posh.wiki

This post is going to be more of a personal story / life update, rather than my usual tutorials, reporting, and opinion pieces.

I've been thinking quite a bit recently about my relationship with sport and exercise, re-evaluating the opinions I have on it.

I used to quite enjoy individual sports when I was young. Especially swimming, cycling, trampolining, and archery. Unfortunately, that was kind of crushed over my school career, because boys ages 5 to - well, I'll let you know - think that winning in football is the only goal in life, and will make you a social outcast if you do not care for or are not useful towards that goal. A variety of PE "teachers" with very unprofessional comments about my lack of enthusiam to be beaten and ridiculed and a complete aversion to actually explaining the rules of certain sports also didn't help.

Another factor that drove me away from sport was watching family members suffer early deterioration from health conditions. For fear that I might have inherited those, I started to swear off exercise, putting all my time into cultivating my mind while believing that eventually my body would fail me. In retrospect, that was illogical, since abandoning any effort to maintain my body would almost certainly make it deteriorate more quickly, health condition or not.

I also never much cared for maintaining any sort of figure or weight. To this day, I have never owned a scale, and have no clue how much I weigh. I've always been of the mind that if I am to be cursed with a physical form, that said form should exist for me, prioritising my own comfort, and anyone else's appreciation of it should be secondary.

With all these factors, I first lost interest in team sports. Then, any form of competitive sport. Eventually, I gave up on sport and exercise all together. By age 16 I'd completely stopped participating in any physical activity, and was of the belief that most who practiced it were akin to barbarians. All the exercise I got was the 3-minute walk to and from school each day. That continued for several years, though the walks got longer, first to a further away school and then to an office further still. Naturally, I grew weaker, and more tired.

More recently, though, I've started to reconsider these stances. One thing that swayed me was starting to feel the effects of sitting at a desk in my office for 8 hours, then sitting in a chair at home for 8 hours, then sleeping for 8 hours, repeat ad infinitum.

A more significant factor has been watching people I know develop healthier relationships with sport and exercise. I've watched friends and colleagues take up individual, non-competitive sports simply for health and enjoyment, and not develop toxic attitudes towards it. A specific shout-out to my incredible friend Poppy, whose endeavours in jiu jitsu motivated me to look into martial arts, and who is an inspiration to me in so many other ways too.

During my research, I found tai chi. Conceptually, it checked all the boxes for me - it can be done individually, as a group, or as a one-on-one competition, but less so a group competition; it was generally non-strenuous; and it retained a focus on cultivating the mind. While looking for classes, I ended up finding a local teacher who specialises in the somewhat similar liuhebafa, and after a couple of months, I joined his beginners' class.

In Chinese, it's called 六合八法拳 (liù hé bā fǎ quán, "quán" often omitted), which literally means "Six-harmonies eight-methods boxing". It's also known as 水拳 (shuǐ quán), meaning "water boxing".

I'd love to tell you exactly what liuhebafa is and is not. I spent a good couple of weeks trying to figure out a clear grouping system and genaology of inspiration, and I've come to the conclusion that it's impossible.

It can be said with some certainty that Liuhebafa is a Chinese martial art, so it can be safely placed within the category of "kung fu", a study that requires patience and time to master (though I'd argue that's true of most fields).

Beyond that, it gets really messy. Liuhebafa often grouped in with the "internal" martial arts (those which are softer and more introspective), and likened to tai chi with a more "yang" style to it. However, as my teacher put it, there is a seed of yin in the yang, and a seed of yang in the yin; No one art is purely internal or external. My experience of liuhebafa has been primarily geared towards the peaceful side, but I've also seen some of the more combative side and exchanged a few blows.

What I can tell you for sure is that Liuhebafa is quite niche. It's thought to have been invented by some time in the tenth century by Taoist sage Chen Tuan* (陳摶, chén tuán) - but take that with a whole fistful of salt, since it's quite difficult to distinguish between Chinese history and myth. It remained largely secret, with very few practitioners, until Grandmaster Wu Yihu (吳翼翬, wú yì huī) began teaching it to the public some time in the 1930s. Because of this, it remains really niche today, with very little literature available on it.

* Sometimes misspelled 陳搏 chén bó; sometimes known by pen name 陳圖南 chén tú nán, or alternative names 陳摶老祖 chén tuán lǎo zǔ "Aged ancestor Chen Tuan", 希夷祖師 xī yí zǔ shī "Ancestral teacher Xiyi", 扶搖子 fú yáo zǐ, or "the sleeping immortal".

After a few classes, I've found that I really enjoy it. After practicing it, I don't feel hurt or exhausted like I would with more strenuous exercise, but I do feel stronger and more comfortable. I love how it can be as strenuous as you really want it to be.

In the atmosphere of the class, I don't feel pressured to do anything faster or better. The culture permits me to take everything at my own pace, which is a refreshing change from previous experiences. Even in a room full of other people, I can just get lost in what I'm doing, and not notice them at all. I don't feel embarrased or afraid to take up space or get things wrong.

Beyond that, there's so much theory and history to learn, and so many comparisons and contrasts to be made with other arts. The way in which I've been learning has been a great mix of theory and practice, which is another refreshing change from my history of trying to learn everything there is to know about a practice before I even try it.

Liuhebafa has really checked all the boxes of what I want out of an exercise, and has been helping to heal a lot of old personal wounds pertaining to sport and exercise. I've been practicing alone for, probably at least half an hour most days, for around a month. As of today, I'm officially enrolled in weekly classes.

There isn't really a neat conclusion to this post. It feels more like a beginning to me, something I want to keep practicing and learning about. Maybe I'll write some more on here, since I think the world could do with some more literature on liuhebafa, but, it'll be a while. Through this and in general, I'm learning to take life more slowly, and not try to run away and learn everything I can immediately, so it'll be a while, but it turns out that that's OK actually. I can enjoy things slowly.

🫸🤛 (抱拳礼)