Taijiquan Jeopardy

I made up a Jeopardy game from written questions my college students submitted about Taijiquan. This student asked a simple "How?" type question. In order to answer accurately I felt it was important to redefine some basic terms.

Guess the question:

Think about the role of a doctor in traditional Chinese society where health is considered accumulated merit (gongfu) which one dedicates to others—and to the resolution of one’s own unresolved ancestors. In this sense, health and learning are similar because they both involve the accumulation of merit for the good of everyone.

Health is a result of conduct, ancestors, and environment: Jing-Qi-Shen.

The Process of dedicating one’s merit is fundamental to Chinese culture (and Traditional Chinese Medicine.)

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Where and When to Practice

When training in traditional Chinese arts, finding the time to practice consistently, actually setting time aside everyday, is most peoples biggest obstacle. The second biggest obstacle is trying to find a safe comfortable place to practice undisturbed.

Some people begin with a more flexible fate then others. Changing ones schedule around or going to bed an hour earlier are possible solutions. Beginners can try setting aside a consistent amount of time everyday at the same time of day and following through even if they don't feel like it. The commitment itself actually makes things easier. The best qi of the day for practice is early morning, between 3am and 8am, but other times are also okay.

Then there is the topic of where to practice. Some knowledge of fengshui is helpful here. The basic idea of fengshui is that the site itself is the most important consideration. Since you will be taking qi(inspiration) from the environment, the best location is a place you want to be, and that you can come to consistently. A place where you feel safe comfortable and can be alone. It should be a place where the air is fresh(free to circulate) yet still (absence of wind).

If your practice location is too cold your circulation may slow down, but it can also be drawn in to a deeper level. Cold places can be fine if they are not damp or wet and you are bundled up and out of the wind. Wind easily disrupts weiqi, the qi on the surface of our waking body. A healthy person will develop weiqi which complements the environment they practice in. The human body is adaptable; however, the effect a particular environment is having on ones practice is of vital importance and requires regular reassessment.
The classical ideal of the perfect place to practice is in a southward facing valley surrounded by gently slopping hills on three sides with the highest point to the north. A traditional Chinese walled garden attempts to replicate this environment in an urban area. The light well in the center of traditional Chinese architecture also tries to reproduce this qi experience.

Considering the totality of your experience over time, you may want to avoid the following:
Cluttered rooms
Open corridors, or pathways where people or animals are likely to walk by.
Standing in direct sunlight in mid-day
Stagnant water, mosquitoes
Things that look like they could fall
Sharp projections.
Where people are sick.

Even expert knowledge of fengshui can not overcome a 'bad' site, the first consideration should be the quality of the site. People who find a great place to practice dramatically increase the likelihood of bringing their practice to fruition.

Breathing

In general I teach that yin proceeds yang. Structure leads to function. However, the opposite is also true. Where you begin, what you emphasize, will create a different style of qigong.

Generally speaking the correct posture will automatically have the right breathing and the right breathing will get you to the correct posture. In practice, however, the way we breathe tends to hold us in certain postures. Breathing is a natural anesthetic, which covers up all types of pain. When we use our breathing to try and force circulation to a certain area, the area tends to become numb. Over years, we accumulate these numb spots and our posture becomes more rigid, our breathing more restricted.
I generally teach people to stand, and to move, before teaching them breathing; however, the two are really inseparable.
Body Image


Cultural conceptions about how to breath and how to stand (posture) are so tied up in emotions, passions, fantasies and identities that either approach can take a bit of unraveling. My experience is that if I say to someone "take a deep breath," they lift up the front of their ribcage (actually constricting their lungs which are mostly in the back) and they tend to harden their diaphragm in a muscular, sometimes even aggressive way. If I say, "breathe naturally," they become self-conscious ("you mean I'm not breathing right?"). Anxiety leads to tension which produces more restriction.

Instead I say, "Take shallow breaths in and out from your nose all the way down to your belly(dantian) and slowly/gently allow the breath(qi) to fill up your lower back/kidney area(mingmen)"

Your breathing should be like the silk spinner and the jade carver.

The silk spinner uses a gentle continuous pull, no sudden jerks, and a smooth even turnaround.

The jade carver doesn't leave any scratches; the breath is inaudible, silent, with no rasping.

The great jade carver discovers what is in the jade as he is carving it, the mediocre jade carver plans out what they are going to carve in advance.

Breathing is essentially about taking the nutritive qi of heaven into all the channels of the body. Our posture is formed in our qi environment, home, school, work, car etc.... How we breath is formed inside our posture. Trying to force a particular type of breathing which doesn't match the physical structure and posture of our bodies will simply be a strain. Frustration itself is a kind of breathing.

The way to change breathing is to change physical structure and posture. The way to change posture is to change the environments we live in and move through, this is the subject of fengshui. The aspect of fengshui that relates directly to qigong is the question of what environment will be most supportive of our practice. Through practicing qigong in a supportive qi environment, we develop sensitivity to the effects the larger bodies we are living in have on our constitution, and on our breathing.

Qigong should not be used as a way to overcome a negative environment.

A Non-Epiphany Art

Chinese Martial arts and Qigong from a Daoist point of view are non-transcendent traditions.

These arts are primarily about revealing the way things actually are, they are not self-help or self-improvement regimes.

However, most people are on a transcendent path. We want to improve ourselves. We want to heal. Or we want to get a 'leg up' on the next guy, spiritually, morally, physically, or intellectually. So most of us regularly, and all of us sometimes, practice these arts in a transcendent way. We try to get better!

The basic Daoist outlook is that life is not a struggle, we're alright the way we are. We're nice enough, strong enough, smart enough, and we have enough qi. Practice is just a way of tuning our appetites for exercise, stillness, sleep, fighting, nutrition, contact with other people, etc.... We are naturally disciplined and curious.

This outlook is sometimes framed in a quasi-transcendent way as a simplification process, a letting go, a returning to our original nature(s).

Thus, epiphanies are really not part of the tradition. Now and then we learn a trick, or discover something cool, and we get excited. But it's not like most Yoga classes, where people brag about being filled with the glorious pure light of the universe everyday, before knocking back a double soy latte, jumping in the hybrid for an hour commute and then punching the clock.

Anyway, in almost 30 years of practice I've actually had two epiphanies.

1. After years of practicing with very low stances and yet constantly hearing "sink your tail-bone," "go lower," and "song;" one day I did just that, I sank my tail-bone. I simply understood on a kinesthetic level what my teachers had been trying to teach, and from then on I did it correctly.

2. After doing a couple years of chansijin (taijiquan silk reeling exercises), one day my chest just relaxed. For a week after that my appetite for food dropped to about half a meal a day. Presumably I was using so much effort keeping my chest up, that when I stopped my body had some reserves left to run on. After a week my appetite came back, but it's been a little smaller ever since that day.

Belief

If you get a chance to read this article about my trip to China in 2001 you'll see I ask people lots of questions about religion. At that time, if the subject of religion, TCM, or qi was raised, 95% of the time I would be asked, "Xin bu xin?" Xin is one of those Chinese words that means lots of things. Here it means, "do you believe or do you not believe (in qi, TCM, or religion)?" But the word xin, like our word faith, could also mean trust. (It's a little creepy being ask this all the time.)

This pervasive question is new to Chinese culture. As far as I know, it does not get asked in Taiwan. Where did it come from?

Marxism, since Raymond Aron first pointed it out, has been exposed as having the trappings of a religion. One of the characteristics of Marxism is that it takes its definition of religion from Christianity. Thus despite the fact that Marxism claims to be anti-religion, it defines religion only in Christian terms.

"Do you believe in God? and that...." is a Christian question. Jews, for instance, do not frame religion this way (to Jews it is a series of laws). Neither do Muslims (to Muslims it is an act of submission). Certainly the world's Animists don't focus on this question either.

Chinese Communists use this "do you believe...?" question to subvert all other forms of authority. Chinese religious traditions do not require belief. Use of the term qi does not require belief. The practice and efficacy of any type of medicine does not require belief.

The practice of martial arts, particularly, has absolutely nothing to do with belief. I'll even go further. There is really no such thing as theory. All we have are lists of experiments and protocols for achieving results. The best that can be said about theory is that it is a tool for inventing new experiments. It doesn't have any real world existance.

By the way, everything I have just said is completely compatible with Orthodox Daoism, except that perhaps I've violated the precept "be uncontentious," or another one, "do not comment on the veracity of claims made by (other) cults."

The Chinese world view was first articulated by the founder of Religious Daoism, Zhang Daoling. A thousand years later, during the Song Dynasty it was adopted by the Chinese Government as Orthodoxy. This world view posits that all things and events are mutually self-recreating, there is no external agency. The source of all inspiration and the process by which all inspiration comes into being, is constantly available.

The role of belief in such a world view does not survive Occam's Razor. I bring all this up because it is a constantly reoccurring issue. People often think that belief in qi will somehow improve their Acupuncture treatments. If it works on animals and small children, I think it is fair to say, belief is not a factor.

Shoot first. Ask Questions Later.

This is pretty much my approach to teaching martial arts.

"Shoot first. Ask Questions later." It is description of American pragmatism. We get the job done, and then we figure out how to explain it.

I've been listening to woefully inadequate explanations of the origins of Chinese Martial Arts all of my life. I started this blog largely to express what half a lifetime of study has revealed about those origins, so I'm not surprised that I've got people saying I'm wrong.

The first question that has to be answered is a tough one and will probably take me at least 10 postings:  Why did Chinese culture create Martial Arts, when no other culture did this? (I plan to stand by this outrageous statement and I will deal with the exceptions in  in a future posting--they are Indonesia, Cochin-India, Muay-Thai, Korea and Japan.  I've already dealt with Africa in my videos.)
The term "cultivate qi" is used in Daoism a lot, to some extent in martial arts, less so in TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), and for practically everything in qigong.

I asked my future wife(?) who is an Acupuncturist, what she thought "cultivating qi" meant? Her answer, "Live Free, or Die Hard!" Which we both saw and loved.

To 'cultivate qi' means to do experiments which reveal your true nature (de). This of course can be contrasted with experiments which obscure your true nature.

But this poses the question, what is your true nature? The Chinese term 'true nature' is de, which has many different translations because it actually means a whole bunch of really different things. For instance, in Confucius Analect's, it is usually translated "virtue." It was on the basis of this translation that European Enlightenment thinkers were able to argue that a non-Christian could be virtuous, and thus fully human.

Nei Jia Quan

Jess O'Brien edited together a bunch of interviews with internal martial artists called Nei Jia Quan Internal Martial Arts, Teachers of Tai Ji Quan, Xing Yi Quan, and Ba Gua Zhang.
What I like about the book is I can really imagine these various teachers are talking to me. In fact, it's pretty funny, because a lot of the time I have this sense that the teachers are shouting at me. I'm willing to bet Paul Gale likes to shout. Here is a nice excerpt:

"'The bottom of the foot is the back.' There's a physical reality of it that the bottom of the foot is the back, meaning that the bottom of your foot is pulling your back forward. You have to learn to move that way, otherwise there's no foundation. You'll always get swept and knocked down because you'll be top-heavy."

I think my favorite section was the interview with Luo Dexiu where he talks about the cultural barriers he had to get around in order to learn from very traditional teachers. In that traditional setting a direct question would have been perceived as a challenge to the status of his teacher, and his teacher would have gotten very angry. He and his fellow students came up with all sorts of ingenious ways to get questions answered with out actually ever asking a question.  At one point he and another student stage angry huff and puff arguments and then ask the teacher to settle them.   This technique got some their questions answered.
I noticed a theme that many of the teachers brought up.  They said qi is given too much attention and that yi (intentionality?)  is not given enough.  I guess that's true with some teachers, but it wasn't true with any of mine.

It's impossible to generalize about all the student teacher relationships out there, but in my opinion once you've internalized about 300 martial applications of various sorts, yi in the application sense of the word becomes less important.  One can continue using the word yi by tweaking it's meaning but there are other terms for this "higher level" yi such as jingshen. 

It's a good book and I had fun arguing with the various teachers.  I would have shortened most of the interviews if I was editing it, but I'm planning to buy volume 2 if there is one.
The book includes interviews with these teachers: Gabriel Chin, Tim Cartmell, Paul Gale, Fong Ha, Luo De Xiu, Allen Pittman, William Lewis, Tony Yang, Zhao Da Yuan, Bruce Frantzis. Check it out.

Nam Singh's cooking with Chinese Herbs

Nam Singh, is a teacher of mine, a fellow student, and a friend. He is a fantastic and creative cook.

A good cooking class should do the following:

1. Really get you familiar with the ingredients. In this case the qi qualities of the ingredients-- What they do, how they are nutritious, and where and when to find the best quality. But all cooking classes should teach you how to know the best ingredients, what they do and how to use them.

2. Teach cooking methods. Deep knowledge of the basic methods is essential for experimentation.

3. Teach preparation and presentation.

4. Teach you great classic recipes, and how to vary them according to ingredients, taste, and appetite.

Probably the most important thing about learning to cook is that it refines your appetite. Being able to really trust your personal appetite to tell you what and how to eat is the definition of health!

Nam Singh teaches through these organizations:

CCD Innovation, Pacific School of Herbal Medicine, The Academy of Healing Nutrition.

Since practicing internal martial arts and qigong will likely improve your digestion, you will have to learn to eat less. At first it won't make much difference but if you are over 35 and have been practicing for 10 years you will likely balloon up unless you learn to eat less.  The best way to do that is to really learn the qi qualities of the foods you are eating.

In this context, we could drop the term qi because any good traditional cooking class will teach you detailed information about the qi qualities of food.  In depth traditions of cooking all over the world are storehouses of knowledge about how to combine and bring out the best nutrients from local ingredients.  And since nearly everything is local now we have a lot of choices.

100% Qi Free?

I took the following quote from Joanna Zorya at Martial Tai Chi:

100% Qi-Free

Our own teaching completely rejects the concept of qi, also known as chi, ch'i or ki. Other instructors coming to the MTA [Martial Tai Chi] should also reject the idea completely. However, on this website there are a couple of articles which specifically deal with the issue. Qi is also dealt with briefly on our "Taiji Concepts" DVD - the clip (in "3 internal harmonies excerpts") is shown on our "Techniques" video clips page. We have found it necessary to address the issue of qi, because most people in the Tai Chi mainstream are utterly obsessed with it, and we wanted to make our position on it absolutely clear. The concept is at best obsolete and at worst dangerous. Significantly, the notion of qi is simply not true.

The way I see it the word Qi is polysemous. It has many different meanings depending on context. So if the teachers at Martial Tai Chi want to ban the word, they aren't necessarily banning the concepts that come with it.

The word qi might in a particular context mean the totality of everything you can feel. Or it might mean the feeling of blood or lymph pulsing through your body. But in another context it means the bubbles in a glass of soda pop. If the term qi is not clearly defined in context, it can be used to create intensional vagueness. Such vagueness is often used by Charismatics to create a feeling of authority among witnesses to a performance of healing or other subordinating demonstrations of power.

However, we really aren't sure what it is we are feeling inside and even outside our bodies. The term qi can be used in conjunction with other words to communicate the density, directionality, size, or relative temperature of something we feel. I'm not going to argue that it is a necessity, just that it can be used appropriately.

Here is my LONG definition of Qi. I wrote this 10 years ago, so it may need some updating, but perhaps readers will have suggestions.

UPDATE: I've had some interesting exchanges with Joanna Zorya in the comments for a previous post on Lineage. I mention these books:

Thinking Through Cultures, On Beauty and Being Just, The Trouble with Principle.