what have you seen?

[Samurai Jack]

Alright, well since people are sharing specifics:

The first time I met George Xu he told me that I wouldn't be able to move him in push hands unless he wanted me to. He then invited me to do so and I couldn't. I asked him if that ability could be useful outside of push hands, and he said "Sure, you cannot throw me!"

Now, I know that there are a lot of little tricks that savy teachers pick up to sort of "fake" the heavy body skill. For example, some subtley change angles on you by putting their hands on your shoulders or elbows so you end up pushing them into the ground making them more stable, instead of pushing them over. Therefore, I thought it'd be clever to throw him off.

I had just busted my personal record in the deadlift two weeks before, and I judged I could probably lift twice George's bodyweight if I squatted down, wrapped my arms around his waist, and lifted straight up. When I proposed this, George looked a little surprised, but then agreed to let me try it.

I couldn't budge the man lifting him straight up. George gave this little "I told you so smile," and that was that. The same day I found I couldn't apply Chin Na on him, or even apply a basic Osoto-Gari foot sweep on him even if he looked totally off balance.

But that was nothing. The best came several months later in a seminar at Golden Gate Park.

George likes to work out under this really huge tree near a duck pond. Actually, several really prominent Tai Chi teachers hold classes there daily, keeping to a schedule they arranged years ago. It's a great spot visually, but it's usually crowded with Tai Chi people and gawkers, and the smell of the duck urine from the enourmous flock that lives there is very overpowering.

Anyhow, the tree at this area is probably a young sequoia, maybe 30 or 40 feet tall, and of course it's gotta weigh more than twenty tons. It's thick enough that four people would have a hard time getting there arms around it.

George was leading us all, maybe thirty students in part of a Chen Tai Chi form (I don't know Chen Tai Chi, I was only interested in his Pa Kua, but if you go to a George Xu seminar you just do what he wants to do). So we're all doing this part of the form that in Hsing-i we call "Bring the Moon to the Chest." In this move you spread your arms out in "White Crane Spreads Wings," then drop your right fist into your left palm and stomp.

George was not happy with how we were doing, and kept telling us to stomp harder and bring our hands down in a more coordinated way. After a few minutes, he makes all thirty of us back away from him, and he demonstrates what he wants us to do.

This is the freaky part: George does the move and his stomp, no kidding, makes that f***ing tree shake! We can all feel it making the ground rumble, and he does it a few more times, and then goes on with the class like it's nothing.

THIRTY PEOPLE STOMPING ON THE GROUND IN UNISON HAD NO CHANCE OF MAKING A DEEPLY ROOTED, 20 TON TREE SHAKE, YET HE DID IT BY HIMSELF.

I still don't know how the heck he did that. Later he told me that he just grabbed the tree with his Chi.

Whatever the heck that means.