Killing Yoga

Almost ten years ago I started studying a martial art called Yi Quan, which was created by the Xing Yi Quan master Wang Xiangzhai in the 1920's, to alleviate what he perceived at the time to be incorrect teaching of XingYi. Xing Yi Quan is one of the three main "internal" martial arts originating in China, the other two being Tai Qi Quan and Baguazhang, and thus Yi Quan is as well.

I started studying under Sifu Cheuk Fung, and had a terrible time of it. I saw other students progressing, but never managed to get anywhere myself. After a bit of time, I started wondering if there were things he wasn't telling me, and made the egregious mistake of attempting to force my body to do what it wasn't prepared to do naturally. This showed superficial progress at first, but eventually let to a number of subtle injuries that took me out of training altogether. It didn't help that I started with a bad knee, but the soft-tissue injuries I added completely screwed me up in ways that the knee wouldn't have. I quit Yi Quan for a while, but eventually came back and started taking classes again. This time my eyes were more open to what was going on (serious Zen training helps you see all kinds of things), and I realized that far from holding out on us beginning students, Sifu Fung was handing us the proverbial "keys to the kingdom" on the even more proverbial "golden platter". Within a month of being in class, any beginning student had been shown all that he needed to know to engage in years of successful training -- boy did I feel like an idiot! As Sifu always said, "those with eyes will see". Yet I was still unable to progress.

I've been frustrated for a number of years to understand the basics of how Yi Quan works, yet be able to make no progress whatsoever in terms of practice. Based on conversations with my brother, who's studying a Imperial-era form of Xing Yi, I've decided that just like Xing Yi, Yi Quan should be considered an advanced martial art, suitable for study by those who are already proficient in another martial art and whose bodies therefore already enjoy a certain level of conditioning. My body is not suitably conditioned, however, and experiment after experiment as to how to get my body to make itself amenable to Yi Quan has either failed, injured me, or both.

After ten years, though, I now believe I'm on the right track, and that the key to the whole mess is what Russ (my brother) refers to as "paying the price of admission". For tubby, ill-conditioned computer programmers such as myself, any plausible method of Yi Quan practice must concentrate on preparing the body to be able to do what is being asked of it, and to this extent I've formulated a slower, more rudimentary program of Yi Quan training that I believe will allow me to regain what ability I did have, but in a correct and natural way that will also allow me to progress further. It's not theoretically any different from Yi Quan as Sifu Fung taught it, but should be much easier for the beginning student such as myself to handle.

Without fully connected strength, none of rest of Yi Quan is worth a damn, but acquiring this body characteristic is the equivalent of jumping over a four-foot wall from a stand-still -- hard for most to do. My new regime is much more akin to jumping over several one-foot walls instead -- much easier. After all this time, I'm finally optimistic that I may finally start to achieve some proficiency with Yi Quan, and I'm going to start practicing again with regularity, albeit at the snail's pace that my new regime requires. I won't get into details here on the blog, but will note success or failure when either surfaces.