Solo Training in Martial Arts

This topic was suggested by my friend at The Dao of Strategy. Please pay him a visit.

When I was a young man, marginally employed with few adult responsibilities, there wasn't much difficulty in figuring out how I should practice. I was able to attend every class my main teacher taught (3 classes a day, 3 days a week) as well as train at a satellite dojo ( 2 classes a day, 2 days a week). In addition there were monthly seminars and what not. Come to think of it, I don't think I did any training on my own.

As I grew up and acquired a family, a career and the hydra headed monster of adult responsibility entered my life, I discovered that I couldn't train nearly as often, but was able to practice on my own quite a bit to compensate.

Time went on. My kids starting having their own activities and my parents were aging and in decline. Rather than be conflicted, I hung up my dogi for a period of years while I tended to more truly important things.

During the time my mother moved through a succession of homes (her own, one for assisted living, a nursing facility then finally a funeral home), I knew I wanted to, and would indeed get back to training again and I started to outline some criteria in my mind for how it would be conducted.

I would want not to need any special equipment (mats, for example), location (building housing said special equipment) or have to necessarily depend on someone else (essentially solo training; I train with other people from time to time, but not often). The practice would have to be intellectually engaging enough to keep my interest and both phsycially demanding and forgiving to help keep me in good physical and mental health into my dotterage. My days of getting into fights are far behind me (last encounter >  30 years ago), and instead I'm looking to cultivate a calm, clear mind (which I happen to think is more useful on a daily basis anyway).

My kids have moved out, yet I find myself busier than ever.

What I'm hoping for here in this post is to have a discussion, rather than just my exposition. The question I want to raise is "How do you maintain a consistent, effective solitary practice?"

I have some thoughts.

Given the quirks of my personality, my first inclination would be to think that I need to practice more and more and more. The "10,000 hours" phenomenon discussed in Malcolm Gladwell's outstanding book "Outliers" (which is a whole other discussion) has only helped to foster this attitude. I am inclined to come up with complex and intricately detailed training plans that I could never hope to keep up and would guarantee unending frustration.

"Budo is supposed to enhance your life, not replace it." - a senior budo teacher.

Yes, the more you practice (all things being equal), the better you'll get, but there is more to it than that.

As a young aikido student, I took a great dislike for the attitudes of other students I dubbed "dojo nerds". These were people who were always prattling about "making harmony" in the dojo, but whose lives outside of the dojo where train wrecks. They weren't coming to the dojo to learn out to make their lives better. They were coming to the dojo to run away from their everyday lives.

The repetitions themselves are not the secret sauce, it's what you put into each repetition.

Perseverence alone will not bring mastery.
Perseverance alone does not assure success.
No amount of stalking will lead to game in a field that has none.
-    I Ching

If you don't have balance and are not enjoying all that life has to offer you (because you're too busy wrapped up in feeding your ego), then what are you doing?

So I guess what I'm saying here is that more isn't necessarily better. Well then, how about  thinking out of the proverbial box; how about less?

Let's look at professional football for a moment. It is a highly complex and violent sport. I'm sure if the owners had their way, the teams would be practicing 24/7/365. But they can't. The Players Association has placed very strict limitations on how much, when and under what conditions (pads, no pads) the players can practice.  Because of that, the coaches work very hard at planning and conducting the practices so that the players get the maximum benefit from them.

I'm not advocating getting lost in minutia and planning out every repetition of what you are going to do; far from it (because I am inclined to do just that). What I am advocating is to constantly strive to deepen one's understanding of what one is doing and make every single repetition meaningful as opposed to going through the motions.

"I saw an angel in the marble and carved until I set him free." - Michelangelo

My definitions here: A martial art doesn't teach you to fight. A martial art is a training method. One of the desired outcomes of the training method is to stack the odds a little more in your favor should the (perhaps violent) unexpected occur.

"one arrow, one life" - kyudo saying

Here's a quote from a senior Xingyiquan teacher who not only has done very well in full contact competitions, but has successfully trained others as well:

“Form.. is not fighting. And fighting is not form. Form is training. It encompasses theory, mechanics, strategies, ideas. Those who equate the two do not understand fighting.

Fighting is fighting and it is never pretty. It is either effective or it is not. You study your system, whatever that may be. You learn about strategy and tactics, you hone your skill sets and then you either go out and execute properly and win. Or you don't, and you lose. For there is also always an element of luck in true fighting. And what fighting "looks like" is, as others have already pointed out, is largely dictated by the rule set. If you look closely enough, there will be elements of the style behind the fighter. But you have to have high enough eyes to see such things.”

A famous Taijiquan master described a heirarchy that makes a lot of sense if you ask me, in coming to understand what we are doing:

Philosophy-> principles->applications-> form

A manager I worked with a long time ago gave me some very useful advice. He said that when confronted with a problem, don't be in any rush to come to a conclusion (unless you have a deadline or something). Instead, turn the problem over and over. Slice it every way you can think of. You may not find a solution, but you may discover something far more valuable - understanding.

What is it that you're trying to accomplish and how are you going about it? I am opportunistic about taking advantage of those instances when I find that I have time on my hands, but I don't have my mind fixed on having to do certain things at certain times. Our circumstances change daily and it's no use trying to hang on to what worked yesterday.

Chuang Tzu Story - Three in the Morning

What is this three in the morning?

It is about a monkey trainer
Who went to his monkeys and told them:
“As regards your chestnuts,
you are going to have three measures in the morning,
and for in the afternoon.”

On hearing this all the monkeys became angry.
So the keeper said:
“All right then,
I will change it
To four measures in the morning
and three in the afternoon.”
The animals were satisfied with this arrangement.

The two arrangements were the same –
The number of chestnuts did not change,
But in one case the monkeys were displeased,
and in the other case they were satisfied.

Is the story about the trainer or the monkeys? Maybe a little of both. We can't be too attached to having things our way. The world around us is constantly changing and we have to adapt as well.

I'm flexible and open about my training, but I also keep track of what I'm working on (the current and previous month) so that I'm not neglecting something without realizing it.

I've made it a goal to practice almost every day. The "almost" makes all the difference. Without it I tend to put a lot of unnecessary pressure on myself. Life is crazy enough as it is. Why would I want to do that? A day off here and there are good things.

Sometimes progress comes by the inch and sometimes by the mile. It's all progress though. Just everyday ask yourself how you are moving the ball forward.

I would have to say that my own practice has been quite solid overall. I've had my ups and downs. When I'm finding it hard to getting my practice done, I know that once your practice really gets hold of you, it's like gravity: you may appear to escape it temporarily, but it always pulls you back.

I'm always looking at how I can improve my methods however. What are your thoughts on the topic?

China Resources Page

I just Stumbled onto Jordan's China Resource Page. There's all kinds of good stuff there. Please pay him a visit.


Below is an excerpt from an essay on the Five Elements. 

1. Introduction

Traditional Chinese thought about nature often involves a set of five xíng 行, named after natural entities (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water). The word xíng, which usually means "walking" or "moving," is sometimes translated "elements" when speaking of the five xíng, but many authors prefer translations like "forces," "natures," "phases," or "transformations" in order to capture the idea that the xíng are in dynamic interaction with each other, i.e., that they are in some sense "walking." Despite its misleadingly concrete implications, I still prefer the translation "elements," since it fits best with the basic terms always used for them: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. (It is hard for an English speaker to think of wood as a "phase.")

Underlying the utility (or, some would say, wackiness) of the concept are a number of additional assumptions:

1. Each of the five elements has a wide number of correspondences with other parts of the natural world. Thus the element wood corresponds with the color blue, the direction east, and the flavor sour. In general, anything that can be subdivided into five categories, can be aligned to the five elements.
2. Each of the five elements tends to strengthen, support, feed, give way to, or create one of the others. For example, wood/blue/east tends to support or strengthen fire/scarlet/south.
   (Mnemonic: Wood burns to create fire; fire creates ash/earth; it is from earth that we get metal; metal can be heated to produce liquid/water; water poured on a seedling allows it to grow into wood.)
3. Each of the five elements also tends to weaken, undercut, or destroy one of the others. Thus wood/blue/east tends to weaken earth/yellow/center.
   (Mnenomic: Wood can grow through earth; fire can melt metal, earth can absorb water, metal tools can cut through wood, water can put out a fire.)
4. A deficiency or an excess of any element tends to exert unnatural strengthening or weaking influence on other elements, potentially causing illness or distress.
5. Illness and misfortune can be corrected by restoring the element that is too strong or weak. One way to do this is to supplement those elements that will tend to strengthen or diminish the unbalanced element. Usual applications are in religious ritual (including geomancy) and in medicine.

The Dragon Motif

Previously, I had posted an excerpt of a review of The Propensity of Things by Francois Jullien. Below is an excerpt from the book which particularly caught my eye.

Conclusion II: The Dragon Motif

The body of the dragon concentrates energy in its sinuous curves, and coils and uncoils to move along more quickly. It is a symbol of all the potential with which form can be charged, a potential that never ceases to be actualized The dragon now lurks in watery depths, now streaks aloft to the highest heavens, and its very gait is a continuous undulation. It presents an image of energy constantly recharged through oscillation from one pole to the other.

The dragon is a constantly evolving creature with no fixed form; it can never be immobilized or penned in, never grasped. It symbolizes a dynamism never visible in concrete form and thus unfathomable. Finally, merging with the clouds and mists, the dragon's impetus makes the surrounding world vibrate: it is the very image of an energy that diffuses itself through space, intensifying its environment and enriching itself by that aura.

--

Shortly after reading The Propensity of Things, I read Lectures on the I Ching by Dr. Richard Wilhelm.

How to go about studying the I Ching has always been somewhat of a puzzle to me. From his lectures, I got some idea of the underlying structure of how the I Ching is put together and how hexagrams are evaluated.

Throwing some coins then looking up one’s fortune, like breaking open a fortune cookie it is not.

Daoist Downloads

If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to a website entitled Hermetica. The author of this website, Bradford Hatcher, has translated an enormous amount of Daoist material (among other things) available for download. Free. Donations are welcome though.

There is a massive translation of the I Ching, the Dao De Jing, Zhaung Zi; and a large number of very high quality links.

Please pay a visit and take a look around. You can also find the link over at the right.

I Ching Resource

I find the study of the I Ching to be bewildering. Never the less, it's a book that I want to someday study in depth. I've found a resource here that might just help me get started. You can also click on the title of this post to be directed to the I Ching with Clarity web site. Please pay a visit.

An excerpt from the website:

People have turned to the I Ching for some 3,000 years to help them uncover the meaning of their experience, to bring their actions into harmony with their underlying purpose, and above all to build a foundation of confident awareness for their choices.

Down the millennia, as the I Ching tradition has grown richer and deeper, the things we consult about may have changed a little. But the moment of consultation is much the same. These are the times when you're turning in circles, hemmed in and frustrated by all the things you can't see or don't understand. You can think it over (and over, and over); you can 'journal' it; you can gather opinions. But how can you have confidence in choosing a way to go, if you can't quite be sure of seeing where you are?

Only understand where you are now, and you rediscover your power to make changes. This is the heart of I Ching divination. Once you can really see into the present moment, all its possibilities open out before you - and you are free to create your future.

I Ching

In addition to the Dao De Jing, and Zhaung Zi, another pillar of Daoism is the I Ching. If you click on the title of this post, you’ll be directed to the Wikipedia article on the I Ching. I’ve extracted some sections of that article and present them below.

As an introduction to the I Ching, I’d recommend The Philosophy of the I Ching by Carol Anthony, for some background information.

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Ching-Carol-K-Anthony/dp/0960383220/ref=pd_bbs_sr_4/103-1104095-2784624?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192814495&sr=8-4

I’d also recommend The Portable Dragon by R.G.H Siu. The late Dr. Siu was a Chinese gentleman who was immensely educated in Western Literature and Science. I believe he was a Chemistry Professor at MIT. In this book, he uses quotes and excerpts from Western literature to help get across the meanings of the hexagrams to our Western minds.

http://www.amazon.com/Portable-Dragon-Western-Guide-Ching/dp/0262690306/ref=sr_1_1/103-1104095-2784624?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192815480&sr=1-1

The I Ching (often spelled as I Jing, Yi Ching, Yi King, or Yi Jing; also called "Book of Changes" or "Classic of Changes") is the oldest of the Chinese classic texts. A symbol system designed to identify order in what seem like chance events, it describes an ancient system of cosmology and philosophy that is at the heart of Chinese cultural beliefs. The philosophy centres on the ideas of the dynamic balance of opposites, the evolution of events as a process, and acceptance of the inevitability of change (see Philosophy, below). In Western cultures, the I Ching is regarded by some as simply a system of divination; many believe it expresses the wisdom and philosophy of ancient China.

The book consists of a series of symbols, rules for manipulating these symbols, poems, and commentary.

History

Traditional view

Traditionally it was believed that the principles of the I Ching originated with the mythical Fu Xi (伏羲 Fú Xī). In this respect he is seen as an early culture hero, one of the earliest legendary rulers of China (traditional dates 2800 BCE-2737 BCE), reputed to have had the 8 trigrams (八卦 bā gùa) revealed to him supernaturally. By the time of the legendary Yu (禹 Yǔ) 2194 BC–2149 BC, the trigrams had supposedly been developed into 64 hexagrams (六十四卦 lìu shí­ sì gùa), which were recorded in the scripture Lian Shan (《連山》 Lián Shān; also called Lian Shan Yi). Lian Shan, meaning "continuous mountains" in Chinese, begins with the hexagram Bound (艮 gèn), which depicts a mountain (::|) mounting on another and is believed to be the origin of the scripture's name.

After the traditionally recorded Xia Dynasty was overthrown by the Shang Dynasty, the hexagrams are said to have been re-deduced to form Gui Cang (《歸藏》 Gūi Cáng; also called Gui Cang Yi), and the hexagram Field (坤 kūn) became the first hexagram. Gui Cang may be literally translated into "return and be contained," which refers to earth as the first hexagram itself indicates. At the time of Shang's last king, Zhou Wang, King Wen of Zhou is said to have deduced the hexagram and discovered that the hexagrams beginning with Force (乾 qián) revealed the rise of Zhou. He then gave each hexagram a description regarding its own nature, thus Gua Ci (卦辭 guà cí, "Explanation of Hexagrams").

When King Wu of Zhou, son of King Wen, toppled the Shang Dynasty, his brother Zhou Gong Dan is said to have created Yao Ci (爻辭 yáo cí, "Explanation of Horizontal Lines") to clarify the significance of each horizontal line in each hexagram. It was not until then that the whole context of I Ching was understood. Its philosophy heavily influenced the literature and government administration of the Zhou Dynasty (1122 BCE - 256 BCE).

Later, during the time of Spring and Autumn (722 BCE - 481 BCE), Confucius is traditionally said to have written the Shi Yi (十翼 shí yì, "Ten Wings"), a group of commentaries on the I Ching. By the time of Han Wu Di (漢武帝 Hàn Wǔ Dì) of the Western Han Dynasty (circa 200 BCE), Shi Yi was often called Yi Zhuan (易傳 yì zhùan, "Commentary on the I Ching"), and together with the I Ching they composed Zhou Yi (周易 zhōu yì, "Changes of Zhou"). All later texts about Zhou Yi were explanations only, due to the classic's deep meaning.

Western ("Modernist") view

In the past 50 years a "Modernist" history of the I Ching has been emerging, based on context criticism and research into Shang and Zhou dynasty oracle bones, as well as Zhou bronze inscriptions and other sources (see below). These reconstructions are dealt with in a growing number of books, such as The Mandate of Heaven: Hidden History in the I Ching, by S. J. Marshall, and Richard Rutt's Zhouyi: The Book of Changes, (see References, below).

Scholarly works dealing with the new view of the Book of Changes include doctoral dissertations by Richard Kunst and Edward Shaughnessy. These and other scholars have been helped immensely by the discovery, in the 1970s, by Chinese archaeologists, of intact Han dynasty era tombs in Mawangdui near Changsha, Hunan province. One of the tombs contained more or less complete 2nd century BCE texts of the I Ching, the Dao De Jing and other works, which are mostly similar yet in some ways diverge significantly from the "received," or traditional, texts preserved by the chances of history.

The tomb texts include additional commentaries on the I Ching, previously unknown, and apparently written as if they were meant to be attributed to Confucius. All of the Mawangdui texts are many centuries older than the earliest known attestations of the texts in question. When talking about the evolution of the Book of Changes, therefore, the Modernists contend that it is important to distinguish between the traditional history assigned to texts such as the I Ching (felt to be anachronistic by the Modernists), assignations in commentaries which have themselves been canonized over the centuries along with their subjects, and the more recent scholarly history aided by modern linguistic textual criticism and archaeology.

Many hold that these perspectives are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but, for instance, many Modernist scholars doubt the actual existence of Fuxi, think Confucius had nothing to do with the Book of Changes, and contend that the hexagrams came before the trigrams. Modern scholarship comparing poetic usage and formulaic phrasing in this book with that in ancient bronze inscriptions has shown that the text cannot be attributed to King Wen or Zhou Gong, and that it likely was not compiled until the late Western Zhou, perhaps ca. the late 9th century BCE.

Rather than being the work of one or several legendary or historical figures, the core divinatory text is now thought to be an accretion of Western Zhou divinatory concepts. As for the Shi Yi commentaries traditionally attributed to Confucius, scholars from the time of the 11th century A.D. scholar Ouyang Xiu onward have doubted this, based on textual analysis, and modern scholars date most of them to the late Warring States period, with some sections perhaps being as late as the Western Han period.

However it must be noted that the value of modern interpertations is still questionable to many people. Since Western civilization did not create the I Ching it can be said that it's interpertations of the book are next to irrelevant to those who believe only a work's original culture can truelly understand it's meaning. On the other hand an alternative view does give variety and life to a work and may be equally as relevant. The relevancy of this view as with the traditional one is up to the person reading it.

Structure

The text of the I Ching is a set of predictions represented by a set of 64 abstract line arrangements called hexagrams (卦 guà). Each hexagram is a figure composed of six stacked horizontal lines (爻 yáo), where each line is either Yang (an unbroken, or solid line), or Yin (broken, an open line with a gap in the center). With six such lines stacked from bottom to top there are 2⁶ or 64 possible combinations, and thus 64 hexagrams represented.

The hexagram diagram is conceptually subdivided into two three-line arrangements called trigrams (卦 guà). There are 2³, hence 8, possible trigrams. The traditional view was that the hexagrams were a later development and resulted from combining the two trigrams. However, in the earliest relevant archaeological evidence, groups of numerical symbols on many Western Zhou bronzes and a very few Shang oracle bones, such groups already usually appear in sets of six. A few have been found in sets of three numbers, but these are somewhat later. Note also that these numerical sets greatly predate the groups of broken and unbroken lines, leading modern scholars to doubt the mythical early attributions of the hexagram system (see, e.g., Shaugnessy 1993).

Each hexagram represents a description of a state or process. When a hexagram is cast using one of the traditional processes of divination with I Ching, each of the yin or yang lines will be indicated as either moving (that is, changing), or fixed (that is, unchanging). Moving (also sometimes called "old", or "unstable") lines will change to their opposites, that is "young" lines of the other type -- old yang becoming young yin, and old yin becoming young yang.

The oldest method for casting the hexagrams, using yarrow stalks, is a biased random number generator, so the possible answers are not equiprobable. While the probability of getting either yin or yang is equal, the probability of getting old yang is three times greater than old yin. The yarrow stalk method was gradually replaced during the Han Dynasty by the three coins method. Using this method, the imbalance in generating old yin and old yang was eliminated. However, there is no theoretical basis for indicating what should be the optimal probability basis of the old lines versus the young lines. Of course, the whole idea behind this system of divination is that the oracle will select the appropriate answer anyway, regardless of the probabilities.

There have been several arrangements of the trigrams and hexagrams over the ages. The bā gùa is a circular arrangement of the trigrams, traditionally printed on a mirror, or disk. According to legend, Fu Hsi found the bā gùa on the scales of a tortoise's back. They function rather like a magic square, with the four axes summing to the same value (e.g., using 0 and 1 to represent yin and yang, 000 + 111 = 111, 101 + 010 = 111, etc.).

The King Wen sequence is the traditional (i.e. "classical") sequence of the hexagrams used in most contemporary editions of the book. The King Wen sequence was explained for the first time in STEDT Monograph #5, where it is shown to contain within it a demonstration of advanced mathematical knowledge.

Philosophy

Gradations of binary expression based on yin and yang -- old yang, old yin, young yang or young yin (see the divination paragraph below) -- are what the hexagrams are built from. Yin and yang, while common expressions associated with many schools known from classical Chinese culture, are especially associated with the Taoists.

Another view holds that the I Ching is primarily a Confucianist ethical or philosophical document. This view is based upon the following:

• The Wings or Appendices are attributed to Confucius.
• The study of the I Ching was required as part of the Civil Service Exams in the period that these exams only studied Confucianist texts.
• It is one of the Five Confucian Classics.
• It does not appear in any surviving editions of the Dao Zang.
• The major commentaries were written by Confucianists, or Neo-Confucianists.
• Taoist scripture avoids, even mocks, all attempts at categorizing the world's myriad phenomena and forming a static philosophy.
• Taoists venerate the non-useful. The I Ching could be used for good or evil purposes.

Both views may be seen to show that the I Ching was at the heart of Chinese thought, serving as a common ground for the Confucian and Taoist schools. Partly forgotten due to the rise of Chinese Buddhism during the Tang dynasty, the I Ching returned to the attention of scholars during the Song dynasty. This was concomitant with the reassessment of Confucianism by Confucians in the light of Taoist and Buddhist metaphysics, and is known in the West as Neo-Confucianism. The book, unquestionably an ancient Chinese scripture, helped Song Confucian thinkers to synthesize Buddhist and Taoist cosmologies with Confucian and Mencian ethics. The end product was a new cosmogony that could be linked to the so-called "lost Tao" of Confucius and Mencius.