Cultural Expectations about How and What

Americans, and perhaps some other groups out there, tend to want movement explained to them.

"What does this do?"  Rather than, "How will I know if this worked?"

"Am I doing this right?"  Rather than, "How will I know if I'm going down the wrong path?"

I don't think I can really explain this problem well with words.  It may sound like I'm being needlessly fussy about word choices.  It's an experiment.

Americans like to have a complete explanation of what factors should be combined to create a particular quality of movement.  Or alternately a list of what they should work on first, second and third, to get a desired result.

In traditional Chinese martial arts the result may be too subtle to withstand being chased by desire.  Desiring a particular nameable result may crush it before you get close enough to grasp it.  Thus, the Jade Maiden disappears when the adept's conduct wavers from the pure and the resolute.

In traditional Chinese martial arts time may be collapsed in on itself.  A list becomes a series of ideas which are simultaneous.  A list without priority or order.  It is therefore false to say that this idea should be combined with that one, because each idea is the whole idea simply presented from a different perspective or orientation.

For example, many years ago I heard this list of two word phrases:

1. Muscle let go


2. Sinew engage


3. Connect Bone

Americans will try to make this a "to do" list.  "So first I practice letting go of my muscles, then I practice engaging the sinews, then I practice connecting the bones.  Right?"  or  "While my muscles are letting go my sinews are engaging and that will connect my bones.  Right?"

The problem is that this list of three is actually a single description of the same event from three different perspectives; that of the muscle (as a single type of mind), that of the sinew (again a singular orientation), and that of the bone (a whole dynamic structure).  If you get any one of these correct, you get the whole thing.  They fit together perfectly because they are actually one.

Does Belief Matter in a Fight?

I usually say, no, belief doesn't matter.  Skill and fate are what matters.  But actually before the first punch is thrown belief can matter a lot.  Even after a few punches have been thrown, your opponent or attacker may believe something about you which gives you an advantage.  They may be carrying around a fantasy.

If a potencial attacker believes you are strong, they have an incentive to use a surprise attack.

While if a potencial attacker believes you are weak, they have an incentive to use intimidation.

I would much prefer to have a potential attacker try to use intimidation than to be attacked by surprise.  Someone who is trying to intimidate me may have second thoughts when they get up close enough to see my 1000 yard stare, or notice that my hands and feet are still moving as if caught in a gentle wind.

Just a thought.  How we look and act can affect what people believe about us.  Spending time preparing for a monster which may or may not be coming to get you someday is a rather poor way to live.  So I'm not recommending anyone give it much thought at all.  But it is a good retort to the big-muscles-good, small-muscles-bad body image mind game.

The Causes of Illness

There are three causes of illness:

1. Ancestors


2. Conduct


3. Environment

Obviously jing, our underlying essence which is self-reproducing, is the active ingredient in seman and eggs, creates scabs, and is more or less responsible for our over all constitution--comes to us through our ancestors.

Qi, on the other hand is largely the result of our personal conduct.  It is something we choose to cultivate or depleat as the case may be.

The environment is another layer of fateful interaction which tends to be a combination of jing and qi, but could also be thought of as shen.  Like external spirits, sometimes it overtakes us without warning.  But usually if you're paying attention, and you live in a house, you can see it coming.

Well, last Friday I had a purely conduct induced illness which as I write this is still lingering.  First, out of vanity, I got a short hair cut.  Second, I went to do some work on my partner's office and I stood outside fixing a sign in a cold wind without much more on my upper body than a t-shirt for almost 30 minutes.  Third, I went to the Asian International Film Festival to see a South Korean serial killer film called "Chaser," about a cop who becomes a pimp and then tries to catch a serial killer.  (I just looked around for some reviews to link to and didn't like any of them.  If you like horror, you'll love it.)  Forth, I drank sake in the theater.  Fifth, I stayed up way, way,  too late.

By Saturday afternoon I was down with a nasty wind invasion in my throat, and a strong sense of regret.  Two lines from the Daodejing going off like neon lights in my head:

Why are Daoist adepts not afflicted?

Because they are sick of affliction.

George Xu Video's

Susan Matthews, one of George Xu's long time students who lives in Durango Colorado, has posted a lot of videos on Youtube.  Some of them are rather old, and I haven't had time to watch them all but it looks like there is some good stuff here.  Check it out.
The first minute of this one must be more than 15 years old, it brought me back to the way we used to practice in the early 1990's. Some of the newer ones show George's amazing internal power.

I Don't Like to Get Hurt

The other day while I was teaching a wonderful class of 6 and 7 year olds, a student raised her hand and said, "I don't like to get hurt."  Her statement arose because I had just been teaching them a two-person, hook-punch, flow drill which works best if your partner aims directly at your temple.

I asked for the hands of students who like to get hurt, 4 in 20 raised their hands.  Human nature on display.  This perhaps led to some cognitive dissonance between the skills I was helping them to acquire and the general anti-violence dogma being taught at school.  Another student raised his hand and asked, "So what exactly do you use martial arts for?"

I answered them by saying, "You know how cats like to catch mice?"  They nodded.  "And some cats like to play with mice?"  They nodded again.  "Well, I'm the kind of cat that likes to play with mice.  But I'm not really interested in eating them."

All of this caused me to reflect afterward that since the 1970's many schools have tried to raise "cats" who neither catch, nor play with, mice.  Since this goes against human nature, we are finally seeing a recognition of how such attitudes lead to students hating and therefore failing school.  Particularly for boys.  There is a new book called The Trouble with Boys, and even better a website, Why Boys Fail.com.  And I'm a big fan of Marty Nemko's, Men's Issues.

If my popularity as a kung fu teacher is any indicator of how things are going, then things are changing for the better.  When I first started teaching in the schools 15 years ago  I ran into teachers and principals who were downright paranoid.  They feared having me in their school was going to result in bloody riots on the school yard.  These days demand for my classes is coming from all directions, PTA, principles, teachers, and of course the students themselves. (The election of action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger governor of Cal-ee-fornia hasn't hurt my cause either!)

One of the back-bones of Daoism is the notion that our true nature is without limits.  Some cats are more transcendent than others, they are more interested in exploring all the different things which can be done with a mouse than they are in actually eating one.  And some cats are more masters of simplicity.  When they see a mouse, they eat it.  When they see sun, they sleep in it.  They appear to be practicing a non-transcendent form of wuwei (not doing).  And some cats are so afraid of mice and other cats and vacuum cleaners that they are constantly on the prowl, like Shaman of old, for some advantage which will enable them to dominate.

Daoism has teachings for all three types of cats.  Observing external behavior is the basis for our three general categories of commitments humans make:  Transcendence, Wuwei, and Shamanic.  But the process of categorizing brings with it two types of baggage that beg to be acknowledged.  The first is that we simply can not tell from looking, listening or analyzing, which type of commitment another person (or cat) is making.  We can guess, and we can think we know--they can even tell us--but it is impossible to truly get inside someone else's head.  The second is that it is our nature to move between these different types of commitments.  For instance if you practice meditation you will find that you are:

1. Worried that you aren't doing it right (Shamanic)


2. Trying to perfect yourself (Transcendent)


3. Was there a third? (Wuwei)

Dollhouse

I know I'm supposed to blog about martial arts and Daoism but I can't stop thinking about Joss Whedon's new TV show Dollhouse.  It starts tonight!

Does Deep Breathing Cut off Circulation?

Back in the 1990's I did an all day workshop in Holotropic Breathing with Stan Groff.  It was pretty far out.  He played a lot of loud heavy metal music (like they do at Guantanamo) while we breathed as quickly and deeply as we could...for 4 hours.  We each had a partner whose job it was to monitor us and create was to give us muscle resistance.  The idea is that the muscle resistance with the breathing would unblock one or more of 7 things from out mind/bodies.  The 7 things were:  Re-birth, second-birth, re-experiencing surgery, re-experiencing an accident, re-experiencing an intense pre-verbal childhood experience, mythic experience, and cellular consciousness.

I got to wallow in 5 of the 7.  I had a second-birth instead of the re-birth (I know that because I was not a breach baby), and I never made it to cellular consciousness.  My mythic experience was having my guts eaten by a large bird.  I know what you're thinking, "That's sooo cool, I'm not going to try it."

But I did learn some things about what inhaling large amounts of oxygen does to my body.  Breathing is an anesthetic.  If you have an injury, particularly on the torso, your breathing will change.  It will go to the place of injury and cover up the pain.  Sometimes after an injury has healed, the breathing pattern which functioned as an anesthetic will still remain.  One of the ways to diagnose chronic pain is by closely observing someones breathing patterns.  Chronic pain often becomes numbness.  A person with a chronic pain breathing pattern might not realize they are in pain until they start relaxing.

But weird hippy stuff and medical conditions aside, there is an important lesson here about the circulation of qi into the limbs.  If you run long distance, or run up a large number of stairs (or anything which makes your breathing labored) the qi gates at your hips and shoulders will partially close (as will the perineum on the pelvic floor).   This is because the heart is demanding more oxygen.  This is why after a run, many people feel a lot of tingling in their arms and/or their legs--At the end of the run they experience their hip and shoulder gates reopening.

Likewise, simply breathing deeply will cut off qi circulation to the limbs.  I'm guessing mammals developed this ability in order to increase our chances of survival in the event that we are loosing blood from a limb.  It may even be that just before mammals "play dead" they have to get really scared and take a few really deep breathes.

In Taijiquan, Baguazhang, and Xingyiquan, we want optimal circulation of qi all over the body while we are moving at high speed.  Without that optimal circulation throughout the body we will not develop the quality of being physically quiet and wild at the same time.  All of these styles teach people to breath into the lower dantian and into the mingmen (lower back).  At the beginning it is important that the breath not be constrained to the chest.  Achieving this more relaxed style of breathing is largely a process of finding the "right" or "appropriate" dynamic postures.

However, it is possible to get "good" at breathing and not get good at circulation.  This is because too much qi gets concentrated in the dantian and causes the hip gates to close.  The hip gates are a bit like pressure valves which close automatically when the pressure gets too high.  So the lesson is that breathing must be calm and gentle, perhaps even shallow, for optimal qi circulation to go into the legs.  If qi isn't going into your legs, no matter how much training you do, you will not achieve quiet and wild at the same time, nor will you will achieve empty and full at the same time.  Yes folks, even qi should not be horded.

The Daodejing says:

To be preserved whole, Bend.

Upright, then Twisted.

To be Full, Hollow Out.

What is worn out will be repaired.

Those who have little, have much to be gained; having much you will only be perplexed!

Another Yoga Rant

I know there is huge variation and experimentation going on in the yoga world, and I applaud that.  I've seen great yoga, and I've met many people for whom yoga is a superb form of physical and mental training.  Nothing I'm about to write is intended to dissuade those people from practicing, or anyone else from trying a yoga practice.

That said, yoga is not for me.

Dave over at Formosa Neijia has a recent post about Yoga.  In his review of a DVD he says, "It’s for opening up the front of the body, which is what those of us that sit in front of a computer all day need."  He likes Rodney Yee's DVD's and some other Ashtanga teachers too.

Now I haven't done a ton of yoga, but I have done 10,000 hours of stretching.  Also, because I'm not genetically flexible I've had to work for every millimeter of length I've got.  I even took Rodney Yee's class in Berkeley 17 years ago, when I was 24.  The most frustrating thing about that class is that it was full of hot sweaty babes who were so busy drooling over Rodney that I didn't even have a chance to be embarrassed about the out of control boner I was having--nobody even noticed.

In that sense, yoga classes were never easy for me.  But I did manage to date a few kudilini yogini's.  One woman that I dated off and on for about 4 years in my early twenties studied with all the heavies including Pattabhi Jois.  She was doing his third series last I checked; which, for those of you who haven't seen it, begins in an upright standing position with one foot behind your head!

So I have some experience.  I did at least 3 back bend bridges every day from age 18 to 28.  Because of my qigong spine opening practice, by age 27 I was able to do a back walkovers cold, I could go into a bridge from a standing position with out warming up.   If I was just using "stretching based" flexibility I would have had to warm up first.  Qigong allowed me to open my spine without stretching.

Anyway, at age 29, I injured my spine in a fall and it really hurt to do bridges after that, so I stopped.

Now, Back to Dave's comment.  Yes, it is true that many people sit in front of computers or read all day and need to open up the front of their bodies.  If you think of the rib cage as a basket.  These people's baskets have become slumped.  It's like they leaned a heavy object against their basket for like a year and now it's got a funny shape.  Yoga is unlikely to be able to correct this problem.  Stretching the basket won't help, it will just keep going back to it's funny shape after you are done messing with it.

The rib cage basket needs to be returned to it's primordial state.  It needs to be softened up and reworked.  If it were a basket, perhaps we could soak it in warm water for a while and then dry it in the shape we want.  But for the rib cage to change shape, it needs jing and qi.

In the yoga/stretching paradigm the goal is to try and move your body into (or towards) a shape.  Each time you do it you are supposed to get closer to that shape.  Props, aids or modifications of the shape do not changed this basic paradigm.  The problem is that if you are actually stretching further each day you are cutting off whole body integration and closing key qi gates.  So although you might get more flexible, at least in class, and you might develop tight muscles which will in fact change your posture, the end result will be less flexibility, less whole body integration and less mobility.

Obviously, for serious couch potatoes, yoga is a wonderful thing and I'm really happy when one of them gets up off the couch.  I'm not talking about them.  I'm talking about serious martial artist, and other serious movement artists trying to improve their art.

If you start from whole body integration and qi circulation, your range of movement is going to get smaller at first, not bigger.  As whole body integration gets better and qi circulation improves, the desire to internally stretch will arise naturally.  You, like every healthy cat on the face of the earth, will want to stretch.  You will know how to do it thoroughly and spontaneously without needing a class.

(Because I know someone is thinking this question:  Yes, it is possible to teach yoga this way, I just haven't seen it done yet. )

And since I just found my former girlfriend's Yoga Goddess site, check it out!  I'm sure she is cutting her own unique and powerful path of innovation.