So today i put in the longest XYQ workout I’ve been able to thus far, which was just shy of two hours. Now understand that this is a big deal for several reasons:
1) I’m extremely deficient (in a Chinese Medicine sense) and every little bit is a big step away from the precipice I was on the edge of about two years ago
2) The longest XYQ workout I’d been able to manage prior to this was 30 mins. in either January or February. This is at least partially because I was primarily focusing on Taijiquan until March and my XYQ regimen was mostly centered around San Ti Shi practice, as it should be.
3) Hebei Xingyiquan done properly at the Ming Jin stage will freakin’ kill you. I know I’ve worked harder in almost every other martial art I’ve ever done, including Bailongquan and Wushu, but for some reason NOTHING takes it out of you like XYQ.
When I was done I went and had a seat and checked my pulse out of curiosity: completely absent at all positions except the Liver position, which was Empty and Feeble. Now late in the evening, my lungs have started to feel like I’ve got something in them, like when you drink wate rand it goes down the wrong way. This again is something I’ve been warned about. The five fists seem to specifically work the Zang organs they are associated with, and I’ve certainly been doing some Pi Quan.
Now this may worry some of you, but as I understand it in the Ling Shu, the way you judge the effectiveness of a treatment is in the degree of emptiness or fullness you achieve in the pulse (depending on which way you’re going with it) vs its prior state. For tonification, getting it to empty out to that degree is practically a cure waiting to happen.
So continuing my survey of the odd effects, all the Taijiquan and Xingyiquan classics and writings of past masters mention at some point that you are going to experience physical pain in your legs, knees, and shoulders and that it’s only going to be muscle soreness at the beginning. After that, it gets more insidious. However, if your structure and technique are correct, this is one of the signs that you are making significant progress. Well lemme tell ya..I got knee pain and shoulder pain and leg soreness and finger and toe numbness and hip pointers and…basically everything hurts. Bad. But, I know for a fact that both technique and structure were exactly as they needed to be. I discussed this with Matt today and his response was “Oh yeah. Believe me, that gets worse before it gets better. And it hasn’t gotten better for me yet.”
Now, lest you write me off as some gimp who is doing external training and thinking he’s doing internal, let me tell you about some of the other things that have been happening, what I like to call the “Qi Kaboom” effect. This first happened last Wednesday during lunch, then again yesterday (Thursday) between the end of my scheduled afternoon shift and the beginning of the evening shift at the clinic that I decided to stick around for, what Matt calls “good days.” Last Wednesday I went out under this big tree during lunch (and therefore between grueling classes at school), ate a sandwich, and ran through sections 1 and 2 of the Taijiquan form. For some reason, Yi Qi and Shen were all being cooperative with each other at that moment and for the first time during a TJQ workout I felt like the qi was filling me or inflating me or something. It was absolutely booming out. So after lunch I went into the classroom and pulled aside Sandra ( a Chen Taijiquan practitioner and my classes resident Qigong expert) and asked her to do a quick scan of what was going on. Her response was “well, you’ve clearly got blockages here and here still but wow, look at this..this is how far your qi is extending.” She held up her hand at the limit of it, which was about four or five feet behind me. Obviously I was thrilled. However, after a little bit the feeling went away and didn’t really return.
Fast forward to the next Thursday. I decide I’m going to need a little something extra to make it through an extra shift, so I go outside to run through section 1 of the Yang TJQ form a couple times. A couple qigong practitioners from the class ahead of me walk by, comment on my form, and then their eyes get big and they start taking a very wide arc around me. “What?” I asked. “I can feel you way over here..” one said. “Yeah, me too. I don’t want to get any closer than this.” said the other. They both started sort of gingerly stepping back and forth, testing the borders of it, and they were both standing probably 15-20 feet away. For the rest of the night people had trouble sitting in the same room as me because of the effects of it. When I got home I decided to show my gf by putting a hand on each side of her right shoulder about 6″ away from her on each side and slowly running downward, kind of “dredging the channels. Her response was “AACK! You aren’t touching me? You’re making my shirt move!” After that I went to bed, woke up the next morning feeling like someone beat me with a pillowcase full of doorknobs and no impressive qi anywhere in sight. Then I did the XYQ workout listed above and the rest is history.
So Matt tells me not to sweat it that there are good days like that and bad days that are the opposite and that things are going to bounce around for a while until things balance out to whatever energetic “level” you’ll naturally have, augmented by further training of course. As for him, he started getting the “concrete bones” probably two months into training. He did a forearm press on my collar bone back in January demonstrating a fist Pi Quan technique and I thought it was going to snap. It certainly felt like it.
So the point of all this is I am nothing short of amazed at the effects of the Neijiaquan practices. It’s amazing the changes that they bring about with what could be considered pretty nondescript movements in the age of Wushu and “flash” karate in film and MMA on tv. But, you find someone who is doing the correct material the correct way and look out. They’re going to be impressive. But much better than all the other forms is that the closer they get to mastery the more refined their temperament will become. Real Neijiaquan masters seem to be able to get along with everyone and anyone and are generally all too happy to share their boxing with others. No chest-thumping, steroid shooting, challenge throwing, and generally obnoxious behaving practitioners here. Yet their power and skill are absolutely unmatched. No wonder so many of the Chinese consider their martial arts to be the pinnacle of their culture!
