This morning I returned home from a 10-day trip to Poland where I trained with Sifu and a small core group of students from New York, Vienna and Belarus in the cities of Poznan, Gniezno and Warsaw. When not attending the weekend seminars, we spent many hours training at our hotel and at our host's apartment in Warsaw, working on refining the forms, mastering the 15 basic exercises, spinning and discussing ILC philosophy and life in general. It was fun but exhausting. One of my recurring thoughts was "When do these guys ever sleep?"
Sifu was warmly welcomed by enthusiastic groups at the seminars in Poznan and Warsaw. About 25 people attended the seminar in Poznan (their second seminar this year), and about 35 in Warsaw, drawn from a larger Taiji group of about 200 people. In each city, women accounted for about 30% of all participants - a far higher percentage than in the U.S. or Western Europe.
On a side note, maybe a quarter of the male participants had shaved heads, which seemed unusual to me, but I was told that in Poland it is relatively common for martial arts enthusiasts to shave their heads.
After the weekend seminar in Poznan, we went to the city of Gniezno, where we met with the mayor of the city and the head of the local cultural center, which was celebrating a week of "Chinese Culture". Sifu held a short training session at the cultural center, where we were joined by the mayor, who practices Taiji and Wing Chun, and who seemed to enjoyed doing some sticky hands training and spinning with us. The mayor also treated us afterwards to a meal at a local restaurant.
We were asked to make a short presention of ILC to the audience at the cultural center, so Sifu explained some of the concepts behind ILC, performed the Butterfly Form, and gave a demonstration of how some of the ideas from spinning hands can be used for self-defense purposes. Our host in Poznan, Piotr, displayed a sword form and the first form "yilu" from Chen-style Taijiquan. On of the highlights of the presentation was when Sifu asked his youngest student, a sturdy 29 year-old, to simulate an attack on his oldest student (aged in his mid-sixties), who was easily able to fend off the attack.
While not conducting seminars, we often visited the hosts in their homes, and worked with them in small groups to refine and improve everyone's understanding of ILC. Of of Sifu's memorable quotes in this regard was that "secrets protect themselves". By this he meant that even if something is explained to students openly and directly, mastery is only possible through dedication and hard work.
During one private training session with our host Mariusz in Warsaw, somebody stumbled over Ashe's latest 21 Form posted on YouTube. We all stopped training and crowded around the computer to watch Ashe perform the form. Afterwards Sifu nodded and smiled and said "Not bad!". Sifu also mentioned that it takes guts to post videos of one's form on
www.iliqchuan.org or YouTube, but that by opening oneself to criticism, one can actually make even more progress.
By about the 8th day of training, I felt a bit tired and discouraged. I later realized that I had been comparing my own (slow) progress to that of the (faster) progress shown by other members of the core group. In an attempt to keep up with them I would tense up, and training, which had been fun up to that point, became a chore. Once I realized I had fallen into the trap of comparing myself to others, I forced myself to focus on my own development and not make comparisons. This helped to lighten my mood and training became fun again.
Our Polish hosts were very gracious, and took great pains to arrange comfortable hotel arrangements for us, took us to meals at various restaurants throughout the city and even hosted a barbecue for us after the final day of training before our mad dash to the train station. Warsaw was clean and vibrant with many new shops and restaurants.
The level of enthusiasm in Poland for ILC was so high that they plan to introduce a weekly ILC class in Warsaw, and also invited Sifu to return next year for additional seminars in Poznan and Warsaw.
Peter
ILC/SL2
Vienna (Austria) Study Group