Strength and Modernism

The worldwide movement called 'modernism' seems to insist on squeezing everything 'traditional' to see what can be extracted of value. This view assumes that what is of value in tradition can and should be extracted from the valueless mumbo jumbo of belief and superstition. What this aggressive view misses when applied to internal arts is that they have already been refined many times- every generation goes through a process of unfolding the material of the past and making it their own. Internal arts, and gongfu in general, are super concentrated already.

When this 'separate out the chafe from the wheat' notion of modernism is applied to qigong, qigong seems to weaken and wither away. If we insist on examining qigong from the point of view of Modern medicine for instance, or sport based athleticism, at best qigong will appear to be mild hypochondria or a fantasy. It will seem too insignificant, too slow, too ineffective, and too boring!

But don't let that get you down. What happens if we turn the table around and use qigong to examine these other two? Modern medicine seems obsessed with inconclusive tests and invasive procedures, it's way too much- way too late. Sports look like competition induced trance, as a way to achieve glory with out sensitivity.

Such attempts to 'cross reference'-- or as the cliche goes, 'meld east and west'-- are delicate projects which too often bring with them a kind of enthusiasm which lacks sensibility. Fields of knowledge have their own inherent logic only when considered in context. We don't use molecular biology to analyze traffic congestion, or shipbuilding to analyze pastry making. This being said, indulge me in this brief look at what weight lifting is from a qigong point of view. I am often in situations of trying to explain qigong to people who lift weights. Normally I try to use language and terms which bring them into conversation comfortably, rarely do I get to explain what it is like to look out at the world from the perspective of someone practicing qigong. Here goes.

Weight lifters carefully damage muscles and other soft tissues a little bit at a time causing contractions in all the soft tissues around these minor injuries, generally restricting the circulation of qi. This then causes the muscles to grow larger and more rigid in order to reduce future injury to themselves and other soft tissues. Most people do it for the look or the feeling of strength. This suggests that they started out feeling weak, or are perhaps drawn to an idealized image of what they could be. Others lift weights because the work they do or the sports they play are characterized by regular injuries, the added bulk gives them some protection, and the reduced circulation makes it possible to sustain small injuries without feeling them.

The work and exercise people do often leaves a regrettable mark on their bodies. On the other hand, if you are good enough to play for the Chicago Bulls, do it! Why resist? Some fates are easier to unravel than others.

If my arguments seem to strong, perhaps there is a resolution. Daoism has always held that there needs to be many different ways for different people to fulfill their natures and that despite apparent differences we are all participants in a larger collective body and we actually need each other to be different in order to support a community, or a community of communities. The world is big enough for many different ways of being. My guess is that weight lifting has its true roots in the skillful wielding of heavy weapons and that perhaps what seems like two diametrically opposing views actually has a resolution in the practice of martial arts, something close to my heart.

If after reading this you still wish to lift weights, my suggestions are: Be graceful, develop evenly, and use loss of movement range as a measure of when you've gone to far. I will venture that the real distinction between muscular strength and muscular tension is: Strength happens where you want it to happen, tension happens where you don't want it to happen.

In the practice of qigong we do not want strength or tension and we tend to follow this simple adage: If it feels like strength-- it's tension! Qigong practitioners are adept at releasing unwanted tension from anywhere in their bodies.

Understanding Lineage

How does the process of resolving ones ancestors through the practice of gongfu manifest within the lineage of a particular practice?

From within a Chinese cosmological world view--when we practice qigong which has been passed down to us through many generations of adepts, we are receiving the collective "perfected" form of all the people in the lineage receding back through time. This practice resolves us (zheng). It resolves our fate (ming). It gives us a way to literally embody resolved action. If we remain sensitive to this process, the result --the fruition of practice -- is appropriate conduct in our daily lives.

This also works in the other direction. Imagine for a moment that the qigong we are doing seems to overwork our liver. Perhaps it is because someone in our lineage drank to much alcohol and her conduct is manifesting itself in the qigong we were taught and practice. If we keep precepts and practice appropriate action, our own healthy liver and our own healthy habits will eventually change the qigong practice itself, thus resolving the past and passing on to our students a healthier qigong practice. So the practice of qigong not only influences our ancestors and the lineage of our teachers, but also influences our students and our decedents.

Now I'm not a lineage fundamentalist, and I'm not a puritan either. But I think it is a little sad that just because Westerners don't understand Chinese cosmology, they toss it out like so much flotsam and jetsam.
In response to all the hucksterism and Qijocks in the qigong and yiquan worlds we are seeing more and more American qigongers and marital artists who reject any traditional Chinese ideas about how studying a martial art could improve your humanity or your health.

We now have qigong Atheists with a puritanical edge.

Understanding Chinese Culture #2

Cyrille Javary has some interesting things to say about the concept of yin-yang:

Since the idea of duality is so familiar to us, we are often presented with lists of the opposite qualities of yin and yang, such as:

yin yang
dark light
cold hot
low high
night day
interior exterior
rest action

This kind of list may be helpful, but it has one serious disadvantage, and that is the implied existence of the verb "to be" connecting the headings with each of their attributes. This kind of copulative verb, which binds a subject and an object, does not exist in Chinese. A Chinese cannot say that yin is dark, cold, or low. He or she cannot therefore think that dark, cold and so forth, are characteristics of yin but only that they are the results that manifest because of its action. Yin is not dark, it is a movement of darkness; it is not cold but a tendency toward getting cold; it is neither interior nor at rest but rather turning inwards and slowing down. The best way to express this particularity might be to use the verb "to become" in place of "to be." Therefore, yang would not be light but becoming light; it is not hot, exterior, or action but is becoming hot, becoming external, or becoming action.

Yin and yang are the concerted movements of life and exist only within the dynamics that unite them. (Javary 1997, p.7-8)

Roger Ames adds something to this thought and returns us to the concept yet not-concept of Dao:

In fact, categories used to define a Chinese world are fluid, and must be seen as often crossing the borders of time, space, and matter in an unfamiliar way. Dao so understood offends against the most basic of Western cultural distinctions, mixing together subject and object, as well as things, actions attributes, and modalities. Dao is at once"what is" (things and their attributes) and "how things are" (actions and their modalities), it is "who knows" as well as "what is known." (Ames 1998, 27-28)

Referring back to the previous post, ....The way in which conduct resolves and rectifies qi implies at least a two directional quality of time. Such action does not require intentionality (yi), rather it is our true nature (de), it is wuwei. Our completely resolved ancestors are like a supportive background to our actions. Resolved ancestors express themselves through us effortlessly as appropriate conduct --gongfu.

Understanding Chinese Culture

The perfect expression of a Daoist practice is simultaneously resolving and inspiring. Inappropriate conduct leaves things (qi) unresolved. Appropriate conduct resolves things (zhengqi). Unresolved ancestors manifest through the actions of those still living -- their descendants. Thus, we can see religious merit or gongfu, as the practice of resolving our ancestors inappropriate conduct through our own appropriate conduct. (Taoism and the Arts of China)(Schipper p.49)
The primary purpose of a Daoist funeral is to bring resolution to the recently dead.  It's as if they were not quite dead yet.

We in the West find these propositions difficult to grasp because we see the universe in terms of independent creation, causation and agency. The notion of qi presupposes that all events/things are mutually self-recreating.

Roger Ames makes some salient points about the nature of Chinese thinking. We says that are always participants in the unraveling of traditional Chinese subjects, never 'objective observers.'

From the Chinese perspective, agents cannot be decontextualized and superordinated in any final sense; to identify and isolate an agent [re: divine creator] is an abstraction which removes it from the concrete reality of flux, exaggerating its continuity at the expense of its change. Since change is interior to all situations, human beings do not act upon a world that is independent of them. Rather, they are interdependent in the world in which they reside, simultaneously shaping it and being shaped by it. Order is always reflexive, subject and object, are not contraries, but interchangeable aspects of a single category in which any distinction between the agent and the action, between subject and object, between what does and what is done, is simply a matter of perspective. (Ames 1998, p.20-21)

Martial Arts approaches to Training

"Be uncontentious and no one can compete with you"  (Dao de Jing)

In recent years a lot of qigong that is popularly taught has been categorized as martial arts qigong.  (I think it is mistake to use this category in the first place, but if we do use it we will have to divide it up further.)  This would be qigong created by and for people who were put in the position of needing to fight.

Traditionally in China the army was filled by both volunteers and draftees.  Resisting the draft often carried the penalty of killing the resister's entire family, so Chinese armies often represented diverse segments of the population.  This fact and the cultural diversity of China naturally led to a wide diversification of approaches to the warriors' life.  People expected to have to go to war, some trained for it from an early age and some did not.  Again, differing views created different  approaches to qi gong, or in this case military training

For convenience, I've broke the topic up into three main traditions.
The first tradition is trance induced fighting and is very old.   The idea here is that winning is more important than living.  Winning is so good and loosing is so bad that it would be worse to come back a looser than to die giving it your all.   The best example of this is trance possession, war dances.  A milder form is the haranguing that happens at sporting events.

The second military tradition would be training to build stamina and resist pain.  If you imagine yourself suddenly drafted into the military at age 14, the sooner you could freely thrust a long heavy spear, the better for your survival.  Training with weights and qi gong practices like Iron-t-shirt and forearm conditioning are all good examples.

The third martial tradition is the so called neijia (inner arts) which includes taijiquan, xing yi and bagua.  This type has the flavor and reluctance characteristic of those who cultivate weakness.  In this tradition the battle field is viewed as an expression of qi.  The battle field substitutes for the body in which the smooth flowing of qi is a priority, not avoiding war, but being uncontentious.  Looking for resolution is different than trying to win, although winning may be necessary for your survival.  This is not a passive tradition, in fact attacking first can easily be the quickest cleanest resolution with the least loss of life on both sides. How this tradition came about is an interesting question I plan to continue exploring. Perhaps people who had been cultivating weakness, were drafted and this was a natural expression of their circumstance.  This third traditions takes the longest to develop usable skills, and seems like a privileged position with in a military world.

Chinese generals sometimes called themselves Daoists.   Perhaps they were trying to show affinity to certain chapters from the Dao De jing like the one at the top of this post.  There is no connection between generals who called themselves Daoists, and religious Daoist.  They had a completely different job description.

In reality, many training methods fall somewhere in between the three traditions I outlined above.  Shaolin quan is somewhere between the second and the third tradition, depending on how it is practiced.  Taiji quan can be practiced with flaring nostrils and ferocious growls.  It follows, of course, that in peoples attempts to preserve methods from generation to generation that these different traditions have often been combined or entangled, creating many hybrids and combinations of methods and views.

Walking #2 (Toddlers')

Watching toddlers' movement can be really instructive.  Toddlers are unstable and actually rely not on strength or righting reactions (both of which develop and integrate with time) but on the softness of their bones and the fluidity of their joints.  They can make great errors in stepping and stumbling because they have a large range of motion in their joints.  They easily recover from falls.  Their bodies are buoyant and adaptable.  Their joints acutually pulse, or open and close, as they walk or reach out for something they want and draw it back toward their center (or their mouth.)

"...it's bones are soft, it's muscles are weak, and yet it's grip is very strong,"

(Daode jing Chapter 55, Liu ming)

Qi gong and internal martial arts combine these two approaches to movement, that of the very young and that of the very old. Both approaches can be considered weak.

From doing these practices, as we age, our joints have more space and we use the space that we have more efficiently. We return to balance without much strain or effort.

Somewhere I picked up the saying:  "Walk with your feet on the ground and your head in the clouds."

Walking #1 (Older people)

What is it like watching most older people move? Is it a source of pity or sympathy, or perhaps a foreboding omen of what we can some day expect ourselves? If we were to study older peoples' movements with respectful inquisitiveness what might we learn?

Young people walk by falling slightly forward to create momentum and continuously catching themselves with their front foot as they stride forward. This type of movement requires:

1. The ability to suddenly contract muscles should we mis-step or slip.

2. Well integrated reflexes, righting reactions, and equilibrium responses so we can stop abruptly.

3. Buoyancy in the joints(space/fluidity) and a fairly wide range of motion to account for sudden variation.

As people age it becomes more difficult to maintain the muscle tissue sufficient to catch oneself, right oneself and return to balance. As people age they often develop a reduced range of motion do to repeated injuries, including what we tend to call normal wear and tear. Even small injuries often leave scar tissue which reduces pliancy and range of motion. This along with a general loss of fluids in the joints leaves less space in the joints for movement. This not only makes large steps difficult or painful, but the righting reactions needed to re-balance are often out of ones range of motion or would themselves cause re-injury in the joints.

Big steps, or any type of reckless movement, brings the risk of falling and breaking already deficient bones. Thus how do older people walk? Hesitant little steps. They test the ground with each step and find their balance with each weight shift, doing their best to maintain their balance all the time.

Eventually, everyone's muscles and reactions degenerate and we are all, in a sense, forced to except the sensitivity that comes with weakness (in Daoism this process is called return).

When older people walk they draw on all the resources they have, (they'll take your arm if you offer it.)

Those in the past, who cultivated the Way,
Were subtle,mysterious, abstruse, penetrating,
Unfathomable, and so too deep to describe.
Because of this,
I can only tell you how they seemed.
They were cautious, as if crossing a river in winter.
Always watchful of danger on all four sides.
They were ceremonious and polite, like being a guest.
Yielding, like ice beginning to melt.
Plain and unconditioned, like an uncarved block of wood.
As open, as a valley.
Murky, like turbid water.
Who among you can be so murky and yet know
Quiet and Clarity within?
Which of you can enter stillness only to return to movement?
Those who keep this Dao,
Avoid fullness.
Because they are not full,
they can renew themselves and not be worn out.
Daode jing Chapter 15 (Liu ming)

This quality of movement, testing the ground before a weight shift, avoiding muscle contractions, essentially seeking depth and ease, are all things we do when we practice qi gong, taiji, or bagua. Aging may actually make them easier to do!

The Chinese Calendar/Almanac

Some guy named Jerome Weng in Singapore responded to my Youtube video African Bagua #1 with the following comment:

Bagua is a sequence of pairs to form 64 possible comination. That is related to I -Ching. SO what is it that all these matters swayed to African dance or Chinese Music. Please read and find out more of Ganzhi system found in Bagua. Basically the Ganzhi system, composing of the Ten Celestial Stems and Twelve Terrestrial Branches. The truth is the China has a strong link to Middle East, not Africa.

Ganzhi is part of the Chinese Calendar-Almanac which is the oldest continuously published book on earth. I have followed it closely for about 10 years. A closer look at the Tongshu (another of the many names for the whole calendar) will strongly support my case. One way to understand it is as a composite/synchronization of all the calendars used by all the different ethnic and regional religous cults of China and it's neighbors. It is a collection of all religions perceptions of time, (really!). So baguazhang is in a sense like the Calendar, a collection of all the different physiologies of trance practiced in China.
Within the Tongshu there are two time cycles that follow the Yijing (I-Ching). One takes a different hexagram each six days and goes through each line in sequence with the moon. Because the moon “math� doesn’t quite add up, some of the hexagrams are only five lines/days instead of six- the top line gets dropped.
The second cycle is not actually a 64 day cycle, it is a 72 day cycle which is tied to the sun and thus reverses the counting sequence on the solstices. It is a 72 day cycle because every eighth day is a divination day, 64+8=72.
For years I used my baguazhang practice to embody the hexagram for that day. If you know eight palm changes which correspond to the eight trigrams, you can practice each hexagram too. Think of each hexagram as a transition between two trigrams and practice that transition. (So for example, hexagram 63 is li [fire] transitioning into kan [water].) On divination days, improvise!

And I wasn't going to point to a direct African or Middle-Eastern connection but Julie Lee Wei will! Correspondences Between the Chinese Calendar Signs and the Phoenecian Alphabet.

What do Daoist's do?

What do daoists do? It can be divided up into three categories: Conduct, Hygiene, and Method.
An example of conduct practices are the Xiang er precepts. These are a first century C.E. summary of what the Daode jing suggests trying, like be honest, be weak, cultivate stillness, and practice wuwei. They are considered scripture for religious Daoists.(see Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures)

Hygiene practices conserve qi and make it easier to follow these suggestions, they include things like bathing practices, qi gong, and an appropriate diet.
Methods include things like zowang(sitting and forgetting), jindan(the elixir practice, internal alchemy), and ritual.

Hygiene practices can also be considered conduct practices because they are meant to have an impact on physical and qi manifestation of our daily conduct.

Qi gong, like taijiquan and baguazhang, is the practice of cultivating weakness in order to sensitize us to our impact on our environment and our environment's impact on us. For instance, I notice that my knee hurts when I walk up a bunch of stairs. If I don't know that qi gong is a 'conduct' practice, I might be inclined to think that my qi gong practice is the cause, instead of considering that the way I've been charging up stairs has been to use strength to cover-up an old knee injury, which practicing qi gong actually revealed.
Practitioners of these so called "long-life" practices, reach their peak level of performance in their 60's and 70's.

Taiji and bagua probably have their origins in ritual dances which rectify qi. That is they dance the qi (time and directionality) of the universe into a condensed moment and then dance it back out into the universe again, (wuwei). Each step containing birth and death, the rhythms of life.
Tracing taijiquan and baguazhang back to their original roots may require such a huge step backwards that it is out of our range, but it is a mistake to think they are purely martial.

Gongfu (kungfu) and Trance

Another possible source of gongfu is as a form of physical training to survive trance. As I've already said, the trance-medium tradition was pervasive in China for most of its history. Full-on possession by a god, as happens in both African religion and Chinese religion, is extremely taxing on the body. Wild movements may toss, whip, shake and gyrate the possessed person. I suspect that at some time in the distant past, this experience was a near death one; people who were repeatedly possessed had shorted lives. Yet in Africa as in China people who become possessed have extraordinary physical training which allows them to survive, some even with radiant health. In Africa this training is dance, and in China, at least in Taiwan and the South East Asian Chinese Diaspora, it is gongfu.

This is also one of my favorate explanations for the difference between internal and external martial arts (neijia and waijia). In Africa and the African Diaspora, priests and drummers are required to be familiar with the rituals for each deity and his/her particular characteristics. For instance, a particular deity is invoked through specific rhythms, dances, songs, and sacrifices. A deity might be known for being jealous, carrying a sword, being female, being associated with the color green, having a sharp wit, and of course, wielding power in a particular realm. However, both priests and drummers are forbidden to become possessed by the deity. Should they become possessed they lose their ritual statues. They are experts in managing and differentiating the different types of human trance.

Chinese religion is very similar. Orthodox Daoist priests were forbidden to become possessed yet their training involves becoming intimate with each type of trance. Daoism is, among many things, a systematic ordering of all types of deities by the characteristics of their local or national cults--and by the specific types of trance that lead to possessions by particular deities.

Taijiquan, xingyiquan, & baguazhang each teach different types of trance. Taijiquan, for instance, teaches peng, ji, lu, and an. Xingyi teaches the five 'phases' and the various animals.

External martial arts is training to survive possession by a deity. Internal martial arts is training to become familiar with the ways in which our bodies fall into trance so that we don't become possessed. What we know in the 'West' as Chinese martial arts is actually fall out from this religious tradition.

Here is a great article about trance-mediums in China.

Update: Because the term "priest" doesn't real translate perfectly into any language, it would be more accurate for me to say about African religion that atleast one person in a given ritual has the role of not going into trance.  Sometimes the "priest" may be the only person possessed.