Summer Term at Ninja High

[davywavy]

After the living death of 12-hour days, my new job at least leaves me enough of an evening to allow me to return to T’ai Chi. Ninja Master was pleased to see me back; it gave him a willing stooge to demonstrate the killing moves on once again (“I was at a seminar with Master Law where he described fighting as being like butchering a chicken. David, come here and try to hit me...”). Still, couple this with the Kickboxing class on Monday (haven’t trained in that for a decade, but I still smacked the smug green belt good and proper) plus more gym work and the D-plan diet is once again showing dividends.
Speaking of diets, a conversation with interior_lulu and the ensuing thoughts made me realise just how much diets are like a modern form of any organised religion; you get a string of seemingly random injunctions (“Thou shalt not eat Carbs after 8pm”), at a high cost (“Join the new Atkins revolution, only £15.99 from all good bookshops!”), which promise the world (“Lose 300 pounds for summer!”) and the advocates of any one practise or sect are prepared to vociferously defend their position in the face of reason or any possibility that they may be wrong.
This could be why, in both religion and diet, I’m drawn to ascetic, mortifying, and fun. Odd combination, but it seems to work for me.

Comments

Re: T’ai Chi

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

It is a martial art; for the most part teacher concentrate on the spiritual aspects, but get good at it and yo're deadly.

Re: T’ai Chi

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

Chen style (I think) focusses on the martial aspect in particular. It's apparently practiced by a lot of tae-kwon-do people.

Yang style (as its name suggests) has pretty much all martial qualities taken from it, although you can still see the spleen-rupturing origin of a lot of its elements.

Re: T’ai Chi

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I do Chen man Chi'eng Yang short form, and it's fairly martial. Ninja Master puts a lot of Ching'i and Pakua into it.