Visit to Sam Chin in Pleasant Valley

I spent the early part of April in the Hudson Valley in the United States, visiting an Autism doctor for my son. During that period I also underwent a period of electronic detox, with minimal television, iPad and internet. Thus apologies about not posting much in the last few weeks.

 

I also had the opportunity to visit Grandmaster Sam Chin at his home in Pleasant Valley, and attend part of his Master Class on the use of the Phoenix Eye. As usual, Grandmaster Chin was very kind and extended the greatest hospitality to me, taking time to discuss the relationships between Buddhism and I Liq Chuan, especially with respect to stability and instability, which was topic of his last Master Class.

 

As part of the trip I was also introduced to one of his senior disciples - Wai Man Tang who is the highest ranking ethnic Chinese in the I Liq Chuan system. We spent a fruitful evening (5-6 hours!) discussing many martial arts topics as he had also studied Yang Taichi (under the Dong Ying Jie system) and Baguazhang (under Park Bok Nam) and we could also compare the concepts in Chinese. As Wai was the same size and build as me, I was able to experience the effectiveness of I Liq Chuan in a hands on way and I was very impressed and came away with a much better understanding of ILC than the previous few meetings that I had.

 

Some of the topics that we touched on were the role of heavy spinning hands in building structure (ILC does not use zhan zhuang), why ILC prefers to have the hands on top when spinning hands, the moving spinning hands and the use of kicking, and the use of the dantian in ILC. What impressed me most was the very systematic method ILC had for understanding circles, angles and directions of force, which I thought was much better than most Chinese sifu just asking you to push hands and slowly gain your own understanding. His structure was very strong and interestingly felt very different from Grandmaster Chin in Malaysia who was much softer, but he could shut down my movement and also set up to strike me as soon as we touched hands.

 

Wai also tried to explain to me some of the health and healing benefits associated with learning ILC and the understanding of muscular imbalances and fascia and he spent a little time trying to adjust my back.

 

So all in all very fruitful side benefit of the trip.