05.07.08

Liver Cleanse?

Posted in Health, Weakness, Daoism, Qi Jocks at 3:07 pm by Scott P. Phillips

It seems like I’m surrounded by people doing various things they call a seasonal liver cleanse. Inevitably these people are thin. The project varies from simply taking a purgative every other day for a week, to not eating for 10 days.

As winter turns to spring we become more active. There is more sunlight and more qi available for getting things done (whether we exercise more or not). As the weather warms we also eat less. The combination of eating less and being more active actually slows down our digestion/metabolism.

Thus, toward the end of spring people start feeling overworked and stagnant, they want to “detox.”

The Daoist approach to Spring is to conserve while simultaneously taking advantage of the extra qi available. Ones diet should have lots of watery soup, lots of liquid, fresh greens. Less grain, smaller portions of meat, fruit only between meals. But it is still important to eat enough food for the type of activity you are doing. Then go to bed early.

It’s not the season’s fault that people have problems, and it is not really the type of food or how much. The problem is that people want to stay up late, they skip their afternoon naps and party right on through.

What most of these fasters and liver cleansers have is a miniature version of anorexia. But don’t get exited. To paraphrase the Daodejing: It’s not that people get dealt a bad hand, it’s that they take a situation of excess and make it more excessive; they take a deficient situation and make it more deficient.

Already strong vigorous athletes, sign up for Iron Man Triathlons. Skinny people who aren’t hungry, decide to fast.

There is nothing new here. Spring festivals everywhere are some version of dancing and drinking all night and waking up in the bushes with somebody else’s partner.

After a night like that, purification is sure to keep you on the roller coaster road to redemption.

When you fast for 10 days you may drift in and out of transcendent bliss, wandering, day dreaming your way through conversations. By the end of 10 days your sense of smell will be heightened as will your sensitivity to breezes and changes in light. You will be prepped for doing exorcisms. Even the subtlest ghosts will be brought out of hiding–by your acute weakness–where they can be captured or transformed. (Ghosts are unresolved commitments which linger because they don’t have enough qi to move on.)

Kids this time of year scream more. They also beg for food. They can’t seem to stop talking and they “accidentally” chop, punch, and crash into each other. So that’s my seasonal advice to all of you.

Cleanse your liver with loud sounds, laugh, sing, grunt.

Make yourself eat enough. Of course, don’t over eat! But don’t try to get through the day on a granola bar and a cup of coffee just because there seems to be enough qi “in the air.”

And if you practice gongfu, get a little rougher. Make those “accidental” slaps sting. Then take a bath and go to bed early.

After thought: Sometimes people who are overweight from too much rich food in the winter, try to lose weight with a “liver cleanse.” If you are really taking off a significant portion of weight through purging and fasting, you are also putting your heart at risk. This kind of up and down with your weight every year will likely shorten your life. Do it once; then use extraordinary discipline throughout the year to make sure you don’t gain the weight back again.

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03.23.08

Down With Health!

Posted in Health, teaching, Qi Jocks at 7:50 am by Scott P. Phillips

I’m really starting to hate qigong.

A member of my extended family who is a famous lawyer once said to me that she couldn’t understand people who do things for their health when they aren’t having any health problems.

I’m sick of hearing people ask, “What is this good for?” The operative this being some exercise or even some entire internal martial art.

But I’m even more sick of the answers other teachers give. “This is good for lowering blood pressure,” “This one is helpful for diabetes symptoms,” “Do this everyday and you’ll never get migraines,” “This is proven to help with balance problems as you age.”

This is all just as lazy as the infantile martial arts extremists who say you should practice so that if by a stroke of bad luck you happen to get attacked, you will be thoroughly trained to defend yourself against all odds.

Listen world! If you want to have a long life, your best shot is having friends of different ages in different walks of life. Be part of a complex active social network.

If you want to be healthy, take a walk everyday.

The reasons for studying internal martial arts are: truth and beauty. Study because you want to explore the truth about how your body works, how it feels, how it changes, and how it operates in diverse situations. Study because you want to experience the truth about the stuff you are made of, about the situation of your birth.

The discovery of beauty requires perception, sentience, introspection, and re-creation. The discovery of beauty comes from making mistakes, from getting it wrong, from mis-seeing things and then changing your way of knowing.

Please, trust me. If you know your body inside out from deep daily experience and exploration you will have tools for healing and transformation that are beyond what most other people can comprehend. It’s like an extra bonus that comes with the territory.

Qigong was invented as a distinct category during the Communist era to answer the inane question, “What is this good for?”

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02.13.08

1000 Times a Day!

Posted in Martial Arts, Qi Jocks at 5:05 pm by Scott P. Phillips

I heard a story about a guy who wanted to study martial arts from a Master who lived up in the Mountains in Taiwan.

Just getting to the cave where this guy taught his few dedicated students was a dangerious rocky slippery climb. He found the Master teaching outdoors and went up and begged the Master to teach him. The master shouted some garbled expletives and signaled for him to put his arm out so he could show him some technique. Upon making contact the student was promptly thrown to the ground. Disgusted, the Master shouted, “WHY ARE YOU SO WEAK?”

The student jumped to his feet and again begged the Master to teach him, and again the Master shouted, “WHY ARE YOU SO WEAK?” And then he shouted at all of his students, “WHY ARE YOU ALL SO WEAK?”

No one had an answer but the student again begged to be taught. The Master then sank down in to a horse stance, stretched his arms out to the sides and began opening and closing his hands, stretching his fingers wide apart and then squeezing them into fists in rapid succession. He then said, “Go away and do this 1000 times a day for a month. If you come back in a month and you haven’t done what Sifu has told you, SIFU WILL KNOW, AND SIFU WILL KILL YOU!”

The master then moaned, “Why are you soooooo weak? Get out of here!”

A month later the student came back, having done what he was told and began his studies.

I wrote a great post (if I do say so myself) about the difference between Gates and Bridges just before Thanksgiving. I’m linking to it now because I’m not sure anyone saw it then, and because Formosa Neijia had a funny link that is related.

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02.02.08

The Death Penalty for Qigong?

Posted in Qi Jocks at 7:39 am by Scott P. Phillips

Here is an article my readers might enjoy.

The long-named Columbia University Chinese Student and Scholars Association: United for China’s Peaceful Rising (CUCSSA) has taken the stance, as of a few weeks ago, that “Anyone who offends China will be executed no matter how far away they are!” and said so on their website for all to see. That’s what ‘peaceful rising’ means in Mandarin, right? Someone translate for me.

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02.01.08

Empty Force, Extraordinary Powers & My Qigong Headache

Posted in Qigong, Health, Martial Arts, History, Daoism, Qi Jocks, Books at 1:11 pm by Scott P. Phillips

I apologize for not writing more lately, I’ve been swamped with work, but I also promise that the next few weeks of blogging will be above average. (This is special because, as my regular readers already know, my secret to good blogging is that I make a point of shooting for just below average.)

I have a few more things to say about Qigong Fever: Body, Science, and Utopia in China, which is now at the top of my list of recommend books about qigong. ( The two others on the list are Breathing Spaces, and The Transmission of Chinese Medicine.)

The issues raised in this book have plagued me, and most serious martial artists, since the mid 1990’s when the first refugee/exiles from Qigong Fever started pouring into San Francisco and other cities all over the world. At one point local Baji master Adam Hsu got so fed up with all the wacko questions he was fielding he simply declared, “Qi doesn’t exist!”

The other day I was at a college faculty meeting sitting next to Professor Yu, a TCM Dermatology teacher I hold in high regard. I showed her my copy of Qigong Fever. Just how relevant this book is, was made immediately apparent by the first thing out of Professor Yu’s mouth. “My father invented qigong.”

“Oh,” I said,” Perhaps he is mentioned in this book.” As it turns out he is not mentioned in the book. Her father was You Pengxi, a xingyi teacher and early student of Wang Xiangzhai, the founder of the Yiquan system of internal martial arts. She explained that qigong came from xingyi.

As usually happens when I hear claims about qigong, I found myself trying to find what truth could possibly be behind the claim with out launching into my own agenda. After all, the book is quite clear about the process in which Communist party functionaries chose the term Qigong from a list of terms intended to frame body, breath and mind techniques under a single therapeutic category—while intentionally discarding the martial, religious, and conduct transforming aspects of traditional categories.

But of course I do have my own agenda, I grew up practicing gongfu and studied under Bing Gong who was a top student of Kuo Lien-ying who also studied with Wang Xiangzhai. We did standing meditation, and various routines we called warm-ups. No one ever used the word qigong—even thought that is what everybody calls it now.

Knowing that of course there could be a hidden history I don’t know, I begin with an inclination to agree with Professor Yu. 90% of what I see called qigong is fallout from gongfu schools– stuff that was taught or invented on a need-to-know basis for students that needed remedial exercises or were developing some unique quality of gongfu.

Unfortunately the profound idea that all traditional Chinese activities have a Dao– an efficient way of working or moving that conserves qi– is not mentioned in the book, nor was it mentioned by Professor Yu.

Professor Yu’s father, You Pengxi, was invited, and the CCP gave him permission, to come to Stanford University in 1980 to demonstrate his extraordinary qigong skills. He promptly defected. He had been a wealthy and successful Western trained dermatologist before the revolution (1949). He defected from Communist China the first chance he got. I do not know the details in his case, but it would not have been unusual for a well trained doctor to be publicly tortured and shamed during the Cultural Revolution (1967-1977). As far as I can tell, nobody taught anybody anything during the Cultural Revolution. Because of his association with Wang Xiangzhai (who died in 1963), he may have attracted students shortly after it became possible to teach again, but he can’t have been teaching qigong for much more that a year before he defected in 1980. So in that sense he may have indeed been the first qigong master “off the hump.” Professor Yu however claimed that he developed and named qigong around 1949.

During the first 15 years of the revolution (the 50’s) there was some gongfu training going on, but between fear, repression and a general lack of food, I have trouble imagining that much quality teaching was taking place. During this period fighting skills were officially scrapped away and discarded while the term gongfu (meritorious skill) was essentially replaced with the word wushu (martial art). I suspect that most of You Pengxi’s teaching and martial fame was from before the Communist Revolution. To be fair, their were some gongfu classes happening in the dark, before dawn and after dusk. In my imagination, admittedly shaped by George Xu, I see these as serious fighting classes where people came home bleeding more days than not.

During the 1950’s qigong as a public activity existed only in the Traditional Chinese Medical Hospitals. It was a cheap and patriotic form of therapy. Before the revolution the Communists, like their Republican and Nationalist rivals, were pro-Western science and anti-traditional (superstitious) healing of all kinds.

After the revolution, the combination of anti-Western hysteria, incompetent use of limited funds, and the obvious efficacy and availability of some traditional healing practices, led the CCP to embrace Traditional Chinese Medicine. Qigong was practiced in a very limited way during the 1950’s, mainly within the hospital setting.

Professor Yu talked about her childhood memories of Wang Xiangzhai, and her father’s closeness to him. She said her father gave Wang Xiangzhai a check book and told him to buy anything he wanted. Also that her father did not charge for lessons and only taught people with virtuous natures. She described her father and her mother’s (Yu Ouming) ability to blast multiple attackers to the ground without actually touching them. They were using qi alone!

Magical and extraordinary powers have been around for centuries, but totalitarian Communism didn’t leave any space for performance art. The book Qigong Fever explains how with the first crack of freedom in the 80’s the CCP gave authority to individuals only to the extent that everything they did was in the name of Science and Chinese cultural superiority. All knowledge still belonged to the state, but performers and charismatic could claim that practicing qigong in a scientific way would give you extraordinary powers— like seeing with your ears, reading peoples minds, or guiding missiles with your qi! A complex network developed consisting of Party officials, charismatic teachers, and researchers who were into qigong. The fact that they managed to make it illegal to criticize or be publicly skeptical of qigong, extraordinary powers, or pseudo-science, helped ignite and sustain the explosion of qigong into everyday life.

When I got home I searched for Professor Yu’s father in a PFD collection of essays about Wang Xiangzhai that I downloaded from somewhere in the Internet wilderness. He is credited with being the source of all Yiquan lineages which practice empty force (gongjin), the ability to throw someone with out touching them.

If such extraordinary powers are possible (and I’m forbidden by precept from actually commenting on their veracity), I’ve always thought they would still waste an enormous amount of qi, and thus be in total contradiction with the whole point of daoist inspired practices; namely, to conserve jing and qi! Not to mention the temptation anyone with actual blood flowing in their veins would have to tip their opponent’s hand during a poker game or to cop the occasional feel from across the room. (Yes, I know, I would never be allowed to learn such practices because I’m clearly a man of dark virtues.)

My point here is simple. If anyone— from the people at New Tang Dynasty TV (Falungong) to your friendly neighborhood qi jock—wishes to have the right to be taken seriously by me on the subject of qigong–then they must read Qigong Fever!

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01.29.08

Qigong Fever

Posted in Qigong, Health, History, Qi Jocks, Books at 11:03 pm by Scott P. Phillips

If this book I’m holding here had been published in 1997 instead of 2007, I probably wouldn’t have set out to write my own book on the history and cultural origins of qigong. I also probably wouldn’t have failed in that endeavor and ended up putting my collection of writings up on the Internet in the form of a blog called “Weakness with a Twist”—and you wouldn’t be reading it!

Qigong Fever: Body, Science, and Utopia in China, by David A. Palmer. Published by Columbia University Press, 356 pages.
The book is a history of Qigong, which appropriately frames the subject as a political movement built around a body technology with religious characteristics, and scientific pretensions. It is a book which resists summarization. Never the less I’m going down that road.

Qigong Fever tells a really shocking story of mass hysterical enthusiasm. The kind of popular insanity that can only happen in a world where 2+2=5 if the Party says it does! The state in essence banned religious devotion, magic tricks, spontaneous expression, deep emotion, and even self-respect. The Party claimed to be in favor of using science to save the world, but obviously science cannot be practiced in an environment where 2+2 might equal 5. It was from this skewed environment that qigong came to be capable of healing anything and everything. All over China otherwise ordinary people could see with their ears, control guided missiles with their minds, tell the future while balancing on eggs—qigong became the source for the development of everything weird, magical, new age, charismatic, and psychic. That all this could happen in the name of science would already be beyond normal comprehension, but the Communist Party brought what would otherwise have been just weird and wacky to a fever pitch by issuing an order essentially forbidding skepticism.

The title Qigong Fever refers to the explosion of interest and participation in qigong methods, research, charismatic religion, and a whole lot more that reached a peak in the decade from 1985 to 1996, after which the government cracked down on qigong people in general and particularly on the followers of the dangerously unbalanced Li Hongzhi, known collectively as Falungong.

Palmer tasks himself with creating a historic record for a subject that is made up of seemingly limitless false claims and (even more challenging for the historian) partially false claims about its origins and functions. In addition he tackles problems as an anthropologist carefully milking the overlapping realms of scientism, charisma, national consciousness, repression, religious impulse, and shifting political networks into a frothy qi infused tonic.

The political alliance that made the qigong movement possible eventually fell apart creating outlaws and refugees. The last chapter of the book deals specifically with the Falungong and its transformation from a qigong cult into an outlaw and exiled revolutionary utopian movement.

The book has a lot of footnotes. Palmer draws on a wide array of original Chinese sources for historical material and makes good use of the history of ideas. His writing moves easily between telling the story, putting it in context, and bringing in other peoples ideas and research to convey the depth of his analysis.

If you like this blog you’ll like this book.

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01.27.08

Yi

Posted in Fighting, Martial Arts, Bagua zhang, Qi Jocks at 8:04 pm by Scott P. Phillips

In the Early 90’s when George Xu came back from judging a tournament on the East Coast, he told us that he had been in an interesting and friendly argument with Nan Lu, a baguazhang practitioner in New York City.

The argument was over how to describe high level Yi. Yi is most often translated “intension,” but the English word doesn’t do it justice. Some modern Qi jocks now use the word Yinian, generally meaning something more like “mind” but in qigong circles it simply refers to “the pathway along which you intend to send qi.”

When George Xu wanted to explain to a beginning student what yi was, he would describe two Doberman-pinchers. Both were told to charge at a group of people. One dog got up close and hesitated, jumping around and barking, not sure who to bite. The other dog, the one with clear yi, immediately bit the neck of the guy with the blue shirt.

George had been arguing that one should train with “killer” yi, the mind should be focused exactly on how to kill the opponent. Nan Lu was arguing that one should have “zero” yi, a mind like a translucent sky. George wasn’t willing to concede but he thought Nan Lu’s argument had merit.

A more common use of the word Yi, one that nearly all Chinese martial arts teachers use, means to have an awareness of technique. A student has yi in his form when a knowledgeable observer can see the fighting idea in the students movement. Numerous throws, joint breaks, and striking combination possibilities should be apparent.

Every technique must have the correct force trajectories, and these must be practiced on a live partner. These trajectories themselves are also called yi. Martial arts techniques use trajectories which are vectors, arcs, and spirals. All of this is referred to as yi.

One of the magical things about a gongfu form or routine is that because the same movement can be used for many different techniques, a seasoned practitioner will develop more and more complex yi as the years go by. A single movement can have a hundred different expressions.

This seasoned and complex yi at some point starts to look less specific. With very clear yi, it looks like I’m making an upper-cut to the chin. But if I’ve thoroughly trained 15 different techniques for that movement I can do the movement in what we might call an undifferentiated potential state. Instead of a specific technique or fighting idea showing itself, the yi starts to look like clouds swirling around the body. It is not that you actually see the clouds, what you see is all the possibilities at once.

Practicing at this yi level also feels like clouds, or sometimes like water, fire or mist. Once a practitioner reaches this level, she stops thinking in terms of techniques.

Kumar Frantzis said about Xingyi that when you strike you should be thinking “Only One Thing.”

A Samurai by the old code (budo) didn’t need technique, he needed only to be willing to die.

Wang Xiangzhai, one of the greatest internal martial artists of the 20th Century, said that “the yi should always be round.” I’m working on it.

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01.12.08

A Long Strong Spirited Response

Posted in Health, Weakness, Qi Jocks at 7:30 pm by Scott P. Phillips

Dave Randolph over at iron-body offered a spirited response to my somewhat comic post entitled, “The Two Finger Rule.” He offered several challenges to my anti-strength position so I thought it would be a good idea to explore them.

Do you see all the obese, people out there? People who can barely carry their groceries into the house. Frail old ladies & men who can’t get out of a chair by themselves or have to use an extension thing on the toilet so they don’t have to squat down so far.

Yes, I do see them. Obese people eat too much. People get old and die. I’m not sure, because I haven’t done it yet, but I think getting old and dying takes a lot of practice. If you try to do it without practicing, you can expect some extra complications. Internal Martial arts like Taijquan can be understood as practicing for death.

Correct strength training does not impede the flow of fluids or qi.
Are you saying that all the old drawings of monks carry water up and down steps, swinging stone lock etc were wrong in trying to build functional strength??

Are you confusing true strength training with body building? Yes building bodies is wrong. It teaches muscle isolation and creates huge muscles that are not necessarily strong and that will creates circulation issues. But proper strength training, and I’m speaking of barbells & dumbbells, but things like kettlebells, clubbells, sandbags etc, that teach full body integration and coordination, causes so many positive responses the body in terms or weight control, mobility, flexibility, coordination not to mention the positive effects on hormonal balances, sleep, digestion, among other things

If the definition of “correct strength training” is that it does not impede flow of fluids or qi, than I would be inclined to agree. However; the people I’ve watched training with these AKC Kettle Bells (pictured to the right) do indeed restrict qi circulation, and they compress qi as well.

But let’s agree to drop the word qi, because it has too many possible meanings for such a concrete disagreement. What I mean by qi in this case is a quality of animation that is characteristic of active children and predatory animals.

Monks in Asia carry water on their shoulders, people in Africa and South America carry it on their heads. The skill of carrying water is to continuously transfer all of the weight to the ground and not take any of it in your muscles. Since water tends to slosh around, this requires constant movement and is perhaps one of the reasons we see such great hip articulation in dances like the Samba and the Rumba.

I’ll concede that if someone is really good at water carrying and they get help putting the water on their shoulders or their head, they can carry a heavy load and avoid loosing sensitivity.

…Part of my strength training includes lots of mobility work for joints and muscles as well as qi gong.

I think the Scott Sonnon, Iron-Body, movement to loosen your joints and use awkward weights to stimulate your body to be more efficient is wonderful! Now just drop the strength part!

I love business, and I love this new health kick. But if you are looking for high level internal martial arts, strength will inhibit your development. My point is not to convince the world I’m right, I don’t think sensitivity is for everyone. Perhaps I’m a weakness elitist in that way. Then again, remind what we need strength for?

By the way can you pick up a 75 lb child with two fingers from each hand? No? then how are you going to pick one up & carry he/she if they are injured & can’t walk? Call for someone to help you pick them up?

I would like the world to know that I have two really strong fingers, and I’m undefeated in thumb wrestling. Also, I’m not saying only use two fingers, I’m saying test whatever you are about to lift with two fingers. After the test feel free to add the other fingers, a hip, a chin, or even a whole arm. (And we’ve all heard the story about the lady who flipped over a car because her baby was underneath it. If you’re healthy and you really need the strength, it’ll be there.)

As for picking up kids, two fingers in the armpits usually works, but in my experience they are not shy about biting, better to get help.

Since an injured kid is one less kid I have to teach, I should leave it at that but… I noticed the Iron-Body website does trainings for firefighters who obviously are in the business of rescuing people and their kids. This is great stuff. I admire the business model. But it does raise the question, do firefighters really need extra strength?

You know those ninja shoes? Well, they aren’t actually ninja shoes, they are called jika tabi. All construction workers wear jika tabi in Japan. That’s right, Japanese construction workers think of themselves as crafts people, not laborers. They don’t drop things on their feet, so they don’t need steel-toed boots.  Sometimes conventional thinking is a limitation.
When I was born, all the fire fighters in San Francisco were straight, white, over 6 feet tall, male, and at least 185lbs. We had a Whites Only Union until 1990! San Francisco currently has twice as many fire fighters, engines, and firehouses as we need. Whenever a city official with balls comes along, the Unions go to the sentimental-fireman-gushing-voters and have that official castrated.

If we didn’t have to pay for all that fire fighter corruption we could afford to design and build all new lightweight efficient equipment and we could even have midget fire fighters. Strength is an issue here only because it protects a class of aging, compassionate and heroic men–that should have been let go a long time ago.

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12.09.07

Underwear

Posted in Health, Qi Jocks, Clothing etc. at 10:19 am by Scott P. Phillips

When I was studying Chen Style Taijiquan with Zhang Xuexin we practiced outdoors in San Francisco which can be quite foggy even in the Summer. One day he showed us how many layers of long underwear he had on: Five, plus a pair of polyester slacks. Keeping my legs warm has been a part of my practice ever since, but I’ve never gotten past two pairs of long underwear, and that on a very cold day.

Before that I sometimes went “commando.” (For those of you not familiar with modern slang, that means “without.”) Unfortunately I did about 6 years of Indian Classical Dance, which is highly rhythmic, improvisational, and has footwork simular to Flamenco but done with bare feet and 8 pounds of bells wrapped around each ankle. I say unfortunately not because it wasn’t a great experience, it was, and I certainly improved my gongfu because of it. The problem is that I think I busted a nut. I mean all that foot slapping took a toll on my testicular ligaments.

All this is just to say that I need to wear underwear. The problem with that is that most underwear has tight elastic which can really cut off circulation. Elastic tends to shrink, so even a comfortable pair of underwear can become uncomfortable over time. I don’t know about you guys (ladies?) but I need to have my kua open when I practice. I need to feel the “gate” between my torso and my legs surging with qi, or blood/lymph, or breath, or whatever you want to call it. Inhibition sucks.

Many years ago I had a girlfriend who happily braved the gay section of Macy’s to by me two sets of silk underwear that were extremely strong and comfortable. I loved them. Unfortunately, by the time they started falling apart, we had broken up and I had to go to Macy’s by myself, only to find that this line of underwear had been discontinued (Alfe was the name I believe.)

When I first met my current partner I was so frustrated I had taken to snipping the elastic with a pair of scissors, which looked mangy and which she was kind enough to remind me of at a party last night.

Then I discovered Rips! Rips rule! Totally comfortable, absorbents, supportive–all that stuff. They are the only drawstring boxer-briefs on market and they are really well made. My circulation is flowing.

The packaging is rather “pretty” with a peace sign, a heart and the Chinese character for “prosperity” printed on it. This suggests that they may or may not be marketing to martial artists. Still, they are great, they are on sale ($13), and if a thousand of you buy them from Amazon, I promise not to talk about underwear again!

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11.05.07

Conference on Daoism

Posted in Qigong, Martial Arts, History, Daoism, Qi Jocks, Books at 12:59 pm by Scott P. Phillips

On Saturday I made it to the last session of this conference on Quanzhen Daoism, which was exciting. Unfortunately I didn’t get any of the papers in advance so I’m just reading them now.

David A. Palmer and an old friend of mine Elijah Siegler are collaborating on an interesting project investigating the relationship between Daoism in America and Daoism in China. Unfortunately the paper is in draft form with a request not to cite or circulate, so I’m not going to talk about it, but it seems like a good time to link to my own “American Daoist, Tours China” article. This is really just a bunch of emails I sent out to friends in 2001 before I had even heard the word “blog” but if you can stomach the jarring transitions and feeble use of paragraphs, I do explore some of the same questions these scholars are asking.

David A. Palmer has a book I’m dying to read and review, but If you want to pick it up before I review it, here it is: Qigong Fever.

I met Terry Kleeman whose book Great Perfecton deals with the multi-ethnic origins of Daoism. It is a difficult read, but if juicy footnotes make you hot, you’ll love it.

I also talked with Paul R. Katz whose book Images of the Immortal deals with Lu Dongbin and the founding of Quanzhen Daoism. When I read this book my particular interest was in his thorough exploration of the on-again off-again relationship of Quanzhen (Perfect Realization) to Zhengyi (Orthodox Daoism).

Professor Katz immediately picked up on my interest in the links between martial arts and ritual performance, exorcism and social organization. He recommend three books, so I have some serious reading to do. He also has a new book out called When Valleys Turned Blood Red: The Ta-pa-ni Incident in Colonial Taiwan.

Lastly I’ve gotten some requests for references backing up my claims about rhythm and music in my videos African Bagua and African Bagua 2. So I plan to write a few blogs on Daoism Martial Arts and Music. Let me just say up front that I stand by the claims I make, but if you want to understand why I make the claims I do, the place to start is reading all the major writers of the 100 Schools who wrote on music during the Warring States Era (400-200 BCE), starting with Xunzi, Mozi, and Hanfeizi.  Laozi, Zhuangzi, Confucius and Mencius also all comment on music and its place in society.  There isn’t one book to read.  The major writers on Daoist ritual all have chapters on music.  As someone who came to Daoism and Martial arts with a dancer’s ear, I’ve listened for references to music all along and slowly put together my ideas.

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10.28.07

American Qigong Ethics (part 3)

Posted in Qigong, Health, Martial Arts, Taijiquan, History, Qi Jocks, Books at 2:19 pm by Scott P. Phillips

Here are a few more American Qigong Ethics.

2. Know the actual history and cultural context of your qigong methods. Are they part of a larger system or tradition? What inspired them? Don’t exaggerate your knowledge or experience–or that of your teacher.

3. Be explicit about what your qigong methods are supposed to do. Being honest here may be counter intuitive. Because kinesthetic learning is characterized by continuously changing cognitive understanding, my best explanation of what a method will do is the one catered to the kinesthetic knowledge of the listener. In other words, this will not lead to pigeon-holing. More likely it will lead to complexity with some ambiguity.

For example, in In Erle Montaigue’s book Power Taiji (Which by the way I like because his writing has the flexibility of a conversation.) he lists the Taijiquan posture/movement “Repulse Monkey,” as being good for the Gallbladder. While I have a clear and distinct perception of my gallbladder and can evaluate “Repulse Monkey’s” direct effect on my gallbladder, most people can not. I also happen to know that in classical Chinese the term “gallbladder” is not only technical but highly metaphoric, it means to open into a springtime of revitalization that will re-inspire and give support to your decision-making capabilities. In contrast, in English the gallbladder produces bile.

If you understand the statement “Repulse Monkey is good for the gallbladder” the way I do, than you also understand that it is not referring to a remedy. It is an engaged process of complete embodiment. My regular readers will recognize this statement as being in tune with a world view that encouraged long-life, slow motion, continuous and consensual exorcism.

4. Help your students understand their own motivations. Don’t encourage people to practice for silly reasons or reasons which will eventually leave them feeling disappointed.

(For instance, regular practice of taijiquan will make your calf muscles smaller, so don’t expect to look better in These boots!)

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10.26.07

American Qigong Ethics (part 2)

Posted in Qigong, Health, teaching, Weakness, Qi Jocks at 12:20 pm by Scott P. Phillips

Recently I was having an informed and thoughtful conversation about schools with a woman who has a high level job in statewide education when she casually mentioned that she studies qigong with a real master.

“Oh great,” I say, “tell me more.”

She tells me he leads a cancer group at one of the local Integrative-Medicine hospital clinics. “What makes him a master?” I ask, explaining that Qigong as medicine is a pretty new idea, and that taxi drivers in China are awarded the title “Master” (Shirfu) as well.

“Oh he’s amazing.” She said, “We do a style of walking Qigong around a small park and one day a drunk homeless guy stood up and moved imposingly toward our path shouting insults. My master just waved his hand and the guy promptly went over to a bench and fell asleep.”

“O.K.” I thought to myself, “Obe-Wan Kenobi did that in the Star Wars movie too!” “That’s an extraordinary claim,” I say. “Are you learning how to do that? What other sorts of claims does he make?”

“Oh, he is very modest. He would never make such a claim himself. I just do it everyday because it makes me feel healthy.”

Now, eye rolling aside, I’m not a truth junkie. I don’t want to pop this woman’s balloon. I don’t know what he is personally claiming, but she has apparently talked herself into exercising everyday. Who am I to get in the way of that?

Still there is a significant chance that I have been practicing qigong longer than her “Master,” who I suspect invented a lineage and an improbable training history. It diminishes me in two ways. First, some people will assume I’m not very knowledgeable because I don’t do these sorts of amazing feats. Second, other people may associate Qigong with these improbable claims and disregard my knowledge altogether. Both of these things happen all the time.

Does her master have some ethical responsibility to clarify his powers of agency?  How different is this from Jerry Alan Johnson who wrote a dictionary sized book on Qigong that I wouldn’t even use as a door-stop?  Johnson uses the “sword-fingers” mudra to do “needless” acupuncture, and one of his students is the main Qigong teacher at a Berkeley Acupuncture School.
I acknowledge that charismatic Qigong teachers get disciplined health commitments from their students or clients that I don’t get. If you tap into a client’s insecurities, or their desire for power, by convincing them that they will be freer, or happier, or stronger, or more preceptive, or even more intuitive, if only they quit eating fried chicken and do some groovy breathing exercise–who am I to get in the way? Those commitments are legitimately good for one’s health. Other people are free to subordinate themselves to people and ideas.

The first American Qigong Precept that I propose is this (I know, it’s a little long for a precept):

When you don’t know, admit you don’t know! Teach your students to do the same.  Do not make claims about healing properties that you can not substantiate.  Clear explanations are O.K., anecdotes are not unless you say, “This is an un-substantiated anecdote!”

Good storytelling can be a useful teaching method because it has the power to make metaphors memorable.  When you present stories as history, go ahead and give the good-guys white hats and the bad-guys black hats–but beware, your are walking a fine line–make sure your students are sensitive to the presence of ambiguity.
If your knowledge comes from intuition admit that, and don’t cross the line of claiming to know with certainty.

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