Coming Up

Highlights from 2024
Obsession: Blurring the line between practice and life
My Typical Day: Daily routines
The Laboratory: My lair for experimentation
Graduation: Intelligent Training: The core shift from 2024 quantity to quality of training
Where I’m At: Assessment of how far I’ve come and how far I have to go

Highlights

Depth. Clocked another 1000+ hours of mindbody practice, spending most of my year essentially on retreat.
Flexibility. Hit the big four of flexibility: Front Splits, Side Splits, Chin to Toe & Full Lotus.
Lotus. First 90-minute full lotus without moving.
Lengthening. Achieved my life-long dream of reaching 6 foot, adding 2.5cm in the past few years from stretching and standing practices. X-ray reveals my scoliosis is gone. I feel energetically more expansive and less blocked.
Balance. Identified balance as key in Gulun Kung Fu. Experimented extensively e.g. standing meditation on balance balls, 15-second single breath pistol squats.
Dance. Binged on the only thing I’d missed about the West — ecstatic dance — during my two months in Europe. Happy to see that after my two-year hiatus, I was even wilder than before.
Injury. Fractured rib in Q3 training with Shifu Yan Hao. Not fun. Triggered reassessment of the damage of hardcore explosive training. Decided to retire from fast, acrobatic Kung Fu to focus on internals. Recurring hamstring strain in H2 hindered flexibility progress, although I didn’t regress.
Treatments. Found the perfect combo for weekly treatments: sadistic Chinese man who tears me to pieces with acupuncture, scraping and bloodletting cupping; and luxury wellness centre to indulge my feminine side.
Kung Fu & Tai Ji. What I learned this year:

Jake Pinnick: Wudang Monk Spade
Chen Shiyu: Wudang Tai Ji 13
Xiao Yun: Wudang Tai Ji Sword
Iain Armstrong: Sum Chien, Ven Tendon Qi Gong
Shifu Shi Yan Hao: Shaolin basics, Shi San Quan, Jing Yao Quan
Gulun Kung Fu: Taught by Dong Dong, Rui and Chen Geng
Shifu Wu Nanfang: Gulun Kung Fu: Zhuan Gong (standing basics), Pan Gen 1 & 2, Jin Gang Chuan 1 & 2, Ba Duan Jin, Tong Chun Quan 3

Obsession

My task is not to end obsessions but to choose them wisely. I must always remember: my flamethrower has no off-switch and no setting but max. If it isn’t channeled constructively, it will naturally become destructive.

Years ago, crippled by chronic pain, I chose to turn my flamethrower towards healing my body: unblock the energetic system, restore natural movement and stillness. The result proved healthier than directing the same energy towards vodka.

I am not blessed with the natural flexibility and softness of an eight-year-old Chinese girl born in a Tai Ji school. But I do have at my disposal:

Relentless drive
Tolerance for boring repetition and pain
Meticulous organisation

To the extent I have transformed, it has not been down to taking a ‘middle way’ approach but by going all at it. However, ‘going all at it’ no longer denotes overtraining myself into injury and exhaustion; more on that coming up.

Critically, I do not perceive it as a chore but an all-consuming fascination, as enticing as Pokémon on Gameboy when at age eight. It took years of tolerating the monotony of self-conscious, stiff white man movement before the fun kicked off.

In 2024, my trajectory deepened as I continued to blur the line between practice and ‘life’.

At some point in the past couple of years I lost the capacity to be embarrassed about practising in public. So, you may find me playing with XinYiBa movement patterns while waiting for my luggage at the airport, my food at the restaurant or hiking mountain trails.

When standing or sitting, I am exploring subtle adjustments: to lengthen my spine, open my body and sink my Qi into the earth. I continue to be astonished by the effect on my state of micro-adjustments in my physiology.

My Typical Day

4-9am: Wake-Up (Massage Brush, Cold Shower, Hanging) > 2h Deep Work > Practice (30m Standing Meditation, 30m Kung Fu Forms)
9am-12pm: Walk to Train with Shifu > Tea > First Inbox Check > Lunch
12-3pm: Walk Home > Nap > Admin > Teach Online
3-5pm: Solo Training (Conditioning e.g. Balance & Flexibility, Kung Fu Forms)
5-7pm: Eat > Messaging & Relaxation
7-8.30pm: Play in Laboratory + Reading / Chinese > Journal > Meditation

The Laboratory

My mountain lair houses an arsenal of torture (massage), stretching and ergonomic toys.

I integrate them whenever possible with daily activities: reading, listening to audio, doing Chinese flashcards, dictating journal entries to AI while hanging upside down (added benefit: reduced screen strain) and using my lumbar opening device while writing.

My toys:

Gravity Boots: 10-30 minutes of bedtime inversion, lengthening the spine. The key help me recover from a herniated disk.

Neck-Hanging: Sub-occipital-release. Amazing chiropractor replacement for neck clicks.

Suspension Tools: Deadlift straps to remove demand on grip strength when hanging and weighted stretching.

Wrist/Ankle Weight Straps: To attach dumbbells to my limbs for long-hold weighted stretching (excellent way to lengthen tendons, unblock tensions and release trauma). Inspired by Chinese Lajin methodology.

Gymnastics Rings & Resistance Bands: For versatile chest/shoulder opening.

Lumbar Device: Opens the lower back. I use this while writing. Wonderful way to balance sitting.

Massage Toys: Vibrating foam roller, peanut ball (placed on top of foam roller and dug into the stomach is quite an experience), hard wooden ball

Wobble Balls: To train balance during standing meditation and single-leg strength work. Made standing meditation a lot more fun.

Weighted Vest: To sink my Qi during standing meditation, add weight to mimic partner assistance during stretching and create challenge when running.

Graduation: Intelligent Training

2024 marked a graduation from being taught in group classes to one-on-one training with the big daddy Shifu.

No more familiar frustration of being the weird one in the group who was much more committed than everyone else.

This enabled me to take my practice into my own hands. Eight hours of direct teaching with my Shifu per week; the rest is up to me. I use my own training methods, balancing a mixture of (1) executing a systematic plan with (2) play, experimenting with Qi qualities, speeds and music. Incorporating more play into my practice in the past two years was the shift that started to infuse my practice with X factor.

This year I let go of the fantasy of training like a twelve-year-old Chinese kid, doing eight hours of hard training in a group per day while being beaten by a screaming master. While I largely prefer the Chinese style of teaching, I disagree with the training load. It is impossible to train effectively for that long per day. I suspect the overtraining is one of the reasons so many Chinese students stop their own training in their early 20s. I suspect this training style is influenced less by tradition, more by Communism. My own flexibility improved more quickly when I shifted from brute forcing myself into splits twice per day to using a scientific Western approach with a fraction of the training volume.

I don’t have the recovery capacity of an 18-year-old. But I do have the cool mind of an adult. I use it to train more intelligently. I can focus on training for as long as I can focus on writing: four to five hours per day. Just like writing, five minutes of intentional training is worth more than several hours where I am half-asleep.

I make sure my Shifu never has to teach me a movement twice. Only twice in Q4 did I forget a movement. I view it as disrespectful to waste a teacher’s time by making them repeat themselves. Training is much cleaner when the teacher can know for certain that the student will turn up on time having done the work. (Yes, my dear students, this paragraph is a subtle nudge to you!)

I am nerdy. I make weekly training plans and log my practice daily, using concepts from my weightlifting days to gradually and systematically work on focus areas. I use the mirror and video feedback to catch weaknesses. Both are invaluable.

I stay simple, focusing on one or two things rather than trying to train everything at once. In 2024, I focused first on front splits & chin to toe, then side splits, then single leg balance & strength and finally handstands.

Progress

Interesting idea: Rate myself in different categories of mind/body skill at various points in time to and plot my intended future trajectory.

This is a difficult thing to do.

Progress in external training (e.g. strength, endurance) slows over time: you make fast ‘newbie gains’ before gradually plateauing. Relatively easy to rate myself out of 10.

But progress in internal practice is exponential and infinite. You have to suffer initial boredom and feeling like nothing is happening; later, a crack opens in the dam and it turns into a flood.

So, instead of giving a rating out of 10, I score in terms of points. Here are my highly unscientific, subjective measures.

0: No training or natural ability
5: Recreationally Trained
10: Teacher / Professional

I suspect my perception of the limit of possibility in terms of internal abilities (Qi flow in movement, alignment & groundedness and meditative stillness and sensitivity) is extremely low. But for the sake of creating readable graphs, I am cautious with the numbers.

And here are the points in time I use:

2014: First two-week silent retreat
2018: Quantum leap after second long silent retreat; first year meditating 1h+ per day
2020: Start 5h daily practice after starting Shaolin training with Shifu Shi Heng Zuan
2022: Phase where I stop hard physical training and go deep into meditation
2023: Year in Wudang, China, where I spend 9 months training 6h per day, with primary focuses on flexibility and Tai Ji

2025 Intentions

The table and graph shows my intentions for the coming years. In short: Not much left with external skills, plenty left on the internal side. From an outsider perspective, may look like my inner side is quite developed; but I know I’m only scratching the surface.

On the external side, I went overboard on strength training in my early years and, looking forward, intend to reduce my muscle mass. I no longer care about endurance or Kung Fu acrobatics. Thankfully, the worst of flexibility — the most unpleasant of all training — appears to be over.

While I perceive my meditative stillness to be my strongest ability, I still sense it is as 10% capacity. In 2025, mediation is a biggie. In 2024, there were only two weeks of pure silent retreat and no intensive (8+ daily hours) meditation. I focused more on standing meditation. It did wonders for my alignment and groundedness, but in 2025 I want to deepen my relationship with the cushion, where the most explosive internal fireworks ensue.

My quantum leaps in practice have historically arisen after long periods of solitary meditation. More of that in 2025, I sense.

Key focuses:

Stillness: 30+ days in intensive sitting meditation retreats; ability to hold 2h full lotus
Qi Flow: Mastery of Gulun Kung Fu after a year of immersing with Shifu Wu Nanfang
Flexibility: No warm-up drop into splits and side splits
Balance: 1-minute handstand

As I step back to look at the highlights of 2024, I see that many things changed. And yet, I also see that my growth was stunted by the six months spent constantly travelling. Yes, I learned from many great masters. But true growth doesn’t happen on sporadic retreats. It happens through repetition over months and years — especially for deep internal practice.

I am now settled and in a perfect environment to kick on. No need to spend energy on travel arrangements, social engagements, bills, laundry, cooking and so on. I actually have more time to practice and fewer responsibilities than monks, who have to take care of admin during the day.

2024 review: practice — intelligent obsession