Visiting Ken Cohen in Colorado, June 2009

I spent the third week of June in the tiny hippy town of Nederland Colorado, enjoying the air at 9000+ feet and studying qigong and wushu with Ken Cohen. Nederland is populated by beard-wearing, dog-owning, beer-drinking, Subaru-driving eccentrics who remind me of the residents of the Okanagan Valley in BC. Nederland has a festival called Frozen Dead Guy Day, for example… Anyhow, I met Ken in 1999, when my Feldenkrais teacher, Phillippe Leblonde introduced us. I’ve learned loads of traditional qigong sets from Ken over the last ten years. He is a veritable living library of traditional knowledge; it still blows my mind how many qigong and gongfu forms he remembers… He’s also a mensch with a good sense of humour and a very open and generous teaching style.

My reason for this visit was to learn various practices that I think will be vital to Les Ateliers du corps. I discussed my proposed curriculum with Ken, and over vast quanities of high end Chinese tea, he helped me refine my plans.

This week I learned:

Sound qigong from Mount Hua, originally from a teacher named Master Chan Siu Lim (Cantonese).

Sound qigong from the Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist traditions, from the venerable John Blofeld and Master Alex Feng.

Sound qigong from the Tuvan Shamanic tradition from singer and healer Nikolai Oorzhak.

Yi Quan standing, walking and physical therapy qigong from Tang Ru Kun.

The Xi Sui Jing, or Marrow Washing qigong, synthesized from a variety of teachers including Wang Zu Yuan’s 1891 text on neigong.

Dao Dan Pai Shen Gong, from the Yellow Dragon Longmen Daoist Temple, originally taught by Master Share K. Lew.

The Eight Hands of the Deer and Crane, seed martial arts forms from the Xi Zhang, or Tibetan tradition of Lama Pai.

The Eight Ways of Flying of the Hawk, seed martial arts forms from the Hua Shan Daoist gongfu tradition.

The Xiao Zhou Tian and Jin Guang meditations from the fruition stages of Hua Shan Daoist nei dan or meditative training, also from Master Chan Siu Lim.

The Shi Dan Tian Gan, or Ten Heavenly Stems, an introductory series of martial arts exercises, originally taught by Zhang Jun Feng. I’ve also studied these with Allen Pittman, and the relationship between the two versions is interesting to see.

Ken also briefly sketched a Wudang external qi healing practice from Daoist Master Sung Daoshi and countless other interesting facts, anecdotes and speculations.

Over dinner one night, he share my favourite (so far) Zen paradox:

 ‘knowing is a fantasy; not-knowing is simply failure’

People in the performing arts tend to emphasize the relativity of knowledge, and the emptiness of technique. Its important to remember the other side of the coin; when you don’t know, you really don’t know and you are not much use to anyone! 

Such a pleasure to see my old friend and mentor; such good fortune to have such fine friends.

~ by Daniel Mroz on June 18, 2009.