Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 13, 1990 TAG: 9003152548
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: SU CLAUSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Whatever he took with him had to fit in under his arm and pass through rigorous customs. Luckily, Alton had his valuables stashed in his brain.
"I came away with something that will last forever," he said.
Alton, who taught English at Virginia Tech during the 1980s, went to China in October 1987 to teach and prepare textbooks. However, he became immersed in an ancient science of strength and healing meditation called qigong (pronounced chee-gone) that has changed his outlook.
A black belt in karate, Alton says he's no longer interested in dominance and fighting. His focus now is strength and healing.
"It's destructive to beat on things all the time," he said. "It's destructive to your body and to your humanity."
The Chinese healing techniques, Alton says, have cured in months a badly mangled wrist that U.S. doctors said would be out of commission for a year. Alton broke his wrist in a bicycle accident and damaged it further in sparring sessions.
He taught writing at Hollins College in Roanoke County last fall, but lately has been teaching qigong classes at Wellness Support Services (formerly the Whole Life Resource Center) in Christiansburg.
He also has written a fictional history of his native Alabama, yet unpublished, and he sings and plays guitar in a rock band, Month of Sundays.
"I'm an odd fish, I know," he said. "I'm not the same person who left Blacksburg two years ago. I'm more Taoist. I don't hurry around trying to make things happen. I prepare, and then I let it happen. If it's meant to, it will."
Alton said he plans to start a school in the ancient art this spring. He said he is probably one of the few people in the country qualified to teach this northern Chinese art.
Besides qigong, he will teach wu shu, a physically demanding northern Chinese martial arts form. He also is considering a taiji meditation class.
His classes, he said, "are about as expensive as flight training, but the learning lasts a lifetime."
For $1,000, he will work with students for up to nine months. For wu shu classes, he charges $40 to 50 a month. He guarantees his students will get the effects of qigong within a month, taiji within another two months.
"Yes, it's taiji, not tai chi," Alton said. "One of my missions is to educate people about the proper terminology.
"The terms we usually hear are corruptions of the northern Chinese words - the original terms - that came to us out of southern China by way of Taiwan. Most of northern China, where these arts were developed, has been virtually inaccessible to outsiders."
He said qigong, wu shu and other forms of the Eastern martial arts were developed many centuries ago by early Chinese medicine men and Taoist monks.
Later Buddhists monks built upon these techniques. At that time, these arts took the form of moving and sitting meditations that stressed health and longevity.
"When the military discovered this, they took it apart and developed the branch that emphasized strength into a separate science," Alton said.
"My teacher sees that as a corruption. He says you shouldn't build up yourself to bludgeon. He took me to demonstrations by men who could break rocks on their heads and fall upon spears without harm. He was not impressed and read a book during the exhibitions. `They will not live long. They are abusing their bodies,' he told me."
Alton's Chinese teacher is a national champion in his specialty, the author of two books on the subject and a professor at the University of Beijing.
He chose Alton to be one of his three disciples out of a class of 7,000 because he wanted to spread his teachings to another country and because, in Alton's words, "I responded so well."
He came into class with a wrist that had been broken seven or eight times and was able in less than six months to go through the most rigorous workouts, too demanding for most physically fit men of 35.
"You have to be in extremely good condition to do this," Alton said. "That's why it is considered self-defense. The best self-defense is good condition. I don't mean just fighting; I'm talking about all the survival skills - eluding your aggressor, running away, striking forcefully and effectively."
Most U.S. sports stress overspecialization, Alton says.
"Runners only build up certain muscles; weight lifters really over-specialize. In qigong, we stress control of all the muscles, so you can do what you want to do," he said.
Alton describes training, which he does twice a day, seven days a week, as "grinding down a dagger until you have a fine, sharp needle."
As he moves through his routine with panther-like quickness, he is always precisely balanced. Even before he begins a kick that would throw even a dancer into orbit, he knows exactly where he will land and is crouched and ready for whatever he might encounter.
"In the 16th and 17th centuries, the intellectuals considered these movements poetry," he said. "They were popular as a way of communing with nature - both the nature outside and the nature in you. Look, they're based on animal movements."
by CNB