On the Road to Kung Fu–One Year Later

Okay, it’s been a year since I returned to the kung fu club and so it’s time for a progress report.  As you may recall, it was a year ago on Memorial Day that I bumped into a guy giving away free karate lessons during a local street fair.  I took him up on the offer because I knew that I needed to get some exercise and practicing a martial art is a lot less boring than lifting weights and running on treadmills.

I had practiced kung fu for a good many years before, but an injury has forced me to stop for a time.  I started to focus my attention in other pursuits, such as music and writing, and gotten very, very fat.  I won’t say exactly how fat I was, but the post office was considering giving me my own zip code.  Marlon Brando would have said, “Dude, you need to lose a few pounds!”  I was that kind of fat.

Anyway, I started the Weightwatchers “ TEE-EMM” program, dropped about a hundred pounds, and then, as I say, I started thinking about working out again.  So when I saw the guy giving away free karate lessons, I jumped at it.  Besides, I got a free gi (karate suit), and who couldn’t use a good karate gi?  So I went to my four free private classes.  The guy said that I moved perfectly.  He said my stances were spot on.  On the second lesson, he had me spar with him.  He could not hit me.  I hit him.  He asked if I always blocked and hit at the same time.  I said that was the way I had been trained.  I did okay, in other words.

I had wanted to return to my kung fu club, but I was embarrassed.  I had forgotten all my forms, even the beginner’s forms.  It would be kind of humiliating to go back, having to learn everything all over, and seeing the same guys who were my junior while I was there before.  But the karate lessons gave me courage.  I hadn’t lost everything.  So I called an old friend and he worked with me and helped me relearn my forms.  After a few months, I knew enough to  not be so embarrassed coming to the regular classes.

So here is my one year progress report.  I’m doing great.  I’ve lost a little more weight, for a total of 130 pounds from my heaviest.  To be honest, I haven’t tried that hard to lose more weight because I feel good and I don’t want to have to replace my wardrobe.  We can’t afford to be buying a bunch of new clothes right now.  And since I’m uproariously happily married, I don’t need to be attracting any cute women other than my wife, so I’m good about where I am.  I could drop another thirty pounds or so, but then, who couldn’t?  I mean, other than Keira Knightly?

I have managed to re-learn all the empty-hand forms (and that’s a bunch—about 11).  I have finished the form I had only just started before, the most advanced form.  I have re-learned all the weapons forms but two.  And I’m working on those two.  I’m not so motivated by the weapons forms anymore.  I’m here for different reasons.

Before, when I first joined the club, I was enthralled with the idea of learning kung fu.  I fell into that trap that a lot of martial arts enthusiasts fall into.  I became Chinese.  My house was full of Asian pottery and scrolls.  I put on my uniform (patterned after typical street garb of 17^th century China) when I practiced at home…in private.  I put on kung fu like a jacket.  I was play-acting.  I may as well have been at a renaissance faire.

But now, kung fu is part of who I am.  Now I practice to be healthy, and whole.  I am strong again, and I mean to stay that way, at least, as long as I can.  I have learned to breathe again.  I’m not a westerner doing kung fu.  I’m just a guy doing kung fu.  I’m not Chinese.  I never could be.  I’m not trying to be a master; I’m just trying to be healthy.  I work out in sweats now.  I don’t care so much about the weapons anymore, because you don’t always have room to be swinging a spear around, but I can do an empty-hand form anywhere I have about nine square feet.

I know I’m strong again.  I see guys at the kung fu club who are twenty years my junior and they don’t have the stamina that I have.  They’re always having to stop and rest and I just keep on going.  This is not meant to be boastful.  I practice kung fu for a very long time, and in those years I wasn’t practicing, I didn’t lose the benefits.

I found, once I had returned, that my arms got very hard again very quickly.  I was a little nervous about that.  But it wasn’t very long at all before the newer students complained about how hard my arms were.  I found that I hadn’t forgotten how to breathe.  I found that, as that karate teacher had said, I did still have all my stances.  I could still move well.  I just needed to practice.

More important than being strong, however, is the other benefit from my return to kung fu.  I am more at peace.  I tend to be an anxious kind of guy.  I guess I get that from my mother.  Of course, the world is sort of an anxious place, and with all the talk about how teachers are the reason for our broken kids, and the downturn in the economy, and the destruction of our environment, and, and and…well, you get the idea.  The world pretty much sucks a lot of the time.  But when I practice kung fu, it calms my mind.  I focus on my forms and the world sort of melts away, at least for a time.  And when you spar (playing, we call it), you have to be right there.  Your mind can’t be a thousand miles away.  You have to be there.  When you play, you are there, right there, alive, totally, in that moment.  There is no feeling quite like it.

Of kung fu isn’t about working out.  It is a way of life.  I never lost that.  Kung fu is a way of living your life.  It’s about being there.  It’s about doing what you’re doing, paying attention to every detail, being aware of everything, seeing everything.  Kung fu involves you in life.  Practice kung fu and you are no longer a spectator, you are a participant.

So that’s where we are, one year later.  I’m stronger.  I’m more at peace.  I still have aches and pains, but that just means I’m still alive.  I don’t move they way I did when I was thirty, but I don’t expect to.  I’m glad to be back.  I still have a couple of forms to re-learn before I have everything back, but I’m in no hurry.  I’ll learn them as I learn them.  They are very advanced forms and I’m not likely to be asked about them by anybody any time soon.  Some folks think martial arts is about achieving goals, such as a black belt or something.  But I think that kung fu isn’t about the destination, it is about the journey.