the martial arts, this former full-contact free-fight world champion founded the Cheng Hsin School of internal martial arts.

The essence of all his teachings is relaxation and understanding the internal principles, both mentally and physically. Through an elucidating progression of lessons Peter shares with students the foundations of his high level of skill.

Seven days of working on the principles and techniques of effective internal martial arts according to the insights of Peter through the study of Cheng Hsin T’ui Shou, a dynamic blend of Tai Chi, Pa Kua and Aikido with uprooting, throwing, footwork, and lots of internal work on relaxation, out-reaching, intention, balance and freeing up ineffective mental patterns. A great workshop, enjoyed by Aikido enthusiasts and Chinese internal martial artists alike.

This workshop will give you the principles of an internal martial art. True relaxation combined with body alignment is fundamental to the arts of Cheng Hsin. Intrinsic strength in which no muscle contraction is needed or wanted. Grounding, balance, moving from the centre of the body and being whole and total are some of the topics. The influence of body awareness and ”energy” work will also be explored. In addition to martial enthusiasts, people as diverse as dancers, musicians, body workers and even chefs have found this work to be helpful for increasing body awareness and skill.

Mini set and the short set of 64 moves. The accent lies on how the Cheng Hsin Principles (relaxation grounding, centring, being calm and being whole and total) express themselves within the form. Peter is very precise and patient in repeating and correcting.
It is possible to enlist without any knowledge of Tai Chi Chuan.

http://www.chenghsin.org.uk/html/uk_camp_2008.html

Prices for various parts of the camp range from £99 for 3 evenings (4.5 hours total) to £575 for the whole week (was £480 if paid before 07/03/08).

Taiji Mini Set

For anyone practicing the Cheng Hsin Taiji Mini Set, there are a series of 15 photographs illustrating the moves online at

http://www.johnnieters.com/MartialArts/taiqi_main.html

You can't actually learn just by looking a these static images but they are a guide.

There is actually a video on Youtube of someone doing the set, but really really badly:

Bullshido

It's important to be honest, especially with ourselves. As Peter says "we don't want to be a fantasy warrior, or a pretend warrior", to be honest about what we do mean confronting the question of what it is that we do. And this doesn't mean denying it or defending it, just questioning it.

The website bullshido asks tough questions. It's too easy and habitual to be defensive, much harder to accept and contemplate statements like these:

If your in this area and looking for a place to train... look elsewhere...... this guy is a chump... a serious poser. unless you want westernized enlighenment camp... head to a real gym.

http://www.bullshido.net/forums/showthread.php?t=49702

Principles of Effortless Power - A Review

Dojorat here presents a short review on Principles of Effortless Power and Cheng Hsin T’ui Shou; The Art Of Effortless Power. Although short it's interesting to see the perspective of someone who hasn't trained with Peter.

I came away from these books feeling that Ralston may be better as a Guru demonstrating direct transmission of knowledge to students in a Dojo format. His knowledge is deep and he is a skilled martial artist.

It's also interesting to read some of the comments

I actually was a member of the Cheng-hsin school in Oakland, CA. in 1985. You're right - Ralston is no slouch. I sparred with him once and his top people were also top-notch instructors. That said, I have two issues with his school. First, they were very steeped in a very New Age Encounter Group atmosphere. The school tended to attract a lot of those types, too. It seemed pretty cultish to me.

http://dojorat.blogspot.com/2007/12/review-cheng-hsin-principles-of.html

Pipl

Pipl.com describes itself as a deep web search engine. One day when I searched for Cheng Hsin online I found this:

http://pipl.com/directory/people/Cheng/Hsin

Essentially its just 5 quotes about Cheng Hsin, but its another interesting place to begin.

Wikipedia

There are many good descriptions of what Cheng Hsin 'is' on official websites, but perhaps they are tailored towards the martial artists that one might expect to be reading them. Now there is a new article on wikipedia giving a clear and detailed overview of Cheng Hsin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheng_Hsin

Wikipedia

For a long time I wanted to see some information on Peter Ralston on wikipedia, not being qualified to write anything myself I waited for someone else to contribute. Now it seems that someone, perhaps Peter himself, has. The biographical detail is greater than anything I knew about Peter before, and provides an insight into the experiences that shaped him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Ralston

Peter Ralston's Fight/Play DVD - a review

"In brief, this DVD is one of the most impressive displays of skill I’ve seen."
www.formosaneijia.com