Almost Dying For Your Art…

So I was lying on the bed in an apartment in Prague, it’s the middle of the day with the sun drifting sparkles over the glass table and I could barely muster up the ferocity to walk over and get a banana due to the fever I was running. Let alone be down the road at the 7 day HME Intensive Taijiquan Training Camp with Sifu Adam Mizner and a hundred other students where I was supposed to be that week! After flying all the way from Australia to attend the camp I made the rookie error of allowing zero rest time from jet lag so after losing a whole nights sleep with the flights and transfers, then going straight into full time hard training for 2 days; it all hit me and my body said nope! 

You know that feeling when you travel somewhere and you get sick and miss out on doing the whole thing you went there for? Yeah that!

Other than missing out on what I had flown half way around the world for, my other concern was that by the Saturday I had to be on a flight to Turkey to do a week of private training with Sifu Adam! How was I going to make that flight??

Myra Ruins, Turkey. Tombs carved into the mountain side.

After days of laying in bed intermittently sleeping and occasionally watching some Netflix my vitality returned and to my relief I made the Saturday flight to Istanbul. Then the connecting flight to arrive at the beautiful old coastal town of Antalya, Turkey. It told stories of late night restaurant culture buzzing with atmosphere, quiet calm mornings, beautiful meals and breads and walks along the old cobbled paths that skirted the high cliffs along the ocean front for miles.

So it was here in this week of morning training that I truly felt Sifu’s power and fullness of Qi for the first time. When we were doing Push Hands and I reached in to grab him it felt like I was touching a lion. And whenever I tried to use any power on him it felt like I was putting my hand into a blender. Once I was in his space my arm was his and if he didn’t graciously hold back my elbow joint would have been easily blended! His method of receiving force was so calm and harmonious, then when he just calmly straightened up his body it was like an explosion. This is true Yang Taijiquan. I was extremely grateful that he held back or it would have been a trip to the local hospital and more resting for my travels!

After an amazing and enlightening week of training I hired a car and took an inspiring trip to the nearby ancient Greco Roman ruins. They held the eerie allure of time tested ancient walls and corridors with the unmistakeable grandeur of Roman history.

I went home with a new found understanding and experience of what it feels like to be on the end of true internal power. And what is possible with Taiji training when the body fills up with Qi; combined with the opening of all the tissue and joints. This opens the way for the mobilisation of Qi and the power within calmness it creates is something truly extraordinary.

Talk soon, from Julius.
☯︎

Andy Mack, Duran Mack, Adam Mizner, Julius Lutero, Gabriel Mizner