LIGHTNING SPEED, DRAGON FORCE AND DIM MAK
Vero applying dim-mak on Sifu Claude during a sparring session
Sifu Claudien Scicluna
Instructor, Shaolin Wahnam Malta
14th December 2014
Dear Family,
We are now home and I am slowly trying to organize my thoughts and experiences and continue to internalize the amazing Dragon Strength course.
Where do I start? Let me start with the more general experiences first (well general experiences...a great understatement) and the more specific course experiences later on in the post.
So here goes. I will start by following on the lines of what Markus Sihing has said - This course has enhanced and deepened all other kinds of Shaolin training I do. Whether it is Kung Fu Sets, Stances, Fa Jing, Tai Chi Chuan, Wing Choon, Hsing Yi or Chi Kung, they are now being performed quite spontaneously at a deeper level, at a more powerful level, both flowing and consolidating modes feel so much more full and powerful.
Next...
Last year I attended the Wudang Special Course and it was a very profound course indeed. Powerful, deeply spiritual and expansive beyond what any words can explain. In the Wudang course I experienced great expansion beyond my physical body and a great lightness of being.
This time round with the Dragon Strength course it was the same feeling of further expansion but different. By different I mean that even though this expansive feeling was even more profound than I ever felt I didn't get the feeling of losing myself, I remained centered, actually more centered than I ever felt in my past.
I actually felt three ever growing vortexes of powerful light coming out from my Dan Tian, my Heart Centre and my Third Eye. This sensation also gave me a feeling of being totally centered and rooted into my being with a sense of amazing mental clarity and powerful confidence. Still this sensation was perfectly balanced with a great feeling of lightness and expansion that touched the remotest corners of the universe. This experience was a perfect balance between awesome flow (great expansion) and awesome consolidation (centeredness and focus).
Towards the end of the course, in the final session we had an amazing grand finale which opened my heart in such a beautiful way. I had tears flowing down my face. I was never touched like this at the end of any course I did in my past. I realized something shifted deeply.
A day passed and the experiences subsided a bit or maybe I was already getting used to the new open heart feeling but then some strange but lovely things were happening which made me think that things are really different now.
Everywhere I was going people were smiling at me. The officers at the passport control and security checks were making eye contact and smiling to me from their heart (this never ever happened to me before as these are very hardened people trained not to smile or show emotion).
I was sitting down at the aisle seat quite early on the plane and loads of people were still boarding the plane after me and a big majority of theses people, no matter what color or shape they were, whether they were kids, adults or old people, they looked me in the eyes and smiled from their heart. These experiences were totally amazing and touching and I am very grateful to have been touched in this way.
Next for the specific Dragon Strength experiences of Lightning Speed, Dragon Force and Dim Mak. Some of us course participants started calling these experiences "The Stuff of Legends".
Lightning Speed – Very fast body movements are not something I excel in mainly due to my larger body shape, thus I was totally in awe when practicing "Dragon Turning The Cosmos" and "Dragon Turning Waves" (not totally sure about the names), two patterns in the Dragon Strength Set where my hands were turning so fast that I was not able to see them just like you don’t get to see the blades of a helicopter turning.
Dragon Force – We got the chance to practice Dragon Force on each other. I paired up with my wife Vero and I was to wrap my arms around her chest and torso and not allow her to go free. Sifu advised not to grab very hard since it this would make me (the grabber) hurt more.
Vero did as Sifu said and I felt myself being thrown backwards by a gentle but forceful flow of energy that kept pushing me till I was about 8 feet away. I then started feeling a pain in my solar plexus and I felt I was losing my breath. We did some chi flow and I was ok.
Sifu allowed us to practice Dragon Force again. This time Sifu told us to hold harder. I did this and again I was thrown backwards. Without thinking much about whether I sustained some internal injury, I told Vero that I want to hold her again even more strong, which I did and she used Dragon Strength to throw me backwards again for the third time.
This was the time when I felt I was hit by a very hard and penetrating force. I started feeling my whole arms from shoulders down to the wrists and my upper chest, neck and face really in pain. A very strange internal pain that went deep within my system. I kept feeling the pain for quite a long time. Slowly slowly, thanks to further chi flows I started feeling better.
Then it was my turn to do Dragon Strength on my wife while she grabbed me. This again worked very nice and she was thrown away whilst also sustaining some strange pains which were cleared by chi flow. Honestly I don’t know what would happen to a normal person if they were to sustain Dragon Force. Surely a very severe internal injury that can be very serious and life threatening if left unattended.
Dim Mak – Well, Dim Mak is neither lost nor just a fairy tale. Dim Mak is as real and as tangible as the last meal anyone might have had. Many people call Dim Mak "The Touch of Death" but we in Shaolin Wahnam call it "The Touch of Compassion" because it is a great way how to disable an attacker without actually hitting the person so hard that they can remain maimed for life or even killed.
I had lots of chances to try Dim Mak on others and also sustain Dim Mak from others on myself. All the time things worked out as Sifu has instructed. Sifu also showed us how to do remedial exercises on each other so that everyone of us can safely be cleared from any injury sustained.
One occasion in particular I am going to mention here. I was sparring with my wife Vero and she targeted a point at the side of my torso just under my chest. She came in whilst I was turning my body to the side to try not to take the attack head on. She still connected with me and since I was sideways the force of the attack slid more than intended towards the centre of my body and towards my heart center.
I started feeling strange and started losing my breath and I also started losing my mental clarity and was seeing things a bit fuzzy. Sifu was double checking whether everyone was ok from the Dim Mak session. At this point I was so fuzzy in my mind that I couldn't even talk clearly and Sifu was not understanding me when I was trying to explain that I wasn't feeling well.
This was when Andrew Sihing came from behind and opened some points for me and I went in chi flow. I slowly started feeling better again and in a couple of minutes I regained my normal function
That’s it for now
All the best,
Claude
"Love is wonderful, because anyone with love in his heart wants to see everyone in bliss, everyone healthy and everyone availing freedom. This is the state of a man who considers the world as his family. Such are the wise man, the great souls." -- Shri Shantananda Saraswati
Sifu Claude explaining the effect of dragon force (on the receiving end) to the class
This post is reproduced from the thread Dragon Strength Course Experiences in the Shaolin Wahnam Discussion Forum.
LINKS
Videos of Dragon Strength Course 6-12 December 2014
Videos of Dragon Strength Course 12-18 December 2014
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