Omega II: Visiting with the Sages
Day 2 - Afternoon Session - Part 9

by Alisa Joaquin

"Hurricane, we'll start it out simple . . . it's called Hurricane but actually its with the hand. It's as simple as being a little kid. Let's do the left hand. I think more people can relate to it. You're driving down the street, put your hand outside the window. Everyone's done that right (I thought of my hubby's air car. He would o this all the time.) And you feel that. You create you own aerodynamics. You lift up the hand and *ggggzzzzzz* and it zooms back as you tilt it forward, you feel how it eliminates that resistance. It's very similar to the MANTIS UPSTREAM, this one it weighs less. And the element you're dealing with is air. So, fish have a tendency to swim side to side, or the mammals up and over, so much of the expression of UPSTREAM follows those lines. On this, I can be different, so I use it more like a Star Wars fighter and use like an 'X." This "X" pattern since we're using air, we'll travel along more these lines. So, let's back up a little bit and we're going to take a little stroll in this direction. I want to remind you that you can do this and you can apply imagery. You can be perfectly still. You don't even have to be outdoors. It's easier if you are out on a cliff, standing out one the beach at the ocean front, and you just let the wind create your own aerodynamics and sensitivity. But you can still do it with your mind. It's still another great reason to move. Take the muck out, clear you right up, it's very cleansing. Now, with a hurricane, you start out kind of slow. Little gradual breeze going. And now you're kind of just gliding through the breeze, right. And this is where it works better as opposed to fish, you can do the bird sketch, where you're a couple of birds. They could be a sparrow chasing a crow. It could be mating season, right? Wherever your mind is at it's okay. And feel free to step around. I'm doing this all in straight lines. Once you get here (the end of the room), fly up and over. Now take it back in the other direction. We're doing this in straight lines because we're kind of limited on space. And we will have a tendency to crash into one another. So when you are out on the grass, you can go anywhere you want. Sore through the park. And this can be so subtle. You don't have to show everybody that you're doing this. So, if you're walking through the park, it can be very very light. You're kind of drifting with your fingers. Or even just your index fingers. It's still a form of kung fu. You don't have to stop and say ,'Look at me, I'm doing kung fu,' right? Don't make a production out of it. You're your own science project. If you choose to share that or not, that's up to the individual. But you can still benefit. And even from just pure stillness. You can deliver these aerodynamic senses on to you through imagination. And not only is this air coming at you, but you have to let it come off of you the same way. So if you do this, it would work like the spoiler of a car. It would put the tires down. Up here you would be catching air. Make it a full body awareness and incorporate your footwork with it.

"Now, it's a little windier. It's a little later in the afternoon. Wind's picking up. Let's try the same thing. Now there's a few leaves here. So, periodically, you're going to want to get out of the way of one of those leaves. You might have to side step a little bit. The thing is there is always motion, it never stagnates. Look forward, perceive yourself further than your own being. Always look ahead. Don't look at your hands, don't look at the floor. Make sure that you have fun with yourself. Excellent, excellent. Now turn. Actually, don't go too fast. Let the wind do most of the work. Remember, aerodynamic. If you're coming down with a flat hand you're resisting air. Lead with your fingertips on this. That would be a proper linkage. The same motor in a porsche is going to go faster in a van, because of that wind thing. Think of yourself that way and try to make yourself more sports car shape on this. If you were a triangle, if you were to triangulate, the faster you would go, the more tired you would be. You don't have to worry about that 60 degree angle. Just sharpen yourself and go faster. So, that's how that applies to this.

Now, wind's really picking up. It's late in the year and stuff's coming, and the branches are coming. Leaves are coming, everything's happening. So, now you're busy. Now, not only do you have to block the fury of these leaves, right? Gosh there's trash and there's branches and debris and it's starting to get pretty busy, okay? So let's try the same thing. Be very ware of your neighbor. Keep using your peripheral vision even though you're looking forward. Let's take it off now again; a little faster. Now when you're doing this thing, you don't want to get to the other side of the room too fast. So feel free to back pettle. Let that wind push you back, slightly pushing you back, right. Whoa, spinning over, right. Side to side, but always try to move aerodynamically. Off to the side rather than, stay out of the way of those sticks and stones. Feel the weight transference, keeping your hands slightly weighted. It's very very helpful. Aerodynamic begins at the tip of your fingers. Don't always swirl and gather. If you start being redundant, you're not being creative enough. Create obstacles through imagery.

"Okay. Now I want to spark it up a little further." He stopped for a moment and got a drink of water. "Let's see, the more we can approach this type of thinking like a child, the more you're going to get out of it. You don't want to restrict your mind or anything. So now, it's going to be HURRICANE MANTIS. So in this case, be extra aware of your neighbor. But even though it's step up this way, it's just an idea. The wind seems to help. It could also be, on that very same analogy of something coming towards you, Tarzan, all right, swinging through the juggle. He's got leaves and stuff that's coming right and he's going to have to block with is feet and move leaves and limbs and you could be gathering and pulling out of the sides. If stones are coming, you can catch and pull them out of the way. Logs are coming, you might have to get over them. Give it all you got. Try to keep calm. I have a tendency to get warmed up (no kidding-he was moving like a whirlwind-just a bundle of energy). I got a lot of passion for this. But never the less, you guys should try to stay calm. So have some fun with this and get up there. It's busy now. It's a busy wind, bah, bah, baboom, get things out of the way. Jump over. You can even dive, humph, and roll back. It's Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, right? You're hanging on here and you have to make these mad dashes through the wind, so let's go! It's windy outside! If had a room that was more circular, we could turn them into tornadoes. Yeah, get some height, get some jumping! (He's really getting excited at this point.) Use your toes! Grab branches. Move them out of the way. Get going. There's no right or wrong, it's just all about enthusiasm (and boy is he enthusiastic) and expressing yourself honestly. Keeping your senses alive."

I could really hear him breathing hard in the background after that on the tape. He was really moving around with us and really getting into the exercise, trying to encourage us to really have fun and to move. If I looked for another sifu, I might choose Rob Moses. He looks like he would be a really fun person to work with, but he would also challenge you to do your best.

Rob continued with, "Okay, one thing you need to know. Every time you lean back, you're going to have to hunch a bit to come forward. Every time you start to high side, you're going to have to tuck your head, the same way you have to do on a windy day. You know the wind gets hard enough, you're going to have to lean to go through it. So make sure this applies. Don't lighten up so much that you're flying out of control. You want to make sure that you maintain some type of control. So, let's try that one more time. All right, it's still windy. Don't hinder yourself at all. Have fun. We're all friends here. Enthusiasm and love. Just have a good time. Just like everybody's three years old today. Let's try this one more time. And if any time it starts to get to you and you feel like you're getting too excited, lighten it up. Make the wind harder, but you don't have to react to it more. It's just like we talked earlier. It's your choice, either overreact or to react accordingly. Don't loose control of your breathing or of your ability to be aerodynamic. But kick some sticks, get out of the way, get over there. One more time, all the way back. So this could be sky surfing. I call it hurricane mantis because I think it's so much fun. To really fill it up with tractor tires, barn doors, there's no real limit of the things you can throw at yourself. Sure, cows, any type of obstacles that you choose to wing at yourself. It's to your advantage to get out of the way so you can be able to slip and move and block and still plow on through without losing ground so to speak. Okay, Was that fun? It still translates. Just like standing in the wind, even standing here. I know out on the beach, I live out in Ventura, near the ocean. One of my favorite places to go is Santa Clara river mouth.  (See http://www.coastalconservancy.ca.gov/scwrp/SitePics/34_SantaClara.html). Nobody goes there because it's a pretty long walk. It's on the ocean. You have the whole beach to yourself. There's a little rise there where the river meets the sea, so the sand has a tendency to pile up there. If you stand there on a real windy day, all you have to do . . . I'm usually barefoot when I'm at the beach right. I would pick up my one toe and put it over the other and my whole body will be flying this way. Even though I'm still, I can feel how aerodynamically it effects my body. And to turn, it's like hangliding. All I do is put the right toe down and the left one up and it's just like being a hanglider. And it can be that subtle. If your sensitivity is in tuned, it's living art. It is yours. You do own it because it's your thoughts, your imagining it because you put into it. It just takes a certain amount of faith and a great deal of enthusiasm. And it's worth doing, these things. They're worth doing. And it doesn't always have to be HURRICANE. Just some thing, to put your hand outside the window of a car on the freeway. And it's another lesson in sensitivity. And you can translate it to a full body workout.

End of Day 2 - Afternoon Session - Part 9

Alisa Joaquin Copyright@2001.
This personal account cannot be reprinted or sold in any other form without strict permission from the author. It is being distributed here solely for your enjoyment.

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