A personal account of the Qi Gung, Shaolin Kung Fu, & Taoist Meditation Workshop held at the Omega Institute with David Carradine from October 1-3, 1999

The day again started early, this time with some trepidation, knowing that this was going to be our last. We went up and had breakfast. This time, I grabbed a full bagel and kept half of it for later. I knew I was going to be hungry by mid morning. I do have to say something about the food here. Their breakfast buffet was good, but the rest of the meals, well, lets just say eating in the cafe was much more pleasant. Their bagels, however, were huge. They were the size of a small dinner plate. A half of one is enough for one person, but i got a whole one so I could have half later. David mentioned more about the food later, perhaps I will include what it is that he actually said.

An additional note which I had not included in October 2nd's Tai chi forms was that Arnold Tayam had mentioned that when he was learning this, he wanted to know who had the oldest form, but he learned that many claimed that but in truth, there is no longer an oldest traditional form. He learned the forms were always evolving, what is traditional is the principles behind the form. It did not matter if your hand for instance, was too high or too low, but if the position would be good for fighting and if the energy still flowed. The principles that had been developed 100's of 1000s of years ago is what was important. Having those principles passed down.

After breakfast, we took some time to take more photos after we watched and waited for David to come through the dining room. We heard he was going to be with the kids and the dining room is actually separated into two parts. One part for families. David did come through, but he headed for another part where the staff ate their meals in another dining area below the main dining hall.

Since we had some time, we walked along the path that would lead us closer to the Main hall. The path was lined with flowers.

Helen following a path.

We then came across their vegetable gardens. To the right is the cafe and Guest services building. Omega does grow their own food. They serve totally vegetarian dishes. They also have a small herbal garden near the Meditation Sanctuary, though I did not get a photo of that.

The Herbal Garden

Up the hill is one of the housing areas. I believe this is the dormitory area. Plus these rooms can also be used for meetings and classroom space.

Our Housing.

Our tent cabin was much further up behind this area. I should have mentioned earlier that around the little Buddha garden where there was in a ring of pine trees, there was a semi-circle of cabins. The map shows an excellent layout of the whole campus.

We began that morning with the Tai Chi form and putting it all together, reviewing it from yesterday. I won't go over what we did, because I was still having some trouble with my arch and the heel spur syndrome. I had gone out on the porch and there were a few people out there. David was talking about the time he had broken his hand in the Warrior and the Sorcerous movie and how an argentine doctor had operated on it. He had said that he had to wear a cast. When this happened, it was right in the middle of shooting so he had to learn how to fight with a sword with his left hand. He covered the cast with a special leather glove to hide it. He said a year later he had it x-rayed and the hand did not even look like it had been broken. But, he was concerned with that kind of injury, he might develop arthritis, so he started to take some herbs and that prevented him from getting it. I was able to ask him what herbs he was taking and he mentioned several, but two of them suck out in my mind, because I had been taking one of those herbs myself. The two herbs were Yucca and Devil's Claw. We went in briefly and I was able to tell him also that I had enjoyed watching the web site develop and he said that they were having a great deal of fun doing it.

I tried to do the Tai Chi, but my right arch was just not going to cooperate, so I went back out on the porch and this time, David was out there with only one other person, a woman who was trying to get him to try some herbal products that she was selling. She must have figured that since he mentioned about taking herbs, she might try to get him to try them and maybe get an endorsement. She did say she wasn't looking for that, but I knew she was lying. David I could tell was VERY uncomfortable with it as well. He looked like he wanted to deck her, but being who he was, he just put up with her. I broke in at one point and said that you need to be choosy about what herbs you take. I mentioned that herbs ground into capsules from airiel parts, flowers and stems, may not be as effective because they loose 80% of their constituents in the process, while root herbs were better. David looked very interested in what I was saying, but the woman looked at me as if to say, who are you to tell me that, go away. I got the feeling that she was trying to represent her product as the best and only product to take, and no one was going to tell her any different. I later wrote to David and said I really felt bad for him being put in that position. I felt what she had done was doing him a dishonor and it was not the time and place. Though David has the choice of whether he wanted to try the product, but I felt when she handed him a sample, that he felt trapped there and took it just so she would leave him alone. I could tell he had no interest in what she was selling. He had his own way of doing things and if he wanted to try other things, he would choose when and where. I also got to tell David that I was studying herbal medicine. Though I felt that was rather a small unpleasant area for him, everything else had been a success and outweighed that.

After the Tai Chi, we took another break and took photos again, this time of the instructors. The two black guys are Michael and Donald. Michael is on the left. He was the one that broke the brick with his chi.

Michael and Donald

Below is Arnold Tayam. He lead us both in Chi Gung and Tai Chi. He is also on David's video tapes (not the two original ones but the later versions). He is an excellent speaker.

Arnold Tayam

Karen Holden (again) lead us in the Tiger Breath Exercise. She is an excellent instructor herself. Mostly she acted as demonstrator, assisting Arnold in pointing out the movements and postures for Tai Chi. She is also on David's videos. On David's current videos, she is on there with her daughter.

Karen Holden

Helen made sure she got photos of each instructor, including our announcer and coordinater, David Nakahara.

I was able to get a final shot with David, and I told him how much of a pleasure it was to speak with him. He then confided in me and said that he thought that it was going to be an ordeal, but he was quite surpised.

Alisa and David

After that photo series, we all came together for the last time and they talked about the tapes that Omega prepared for the participants and about the video tapes that were available showing different forms. Arnold, spoke more on the differences of Yang and Chen forms. Someone asked about Taoist Tai Chi and Arnold said that Taoist Tai Chi was probably more like Qi Gung. And that the Chen form perhaps came out of that. The forms that we are learning are actually modified to where it is more simple. The Yang form and Chen forms are much longer, but continue to evolve whenever the need arises. Arnold then reviewed Qi Gung doing the five exercises of cleansing. Afterward, the instructors and David gathered back on the small stage and they were asked if there were any books they would recommend.

David Nakahara recommended the book "Conversations with God." It is rather an interesting book. This man questions his life and he begins writing letters to God, and God supposedly responds directly, through the writing. He then passed the mike to David and he spoke a little about the "Tao Te Ching." I mentioned about "Backwards Down the Path" (which takes the Tao Te Ching and examines it in a different form) He felt that any book on the "Tao Te Ching" written today would be farther from the original and meaning of the words could be lost. He indicated that he liked the classic version because it is closer to what Lao Tzu wrote. For me, I would like to explore the classic to know if that is so.

David then recommended a very small book of about 50 pages called, "All Else Is Bondage, written by Woo Wei." He said that it consisted of short poems and sayings. He said it is very introspective. It deals with non-volitional living. He said he's been reading the book for a long time, in fact, he's not even finished it. He also recommended "The Inner Chapters" by Huang Tzu. He said, "I think when the end comes what we'd wish we done more of was the stuff that did not have practical application, the fun stuff that we missed." He spoke about his mother and when he had broken up with this woman that he had been seeing, he called his mother and asked her, "What am I going to do?" and he was crying over the phone and he said to the group, "I guess I can say this, she said to me, 'Well you know son, when all that's said and done, all that fucking and sucking doesn't amount to a hill of beans.'

Then he went on to say "When all is said and done I think maybe all of this stuff we think is important, all of these things, these practical applications. I mean, what good is music? But what would it like without it? What good is a joke? Love and music and art, it just seems to me, that's what gives the texture of life, makes it bearable. What's the point of it all, just to keep our stomachs full? To show off our RV? To have the tallest SUV in the neighborhood that doesn't fit in the garage any more? You can't park it. If you can figure it out what's in the poetry (the Tao Te Ching). It is trying to tell you how all this energy can flow through you and be for the good. Because an awful lot of the energy that we deal with is getting in our way, I mean the bad energy. You know the thing that he's talking about (referring to Arnold and pointing to the crown point on the head) which is kind of a higher will. People get it inverted. There is kind of a godliness, that you can feel pulling you up like this. And people say, 'You know. I'm going to go get a gun and kill a bunch of people.' And they think they're suppose to do that, because that sense of will is turned upside down. I think it's really important that we all kind of to keep that straight, to keep that energy flowing right. Because it is so easy to get it all wrong. And to do acts that are incontrovertible, destroy things. And it's really easy to do that to ourselves, to make decisions we cannot suddenly escape from, because, these things we are talking about . . ."

Suddenly he noticed "What am I fooling around with this when I got a microphone right here." He then handed back the mike that David Nakahara gave him and used his own remote mike. He then mentioned about the a script given to him (referring to Kung Fu-the pilot movie) He talked about how the pilot was suppose to be more of a warrior "movie" and the FCC kept cutting all the great fight scenes they had done, so he had this meeting, and he then started looking at it a different way. As if something was trying to tell him, that maybe this wasn't the point. He had a meeting in his dressing room and he said, "isn't this the voice of the land? Aren't they telling us they don't want this. Why don't we make that the point. Why don't we make the point being that this guy doesn't want to hurt people. It made it easier to do and then we got a lot of feedback. Inadvertently, we all became drenched in this attitude that lead us to this philosophy and it was totally arbitrary accident that it happened that way. I remember they said that I couldn't kick people in the head (long pause) so I kicked them in the throat." The group laughed at that and he also laughed. (One side note: David has a very infectious laugh and smile. He just beams. You want to smile with him.) He then went on to say about the new series, "They had my son in his very first scene and he comes charging down a flight of stairs, with a pump shot gun blowing people away, and they kept doing this. I finally got together with these guys at Warner Brothers and said 'Look I don't think our audience really is looking for that. I don't think they want that. Can't we just arrest them.' And then we started doing that and the Kid complained that he never got to use his gun any more."

(I'm taking a quick break in here. It is difficult just to paraphrase what was said. David is such a dynamic story teller that I just have to use his own words wherever I can. I know this is long, but he spoke for 45 minutes and I want to give everyone the opportunity to know what was said. One little side note. Every time he would talk about Chris Potter, he would refer to him as "my son." I could tell that Chris had become the son of his heart through that show. He is that fond of him.)

David spoke how there were so many different people watching it. There seemed to be something for everybody (again going back to the old show). He was amazed at how Jerry Thorp was just putting everything together. He just thought of him as a regular business man. David spoke of a moment when Thorp was directing a scene and everyone was sitting around eating and David said that Thorp had said "I don't want to see you eat." and David said, "Oh, okay." David said that Jerry Thorp felt that Caine eating was a violation of the purity of it. You never even saw Caine sleep. Of course they broke down a little bit they had Caine sick or dying, or making love. As the show went on, Caine became more human. David also spoke about when he had recieved the script and wanted to do the part, at the time he really did not want to do a series, but in order to do the part he had to sign on. He never thought it would be a series, of course we all knew what happened and in his own words which I feel he can say it better than I can.

David said, "When that started to happen by that time, I started getting hooked and I thought, my conscience made me continue with it whether I wanted to or not. And it still does. I still feel that there's more that needs to be told. It turned out to be a vehicle where you could teach which is not what I had in mind in the beginning at all. I just wanted to play a good part and make a lot of money, you know, that kind of thing. But, still, we'll probably do that series again or something about that character, because it does work in wonderful wonderful ways."

Someone asked him which series he liked best and he said he liked both. Though some people would come up to him and say they liked the first series and he would say "Well you probably liked your life better back then." He then told a story related to the second series. He said,

"I was eating at a restaurant up in Toronto where we shot the series, and this little kid came up to the table and asked 'Are you the guy in Kung Fu?' a question that people have been asking me, you know, for a couple of decades, I said, 'Yeah." and the kid asked, 'You're the father?' and I said, 'Yeah.' and that was the first time any one asked me that question. and the kid said 'WOW!' and he went back and I thought 'Oh right, he doesn't even know that the old series ever existed and he's not interested. The thing that impressed him was a father figure and I found out there were a lot of women who were fascinated by the father-son relationship. Towards the end of the first series, I said I wanted to do some more of these things and I presented this idea to Warner Brothers and they said yeah, yeah, yeah, But I said I wanted to do this whole series of things. I wanted to do Son of Kung Fu, Kung Fu in the City, and then I want to do a musical called Kung Fu With Love, and I wanted to do a send-up called Kung Fu to You Too."

David then spoke about when he met up with the young man who played Little Grasshopper in the original series. They were in a New York restaurant and there were these balloons filled with helium. Well, I think you could picture this. They pulled down these balloon and inhaled them and said lines from Kung Fu (and he tried to imitate the higher voice from the helium-it was real funny). He learned from talking with him that they both had this idea of putting together a new story and he went to work with what he described as this helium hangover and he wrote down what he thought about on a napkin in NBC's commissary and that evolved from Son of Kung Fu, to Kung Fu the Movie, so that was the first one. They then combined that one with Kung Fu in the City, so he got two of them down and he said that he needed to do the musical and the send-up, though the thing that he did on Saturday Night live that he hosted back in 1980 was close to that. The scene was Caine is walking through Harlem and he steps into a haberdashery (hat store) and asks for a drink of water. Eddy Murphy tries to sell Caine a zoot suit and Caine looks at himself in the mirror and his blind master is in the mirror and his Master says that Kung Fu Master does not wear glad rags, Grasshopper, and Caine destroys Eddy Murohy's store in real time slow motion.

He spoke how hard it was to get the second show together. There had to be 110 markets interested in order so they could be able to have the money to do the show. The person who did this had gone out to 110 separate television stations and somehow he got then to agree to sponsor and air the show. The only thing they could not do was two partners because what the stations wanted to be able to do was air the shows out of sequence for something like Thanksgiving or they would save them for the February Sweeps. A lot of the stations just did not air the show in sequence and there was a defident progression to the show. Of course later, they started to do that, but at the time, David was wondering why they were doing this. It was like they were throwing a monkey wrench into their own machinery (referring to the networks). He was realizing that the networks don't really care so long as long as there was money in it and he also realized that he could use that to actually get beyond their prejudices and do something that's important. It may sound arrogant and silly because it's a television show but then he said, "Hidden in it there are messages and I can't tell you how many people over the years have come up to me and said, 'Your show changed me life.' and I use to say, well you've got to be really dumb to have your life changed by a TV show, but I figured, damn, you know, if that's all I can do or if I can do that much, and then realizing there is an audience of 30 million people, well there was, there's now an audience of 150 million watching that original show." But unfortunately he does not own the rights. He cannot even sell a T-shirt that says, "I am Caine I will help you." Someone asked about Bruce Lee being involved (referring to the movie made about Bruce Lee's life called "Dragon") but David said that Bruce was not involved at all.

David Nakaraha thanked Michael Craft who had called them up a year ago and asked them to do this. Arnold thanked the group for our enthusiasm and that hoped we would continue our studies. Sadly, the one thing that was not put on the tape was a few things that David Carradine had mentioned and that was:

1) About the cuisine. He compared it to being at one of the places he was at in the middle east. I won't go into details. He did say Omega was thinking about changing the menu selection.

2) That this whole weekend had energized him. When I spoke to him alone during the break on our last day, he had confided in me and thought that this was going to be an ordeal, but was surprised that it had not been. He had shared that with the group, not the fact that he had said it to me first, but shared the part about thinking that it was going to be an ordeal and it wasn't. He really enjoyed himself. It had energized him so much. He also shared some stories about being on the plane when they were coming to Omega and they had been lucky to even get tickets because that had been done at the last minute and all they could get was coach, and he was saying how they were packed in there, and he looked back at Donald and he just had to laugh because Donald was really tightly packed in his seat (and Donald is no small man).

3) David also placed his web site address up on the board. His web site has been really interesting to watch as it's been developing. It still has areas that are under construction, but there is still a lot to see. His URL is: http://www.davidcarradine.org/

Over all, the weekend was AWESOME! I later learned that they really did not cover everything they wanted to cover. So perhaps they will do another Omega weekend. I learned just recently, that David is thinking about it. I hope so. And those who did not get the chance to attend, I would say GO! David was wonderful. The instructors were wonderful. The whole weekend was worth it. And David, if you read this per chance, THANK YOU! Please, consider doing it again. Perhaps checking in on those who had been there and seeing if they did learn the lessons and to impart new ones. You are very much loved and we will be waiting for the new series, if the fates allow.

I decided to leave everyone with this final photo. I cropped it just so it showed David. He looks like he is looking into what the future may bring, and perhaps we all do that. Let's just hope that the future is a bright one and that he continues to be there for many years to come.