- Kan
Kan: The Barrier or Gate
Nanboku to-zai katsuro tsu-zu
Once you break through the barrier:
Free to all directions
It was is the early 1990’s, I was returning to Esalen for a long weekend. The drive as usual was long and winding like a slow unfolding of your life itself. The view spectacular, the sky blue and the ocean reaching and touching the sides of the steep hills.All my trips to Esalen started like this. Driving out of Silicon Valley, through Santa Cruz, then going past Monterey and finally Carmel. At that last stop before the long stretch to Big Sur starts always felt like the post to leave everything you didn’t need behind. It was with these thoughts I drove, windows open, taking in the raw power of nature surrounding this coast.
The weekend was with a man had had read, but never met before. What does one feel when one knows you are about to be in the presence of a true master at the end of the road you are on? I kept my excitement high and assumptions low as I completed the drive.
Al Huang at Esalen
“I am not here to to teach you about Tai-Ji, I’m here to teach you about your “Ha-Ha” place,” were the first words I heard from Al Huang. He then proceeded to show the most graceful movement art I have seen – the slow dance of Tai-Chi. As we were to learn later, the “Ha-Ha” place as he calls it is our energy center, the elusive Tanden, Tien, Hara, Kandasthana/Pranayama or The Core as many call it.
What an amazing reversal. Most things in life are about “form” first. Every martial art, business, profession is like a spiral path in which the first years are all about the “doing” or learning by repeating, repeating, repeating. Eventually experience kicks in, and the form starts to become second nature, moves from the focus on the one thing to more “no-mind”. In the movie Karate Kid, the words wax on-wax off were a great demonstration of this- while he is working on waxing, he is actually learning the kata. Almost all disciples need this stage, where you are learning the form. After this you can work on the essence or the deeper reason we learn the form.
Al Huang decided to fast forward the form to give us a glimpse of the essence of Tai-Chi in a way only a real master can do.
In a laughter filled room called Huxley 
next to the kitchen, we were thrown into ways to feel the Chi or energy that the form of Tai-Chi aims to help you connect with. Movement after movement, it was not move your hands up, then in a circle and down – breathe in your hara, now pull the energy up, now move it around and now sink it down.Over and over. In all kinds of ways.
next to the kitchen, we were thrown into ways to feel the Chi or energy that the form of Tai-Chi aims to help you connect with. Movement after movement, it was not move your hands up, then in a circle and down – breathe in your hara, now pull the energy up, now move it around and now sink it down.Over and over. In all kinds of ways.As someone who was brought up in a scientific no nonsense background, I had already learned in my prior visits to Esalen that Human Development was just starting and that it was best to keep an open mind and ask questions. At a simple level, my experience of Al Huang was a deep concentration on breath, focus on the hara, and a deep “zen-like” moving meditation that was astonishingly simple.
By Sunday morning, everyone had found there “Ha-Ha”place and we were all rosy cheeked, glowing with warmth, and moving in sync like a Broadway Chorus-Line. Al was like a conductor who had somehow brought a group of people with nothing but an open mind to break through the barrier or “Kan” and get a glimpse of a new freedom in movement and connectivity
.
Book by Al Huang
His words were always simple. Everything in the universe is made up on Energy. We all have the potential to connect to this, but we have forgotten it in modern times. With the right intention and practice we can connect to the source of our power deep inside us. In connecting to our power, we connect to the power in the universe. The circle is complete.
In our everyday life, we have all kinds of barriers- internal and external. External barriers are the most visible. Overcoming them is what life is about. Internal barriers are our own limitations. Breaking through these reveals our true selves. Elusive as it sounds, it is, in fact, very very simple.
What happened next? Little did I know, once you pass through a barrier like this one, and with the help of a master like Al Huang, connect to your hara, you pass through a gate. It’s like opening a door that you did not even know existed, let alone know what lies through it. That, of course is another story…
