wenwu

hey guys hope this finds you well and planning your april fool's jokes fitness how important is it to you? how do you work it in to your pracitces. i study bagua, and the movements can be a little demanding but leans more to health than fitness, i like the challenge of pushing myself in circuit training and so on but in recent years i have slipped and gained a little more than i want to. these days a lot of my exercise is very low impact. what do the rest of you do to stay fit?

a num ber of people on this site do gong fu what are the reason for doing it, fighting, self defence, mediatation etc. have you found what you are looking for?

ok since we are talking, can you guys say a little baout your MA experience I'll start at aged 16 i started TKD (should mention i am 30 now), got to black belt and won various medals and championships and helped run the school for a while. travelled around looking at different clubs and styles. got talking to a few people who sparked my interest in the internal styles so i moved to China took me a while to find my current teacher in here, during this time i studied a little xing yi, wudang taiji (which i am hopefully taking up again soon) and bagua in Zhengzhou, Henan province, also spent a week in a shaolin training school for fun. Left Henan for a few reason and eventully came to Beijing in search of a good bagua teacher, with the help of internet forums and the like, i found one and i have been with him for 3 years now. really lovng bagua even though it is still really difficult for me, currently looking to expand my practice into health and deeper meditation arts, also still tryin to track down Duan Bao hua, maybe when i am ready he will show himself to me

wow so many varied replies thanks guys I suppose i better stump up, don't want to feel left out walking, lots and lots of walking baguazhang the plank most nights various sledgehammer movments streching for those of you who do taiji and the likes, do you find tht any of your other sporting activities, are contra productive to your taiji. if so how?

hi guys, been away for a while but the beginning year has been good to me so far so here i am. looking int o starting some deeper mediatation and healing practices to go along with my bagua and qi gong. don't really want to go through my teacher at the moment as he is leaning more to the fighting side. found these guys http://www.taichitodao.cn through a friend and was wondering if any of the china hands here have any knowledge of them. i am going to meet with them soon, to disucss things i i think i will get a fairly good idea of what their about from that, but anything you can tell me would be great thanks

ok like the title says 2 qucik questions be=ased on things that i have heard 1. during standing qi gong you will feel a pin prick sensation in your middle thigh, this will turn into a warm feeling and begin to spread. I read this a while back and i have felt this sensation but i am not sure what to make of it, it feels very similar to damaging a muscle (which i have done many times) also if this is true are yuou mean to feel it everytime or just once? 2. small heavenly circle an microcosmic orbit, how long did it take you guys to open this up and how did you feel afterwards. i know everyone is different but it is nice to share expriences thank you everyone and happy new year

morning again here is the article which ma chuan XU discusses many things including the samll heavenly circle http://www.chinafrominside.com/ma/bagua/machuanxu.html ok so i asked for other people experience i better post mine, I still train ourside even though it gets below zero around here, luckily no snow though, I my hands get warn and tinglely (maybe this is a word?) a few minutes after i start zhuang zhan, and on a good day they start when we are doing the streching, when i an really in the flow i feel the tingles recede as a breathe in and return when i brethe out. still not a lot in my feet i guess my legs are too tense, (see mabu discussion) because when i do lying meditation i get the "buzzing" all over, kind of like a very subtle but long lasting orgasim (sorry for being crude but it is the only way i can explain it)

Root (AFAIK) is to do with relaxation anf lowering your qi which happen naturally when you relax,practice standing in a relaxed manner wil help this develop, experiment woth your stance and you will really feel the difference between a relax stance connecting to the ground or a tense stance that makes the ground act like teflon. also things like push hands or just having someone trying to push you over (gentley at first an then getting stronger) will let you investigate you stance work

thank guys interestingly i was chatting to someone about my practice and she as asking me what it felt like, I didn't tell her anyting thing for the same reasons that were mentioned above. right yeah it is about clearing the mind not searching for things. the pin prickthing happened to me only once a a few years ago, guess i have been slacking ing my practice for quiet a while but again it is not something i search for, i find a good measure of mypractice is how warm i can keep myself (clearly i am still at a basic level0 we still train outside here and it is mighty cold, when i am doing ZZ and our ji ben gong just a series of stretching similar to yoga) if i am heating up i feel good. sharing experiences um .... ok sorry i asked but the tempation was there. ma chuan xu said in an interview it takes 3 years of proper practice to open up the small heavanly circle but then again he is fairly remarkable thanks for all your responses guys

morning everyone most of the internal arts that i have studied have three basin (san pan) of study these refer to the different heights tht you stand at. once upon a time some one came to my teacher and just wanted to learn qi gong so my teacher let him stand in the upper basin posture, and while he was there having a hoiday my teacher went eround all the rest of us pushiong us down, reson being for internal martial arts we need the leg strenght so that we can move and still have root, either way for me internal happens at any height as long as you have the correct alighment and breathing an intention. the big things for me is to practice "yin" mental strength as an external martial artist i spent a long time in really exhausting postures but they were different in the way we were feeling the work out and our mind had "food"but we battled through becasue we had somethign tangible to fight. In zhuang zhan it's not as intense and just standing there my mind starts looking for things or getting bored even when it begins to hurt, my usual feeling is to go lower and get some nice work out feeling rathr that stay there but that defeats the porpose of the whole thinsg

2008 is my year to find direction. feel like i have been floating for the last few years and now i really want to set out some goals and rachi them, these would be 1. upping my bagua and moving back to morining classes 2. start looking into healing therapies 3. looking into running my own business 4. sort out my current relationship, no matter what the end is 5. ease up on the old drinking 6. finally start studying chinese

hhappy new year everyone as usual I am replying to this far too late but here goes. as far as i know the person in the photo is a gentleman called Tom Kurtz, pick up any martial aerts magazine in the UK and you will find adverts for his books on flexibility, he is a sport scientist and as far as i know not a well acomplished martial artist (but i am willing to be corrected on this pointed.) therefore his stances are done with strength and flexability in mind and not always with the same structure as martial artists would have. i would like to see that picutre from a side on view to see how straight his spine is, but never the less the lack of structure between his knees and his hips means that he is using too much muscle to hold that stance and therefore it is useless for ZZ and even Martial arts and he is giving up a lot of mobility. For ZZ your knees should be in line with your feet, this allows you to get real relaxation in your body and you can "lean" on your structure rather than using your muscles, the same is true for the upper body, you should push your Bai hui point up a little and this will striaghten your spine, there should be a line from your bai hui point to the point just behind your testicles (sorry forgot the name) and this should continue down and meet a line betwen your feet just in front of your heels, i keep my weight off my toes so that i can grip the ground with out using too much muscle. just my 2 cents, if i am wrong please let me know

so i have been doing martial arts for a few years the 6 have been internal. these past few months i have really been focusing on my standing and breathing exercises. really enjoying them at the moment don't know why. last night i had sex (kinda) and this moring had a real sickness feeling in my lower belly, around the dan tien area. this is the second time i have experienced this in a row. has anyone else had this experience?

hi there, thanks for your post, my feeling comes just after sex. thanks to everyone for their replies and sorry for my stange messages, My computer is doing strange things and not showing new messages or even my posts sometimes, oh well I will look up the qi restoration qi-gong, thanks for the tip

the feeling i get is after sex, lasts for maybe a day, or is is today anyway

wrote a longer post but it didn't go up!!!! Basically does anyone have strange feelings around their dan tien are after sex? opps shuld really have opened my eyes when i looked for my previous post, sorry please don't reply to this post If the admin can del it, that would be great

an interesting topic to say the least, my take on this would be, that is is the feeling of failure that is more important here, it is difficult to get to a hundred days but there again what is life without a challenge, it takes control and effort, which not many people at a starting level have. so how do you feel if you fail.... like it is too hard and you can't do it so why try, like the alcoholic who falls off the wagon. however I can see the value in this way of 'ignoring' any small slips so when you get to the end you still have a feeling of achievement maybe you made 100 days and only slipped once, next time you will do better. this or any sort of difficult practice can't be jumped into and people who aim to high and fail often never try again and move away.

if you want a really basic way of making your cds, you can download soundforge, this is a recording program tht you can play with all your on music and make gaps for as long as you want

what is a good age to be and why?

Righto, i throw in my 2 cents. the area in Henan is Song shan,many reason are given up to the reason why the shaolin temple was built there it just depends what you want to believe. There really is no direct connection between either of the shaolin temples and taoism, the idea that taoism is stronger in the south maybe come from a quote that i have forottoen comparing the Northern shaloin and wudang temple, this quote was based mainly on the fighting ability of the different monks. These days the Shaolin templeis very different from what a lot of people expect. there are a lot of stalls with monks selling dvds weapons and various other things, even the monks and the surrounding schools speciallise more in contemporary wushu than either kunkfu ot buddism, I had a friend who was having difficulty with her meditation practice and headed off to the temple to ask one of the monks about it, she was unable to find anyone who could help her. you will still find some of the monks practicing taiji but this is more to do with geography (the chen village is also in Henan and shares many movments with shaolin kung fu) and the popularity of the art. gone are the days when the shaolin monks only learnt shaolin kung fu. not sure this answers any questions at all. but what the hey

hi there Been away for a while dealing with family trubles and so on anyway I am heading to Shanghai soon and I am looking for teachers there before i go to continue my study, I have bought a couple of Yu Dinghai's VCDs and the stuff looks quite nice, does any of the China based Taobums have any experience with Mr. Yu? thanks for any info you can give me

hi there been away for a while, moving house and saying goodbye (temporarily) to my girlfriend, ho hum i asked this question on another forum and really didn't get much back so here goes nothing, through your mediation or qigong practice have you found any effect on your emotional states. with me these days when i feel relaxed i REALLY relax and when i am happy it feels more real than it did before and when i get angry (not often) i also feel it is much deeper than before. has anybody else experienced this or am i going mad?

thanks man I have been looking to contact him for a while now, i live in Beijing but will be moivng on shortly, guess i have to keep on trying

hi there yen Hui, i have been looking to train with Duan Bao Hua for a while, really love his style. do you have any informaion baout him or where he teaches

another quick question What do you think the effects of drinking are on your development? we have all heard about the benefits of a glass of red wine, and if i drink just a little i find my mind is a lot quieter and i have come up with some really interesting (well, to me anyway) things after a little bit of alcohol, however i am aware this is a sort cut to the basic results of mental discipline. Through chating to a few people that are in to qigong, I seems that drinking in moderation has no real bad sides effects, in fact one old fellow told me that it was good to do qigoing after drinking becasue it gets the alcohol out of your system