the human weapon

i am sure i mentioned that quan tuo & i saw an episode of this show recently. the premise: 2 mixed martial artists go around the world learning martial arts from the source, then they have to compete with a champion of that martial art. great premise. the hosts: not terribly interesting, kind of meat-headish, completely american & provincial, suddenly finding themselves in exotic places & experiencing new things (to say the least). it's actually great to watch them get their arses kicked (thus far in the first episode by the slippery & fast muay thai fighters). saving grace: history & culture is examined; martial art is introduced & broken down for the viewer. there are even simulations on how to actually perform, in the muay thai case, the 8 moves that comprise it. very cool. the goal: to become a human weapon!

now isn't that always the goal? i may be presumptuous in saying so but quite a few of my shaolin brothers have trained in other martial arts & continue to grow in a mixed martial art sort of way, if not hope to, once they have achieved something in kung fu. our bodies are weapons.

in talking about it with quan tuo, i think we should do something similar - travel around the world in search of training. not some fly by night thing either: months maybe years in each place to properly be trained. it may not be "must see tv" but i know it would be an exciting, gruelling & rewarding experience.

my shaolin sisters were saying we should do it but just us gurls. girls kicking arse, taking challenge after challenge after training for a year. great idea. good marketing too.

in the commercialism, of course, something is lost in the show but it is important to see & realize how much training anyone goes through to be a martial artist. it takes time, discipline, hard work & yes, suffering, to reshape your body & your mind.

for me, shaolin is mind, body & soul. i trained in zujitsu & learned to box a bit. i have always been active but never what i would consider an athlete (quan tuo is the consumate athlete, excelling in many & varied sports). i found tai chi at a certain time in my life. i needed something more internal, meditative. it was a complete turn around from zujitsu. it was so difficult to get my body to be bent, soft, low, to harness energy from the dan tien & to learn to use other energy around me, to learn to deflect & redirect. shaolin kung fu is a mixture of all these things minus the sparring. i think i will need contact at some point to round out the experience & perhaps that is waiting for me at a more advanced level. [no one speaks of it].

all this said, there is so much work involved in training. the difficulties for me have always been mental & some are actual physical things like breathing, or getting my breath to calm down, i completely suck wind sometimes; my arms that get tired, oh so tired; being horizontal or vertical & not on the ground despite my balance always being good, i get the spins. there are many other little things that make my training quite a challenge. yet i continue to go back.

quan tuo always asks - how much of our hardships are mental? i would say ALOT. fear also plays a huge part. no one wants to get hurt of course & we do practice a level of control & awareness, we have to. but once someone is injured, more than the soreness that goes away the next or subsequent day, at times one prevents oneself from returning & training harder. this is something we need to motivate ourselves on. no one else can do it.

i am still learning shaolin & learning about myself. i am still fairly young but no where near as young as some of my brothers. plus as a smoker, i put additional difficulties on myself in my determination to keep my vice (dammit). i look at our advanced classmates & some of their training runs 8 years! there are some gifted or skilled or adept enough to make it go quicker. there are those who are hungry (quan tuo) & they accelerate further with devoted time, effort & discipline. i have to say discpline is still a struggle for me. it will continue to be so.

this rant came about because i wonder if i have what it takes to be a human weapon, should the need arise. the more one learns a martial art, the more we become peacable & the last ones to find themselves in physical situations. training is awareness, it's being able to take in what's around you & to trust your instincts.
chaka zulu, my master in zujitsu told me early on that fight or flight is the human natural instinct & he believed that sometimes you had to fight in order to take flight. i always think about that.

more chi.