windwalker099
Master Black Belt
A little more on heating it
That’s actually how we used it. A large pot of Dit Da Jow was heated on a burner, and we’d soak the hand being conditioned as hot as we could stand. It seemed to help circulation and recovery. I understand concerns about chemical changes, but in practice, heat was part of the method.
"The “Burning Hand,” was Mr. Long’s signature technique, and he was quite open about teaching it those who wanted to learn it. It was an “internal” specialty, different from “external” pushing power. More a slap than a hit, Mr. Long would sometimes place a phone book on your shoulder and give it one of those “slaps.”
You could feel two things coming through the phone book. The first was a push (the external component) that would set you back a foot or two. That was to be expected, but it wasn’t anything to worry about. It was the second thing that was nasty... a sharp, stinging sensation that penetrated your shoulder.
This second force seemed to follow the more external, first force. It seemed to lag behind. But the external force was then gone in an instant, while the stinging second force stayed -- and grew.
Now, I am not a gullible person, and it was going to take more than a trickle of this second force through a phone book to convince me that this slapping stuff was anything much. And so it was that Mr. Long deflected my punch with a slap…just a little too hard. And as a result, my arm locked out in front of me, as if frozen, while a searing pain moved through the flexor muscle compartment of my forearm.
My jaw clenched shut as I could feel beads of sweat forming on my face. Mr. Long continued to yack away at the other students, unaware of my predicament. I was struggling to breath, actually. I couldn’t move, actually. But out of the corner of my eye, I could see the other students now looking at me with some concern.
For his part, still talking to the group, Mr. Long began pulling back to strike again. He still wasn’t looking in my direction. I tried to retract my arm, but couldn’t move. Then finally, I managed to whimper something out… like “Aaaa!”
I know that sounds dramatic, but that’s what happened.
And lucky for me, it was enough to get Mr. Long to stop talking and turn his head to see that I was in some serious hurt. I would not have been a happy camper had I been hit like that twice.
The next day I had a huge black and blue mark on my forearm, pretty much the size of his palm. But this was not a result of force
#1. That kind of force would have maybe broken a bone, had he hit hard enough, or maybe it would have done nothing, if he hadn’t hit hard enough, but this was something different from force
#2. And call it whatever you like… call it qi, or burning hand, or whatever… it is something you need to personally experience in order to get the idea. And I got the idea."
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could be wrong as I understand it.
Funny enough, if the bottle is too full, the force rebounds — the hand takes the hit instead.
