The Black Taoist

The Black Taoist is an internal martial artist (neijia) and teacher of exceptional skill. His website has a fresh rap about feeling the ethos of a martial arts life. Yes, I got it stuck in my head.

I first noticed him online about 8 years ago and got a kick out of his "taoist" style, but he has now put together a collection of video's on youtube that are really excellent. I was instantly inspired by his frank talk and his relaxed spontaneous narration and interview style. For me, he marks an major evolution in the development of martial arts teaching and dialog. Frankly, most martial arts videos are so boring they are unwatchable. Thanks to the Black Taoist everyone is going to have to "step up." (ie. I think he's 6'5")
I am also fascinated by the possibilities of exchanging marital arts videos. Dueling martial arts ideas expressed in a public forum people all over the world can watch. It's only going to get more interesting. All that being said, I did get a little heat going with my own video response to the Black Taoist, and now I've thrown in a few more, and more are on the way.  http://youtube.com/gongfuguy

Xingyi

I've studied both types to Xingyi quan (hsing i ch'uan), Wuxing (Five element) and Liuhe (six harmonies), but I've trained Liuhe a lot more. Both are powerful internal fighting arts. Both can be performed in a small space. Video

More, and More.

The histories I have read about this art really don't tell us much. Liuhe is thought to be the older style. I find it difficult to believe, but Liuhe was taught only to Muslims before 1949. Wow, there is some truth there but at some point they must have been teaching others because it's supposed to be the older style.

I do think liuhe is actually an older style because wuxing seems to have become simpler, perhaps even gentrified. (George Xu used to say "think kill!" when we practiced liuhe.)

The main weapon of war for the infantry for most of history was the spear. A phalanx protected by a small cavalry was very difficult to beat. Cavalries with huge Arabian horses became a cult of the emperor by the time of the Tang Dynasty (cavalries were later used by the Mongolian hordes conquered the world) and they were formidable, but training war horses was harder and more expensive than training huge infantries. The spear remained very important until the invention of the gun.

Spear training is evident in luohe xingyi both in the stepping and in the shrinking of the body size, not to mention the turning maneuvers and the focus on forward movement. I really can think of no martial art that is better designed for fighting with a group in tight formation, shoulder to shoulder.
I have heard that xingyi was officer training for the infantry but I don't know of any facts to back it up.

Another theory goes that xingyi could be practiced on the thin paths of the rice paddies and in small places (as opposed to Shaolin which needs an open court yard or a walled park). It could be practiced on the road, going and coming from work.

Update: China From Inside is a pretty good site.

Daoism and Martial Arts

If you read Stephen R. Bokenkamp's excellent Book Early Daoist Scriptures you can learn something about Daoism. There was a Daoist precept against keeping (or collecting) rare or excessively sharp weapons. This suggests that it was pretty normal to have something handy around the house, but that fighting was not considered part of their job (also weapons are talismanic, they are said to attract demons).
There is another precept which is really interesting: Daoists were forbidden to fight in the army, but if they were forced (threatened with the extermination of family) than they were forbidden to serve in a subordinate position--Meaning they had to command troops.
Other important precepts are cultivate: weakness, softness, stillness and non-aggression. There were also prohibitions against wasting qi or jing, or loosing your qi (i.e., getting angry to the point of self injury).
The vast number of Daoists were house holders, married men and women, priests whose job it was to regulate or manage local cults and the rectification of the unresolved dead.
Daoist thinking is important in the creation of internal martial arts, but the connection is not easy to make.
Kristofer Schipper who I mentioned in an earlier blog, says that there were two types of Daoists, black hat and red hat. Red hat were aloud to practice martial arts and black hat were not. The distinction between these two is not a simple one, but red hat's are usually transmediums or shaman (wu).
The idea that certain internal martial arts (taijiquan, xingyiquan, baguazhang) are Daoist or Daoist influenced may not predate the 20th century. It very much depends on what we think Daoism is, and what constitutes an "influence."
I intend to deal with this subject in depth in the coming months, but I thought I might give my readers a head start on the reading.

Standing Meditation

I over looked this book by author Lam Kam-Chuen because the people on the cover look like they are wearing pajamas and the title translates the word Qi as Energy, and I've had quite enough of that.

The surprise is that The Way of Energy is a good summary of Zhan Zhuang, or standing meditation, and I recommend it to beginners.   The pictures are clear and the instruction straightforward.

In the biography section of the book he explains that his teacher, Yu Yongnian, was a dentist who studied in Japan before the revolution in China.  In the fifties his teacher was involved in the creation of the modern (TCM) Traditional Chinese Medicine-Qigong curriculum.  The book includes a short section about research his teacher did on the various stages people go through when they are learning to stand still.  When someone with knowledge of history reads this kind of stuff we think of the Nazi doctors.  But who knows they could have all been willing members of his work-group.

Kam's teacher's teacher was Wang Xiangzhai, the famous unconventional martial artist who invented Yiquan.  My first teacher Bing Gong, was a disciple of Kuo Lienying, who was a contemporary of Wang Xiangzhai and also studied with him.  The material in this book is very close to what I teach about standing practice from a martial arts point of view-- it is also the best qigong practice there is for health!

The second half of the book teaches the Eight Silken Brocade which is a very common muscle tendon lengthening warm-up, now almost universally referred to as ancient qigong.

The book is better than most, but it has a few problems.  The funniest of which is the last page ridiculously  titled "First-Aid."  The last line of the book is:  "If you get a burn go the your cupboard and pour soy sauce on it!"  --Ah the lost art of editing...

Three Daoist Paths

What do these three things have in common?
1. Taking a step and putting your foot down with out any agenda or plan. (Like in Bagua zhang)
2. These pictures and videos of the Goddess Mazu, in Taiwan.
3. The Chinese word for fist: quan. (By linguistic extension it also means a martial arts routine which can be performed.)
The answer is they are all different parts of a processional religious tradition. This tradition of performance and ritual cuts deeply across western conceptual categories of meaning.
A few days ago I wrote about Paulie Zink, and the difficulty I had making sense of his monkey style Daoist religious performance training. When we think of African religion, a dancing ritual expert is not so hard to imagine. How about a Chinese dance that is so full of unseen power that if word spreads it is about to be performed, people run home and lock their doors?
Kristofer Schipper in his brilliant work The Taoist Body, explains that people trained in monkey gongfu also played the monkey god (who steals the peach belonging to the Queen Mother of the West) in ritual performances which had a strong religious function for Chinese communities. Such performances were part of religious celebrations, festivals and processions associated with local temples and sacred history. He also talks about Daoist puppet masters:

"Puppets are rarely called in just for the show; their power is such that they are considered invaluable aids in the battle against evil influences. A troupe is called on to exorcise these influences in the event of disaster such as fire, flood, drought, or epidemics. They also come to purify newly built houses and temples or to consecrate important offerings, either to the gods or to the orphan souls. This is because the puppets do not just represent the gods: they are the gods."
"As a rule, a marionette ensemble consists of thirty-six bodies and seventy two heads. Together, these add up to 108, which corresponds to the total number of constellations. The puppets, therefore, represent all the essences of the universe. Before the play begins, the marionettes are consecrated in the same way as the statues of the gods and the tablets of the ancestors. They are thus infused with the spiritual force of the gods they represent. So fearsome is their strength that when they chase away demons with their chants and dances, and assail invisible devils with their miniature weapons, no one dares to look. The orchestra plays, the master puppeteer recites sacred formulas, the puppets move about, but the place in front of the stage remains empty and the common people stay home behind closed doors afraid that , in a panic, the demons might take refuge in their homes, or even it their bodies."

When a puppet god puts his foot down, does he have an agenda? Or is his foot embodying the Daoist idea of wuwei: nothing is done, yet like water, nothing is left unnourished?

Student Performance

My fourth and fifth grade students at Mission Education Center in San Francisco performed this week for the rest of their school. They really rocked the school yard. The show is a demonstration of 19 weeks of training once a week for 45 minutes. Check out the video!

Weakness

How do internal martial arts work?

One way to explain it is that they improve alignment and thus improve the efficient transfer of force through the body. Alignment, in this sense, is not static alignment, it is functional alignment while in motion.

This type of 'improvement' involves moving in a smaller range. Internal martial arts measure 'range' in many different ways, but for the sake of example we can simply think of 'joint range.' When we use a smaller joint range we do it because we are looking for that percentage of joint movement which is most efficient at force transfer. We then practice movement routines which use that smaller range until they become integrated or familiar.
Perhaps surprisingly, what happens when we do this practice is that we feel vulnerable. When we move outside of our efficient range, we notice the potential for misalignment or even injury. The more actual potential to transfer force one develops, the weaker, and more vulnerable one feels.

This is not the weakness one associates with being sick, over worked, or deficient. It is the weakness we associate with sensitivity and adaptability. I posit that all increases in power are do in some part to a reduction in range of movement while in motion.

As students improve they often exclaim something to the effect of, "I'm completely unstable on my ankles!"

Plans for Youtube Lectures

Now I have another idea that I have to start working on. I want to do youtube lectures with my own mix of music, dance and martial arts. The first subject I thought would be Bagua walking; its true origins not just the unlikely stuff that we hear repeated over and over in every book, article or school.
I’d also like to do one on the real meaning of gongfu, meritorious action. And also on the real meaning of quan (fist): a routine done to commemorate any public event, but which grew out of religious processions for specific local deities between and with in villages.

Also look for more book reviews. Here is a must own reading list that I made up for the Library at the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Topics include Daoism, History and Martial Arts.

Youtube Single Whoop(ed) Video

So I finally put up a cool video with my self and Greg Mooney mixing it up. Check it out at http://youtube.com/gongfuguy

Being Double Weighted

I have said that I would write about double weighting in Taijiquan push hands (tuishou). I probably need to do a whole article but I just picked up a copy of Erle Montaigue's Power Taiji (Paladin Press 1995). Here is his website, and he has a live webcam form correction service. I'm impressed.
Here is a quote from the book:

8) "If you think that your push-hands is good and you pride yourself on not being able to be pushed over, start from the beginning again because you have not learned taijiquan. You must use this exercise to help each other to understand some very important principles of taiji. If it becomes a competition, then you are only learning push-hands and not taijiquan."

Double weighting can have many meanings, but here he is referring to a kind of defensiveness that can develop from improper practice.
This defensiveness is both physical and psychological. At the physical level I sometimes call it “defending the middle.� One can actually get good at not being pushed by sinking in between ones feet, hunkering down, and then letting the upper body and the head move freely around. This is a big mistake because you can delude yourself that you are getting good, you can convince yourself that you are winning. In reality your opponent has to ‘up the ante’ if they want to win, and if they are nice they won’t.

There are four primary push-hands movements: peng, ji, lu, an.
If you stay with these movements your practice will improve. There are also four secondary push-hands movements: cai, kao, lei, zhou. When your partner makes a mistake and leaves peng, ji, lu, an, you must respond immediately with cai, kao, lei, or zhou. The problem is that if your partner responds quickly, so must you. Zhou, for instance means use the elbow to pivot, throw or strike. In slow motion, that’s fine, but moving fast you risk really hurting your partner. Nice people will just lose.
Someone who has taken this wrong path is very difficult to convince they have made a mistake. Usually they will be convinced that they are superior to you.
If my readers want, I will link to Youtube videos of people practicing “defending the middle.�
Since this a totally new blog. I await your responses.