Underwear

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!

Proprioception and Kinesthetic Awarness

To feel your body or not to feel your body, that is the question.

If only Hamlet had studied Tai Chi.

The tongue always feels things bigger than they actually are. If I try to feel the size of my hands with my eyes closed, they usually feel bigger than they actually are. I know how big they are supposed to be, but I still feel them bigger. If I keep my hands still for a few seconds with my eyes closed my sense of how big they are starts to morph into other shapes.

Taking drugs can disorient us so much that we do not feel our bodies. They can also cause us to feel our bodies in weird expansive or contracted shapes, or to feel intermittently. But we don't need drugs for this, if you are flirting to someone really hot, you might forget about your own body altogether. A great conversation, reading or writing, watching a movie, all of these everyday experiences can cause us to forget our bodies, to feel them in an exaggerated way, or to drift in and out.

Traditionally strange feelings and disembodied feelings were covered under the subject: trance and possession. Now we have the scientific categories of proprioception and kinesthetic awareness.

Extreme relaxation, or extreme stillness often result in the sensation that ones body has no boundaries.

Pain starts with exaggerated feelings of the body and often leads in and out of feelings of disembodiment. There is nothing like getting hit to make you feel your body, but if you are going to keep fighting you need to "shake it off." What is being shaken off? A contracted sense of space?

When big muscles are engaged and experience resistance they cause us to feel our bodies at the expense of our sense of space and movement. Thus my often repeated comment that they make us insensitive. But more specifically what they are doing is making us feel in a limited way.  Movement orients us, muscle tension reduces our ability of perceive.
There is a continuum of  proprioception ability from superb to dysfunctional.  The Sensory Processing Disorder website is a great place to learn about how to recognize proprioceptive problems in yourself and others.

Here is a really nice article that explains how proprioception interacts with other senses.

Here is an article about consciously training proprioception.  It got me thinking about how my body learns, but practicing internal martial arts does everything these silly exercises do.

Of course there is always Wikipedia.

The traditional Chinese categories of shen, xin, jingshen, yi, jin, and shi all refer to and encompass aspects of proprioception and kinesthetic awareness.  How else could "shi" be translated variously as: strategic advantage, a location at the center of change, potential energy, and the unification of active power with inner quiet.

A Wonderful Alliance

When it comes to the subject of Experiential Anatomy and Physiology, Daoism and Modernity fit quite beautifully together. Here are some questions and observations common to both traditions.

Does a baby experience pleasure before it learns to smile?
Do we experience time in the womb? Do we feel it, or is it experienced as some other kind of change?

Do we experience space or balance while we are in utero?

When and how do we begin to recognize distance, or inside vs. outside, expanding vs. contracting, wrapping inward vs. wrapping outward? When do we gain the ability to spiral one way and then the other? Is it simply an unconscious part of growing or do we have some volition?
Stages of development are quite well known, but like taijiquan training methods, a child can develop out of order, skip a stage, or even create a unique transition.

I once knew a great dancer who had skipped the crawling stage of development, he went straight from scooting to walking. He was naturally flexible, rarely wore shoes, and never needed to stretch before a workout.

Do we start from a feeling of having a body, or do we start with a feeling of having no boundaries?

After birth, one of the first things we do is turn our head to find our mother's breast. Is this part of your internal martial arts practice? Does a baby feel its bones, or its muscles? Does it feel hungry? Does it feel the turning? Where does the movement come from?

Eventually a baby will find its hand with its mouth. It will start to see, and track. Eventually it will point and grab, and push and pull. How does a baby initiate this movement. Do children feel outside of their bodies?
How does a baby get control over its arms? Is this a question you ask yourself when you practice internal martial arts?

Heat or Ice

Yesterday, having just gotten into my warm car after watching the latest Stephen King movie and nearly freezing to death talking to a fellow movie goer in the wind, I saw a small group of high school girls crossing the street. Very sort pants, low socks, t-shirts. One of them had big lumps of plastic wrap around her knees and ankles. I suddenly registered that they were athletes and that the plastic wrap was holding large amounts of ice on the unfortunate young womans legs.

Many people think sitting in an ice bath after a workout is a good way to train. Most people who would be reading my blog know that Chinese medicine almost never uses ice.

There are a whole bunch of theories about why ice is good, but my experience tells me that mostly it is terrible. It is better than nothing on burns, but if you have burn cream, it is better. There is no question that ice can bring down swelling after an injury. For a really bad injury I would put ice on it right away. But as part of a training ritual, it is barbaric. It develops bad, tense, stiff, muscle quality and in the long run it probably leads to arthritis.
I love hot tubs and steam baths. When I was young and road my bicycle at high speed over steep hills to all my appointments, swam in the freezing cold ocean, did kungfu and dance for 6 or even 8 hours every day, and sat still (or slept) in stupid classes at school--a nice hot bath once or twice a week was very close to Nirvana. Still, as a training method it contributed nothing. I was tired and stiff because I was training too much of the wrong thing. It would be better just to train right. Too much hot drains the qi.
Cleaning and scrubbing the surface of your body every time you sweat is really important to maintaining good muscle and joint quality. This is why internal martial artists, especially when they get older, try not to sweat most of the time. If at the end of your practice you aren't near water and a place where you can be naked, at least towel off and change some of your clothes.
A short little dip in hot water, a one minute ice massage after a sprain, fine; Don't make a habit of it.

More American Qigong Ethics (part 4)

If you are making offerings or commitments (bowing, praying, sacrificing, burning incense) to a teacher or an idea or a deity, or any unseen force--be explicit and upfront with your students. If they are expected to make the same commitments make that clear at the beginning. Do not include students in your commitments or covenants with out their permission.

The above paragraph is a rule.  But I've been having trouble pinning down a rule with regards to subordination and pain.

What makes qigong work is unknown.  Pain is so utterly un-transferable to others that we can not measure change in another persons pain level.  Pain is highly subjective, but fortunately, subjectively felt pain is what matters.
How can I say people shouldn’t subordinate themselves to something if in the process they end up reporting less pain? or more friends? or deeper bonds? I know I’m not half as good as some teachers are at getting students to change their behavior. Are some teachers lying to people for ‘their own good?’

The Gate of Fate

The Chinese term for the lower back kidney area is mingmen which means "the gate of fate." The name implies the Chinese notion that prenatal qi, yuanqi, is stored in the kidney system. The kidneys regulate fluids in the body and they also produce jing. Jing is that aspect of qi which comprises the self reproductive quality in nature, it is stored in the kidney system where it is available both for making babies and for making repairs. Jing produces new tissue when we are injured, bone, muscle, scabs, etc. It is our ancestral memory.

The number one purpose for studying martial arts is to not have a rigid fate. I wish more schools explained this up front. This idea is closely linked to the area known as the mingmen. When the lower back is stiff and deficient we literally have a rigid fate.

How is it possible that a person gets stuck on an idea in their twenties and despite heaps of evidence which accumulates during their lifetime which contradicts that idea, they still cling to it. Traditionally these rigid ideas or notions or ideologies have been conceived as hungry ghosts or wandering demons that are invisible to us but slowly eat away at our kidneys whenever we "check out." By "checking out" I mean staying up too late, forgetting to eat, taking drugs, or unleashing political rants. The day after we become food for little hungry demons, our lower back gets stiff and starts to hurt.

I don't think there is a perfect correlation between physical rigidity and a person's inability to freely make choices based entirely on what is real. There is some correlation, but I've met some amazing people with pretty screwed up bodies. Still, sit-ups are dumb. Six-pack abdominal muscles are O.K. against a boxer with gloves on and that's it. Like the "core-strength" fad, sit-ups break the unity of a person's body, they restrict the freedom of the torso and they tighten the breath. Why choose a rigid fate?

Weakness, Security, and Something I Can't Live Without

Chris at Martial Development asked people to try their hand at self-criticism. But gee, isn't calling my blog Weakness with a Twist enough for you?

I'll admit to this: I'm behind on my blogging schedule because while going through security at the Airport I accidentally traded laptops with a woman from New Jersey. Our laptops looked identical on the outside and I guess the security people were re-viewing things randomly. We got on different planes to different parts of the country. She didn't notice until she was on the plane, and I didn't notice until I got her call six hours later.

The lesson: Put a cool sticker on your laptop.

I'll admit to this too: I have a Japanese style spray toilet. I am not a hairless wonder. After using a spray toilet at home for over a year now, I am at a loss to understand how other "people of hair," cope with just toilet paper. The spray toilet comes under the general purview of the Toilet God. I believe that the slow adoption of the spray toilet worldwide means that it is our duty to ritually promote the Toilet God to a higher rank in the Daoist Pantheon in recognition of the higher level of technology involved and to speed the spread of this wonderful devise.

The Celestial Masters: Tianshi

 This is a continuation of my series on basic facts about Daoism.

All Daoist’s recognize Zhang Daoling as the first Tianshi, which means Celestial Master.  The title Tianshi was first given to Daoist priests by the emperor during the Song Dynasty (960-1279 CE) in acknowledgment their ritual mastery (shi) of the Celestial (tian) realm.   The title was then applied retroactively one thousand years, all the way back to Zhang Daoling.  Zhang is the founder of religious Daoism who met with Lao Jun (Lord Lao), the source of the Daodejing, on mount Heming (Heron Call) in the Year 142 CE and formed the Covenant of Orthodox Unity.  (See article Zhang Daoling.)

There are many Tianshi lineages but there is one individual in each generation who is the central Tianshi.  This person comes from a continuous family lineage going back to Zhang Daoling.  During the Dynastic eras of China the Tianshi had a palace at Dragon Tiger Mountain (Longhushan).  To get a sense of the importance of the Tianshi it helps to understand that all building and construction in China has always been regulated by the government.  No building was allowed to be built larger than the Emperor’s palace.  We get a sense of how important the Tianshi was by noting that the Tianshi’s palace was specifically built (roughly) six feet smaller than the Imperial Palace.  Needless to say, the role of Tianshi was central to the religious life of the country and the functioning of the state, and because of this, the Tianshi is sometimes called the Daoist Pope.

When the Communist government took power in 1949 it banned all religion, and as a consequence the Tianshi fled the country.  During the Cultural Revolution in China (1967-1977) the Tianshi’s palace was completely demolished.  Recently the Tianshi’s palace has been rebuilt and Tianshi Daoism is making a tenuous recovery.

The Priesthood
The Tianshi  priesthood is the oldest Daoist movement.  Its primary activity is the performance of ritual. Rituals are performed in private on behalf of a cosmic, national, or local constituency.  To be a Tianshi of the highest rank one must be married to another Tianshi.   Both men and women are equals, the difference between them has more to do with society at large than any doctrine within Daoism.  Male Tianshi have historically been the ones who interact with the public.

Tianshi are required to keep precepts.  These precepts are from three overlapping categories.  First they are derived from Daodejing and are consistent with its teachings.  Secondly, they regulate appropriate social conduct related to one’s priestly role or position.  And third, they support ritual purity and transcendent practices.

Becoming a Tianshi
Most Tianshi lineages are passed down within families, but it is also possible to be adopted into a lineage.  Each Tianshi gets a name which is taken from a line of a secret lineage poem.  Every member of a generation in the same lineage has a name chosen from the same line of poetry.  Since the Tianshi tradition is very old and has spread wherever Chinese people have settled, this secret lineage name allows Tianshi to identify each other.

The process of becoming a Tianshi usually begins with investiture.  Investiture entails the taking of precepts, the passing-on of ritual vestments and ritual implements, receiving and copying sacred texts (which are usually also committed to memory), and the receiving of registers, which are secret documents used in ritual to regulate the gods, ghosts, spirits and demons of the Daoist Pantheon.

Rank
The type and number of sacred texts a Tianshi is invested with determines his or her ritual rank.  This list is absolutely secret, it is shown only to other Tianshi in specific ritual circumstances.  For example the list could be shown when a new text is transmitted or at the beginning of  a new course of study.  Thus the rank of a  Tianshi is not a personal achievement and all Tianshi are considered equals--there are no true earthly hierarchies.  That being said, there are indeed heavenly hierarchies.  A Tianshi’s role as ritual master is intrinsically about the recording of meritorious acts on earth,  in heaven and in the unseen world.

Zhengyi and Tianshi
The terms Zhengyi and Tianshi are somewhat interchangeable.  The designation Zhengyi  literally means Correct One; it is the name for the original covenant made between  Zhang Daoling and Laojun (Lord Lao) on mount Heming in the year 142 CE.  In English we refer to it as the Covenant of Orthodox Unity.  All Tianshi are also considered Zhengyi.  Zhengyi is perhaps better understood as the category of orthodox  practices, which are in contrast to all practices which are unorthodox (Buzheng).  It can be applied to other Daoist movements and lineages as well, such as Quanzhen or Shangjing.  The trend has been to include Daoist movements and practices under the designation Zhengyi as they are understood to be in conformity with the Original Covenant.

The picture above came from here.

Just say "no" to Turkey, Dog, and Eel!

There are quite a few Daoist precepts about food. Food precepts are one of the more flexible categories of precepts, firstly because humans are so dynamic and secondly because so many other precepts can trump food precepts.  After all, if you are starving eat!

On the other hand, most of the precepts have some solid reason behind them.  Monastic Daoists often followed their Buddhist roots and went with vegetatianism.  While hermit Daoists usually had more limited food choices, so more flexibility.  However, if you have a choice and you are practicing meditation, the category of "hot" or 'heat producing" foods is to be avoided because it has a tendency to make you alternately horny and sleepy. 

Sexual fantasy and sleepiness make it difficult to stay still.  But in my experience, being with extended family is even more disturbing to a meditation practice.  Family quirks that you have managed to escape for most of the year, screaming children, an annoying conversation--these all have a tendency to make us squirm.

So a piece of advice, if you are just starting a meditation practice (meaning less than five years of practice) avoid the turkey.  Turkey is called Huoji in Chinese, Fire Chicken.  It falls in to the category of "hot" foods along with dog and eel. 

Besides being "hot," dog was used (and probably still is) as a blood sacrifice.  Black dogs specifically were used to replace human sacrifices in an earlier era.  Daoists are of course forbidden from participating in blood sacrifice as any deity which drinks blood is by definition demonic.

Eel is also "heat producing," and I believe that fresh water eel somehow competed with rice cultivation in traditional Chinese villages. 

If there is a lot of pressure on you to participate in the turkey ritual, perhaps you can limit your precept violations by compromising with just a little Wild Turkey.  While it is "heat producing," it may dull the influence of extended family entaglements.

The Dao of Learning

There is a common convention of Chinese culture in which the word Dao, meaning the way, is applied to any field of study. Thus we have the Dao of archery, the Dao of writing, the Dao of mothering, and even the Dao of basketball. This expression refers to a way of knowing and embodying which is unique to each pursuit, and implies both ease and confidence. It is somewhat like saying in English, "She really has the knack of tree climbing." In addition to implying that a person is really skilled at something, it implies that the activity itself transforms the person who does it, it is not just an act of doing, it is an act of mutual self-recreation.

Truly knowing a skill, or even a subject, further implies a curriculum. Thus many books have been written describing the Dao of Archery, the Dao of making Tea, or even the best selling book The Tao of Pooh.

In Japanese, which uses Chinese written characters, Dao becomes "do," in many familiar arts like Karatedo, Judo, Aikido, Budo (the warrior code), and Chado (the art of tea).
For most of the last 1500 years in China the first lessons one received when learning to write calligraphy were instructions on how to sit without obstructing circulation, how to hold and move the brush in coordination with ones breath such that the student might start discovering the Dao of writing from day one. In fact, implicit in this idea is the notion that one is learning how to embody the physicality of great public officials of the past. This is also true of all traditional subjects, music, martial arts, medicine, weaving, etc. In traditional Chinese culture the physical process of acquiring knowledge is not subordinate to knowledge itself-- How one learns is, in a sense, given priority to what one learns.
This idea is beautifully illustrated in the story of Cook Ding in the 300 Century BCE text, the Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu). The story is an ironic tale in which Cook Ding butchers an ox in front of the king, it is the title story of the third chapter called "The Mastery of Nourishing Life." In the story, the king is amazed by the dance like beauty, grace, and ease with which Cook Ding butchers the ox. When asked, Cook Ding explains how the naturalness of his skill came about and in the end the king declares that listening to these words has taught him how to nourish life.