Visiting the Mother Ship

Road trip!!!

Encouraged by our teacher, Shizi Rick Krausman, to become instructors in this art, Coop, Andy, Christina, Shizi, and I set off for the Gompa in Arlington, Texas. It was there that we would complete the first phase of the process, becoming assistant instructors, by being certified in a part of Rolling the Pearl, the name of the beginning program for learning JBZ.

The Gompa is an oasis situated in a residential housing development in Arlington.  In fact, the facility is located behind Shifu Painter's house.  Compact in design, it accommodates a handful of students in a very intimate way that only a small space allows.  At all times you are in close proximity to your teacher and very close to other students.  Do not consider this to be a bad thing.  With this intimacy, you get a lot of attention, which makes you a better student.

The compound is isolated from the outside world by a high wooden fence.  Several trickling water fountains bubbling around the premises help block traffic noise. Towering pecan trees, bamboo, and other assorted plants give the place a natural look and add to the peaceful environment.

During my stay there, I met and had two lessons with Shifu Garza, the Gompa's Taijiquan instructor.  Not only was Shifu Garza welcoming to us JBZ students, but his students were helpful and very friendly.  Shifu Garza is an excellent instructor.  I was impressed by his ability to easily explain non-easy topics and friendly manner.

While having met Shifu Costaldo at this year's Gathering of the Circle, this was the first chance I had to work with him for any length of time.  His knowledge and ability to teach concepts of JBZ are amazing.  It was Shifu Castaldo who created the Rolling the Pearl curriculum.  Because he was instructing potential instructors (us) he also taught us how to teach.  The information that was freely imparted he had gained over thirty years of teaching and will help us immeasurably.

By going to the Gompa you have the added pleasure of seeing Shifu Painter often.  He would stop by during class, pop in for lunch, or simply sit with us for an hour before we retired for the evening.  Those of us who know Shifu Painter, if only slightly, understand what a pleasure these casual meetings are.  You can feel his care for the world, his strong sense of justice, and his immense knowledge of this art.

An added benefit to this trip was being able to go to lunch and dinner with the Shifus and talk about everyday events like sports, movie making, or what-have-you.  It was during one of our dinners that I got a call on my cell telling me that my wife broke her leg at the barn.  She rides horses.  I'm writing the first draft of this blog on the plane heading to CLE.  My trip was cut two days short so that I can be with Karen.  This small taste of the Gompa, though, makes me want to come back.  And I will!  As soon as my better half gets better; she's my first priority.

UPDATE: Karen is the proud owner of a new titanium rod and other assorted medical hardware, which were attached to her broken femur.  She is uncomfortable, as can be expected, but doing well.  Becoming independently mobile will take a little more time.

An Unexpected Side Benefit

JBZ is a physically exacting art. By that I mean that one must concentrate on one’s muscles and move them in a precisely prescribed way in order to properly perform a movement.

Let me give you an example by dissecting the ba turn. In this movement, you need to turn your outside foot by turning your leg at the hip’s ball and socket joint and not at the knee. The inside leg also must turn at the hip, point in the direction of the turn, receive your forward momentum, bend slightly to transfer the momentum down, and then spring up and out in the new direction transferring the momentum forward. It looks quite simple when seen done by someone who is proficient, but it’s not easy to do correctly. [The steps of the ba turn have been abbreviated for this example; there is more to successfully performing this turn than what is written here.]

Practicing this art requires this sort of physical concentration on all that we do from walking and breathing (yes, there’s a proper way to do both – most people do them inefficiently) to the most complex palm changes while turning. My point is that this concentration on your muscles, posture, feet and arm placement and angle, spine angle, etc. is constant. To have power with every step (to have a moving root), one cannot leak energy by having improper alignment and expect to connect with an opponent with full force. In order to make yourself always ready, you have to concentrate on your locomotion at three in the morning when you’ve just gotten out of bed to get a drink of water. You have to live, eat, and breathe the art’s principles twenty-four by seven so they’ll be there in the heat of an encounter; so that they’re hardwired. You don’t want to think about how to do a ba turn when someone is taking a swing at you.

Does this make sense? Our Shizi (our teacher) says that this art is something that you become, not something that you practice. He hit the nail on the head with that summary. Those of us who have gotten into JBZ and been bitten by the bug for this art know exactly what this means.

There’s a non-martial side benefit to all this mental concentration and practice, too. After you’ve been practicing for a while, you know your own body much more deeply. You can isolate muscles that you couldn't before and sense parts of yourself that you didn't know existed. How is that a benefit? Well, you can focus on and examine different areas of your body when something feels different. For example, is this harshness in my throat because of something that I ate, or am I getting a sore throat? If it’s the later, then I can take steps to mitigate the problem (gargling with an antiseptic mouthwash, taking aspirin, getting into bed). In the past I didn’t feel the sore throat coming on, I felt it only after it had already arrived.

If you add Quiet Sitting to this focused attention, you really can feel what's going on inside you. Shifu Painter in his Combat Baguazhang, Volume One says, "... sitting quietly is the easiest way to feel subtle internal sensations."

This deeper knowing of myself has helped me avoid illness for two years. Our Shizi has done so for ten, ever since he started this art. This side benefit alone is worth a million dollars!

But this new-found information can be abused if you don't have the mental discipline to put things in perspective.  For example, this crick in my ankle is probably nothing... probably.  The undisciplined mind might think that it's trichinosis or beriberi or some such thing.  So he'd most likely go to the emergency room where the attendants would say something like, "Hey, here comes Qui Chang Caine again!  What do you have this time?"  And I would... errr, I mean this other person would tell them and the attendants would laugh and laugh and laugh.  I never realized that emergency room attendants were such happy people... ummm, ahhh, not that's it's ever happened to me of course.

Sitting Quietly

Quite Sitting is one of my favorite parts in my morning workout. I have a meditation bench that I put on the back deck (or in front of the family room window now that the weather has turned here in Ohio) that overlooks the backyard flower garden. My wife loves birds, feeds them regularly, and there are always quite a few that come to the feeders. Earlier this fall, we had a flock of wild turkeys that came by to eat the seeds that dropped to the ground.

Once settled on my bench, I try to quiet my mind and take in what’s happening outside while trying not to analyze what I see. For me, this is very hard to do. My mind keeps wandering all over the place until I realize what’s happening and call it back. This is especially true when I close my eyes.

I have found that if I concentrate on the pauses between the inhale and exhale of breath, it’s easier to ‘not think.’ I can’t help but think that concentrating on not thinking is thinking, but I haven’t worked that out yet.

The meditation bench that I built is a sturdy and comfortable little thing that allows me to sit as prescribed in Shifu Painter’s book, Combat Baguazhang I. The seat slopes forward slightly so my hips are more elevated than my knees, which is the proper position for Quiet Sitting.

With a few hand tools, you can build such a bench. Mine is made out of pine that I purchased at the local big box hardware store. It was the prototype that I made before I used more expensive woods to build other benches for friends. Because it was the prototype, it has quite a few holes drilled into the seat where hinges connected the legs to the seat bottom. I had thought to make the bench more portable by making the legs foldable. While this worked well, meditation benches rarely move so I abandoned the idea on the later models that I built.

Although my bench is made out or cheap pine and has more holes in it than a stop sign on a country road, I am attached to it and would not trade it for a fancier model. On the bench is the spirit jian that we sometimes use in class. I sit with the jian and it, like the bench, is an old friend.

Would you like to make your own bench? It’s easy. Here’s what you need:

Seat: ¾” pine board, 9”x24” long – 1 piece
Legs: ¾” pine boards, one end is cut on the diagonal – 2 pieces
The legs measure 9”x8 ¾” in the front and 9”x9 ¼” in the back.
Braces: ¾” pine boards, 2”x24” – 2 pieces

The bottom of the legs need to taper so the bench tilts slightly forward. That’s why one side is slightly longer than the other. You can see the slight right tilt on the picture of the bench at left. If you’re lucky enough to have a table saw (or a friend with one), cut the leg bottoms at an 87° angle. The extra piece of wood at the bottom of the leg that's shaped like a wedge was used to get the angle of the seat just right. I experimented with other angels before settling on 87°.

The legs on my bench are attached to the seat with glue and pinned in place with ¼” dowel rod pieces to give it extra stability. Nails and screws are easier to use, but be sure to drill a pilot hole first so the wood doesn’t split.

Use the braces to keep the legs from breaking away from the seat once you start to use it. Attach one brace at the back and bottom of the legs and the other at the front and top. Don’t put the front brace on the bottom of the bench legs, because it’ll get in the way or your legs when you sit and fold them under you.

If you have the interest, try it and let me know how it goes.