“We worked like Slaves, ate like Kings and trained like Warriors”
From July 30 to August 10, Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming gathered in YMAA Retreat Center CA with some senior students and 8 applicants to the 10 years training program, for the 6th YMAA Working/Training Camp.
From my point of view, it was a very good experience! To have the opportunity to be 12 days, day and night, in the company of Dr. Yang, being able to learn from his wisdom and knowledge and share moments of joy, was already a blessing.
The senior students and the rest of the applicants were all very nice guys. It’s always good to know different people and share experiences. Everybody has something to teach!
Now, I like to speak about some aspects of the adventure that needs to be pointed.
Trip: The trip was definitely an adventure. I wasn’t inside of an airplane for 13 years, since I was 10. I didn’t remember how the airports work! Damn the security!! The terrorists already won a battle, the battle of fear! The security is so tight that we even have to take off our shoes! But beside that and long lines for check-in, the airports are a good place to be! There, we can find a lot of different people, different races and different cultures. It’s good.
This was my first time in USA, and from what I’ve seen from the air and on the ground, it’s a very beautiful country with a lot of different landscapes, from desert to mountain, beaches to lakes and rivers, and farms to cities. I think Americans are lucky to have such an awesome country. I hope they value that.
The Place (Retreat Center): The Yang’s Dragon Valley is beautiful!!
A lot of trees, big ones, small ones, old, new, it’s great! On the first morning we walked around the land to know all the area that belongs to Dr. Yang. The area has many kinds of vegetation (a lot of poison oak, just great for itchy moments) and a lot of life. One of the reasons why I liked the place it’s because the place is raw! It has bears, deers, squirrels, bees that eat meat (that’s strange for me), scorpions, honey birds and many other that exist there and probably I didn’t even notice.
On the top of the hill we had the cabin (a little small house which has everything that we need to survive); the shed and the instructors house (a beautiful round house with two floors that will always make me remember how good it fells to take a cold shower). From the instructors house we had an incredible view of another mountain called “Bear Beauty”. It’s incredible and strange at the same time, because it gave me a sensation of peace and greatness, but also of close to us and distant at the same time, and even a sensation of mind barrier for not permitting to look far away to the horizon.
On the bottom of the valley resides the Yin side of the area, it’s the creek! Some years ago it was full of water and fishes, now at least in the summer time the water is shallow, but in some places it has enough water to be submersed. One time, some of us went there to take a bath and the water was great, clear and shiny, just what we need to enjoy. In that area there’s also a lot of berries. You can almost call it a paradise! What is missing?!
One of the best things in the land is the road from the creek to the top of the hill! It’s a marvelous gravel road that zigzags all the way up and has an inclination of 37 degrees. Isn’t that amazing! When I think that in a possible future I have to run it every morning, I already fill cramps in my legs.
To resume, it’s a fine place to live.
The Food: That’s definitely a very good memory! We really ate like kings. All the meals were like Chinese buffet, when we noticed we already had our plate or bowl full.
People say “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!” and we wanted to make sure that that saying was fulfilled, so we ate so much that sometimes I felt like I wouldn’t be able to train after that! The quality and the taste of the food were great.
I must thank Dr. Yang, Ms. Yang and Debbie Rebosa because they were the ones who cooked for us, and they did it with so much love and dedication that all which I can be is grateful.
Another thing worth mentioning is the famous watermelon break! Between 5.50pm and 6.10pm we had a break to change from work to training. In that 20 minutes break Dr. Yang chopped a big watermelon that we all ate with a lot of pleasure! It was time to rest body and mind, chat a little and feed the demon inside the stomach. God bless those breaks, for they will always be in my memory as good memories.
The Work: The work was good, hard for those who are not used to make a lot of physical efforts, because the core was digging and pulling logs.
The manager or the “General” of our small army was Matias, cool guy, good leader.
On the first day of work I started pulling logs (which is a little bit heavy and tiring) because I wanted to try the log hooks. On that day I pulled logs, I dug, I helped to put the logs in place and so on, but it was just that! Then, on the second day I started to think about that and I realized that it wasn’t just working for working, it wasn’t just working for training, we were there to help making it happen! We were there putting our sweat and energy to build something valuable, it was our contribution for the project! After realizing that, I saw that it was not just Dr. Yang’s project, but our project. It’s a project that we all believe and have faith on its success. It’s a project that is valuable for everyone if it’s successful. From that day on, I started to see the work differently, like something that is worth doing, and not just something which we had to do.
On the end of the day we were tired, but sometimes I think that it’s necessary to do daily physical work. It fells good. It’s better than being every day on the office seated in front of the computer doing only intellectual work, many times with bad postures weakening the body in a silent way. Of course that physical work with bad postures also damages the body and normally faster, but if it’s done the right way it strengthens our bodies.
The work also permitted that everyone could know each other a little bit better. It was very funny! We all worked hard and enjoyed a lot. Even do we were tired, we could maintain our smile.
A warning, always choose working gloves in good condition, or else, you will stay with a lot of blisters in the hands. Work WISELY!
Training: What can I say about the training? It was harder than working! Much harder! But we do it with more passion! The training for me is a strange pleasure. Even knowing many of the benefits of the training, mental and physical, I train for 4 years and sometimes I feel that I still can’t really understand the reason why I continue training! To simplify I can just say that I do it because I like it, but I don’t really know if it’s just that.
Those ten days of training were a good experience. The training was all fundamentals, Stances, Jin, Taijiquan form, Staff and Reaction. All the things that we learned I already knew, but it was good the same way. What happens normally in today’s society is that we learn some things, train for a while and we already think that we are so great that we don’t need to continue training fundamentals, because that’s for beginners. Those who think this way are so wrong that it makes sad just to think about it. Even after 4 years of practice I consider myself very basic, and this time in California showed me that I still have to train a lot. I still have to continue challenging myself until I get to the stage of “regulating without regulating” all the things that we train, until it’s natural and smooth.
From all that we trained, the stances were the hardest training. It’s so demanding for the legs but so necessary to support the higher levels. A bad stance is a sign of poor quality martial arts. It’s poor because it shows that there is no strength on the legs so, no root, no power in kicking, no speed in movement and kicks, and so on. That’s why the stances are the first thing to train; they are the roots of a growing tree.
The Jin training is cool; it teaches how to use the body in a different way that we are used to, and how to generate power for fighting.
My favorite weapon is the sword, but I also like very much the staff. The staff is a continuous flow weapon. What I mean by that, is that we can slide the staff changing from one technique to another without stopping. We can block and strike right away in a fast and continuous motion. It’s also the root for all long weapons so it’s fundamental to prepare ourselves to higher level weapons like spear.
Now I’m in a long journey, a journey of mental and physical conditioning to prepare myself to face a new adventure. I’m preparing to face myself in the battlefield for the fight of no fight, the self-conquering process which will give me the physical and mental knowledge to be a Chinese martial arts master, and the serenity and inner peace to develop and pass down the art to another generation.
I would like to thank a lot to Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming for the opportunity to be there, for all the knowledge and insights he passed down to us, mostly in the morning and evening meetings. Thanks to Ms. Yang and Debbie Rebosa for the food (was great!) and all the support. Thanks to the senior students who gave us a lot of help in our training, in particular to Tony Chee and Erik Elsemans, who were responsible for the training. To the last but not the least, a big thanks to the rest of the candidates, all you are very cool guys, hopefully we will met each other again in California or somewhere else. Continue training hard, that’s the way to be better.
To end, I will leave a poem that I wrote in the camp, representing what I felt when I was there.
The Song of the Real Meaning
Early in the morning
Awakes the lazy body, the happy mind.
The face smiles to the world
“Good morning!” shouts to the friends.
Every single day
A heart searches for a meaning,
Good meditation
Is real or dreaming?
Hapiness is a goal
10 years of pathway,
Do we know the answer for the question?
Is martial arts our holy way?
In the middle of stances,
Staffs and jins,
There is a inner definition
Of subconscious things.
Carved wood mountain,
Clear water creek.
Place of energy circulation,
The house for the future we seek.
What makes me cry
makes me smile.
I seek inner peace
but I still have to wait for a while.
Published by: Ricardo Tonet
