Meeting Tabby Cat

I have much neglected writing about my meeting with Billionaire Genius Tabby Cat.  First off I should say that in person he is warm, worldly, charming, thoughtful, generous, agreeable, and a great conversationalist.  I am truly delighted to make his acquaintance.  We fully agree on 99% of everything!  But as I’m sure my readers are aware the fiercest, most contentious arguments happen with people you very nearly agree with.  That 1% of difference starts to seem like the key to everything.  So I will take the liberty, in the interest of furthering the evolution of all human knowledge, and trusting that he will do the same for me, of making my case raw, without niceties.

It was 8:30 AM on a warm Thursday.  After about 20 seconds of friendly posturing, we squared off for some fixed foot push hands.  Seconds after contact I found my hand around the front of his neck, slowly and gently lifting him backwards.  “We could do that,” he said and then proceeded to jump around like a feather weight boxer.  “No, no,” I said, “I want to learn your game.”

The base idea of Tabby Cat’s theory is that push hands is not a game, it is a single attribute training drill.  The attribute it trains is so key to Tai Chi, that until you acquire this attribute, nothing else matters (except money and sex).  Before we discuss what that attribute is, lets address the consequences of this type of view.

Since historically speaking it is quite clear that the serious fun of martial arts developed in a social environment with theater, religious ritual, health ideas, and a wide range of prowess inspiring everyday problems, both social and asocial--the notion that a single attribute drill could be at the center of what defines Tai Chi is a profoundly Modern notion.

We tend to think of people like Yang Chengfu and his student, Zheng Man Qing, and his student, Ben Lo (Tabby’s teacher) as representatives of tradition.  But Yang Chengfu most likely saw himself as a modernizer, and Zheng Man Qing even more so.

The idea that a profuse, weirdly complex, theatrical fighting art like Chen style Tai Chi could be whittled down to just an attribute drill and a simplified 37 move form with, as Ben Lo put it, “Fair-ladies hands,” could only have come about as the result of a Dr. Spock-like inspired purging of all irrational impurities.

Now that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  But it gets weird when all your students think you are the representative of a long and stable tradition.  When in fact you represent only a small part of it.  When in fact you were just playing around with language, trying to find words to describe your practice which were clear, simple and direct.  The huge problem here is that words get stale.  “Go with the flow,” was a great expression when it was first uttered, but now it is cracked and tasteless.  The instruction, “Just relax,” has become as polysemous as “You’re so spiritual.”
So there we are in the park and I’m trying to understand what this single attribute is and how I can tweak the game of push hands in order to use it as a tool for acquiring this all important attribute.  We cross hands again, this time I ignore the fact that Tabby is curving his chest inward making his head and neck vulnerable to any upward expanding movement.  I let him lead me around and then suddenly he pushes me and I move my foot.  I lose.  We do it again, I lose again, and again.  He says, “See, you’re really tense.”  I reply, “Should I try to melt my tension when you push on me suddenly?”  “Yes," he says.  I try it, it doesn’t work.  Then I push him without giving him a chance to lead me around.  It works, I win.  He says, “You can’t do it that way.”  I’m confused, I say,  “Your attacks are all straight forward and sudden.  Can you do them slowly?”  “Okay, he says.”  When he attacks even a little bit slower, I have time to melt, and he has a much harder time getting me at all.  His slower attacks sometimes reveal a connection to the ground and I win.  But mostly I lose.
He clearly has a special attribute.  The attribute is a wave, or surge that hits me before I feel his mass pushing me.  But only just before, which is why he can’t do it slowly.  If the wave could hit me a full second before his mass did, it would be way more impressive.  The surge comes forward from belly height and seems to have influence all the way down to the feet.  But it comes in the same way every time, so when it’s slow, or if I’m allowed to move my foot or if I attack any part of his body besides his belly or chest, the “attribute” doesn’t work.
I point this out and challenge him to do push hands flank to flank.  He says, “The point of the drill is to acquire the attribute and then you can do anything you want with it.”  “Okay,” I say, lets do it on the ground then.  “Systema has drills like this, in every possible position and angle.”  (Later I learn that he literally wrote the book on Systema!)

He doesn’t want to do it on the ground, so I offer, “I clearly see that you have acquired a valuable attribute, but for it to have any martial significance it would have to work in a surprise attack, in which you begin to fight from a terrible position.  Can you do it if I’m grabbing you from behind?”  I circle in slowly for the kill but he retreats to, “Ben Lo can do it from any position.”  He describes a bunch of examples, but if I understand him correctly, Ben Lo is generally attacking fast.

I’m a little disappointed, I really want to be literally ‘blown away!’  I venture that what he is actually doing is leading me around until I make a mistake and reveal some structure or tension at which point he suddenly attacks.  He agrees that he is basically doing this.  I counter that it is quite divergent from fighting because in a fight, action trumps inaction.  He asserts that it is an essential attribute drill which, once mastered, creates a quantum shift in movement and understanding.
I spend the rest of my time with Tabby in the park trying to do exactly what he is doing.  I figure, I might as well try to learn as much as I can right there and then.  His preferred position is one hand on my elbow and one hand reaching for my chest.  I match this, as well as the inward curve of his chest.  He says, “That’s a better position.”  We push some more and then he treats me to a wonderful breakfast and an even better extended conversation on everything under the sun.

It’s been about three months since our meeting and I must say that in the process of deeply considering Tabby Cat’s ideas and developing my critic of them, I think I’ve improved a lot.  I've been learning from both of our mistakes.

What was happening?
The idea of a single attribute drill is a brilliant Modern innovation.  But shouldn’t there be some kind of limit on how long it takes a person to learn it?  I mean at least with single attribute zazen, the practice of sitting still is the fruition, so there isn’t much pressure to prove you are enlightened.  But with Tai Chi there is a reasonable expectation that at some point some serious ass kicking attributes will kick in.  Really, if the single attribute takes more than ten years to acquire is it worth it?  If it were only two years of training we were talking about I’d be like, “Yeah that’s the way to go.  Attribute drills baby!  Drill baby drill!”

But we are talking about less than a handful of Ben Lo’s students having acquired it over a period of 50 years.  Yikes.  Tabby mentioned that two students were super achievers, Terry Li (recently deceased) and Lenzie Williams.  I have yet to meet them, but even if these guys are the cats meow, they are only two in how many 1000's of students?
Zheng Man Qing promoted Tai Chi for health, entertainment, and the cultivation of wuwei generally, and that’s awesome wonderfulness.  I’m right there with him.  I am not promoting the idea that there is anything special about me or that learning Tai Chi will make us superheros or enlightened or even better people.  Tai Chi is art, Tai Chi is beauty.  I'm with anyone who recognizes that.  But as promoters of beauty we have a duty to make plain our flaws, and to correct them.

The five training principles Tabby promotes are simply inadequate to communicate the internal aspects of the art.  They are:

1. Relax


2. Body Upright


3. Separate Weight


4. Turn the waist


5. Beautiful Lady's Hand

To illustrate this I will describe two problems Ben Lo has had teaching that I learned about talking with Tabby.
After years of teaching push hands, Ben Lo realized his students were getting worse.  Students were simultaneously searching for tension in their opponent, when he found it, he would suddenly blast his opponent.  This caused the loser to fear the sudden shock and develop chronic defensive tension.  Meanwhile the winner was being rewarded for being more aggressive (more on why this is a problem below).  Ben’s solution was to create a new game.  He gave each partner a different role, one would only try to look for tension and the other would only try to evade it, after twenty minutes they would reverse.  This resulted in improved yielding skills but it didn’t solve the problem.  (The first time I pushed hands with a 5 year student of Ben Lo’s, I put my hand on top of his head and he yielded all the way to the ground!  We were playing a completely different game.)

The second problem was that two types of students were coming to him, the jocks with “tense” full chests, and nerds with “collapsed” chests.  Neither one was relaxed and he told them so, but after a while the “tense” students started to become collapsed too.

Here is what’s going on.

We have two bodies.  An outer body, the thing with muscles that most people normally think of as a body,  and an inner body.  The inner body feels like empty space in the torso.  I suspect that the inner body is more primitive in the evolutionary sense.  Obviously this implies a composite body theory. The inner body is clumsy, very strong and innocent.  It is somewhat like Freud’s Id.  It has very simple primal desires.  It lacks artifice, memory, and preferences.

Anyway, all normal human activity is a war between these two bodies.

The jock type of movement uses a tough outer body shape with a lifted chest in order to limit, direct, and constrain the inner body; however, the jock type uses the inner body for power.  In the battle between the bodies the jock type of movement represents the inner body overpowering the outer body.

The nerd type of movement uses a collapsed but tense chest in order to de-power the arms by disconnecting them from the liquid mass of muscle.  This is necessary for fine motor control.  The nerd type of body has a strong collapsed chest and weak arms (the chest and arms have different liquid densities).  In the nerd type of movement the inner body is sneaky and fairly quiet, but it can also manoever all around evading and repositioning to get to tricky angles.  In the battle between the bodies the nerd type movement represents the outer body overpowering the inner.

What we actually want to cultivate in “internal arts” is each body doing a separate job, working together, but completely distilled from each other.  So the outer body is dead, totally quiet and devoid of intent.  The internal body is totally active and free.  The internal body is moved indirectly by the spacial mind moving around in space.  Once you have this conceptual framework it is easy to see Tabby Cat’s mistake.

Tabby Cat actually has a dead external body and a free internal body.  That part he is doing correct, but he moves his internal body by keeping his mind in his belly.  The more he can expand out from his belly in the direction of the ground and his opponent, the more effective his push is.  The more his spacial mind extends down, the more force he has to float his opponent. To the extent that his spacial mind extends past his own hands into or beyond the opponent he can move the opponent without them feeling any structure in the attack.  This is what we call internal power (neijing).  Because his mind stays in his belly it is always pushing his mass, and given a moment to adjust to the unfelt attack, the secondary mass attack is easy to deflect.  In fact, if the secondary attack is resisted and he presses it anyway, he will reveal a structure.  And structure once revealed, can be crushed.

To use different language, he has huajing (transforming power), but he doesn’t know how to use it (not much ling--inner agility, intelligence).  So when he goes to attack he sometimes uses huajing by accident but mostly retreats to anjing (hidden power).  In the brief moment his mass is being pushed forward by his mind inside his dantian, he is exposing his jin, his structure and his root.  This is why he can not attack slowly. This means that although he has reached the level where he can completely distill jing and qi in solo movement, he still mixes them under pressure.

What he should be doing is keeping his mind outside the body all the time.  This will eliminate the initial need to lead the opponent around because the only way an opponent can go directly against outside the body force is if they have the same mind-outside-the-body skill set.  His mistake is that he is leading his internal body in a direct way, when in fact he should be leading it in an indirect way.

The strongest indicator that this is Tabby’s problem is that even though it is on his list of 5 training principles above, he doesn’t have a clear upright posture.  An upright posture comes from another related force called Central Equilibrium power (Zhongdingjin).

To practice Central Equilibrium power by oneself simply requires that one's liquid mass adjusts in relationship to the the center of liquid mass as any force goes out in any direction.  It’s not very complex, but the outer body has to be dead-weight relaxed (xu) in order to do it.  If the outer body is not dead-weight-relaxed, posture correcting muscles will be activated to bring the mass back on center, thus pitting the external body against the internal body in a battle.  If central equilibrium is maintained exclusively by changes in the spacial mind, in Daoist terms, jing and qi remain distilled.

To apply Central Equilibrium power while fighting, the opponent’s mass must instantaneously be included in one’s liquid mass adjustment.  When done correctly, the opponent’s incoming force is dispersed automatically and instantaneously by a continuously adjusting spacial mind.  Thus, there is no advantage in evading by yielding the chest and neglecting uprightness.

In other words, yielding the chest is fundamentally an aggressive act because it is a set up for an outward attack (Lu into Ji in classic push hands terms). When we hit someone using Central Equilibrium power we never shoot out to a single point; as our mass spirals and expands to hit, it is moving equally in other directions.  To use Wang Xiangzai’s language, “Power never comes out to a point, the body never breaks the qi egg.”  Although the opponent gets clobbered, the body doesn't take on the experience of aggression.   That's not much consolation for the injured party, but it's an interesting idea.  No?

Tabby Cat has been doing a bit of writing lately and I recommend reading it.

I learned a lot from the exchange, and I have more to write about still.  I'm still open to the idea of a single attribute drill that would eliminate a lot of wasted time.  But in this case I would have to say it failed.   There is so much detail to the internal martial arts that putting off learning it in hopes of some holy grail of power ultimately means never learning that detail at all.  And Tabby is the case that proves the point, he studied Systema in hopes that it would fill in the gaps, and in the end he has retreated to Western Boxing and Yoga to supplement his Tai Chi.  In this case, I think, even Modernity has failed.

Stuff on my Mind

Here is a woman in Australia who, like me, understands that "core strength" is a big mistake:  Edgecliff Physiotherapy.

I learned about her from Josh Leeger who also turned me on to Exuberant Animal.

Also from Josh I got to Philip Beach's site describing Meridians as Emergent Lines of Shape Control.  Here is a pdf of a paper which explains the theory.  This made me think that meridians don't really "exist" they are trained reactions which disappear the better your internal practice gets.  Which explains why Medical Qigong is the lowest level of qigong, the meridians are most apparent in sick or dying people.  It also corresponds well with the Daoist notion that the meridians are lines of fate, lines (and points) which provide a window into either freedom, or robot-zombie-like predictability.

Speaking of fate, here is a rationalist approach to Astrological Horoscopes!  I think the author nails it in his own quirky way.  My own experience following a Daoist Auspices Calendar for several years taught me a whole bunch of unexpected lessons.  Like that their is a lot of freedom in letting an external force (in this case words on a page) decide for me whether to go out and party or to stay home and study.  When you're free, you can waste a lot of time and brain power trying to pick a day and time to get a hair cut, or buy new shoes, or work in the garden.  Just looking at the Daoist Calender externalized all that strategizing and weighing of options--which freed up a lot of time and energy.

I've been reading Gustavo Thomas' blog and watching his videos, great stuff!

Look at all the stuff canceled in Tokyo.  We have found lots of stuff to do here anyway and people are happy to see us.  I had very fresh raw pork liver the other night, with beer, yum.  I'm happy to report that Tokyo is still full of great deals on delicious food, especially lunch.  For example at a sushi boat restaurant, if I eat as much as I possibly can it only costs about 8 dollars US.

We went to a Kabuki show.  My main comment is that the actors have to practice a whole lot of stillness!  How anyone could miss the connection between stillness in the theater and stillness in martial arts I do not know.  Oh, and the costumes are amazing.

Check out Akira Hino, Jazz Drummer, martial arts teacher, dancer.  Here is his Video Channel.

Japan is so fashion conscious, it is impossible to be here and not think a lot about clothes and shoes.  I hope I can find some time to work on making my own because that seems like the only really satisfying way to stick my head down that well.

Daniel Mroz published a book on martial arts and theater, check it out!  Now I really have to work on getting mine in to print.

I got the book Impro to Rory Miller at Chiron and he loved it.  We are still awaiting a review.

Check out Tokyo Probe. Beer.

Aunkai Martial Arts in Japan

If you are a martial artist visiting Tokyo you will want to pay a visit to Akuzawa Minoru, he teaches an art he calls Aunkai which is a hybrid of Chinese and Japanese arts.
When I first found the studio, I looked in to see a bunch of guys in boxing gloves hitting boxing mitts.   My first thought was, oops wrong class.  But it was in fact the right class.  They use Sanda as a base for skills development and as a warm-up.

Akuzawa Sensei's website is worth reading, especially the Bujutsu section.  Towards the end of class he was kind enough to show his skills to me directly and let me test him in various ways.  He also partnered me with his senior student Miyakwa Kazuhisa for a significant portion of the three hour long class which gave me a good sense of what he has been able to transmit.

Although, I believe it is quite difficult for most students to grasp, Akuzawa Sensei is using an apophatic method,  "...[W]e aim to give our students the physical tools to forge a Bujutsu body able to bring its own imperfections to light, address them, and come to its own answers--all of this eventually leads the practitioner down their own path in the Martial Way."  While most people would read that statement in context as iconoclastic or individualist, to me it is simply explaining that the methods themselves primarily point to what you are NOT supposed to do.

Take for instance these two exercises:  Both have fixed foot positions.  The one top goes up and down.  The one on the bottom goes forward and backward.  They are both designed to take all arm and leg power out of the system as well as any size advantages or gravity/momentum/positioning advantages--  Thus leaving only "internal"  mind-energy changes of the torso for generating force.  What the practice reveals is all the possible things you could do that are wrong.  This is really important because all those "wrong things," like tension in the shoulders, might seem like they are giving an advantage in a more dynamic or volatile exercise.

No matter how much you simply copy the external shape, it is impossible to simply copy movement that happens internally. To add to this, the concept of bujutsu, unlike martial sports, does not adhere to rules, so you must be able to flip your perception and look at things in a completely different light.

Here I think he is suggesting that the mind limitations normally associated with social dominance also limit power and options.  To practice 'internal' arts is to fundamentally play a different game.

You must not get bogged down on the "shape" of things in practice. I also strongly believe that you should not create a method that is set in stone. Bujutsu itself is the ability to use the body in any situation, any environment, and as such is the embodiment of change. This means that training must be tailored to yourself by endless trial, error, experimentation, and adjustment if you want to understand the true essence behind movement.

Again he emphasizes the apophatic; make mistakes and learn from them.  Sure, there is a method here, but  the method is pointing to something.  When you figure out what it is pointing to, the method can be burned away.

Akuzawa Sensei is a warm, generous and open guy and his students were all welcoming.  The best test of his power I got was when he asked me to hold his arms down at his sides.  I was instructed to use any kind of force adjustments I wished to try and stopping him from lifting his arms up for the opening movement of Tai Chi.  I was ready, in position, holding his arms with all my creative effort, but he unconsciously decided to scratch his head!  His "head scratching" power was totally unstoppable, he took me with him.

He is clearly offering a method, it uses boxing gloves and some Shaolin and Xingyi type repeating lines, and a bunch of two person resistance/cooperation exercises that teach various things, and he advises students to do standing meditation practice on their own.  But he is also clearly saying, don't get stuck on the method, the method is all about limitations, the fruition is about freedom.

Tunnel Vision and the Perception of Density

Understanding the nature of perception is profoundly important for the study of any movement art.  The martial arts have been particularly vulnerable to the modern dictum that, "what you see is what you get."  But perception just ain't that simple.

Kinesiologists and their fellow travelers have uncovered a plethora of experimental evidence that motor development, perception, and imagination, are all intertwined and interdependent.  For instance check out this upcoming workshop blurb from Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen:

The senses are our organs of receiving information from ourselves and from the outer world.
Perception is the psycho-physical process of interpreting sensory information. This process begins as potential and develops in response to experience. The dynamics of perception explores how we filter, modify, distort, accept, reject, and use sensory information to bond, defend and learn.

In order to perceive clearly, our attention, concentration, motivation or desire must actively focus us on what it is we are to perceive. This aspect of perceiving, pre-sensory motor focusing, patterns our interpretation of sensory information.  Without this active focusing our perception remains poorly organized.

Sensory information comes to us through multiple channels.  Touch and movement are the first of the senses to develop. They are registered throughout the whole body and establish the baseline for future perception through the sensory structures of the head: mouth, nose, ears and eyes.  Sensory information from these structures is transmitted via the nervous system through cranial and spinal nerves...

[This workshop will explore:]

• The perceptual-response cycle.


• The developmental sequence of the senses and perception.


• The mouth as the first extremity to grasp, release, measure, reach, and withdraw.  It sets the foundation for the movement of the extremities (head, tail, hands and feet).
  The mouth and nose as the first initiators of movement of the head and spine.
  The inner ear as it registers vibration, movement, auditory tone and body postural tone.


• The eyes as they are dependent upon all the previous senses and, the role of the eyes in helping to integrate the other senses into more complex patterns.
  Cranial and spinal nerves from a cellular and nervous system perspective.

The perception of space outside our bodies is thus built on a foundation of both movement and feeling.  So for instance if I look at a tree, or just for fun, a guy named Hulk, I'm going to be using my eyes to determine his size, shape, motion, and density.  90% of that is not what I actually see, it is happening in my imagination.  My imagination happens to be very accurate for this task.  Even though Hulk's back is not visible to me, I've incorporated it into my visual comprehension.  If one of Hulk's legs was obscured by a trash can my mind would still imagine the leg and would be quite surprised if suddenly the trash can was gone and there was no leg there.  A very large part of this imaginative process develops through touch.  Hulk's density is frankly not visible at all, our perception of density is built on our experience of touching, squeezing, biting, lifting, pushing, bouncing and poking similar objects.

Embodiment is the new catch word being used to sell everything.  The packaging on my toothpaste tells me that it will leave me feeling more embodied, so does the flier for 25 Hour Fitness, and the meditation class down the street.  All of this embodiment hoopla is just the perception of density from the surface of the skin inward. The opposite of "Embodiment" then is disassociation.  I don't really know what disassociation is, but I'm guessing it is a failure of imagination.  Many drugs, especially the illegal ones, cause some kind of dissociation which probably temporarily damages the basic functioning of the imagination.

In Chinese internal martial arts, Tai Chi, Xinyi, Bagua, we take a different route.  I suppose we could say, "We do Embodiment inside out!"  The higher levels of practice are all about the cultivation of emptiness which is the feeling of zero density from the skin inwards.

As we discussed above, density is perceived through various forms of touch.  Every inch of the body is capable of perceiving density.  The feeling of cultivating Qi is hard to pin down but at least part of what we call "feeling qi" is the perception of density from the surface of our bodies outward.

If you just do a quick glace around the room, you probably aren't thinking much about density.  But now find an object like a vase or a can of deodorant, ask yourself, "Can I feel the density of that object by just looking at it?  Can I feel its density from a distance with my belly?  How about with my elbows?"  Most peoples imagination can do this quite easily.  When a cat is stalking its prey in a forest, it keeps its eyes on the prey but it is testing the ground for density with each step.  If you walk into a darkened room your perception of density suddenly goes on high alert so that you won't ding your shin or otherwise smack into something solid and unexpected.  That perception seems to reach out into space.  This is what we are doing when we practice internal martial arts.

If you hit someone, basically you are trying to make them feel more embodied.  The more they feel the pain inside their body, the more effective your strike was.  The more their perceptive faculties are focused inwards, the less they have available to find a way to hit you back.  So the opposite is also true, the more my faculties are focused outwards, the better my opportunity to fight.  This is true for the entire surface of my body and also for my ability to imagine out into space.

Along the same line of thinking, stare into the center of this image.  After a while the lines on the edges will start to straighten out.

This happens because we basically have tunnel vision all the time, it just seems like the whole world is in focus because our imagination makes it so.  But if you are in a fight for your life with an adrenaline surge, part of your imagination shuts down and you get tunnel vision.  This Wikipedia article suggests that there are pharmacological reasons for this, in other words they don't call it a loss of imagination.  But in fact it is both.

Theater ritual and martial arts are closely intertwined.  Masks have been used since ancient times to create altered states of consciousness.  If you want to know what it is like to experience the tunnel vision associated with being attacked, just put on a mask with narrow eye slits.  Mask work done with tradition and sensitivity has the ability to profoundly change the way we move and see.  It can change the way we feel and perceive both space and time.  Most traditional Chinese martial theater and ritual was done with elaborate spacial perception altering costumes and either heavy mask like make-up or actual masks.

Does Yoga Mean "To Yoke?"

Side stepping the debate about where modern yoga came from and what it is, I'd like to dig into the history of the basic concept-- yoga.

Wikipedia offers a nice overview.  Here are the important quotes:

The Sanskrit word yoga has many meanings, and is derived from the Sanskrit root "yuj," meaning "to control," "to yoke" or "to unite." Translations include "joining," "uniting," "union," "conjunction," and "means." The word yoga may also derive from the root "yujir samadhau," which means "contemplation" or "absorption."
___________

[Patanjali gives this terse definition] "Yoga is the inhibition (nirodha?) of the modifications (vrtti) of the mind (citta)".
___________

Hatha Yoga is a particular system of Yoga described by Yogi Swatmarama compiler of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika in 15th century India. Hatha Yoga differs substantially from the Raja Yoga of Patanjali in that it focuses on shatkarma," the purification of the physical body as leading to the purification of the mind ("ha"), and "prana," or vital energy.

If this is accurate, there is a strong possibility that Yoga and the Daoyin--Tai Chi--Shaolin matrix have a common origin, or that at least they all stem from a common notion of what a human being is.  I would summarize the method of Daoyin as--- "yoking" a purified physical body to "that stuff which animates us" (qi or prana) and then "yoking" that to a larger active spacial mind.  ---The use of the word purification here could also mean distillation or total differentiation.

The jing and qi must be purified or distinguished, they can not be mixed.  If the physical body (jing) is mixed with prana/qi the result will be gross motor or fine motor movement.  All three types of movement are controlled by the spacial mind, however in the case of "yoking" or Daoyin the spacial mind does not effect the body directly it must first unify with the qi/prana which then acts as an intermediary pulling (or pushing) the whole physical body along.  So fine motor movement, like typing, is almost impossible to do because it requires direct mental control of the fingers.

Pantanjali's "inhibition of the modifications of the mind," may simply be describing the discarding of all fine and gross motor control.   Perhaps it also includes the discarding of artifice, effort, and the maintenance of fantasies.  That would put it pretty close to an early definition of Laozi's  key concept: wuwei (not doing, or non-aggressive intentionality).

A quick scan of blogs dealing with the question of "yoking" turned up this:

Importantly, yoga did not mean “yoke” or “union” in its classical usage, despite what most yoga teachers and popular writers on yoga say today. But, as many contemporary scholars of Indian philosophy will point out, it would indeed be odd for yoga to mean something like “yoke” or “union” since the objective of Patanjali’s yoga, as it is laid out in the Yoga-Sutra, is for the yogi to recognize and realize the true nature of the universe – i.e. that pure consciousness (purusa) is distinct from mere matter (prakrti), which includes our minds and our thoughts. In other words, the yogi does not seek union or oneness with the world; rather, he seeks to liberate himself from his attachment to the worldly.

And I would respond that to distinguish consciousness (spacial mind and qi) from matter (body mass and ideas) is simply a returning to our original nature.  I would tend to describe our original nature as a functional order rather than a "union" since "union" is really a matter of perspective--whether we call it one, two (one 'yoked' to one) or three (one yoked to two) really depends where "we" are standing.  Does "our" original nature really have any fixed limits?  Sounds like liberation to me!

What's New!

Twisting and spiraling has gone mainstream!  I win!  Here is a fun article from Men's Health about twisting--  inspired by Tai Chi and Bagua and even cloud hands style Qigong-- to make people run faster.

Also, here is a cool new blog about what isn't new...ancient Tibet-o-civilization:  Early Tibet.

And here is my friend Maija's fun Blog: Sword and Circle.

I don't know the story behind this blog but I like it, maybe you will too.  Dark Wingchun.

I found that last blog because Maija published the following article on it (and Facebook), looking around the web she has written on this theme a few times but this is the newest incarnation:  Random Flow.

I like her ideas a lot.  My view of two person set flow routines (in reference to her random flow routines) is that if they are taught as techniques the purpose is lost.  Knowing where the force is going to come from is what makes this type of practice safe even with momentum and power in the mix.  Maija quotes her teacher Sonny, “If I know what you are going to do and where you are going to be next,  I can beat you no problem!”  That would be true if a person could truly know.  But to me what exemplifies the great tradition of gongfu is movement which can not be stopped by any technique.  It is an incredible presence.  This means training two person flow drills until they have no gaps, until one is defended on all four sides while simultaneously attacking.  The purpose of two person flow drills is to be able to beat an opponent even when he knows exactly what I am going to do.  So in the end we must be talking about an identical experience, we train the form to get as close to totally undifferentiated chaos as is humanly possible.  Which also happens to be my definition of the term Tai Chi.

Here is a video of some of my students doing a set flow drill (starts at 44 seconds in).



You also might want to check out this at Daoist Studies.org

And Livia Kohn has a new blog!
Here is the link to her Three Pines Press, and an interesting book on Sex in the Suwen.

The Social Muscles

I've been workshopping the idea of Social Muscles for a few months.  Even after years of blogging I still meet people who are baffled by the idea of cultivating weakness, so I'm trying to find vocabulary that makes this traditional group of ideas more "accessible."

Everyone is familiar with the idea of social stress.  Social stress happens whenever there is any challenge to a person's preferred status.  There have been a lot of rat studies about social stress (their hair tends to fall out).  There have also been a few studies of British civil servants (their hair falls out too).  Generally the lower you are in the social hierarchy the more stress.  That's probably because the lower you go in a hierarchy, the more people their are competing.  Positions at the top of social hierarchies are generally less stressful, but that depends on how real the challenges are and how often they are coming--the opposite could be true.

I used the word real in the last sentence, but social status is actually mostly about illusory things like who has the most friends or the biggest house, or even more illusory things like, 'do you believe in _____' (insert any group defining marker like: god, unions, aliens, PCB's, barefoot running...)  It's nearly impossible to have a conversation without experiencing some social stress.

Our experience of social dynamics is largely unconscious.  Experiences with improvisational theater, intense conflict, or other dramatic breaks from normal behavior can lift the veil off of social dynamics.  Suddenly you just 'wake up' and notice that every word, glance, sound, or movement is changing peoples status before your eyes.  Most people are status specialists, one person fights to be dominant, another looks around for a strong person to be number two to, others show their top row of teeth and nod "yes" a lot-- they are happy subordinates.  There are infinite degrees of social status and it can change in the blink of an eye, or rather, it always changes in the blink of an eye.  Most people have a preferred status but status is constantly in flux, changes happen in quantum leaps.  Good teachers are masters of changing from low to high status in a flash, one moment the students find themselves cheerfully interacting with each other, helpful, and cooperative, the next moment they are frozen listening to the teacher's instructions with bated breath.

All of these status expressions are physical.  They come from deep inside the body and they are effected by our perception of personal and architectural space and ownership.  (See my blog post on Body Mapping.)    These largely unconscious movements and expressions arise from torso movement in and around the organs.  You can consciously activate them, but once they are active they are hard to control.  You can decide to get angry, but then deciding to calm yourself back down ain't that easy.  It's a lot of work to fake being happy--try doing it for an extended period of time and the stress will become debilitating.

Social Muscles are all the muscles of the torso that create, control, assert, and manage social status.  When we practice internal martial arts we want to let-go (tou kai = dissolve outward) all our social muscles.  We want to discard the impulse to control our status with physical expressions of dominance and submission.  If this sounds easy, perhaps I'm not being clear.  If you are home by yourself reading a book, or watching Chopped on the Food Network, you are reacting to stress cues of dominance and submission.  Any time you think, "I liiiiiike," or "Sexy-time," or "Really?" you are activating your Social Muscles.  Some experiences are obviously more stressful than others (I find watching Chopped really stressful).

Readers may be thinking, "But dude, it's relaxing talking with friends or curling up on the couch with the latest Bed Bath & Beyond catalog!"  It doesn't matter.  One part of your experience is relaxing, and probably being stimulated by happy chemicals too, another part is actively, unconsciously, reacting to social stress.  Facing my own demons, my happy chemicals are clearly triggered when I get in an argument, I love it, and perhaps it is less stressful for me than for other people, but it's still stressful, my Social Muscles are still working overtime!

What often passes for "relaxing" is actually just people hanging out in their preferred status.  I love soaking in hot water and breathing fresh air.  Visiting a spa can certainly be a real break from social stress, but sometimes the people at spas are down right freaky.  When hanging out at a spa becomes your preferred status, you have entered a weird zone.

My guess is that beginning as infants we spontaneously make faces and change body shapes.  Our internal organs just move around and do random stuff in response to stimulation.  But our parents give us consistent feedback for specific expressions, gestures, sounds, and whole body movements.  Through this consistent feedback we learn to interact socially.  In the beginning I doubt it is stressful, a baby can cry loudly for 4 hours straight.  What makes it stressful is the attempt to constrain impulses.  If you just get angry, it's not stressful.  But hardly anyone does that.  We start to get angry and then we check ourselves, or wonder why, or attempt to assert dominance and fail, or restrain ourselves, distract ourselves, simmer, or just "walk away."  That stuff is all really stressful.  Social Muscles work to contain spontaneous reactions. ¹

It seems to me that most "displays" of emotion are attempts to change our social status.  I remember being in India in a post office.  After the 4th hour of waiting in lines to mail some books back home, and getting turned away from a counter for about the sixth time, because I hadn't wrapped the books properly, I just started crying.  I willed it.  In America I would have done something differently, something more on "script," but in India my dominance/submission messages weren't working anyway so I chose to throw all caution to the wind.  The tears were a satisfying release for me, but the people around me started looking enormously upset.  Suddenly everyone was helping me.  There were a lot of young people sending letters to Harvard and MIT, and they all stopped to help me.  About 20 of them pulled me outside and listened to my problem and then they started helping me solve it, they found me a guy who sews up books (really, in plastic and canvas) and another person who writes out addresses and sews on labels and one who affixes wax seals.  It was weird.  Anyway my point is that because I was in another culture and had been pushed to the brink, I was able to discarded who I am.  I could have a pure, baby like, expression of emotion, a non-stressful expression of emotion, and just watch the reactions. That never happens at home, I know my place, we all know our place and we work hard to keep it.

The practice of internal martial arts is about completely letting go of the social USE of the muscles. This is especially true of the abdominal muscles and the ways these muscles connect to the face, hands and feet.  The Social Muscles are extraordinarily powerful, when we drop all social constraints we can become angelic, monstrous, predator-like, or to use traditional Daoist terminology-- immortal.²

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¹I use the word spontaneous here with some trepidation because, I think, the impulse to contain or control social situations seems spontaneous to the extent that it is unconscious.   Perhaps primal urge would be a better choice of words, or maybe something Chinese like yuande, original nature.

²The Chinese character for immortal, xian, is made up of a mountain and a person.  So as a literal image it means: mountain man.  AKA, big foot, sasquatch, & yeti.

Xian = Immortal = mountain+person

Structure Vs. Momentum

Two posts back I was discussing the perfect curriculum.  Part of that discussion, which got a lot of comments on Facebook (can we fix the code so they show up here too?), is about the pros and cons of breaking an enormous corpus of ever receding revelations into bite sized ideas.  While the pros and cons are still being weighed, I have a little something to say about Structure vs. Momentum.

Structure training has many facets and side trajectories.  The most significant in no particular order are, center-line awareness and control, power investigation and development, and  creating potent default stances you can fight your way to when you are loosing in a self-defense situation.

But all that aside, the main purpose of structure training is to learn how to give up control of a fight in exchange for taking a dominant position. This is more or less what I was getting at when I named this blog "weakness with a twist." If you can reposition yourself with a structural advantage, having control over the fight isn't that important.  You can effectively let your opponent buck and roll while you tap them on the shoulder from behind.  It isn't usually that easy to pull off, but it is that simple.

Structure training isn't the whole fight by a long shot, but it is a very important piece.

Electric Volcano

Contrast this with momentum training.  Learning good structure usually involves a substantial loss of power do to the loss of natural momentum.  For instance untrained people often throw their shoulder and head into a punch because they intuitively know that it will increase the momentum of their strike.  We martial artists often un-teach this inclination right at the beginning because throwing your shoulder and head into a strike will likely land you in a worse position, especially if the punch misses it's target.

Again, the order in which this unwieldy mass of teachings are learned is up in the air, but there is some logic to teaching Momentum after Structure is established.

If structure training is about giving up control to gain position, then momentum training is about giving up both control and position in exchange for adding chaos.  The more mass there is barreling through space along spiral trajectories, the more inherent danger.  The less momentum there is in a fight the safer it is.  If the person you are fighting is focused on defense, he is less focused on hurting you.  If your opponent is trying to control or dominate you, adding momentum will likely shift him into a defensive mode.  The more defensive he is, the more rigid and predictable he will become.  The more experienced you are with the chaos of added momentum, the more likely you are to prevail.

Momentum training increases the power of strikes dramatically, but that's a side benefit.  The main purpose of momentum training is to get you to drop the wasted effort of trying to dominate and control.   Tigers fighting other animals don't waste effort trying to dominate and control.  Those are social concerns.  Drop them and you will experience greater freedom of action.

The will to dominate and control arises from the fear of chaos (huntun).  That doesn't necessarily make it good or bad, it just limits our ability to see things as they actually are.

The Perfect Martial Arts Curriculum

Recently, several of my students have been giving me a hard time.  They say I'm under playing the importance of structure training.  Perhaps they are right.

In the traditions of India, Japan and China, it is common to teach using an ideal model.  Copy the model and practice like crazy and eventually you will understand how the model was created, both what makes it tick and what raw materials went into it.  "Reverse engineering" is the name techies give for this type of teaching.  It works well in flexible one-on-one learning situations where, if for some reason, a particular model isn't coming together, the master teacher can just change to a different model.

This way of transmitting cultural knowledge tends to be quite effective at creating continuity.  It's weakness lays in it's tendency to "worshiping" the model itself.  If the teacher believes a particular model is so great it should never be changed he will tend to blame the student (or the society as a whole) for artistic decline.  It's also possible that the teacher got an imperfect transmission of the model and ends up transmitting superficial knowledge.

Western Civilization gives priority in learning to cognitive understanding, not models.  Even when faced with an art which is visceral and corporeal, the tendency is to teach with a curriculum utilizing progressive stages of conceptualization.

This type of teaching tends to make efficient use of time and facilitates group learning.  It's very adaptable.  If the students aren't getting it, the teacher will try to develop a new lesson based on the notion that all knowledge is built on previous knowledge.  By working with the pieces, eventually the whole picture will come into view.

Working against this approach is the problem that acquired knowledge based on conceptual notions or utilitarian routines can sometimes inhibit artistic realms of awareness. (That's what the film the Black Swan is about, by the way.)   Artistic skills and ability are not always based on previous knowledge.  Realms of awareness which open up possibilities of spontaneous action can not really be taught, they must be discovered.  In fact, one type of knowledge can inhibit learning in another realm, like hitting the brake and the gas at the same time.

Too often the role of teacher as facilitator is undervalued and the role of teacher as "spoon feeder" is idealized.  My own learning experience in the martial arts benefited enormously from the "just copy this ideal model" and practice like crazy way of doing things.  Getting autonomous students to willingly submit to that form of learning usually requires a huge head fake.  A sort of matador's cape that I've never been particularly good at wielding.  Meanwhile our society exerts an enormous amount of pressure on teachers to create a progressive curriculum.

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All of that was just a conceptual prelude to me presenting the problem in the following practical terms.

If you want to understand the value of strength, do some really hard physical labor for an extended period of time.  Try working 20 hour days commercial fishing in Alaska, carrying around 80 pounds of gear all day above 10,000 feet, or tossing bales of hay in Iowa.  (Perhaps people can mimic some of these effects in the gym, but I'm skeptical.)  Once you have this kind of strength you will appreciate flexibility as a total revelation.  Without first developing this kind of strength, flexibility just seems like a convenience.  But build up some serious strength and flexibility will seem like a treasure.

Once you have strength and flexibility, structure is a revelation.  Good or correct structure will allow you to transfer force through your bones, dramatically reducing the need for muscular strength, allowing you to conserve enormous amounts of energy.

Once you have structure you can develop it so that any movement at any angle or curve has integrity.  And then looseness will be revelation.  With looseness you will have the ability to have structure only when you want it.  You can disappear and re-appear at will.

Once you have looseness, momentum is a revelation.  Looseness will give you the speed and adaptability to take advantage of both your own and an opponent's momentum.   It's a whole different way of fighting. (Yes, I'm talking about fighting again, but it's only a frame for the larger philosophical discovery.)

Once you understand momentum, you will feel the value of increasing the unified integrity of your entire liquid mass as a revelation.  Unity comes about through reducing all effort.  Eventually you will experience turning off all specific muscular control as a revelation.

Once you have discarded effort, emptiness becomes a revelation.  Emptiness connects the effortless body to spacial awareness.

No doubt there are revelations to come.

Laozi says that the more focused, differentiated, specific and clear an idea becomes, the more likely it is to begin to stagnate and decay or harden and break.  Shouldn't this be the first lesson?

Defeat All Dirty Power!

Below is the text of the flyer for George Xu's latest public offerings in San Francisco.  It's poetry, of a sort.  The first time I met George was around 1990.  My first teacher, Bing Gong was making a formal introduction on my behalf.  George was briefly delighted and then went into a wild rant about how everyone was doing Tofu Tai Chi.  He proceeded to define and contrast Tofu Tai Chi with the other cosmological possibilities and then began demonstrating maximum spring shaking power as the antidote to all this squishy food practice.  I was hooked.

In case you are wondering, "dirty power" is anything generated from a body which does not conform to the principle of "Dead physical body"  --Also known as XU, which was the topic of my last post.


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2011 Seminar with Master George Xu

Seminar 1: Master George Xu will teach Chen Style Tai Ji , secret of max gravity, 3rd level of internal power, pure and large internal power, form and Tai Ji push hand principles, and Wu Tang Qi Kung. Unit empty pure force will defeat all dirty power force and weak force.

Seminar 2: Master George Xu will teach Xing-Yi Six Harmony - Ten Animals, Xing-Yi 10 principles, 10 different circles, Seventh Harmony to the enemy and Eighth Harmony to the universe, 3 level of 10 Dan Tian training (small internal, large internal, space spiritual Dan Tian), and Qi Kung training.

Seminar 3: Master George Xu will teach Ba Gua basics and dragon eagle form, Ba Gua snake, dragon, tornado, three different power, Ba Gua principles and usage. Dead physical body follow intelligence internal power and pure internal power follow space spiritual power.

Seminar 4: Master George Xu will teach new secret from Europe, Tai Chi form and principles, two men training, test your internal power perfection, intelligence and purity. Tai Ho of Tai Chi, Natural style secrets. Teach you to be as powerful and wild as tiger, fast as lighting, large like ocean, spiral as tornado, heavy as mountain, light as feather at the same time.

Fee:  $120 one day, $180 both days

Please register in advance.

When:

1. Feb. 12-13 Sat & Sun 9-5pm

2. March 5-6 Sat & Sun 9-5pm

3. March 26-27 Sat & Sun 9-5pm

4. April 30 - May 1 Sat & Sun 9-5pm

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Also: Rory Miller will be in the San Francisco Bay Area again Feb. 18th-20th.  Check it out!



Me & friends at Rory's workshop in last September