161. A Baguazhang master's visit to a beauty salon (☴/☱)

Compared to the hopes and dreams of wannabe martial artists living off a constant diet of martial art movies and books, my Baguazhang life is plain vanilla. I have the same good and bad times like most people. And just to illustrate how run-of-the-mill my life can be, recently my online tea business has been going through tough times. Tough times brought on by what's happening between America and China. And the constant negative media courage of the Australian economy, which is particularly sensitive to the collective mood of the public. But I manage to cope. So long as the bank gets their monthly 30% cut of the earnings, I will have enough to cover the rest of the outstanding debts incurred more than two years ago by trying to play big the entrepreneurial game. It's one of the reasons why I say 'Thank God for Baguazhang'. While it may not look like it and at the time, the reason why: Baguazhang, when I think about it, has been one of the smartest business decisions I have ever made. For over sixteen years it's saved me a ton of medical bills and expenses that having a business can generate; physically, emotionally and mentally. Firstly by keeping me gently fit and secondly by bringing me back up when I've been brought low. And occasionally, Baguazhang has taken me to places that to me are ordinary events that I believe everybody has been through until I start sharing it with others and discover that may not always be the case. About eight years ago, the difficulties in my tea business started to mount up to the point where I couldn't increase my staff's wages as was the annual custom in Australia. In fact, I had to let some of them go and do the work myself. On top of that, the signs were showing that soon I would need to relocate the business to a cheaper lease, regardless of the money saved from selling my house. You get the picture. It was also at this time that I applied for my first business loan. And everyday I kept doing my Baguazhang sets. Taking it all in my stride and keeping it real. Until one day, while visiting family in Hong Kong, I got invited by my sister-in-law to a beauty salon with my wife. It's typically a nice facial beauty treatment followed by a massage. My wife went first and then it would be my turn. At the end of it, I would feel refreshed and cleansed — all stress related pimples from too much heat in the system gone. Except that when it was my turn, right after the hot towel was put on my face to soften my pores, the beautician left the room. She may have only been gone for a few minutes at most, but my body - starting with my feet - began rising up off the bed. I couldn't stop it. While my head stayed firmly put, my body kept rising up off the bed. I tried telling but I couldn't make a sound. It was as if my mouth had been glued shut. What the hell was going on? I couldn't speak or control my body. On top of that I found myself naked. This did not look good. And yet the weirdest part was my calmness through this situation. So when two you women entered the room and began discussing my situation in Cantonese and I understood, I knew something was seriously wrong because I can't speak Cantonese and I shouldn't be calm. They grabbed my floating legs and gently drew me back down onto the bed. Holding me down until the feeling of unbearable pressure subsided within me. And the pull of gravity felt normal again. After that the two women left the room. The beautician returned to the room. I asked her who the two young women were and she told me that there was nobody else here, apart from my sister-in-law and my wife chatting in reception. In fact she said she had found that I had stopped breathing but thankfully some strong shaking had got me to breathe again. Call it what you will, but I believe to this day that the situation would have ended differently had I not been doing baguazhang! And it has also marked me with the knowledge that certain ways of solving problems are not open to me.