The Journey Within

It’s been a while since i’ve last written about my private tai chi lesson. I’ve finished the Sun style form some weeks ago, and now i suppose it’s fine tuning. The usual suspects are still there – relax, relax, relax! Such a simple word and yet the permutations of body parts that can be relaxed is just too many! So i’m just going to highlight the one that I’m finding most difficult – the kua!

I guess many has written about the kua. I’ve linked it with why we have knee problems when doing tai ji. Just when I thought I was making some in roads, my push hands classes tell me otherwise. The message is always the same – the kua is not “loose” enough. Going through this with my teacher, he came up with a simple technique which I hope will help you too.

First, let’s start with a test of loose kua. Do a horse stance. Turn your upper body to one side while in that stance. Both your knees should stay where they are. If they’re following your movement, your kua is not loose.

To do this in a horse stance is difficult. So what he advised was to do it in a higher horse stance. Let the focus be on loosening the kua rather than do a “pretty” horse stance. Give the knees a rest. In fact, try to avoid bending the knees further in an attempt to loosen the kua. The knees are still kept bent though.

I find that this technique actually helps narrow the focus on relaxing the kua. It shuts out distractions from all the other body parts. Please let me know if this helps you, or if I’ve made this clear enough.

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“How are you?”

A very simple question, with a variety of answers you can choose from, but somehow, we stick to the familiar, like “i’m ok” or “good good” or “fine”. There’s no denying the convenience of picking from stock answers. It’s simple, it’s effective and it doesn’t draw you into a long drawn discussion about how bad your day has been, or how well your son has scored in the latest exams (we hate show offs!)

So why do we resort to stock answers when we can do much better? Why say “i’m ok” when you can say “i feel absolutely wonderful!”? Why say “i’m fine” when you actually meant “it’s been such a bad day…”?

For one, we’ve probably learnt from social conditioning that saying anything more than “i’m ok” is not socially acceptable, unless you’re delivering some good news which affects the person you’re talking to as well, like “we’re getting an extra day’s holiday because the boss just landed a big business!”. Try saying “i’m tired. I didn’t sleep well last night. The neighbour’s cat was howling all night. I just feel like strangling the cat but I didn’t think that will go down well with the neighbour. Not that I like the neighbour very much. She’s always complaining about how much she hates potted plants…”

We don’t like long sob stories. And yet we ask “how are you” expecting a very brief “I’m ok”. no wonder we’re conditioned to answer “I’m ok”. there’s no incentive to answer anything else! We don’t want to be socially unacceptable now do we?

Recently, I’m a bit fed up with answering “I’m ok”. i’m fed up with the monotony “i’m ok” suggests. I’m fed up that knowing I could answer much better than “i’m ok”, I still stick to my day-in day-out answer like “I’m ok”. Can we do better than “I’m ok”?

Since I don’t want to repeat (in words) the annoying things that happened during the day, the only option left is to choose more empowering statements to break the habit of saying “I’m ok”. Somehow, my brain has been wired to pick out the negative things that happened throughout the day than the positive ones. So, in a bid to change that, I am going to exaggerate the good things.

So instead of saying “I’m ok”, let’s try “i’m more than ok, I feel like I’m improving everyday with the challenges I face everyday!”. Ok, I have to admit, this 5-second sound bite reminds me of one of those self-help/motivational/inspirational statement that is trying to do a quick fix in mental health. I’m not proposing to use it for that quick-fix purpose. Instead, I propose to use it to break the pattern of monotony. Use it because I don’t want to use something as boring as “I’m ok”.

A quick search reveals some of the words that can be used after “I feel…”:

magic, vibrant, ecstatic, like soaring into the sky, powerful, invincible, serene, balanced…

So if you catch me saying “i’m ok” the next time, stop me right there! I’ll do better with the next statement. Or if you’re not prepared to receive those answers, be careful when you ask “How are you?” the next time.

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An unusual lunch time for me, instead of heading out to feed myself first, I went out to feed others instead – with a little deposit into the blood bank.

Blood donation, you either do it or you don’t. Those who do it do it for a variety of reasons – feel good factor, another time to socialise, the chance to lie beside a pretty woman (different bed of course!), some time off work, peer pressure etc. Some even does it for monetary benefits! Those who don’t do it also carry with them a list of reasons – fear of needle, fear of seeing blood, fear of pain from the needle, fear of seeing people you don’t want to see, or just can’t be bothered.

Whatever reasons you have, there are plenty of others just like you. And when I arrived at the blood donation centre, I’m actually surprised by the response. There were plenty of people, and a lot of them has the “this is my first time” sticker on them – peer pressure does sometime do good.

The process is quite similar to the one I went through in UK. You go through registration, to make sure you are who you say you are. Then you answer a list of questions, to make sure you are in tip top health and do not have any blood related diseases. I was almost rejected when I told them I was in UK since 97. They were rejecting people who were in Europe between 1980 – 1996, apparently that was the mad cow disease period.

The qualifying next round is then pricking your finger and collecting a droplet of your blood to see if your blood is “thick” enough, i.e. if you have high enough levels of red blood cells (or more accurately, the iron-containing part of red blood cells). The droplet is then released into a bluish solution and hopefully, it’ll just sink through without dispersing.

After qualifying all those rounds, then only you’re admitted to the actual blood extraction. This is the only part that I found different from my previous blood donation experience. Previously, I was given the option to opt for local anaesthetic so that the blood extraction needle does not hurt. I didn’t want to experience 2 needles, so naturally I went for the 1 needle option. The nurse asked again just to make sure,

“so i’ll just do it straightaway ok?”

“er… do I really need to take the anaesthetic?”

“no, not really. only Singapore does it. my country doesn’t do it as well.” obviously, the nurse is not from around here.

“oh ok, just do it then”

And let the blood flow begin…

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Recent late nights (or early mornings) at work have forced me to consider trying a different career path which offers me more flexibility to pursue things I like to do (e.g. tai ji). So I flipped the newspapers and tried applying for something totally unrelated to what I’m doing now.

It was fun looking for something new. It feels like a kid in a candy bar, or in my case, a chocolate factory! My eyes were scanning for anything which seemed interesting to me at that time. So I picked a few – writing for a magazine, a teacher, a librarian. I probably don’t have the credentials to do any of those, but I thought I try anyway. It was fun choosing the adverts, but writing a resume for a different career was much harder than expected.

I couldn’t list out my normal jargon I have used for years within the insurance industry, so I have to stick to common themes in companies. Things like – organisational skills, communication skills, writing skills, computer skills, thinking skills etc. And I have to draw experience from jobs and put them in a “different language” so that others outside the insurance industry can understand them. And I had to do 3 different resumes for all 3 different positions!

The process actually forced me to focus on what I’m really good at. Because I was trying to find common themes among companies, I did not have the luxury to mask my abilities (or inabilities!) under the various jargon. And I had to think hard for examples such as writing skills – I could say that i have a blog, which doesn’t say much about my writing skills! Instead, I put down in my CV about that time when I translated a Chinese article into English for a tai chi magazine – anything goes i guess.

So if you’re thinking of changing career, try writing a resume for it first. Write a resume for your ideal career. Go wild. Assume that it is somewhere out there. You might find out what you’re really good at, and possibly also find out what you really want to do. Hey, it’s a very low risk way to find out more about yourself before quitting your day job!

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I’ve done Tai Chi. I’ve done running. And when I knew I could combine them both, I just couldn’t resist to buy that book. And today was the first day I tried out Chi Running, and I have to say… I’m really impressed with the results!

Posture is important in Tai Chi. The alignment from head to toe is important to achieve the “connection” with the ground so that strength can be channelled properly throughout the body. To get proper alignment, I’ve relied on my own eyes, other people’s eyes, my teacher’s eyes, and ultimately, my own feeling.

This is exactly what Chi Running is trying to achieve, to use proper alignment to optimise the body structure such that it is most suitable for running. Skeptical? So was I, I just couldn’t resist trying it out though. I ran for only 20 minutes, when I normally would have been exhausted, but surprised I wasn’t panting. I wasn’t even breathing hard. I didn’t feel any strain on the leg muscles. No strain on the knees. And I felt energised to go on and on! I had to go because of other commitments, but I’ll definitely try it again.

The marketing material says:

• low injury rate
• requires less effort
• requires little or no recovery time after the run
• feel energised

I say: if you forgot what it was like to run like a kid, when you don’t even think about running but just have the abundance of energy a kid has, try Chi Running.

p/s: It’s actually less intensive compared to my normal Tai Chi routine because of the smaller range of motion! So in a way, it’s a good introduction to Tai Chi.

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