Joint Pulsing #2

If you practice pulsing all the joints in the body, with a partner and on your own, many aspects Taijiquan will come to life. This is considered an original qi (yuanqi) practice because it is really obvious that babies do joint pulsing all the time. Most people loose much of this pre/post-natal action as they mature.

The wonderful thing is that this buoyant mobility is recoverable, even at advanced ages, because it relies on fluids not muscles. (Of course older people loose fluids as they age too, but not as fast as muscle.)

From a fighting point of view joint pulsing really amps up one's ability to hit with a lot of force using very little movement, and no wind up. In other words, fajing.

On the down side, there is a tiny delay in between opening and closing the joints that can be exploited by a fast and sensitive opponent. So if you want to reach the top level, you will eventually have to phase out the pulsing.

Here are the 6 stages of becoming a joint pulsing superhero:

1. Make the joints open, make the joints close.


2. Make the joints close, let the joints open. (the second part is passive)


3. Make the joints open, let the joints close.


4. Put opening the joints inside of closing the joints, and put closing the joints inside of opening the joints.


5. Dissolve the closing and opening of the joints.


6. Dissolve the intention to open and close the joints.

Joint Pulsing

In the bad old days of Taijiquan, there was hardly any detailed teaching beyond forms correction and simple push-hands. Now-a-days, there is tons of teaching and it's getting more open all the time. What constitutes the body of taijiquan basic knowledge is really growing.

So I expect most people have heard this simple description of jin:

Peng: Twist outward, close the joints, qi rising.

Ji: Twist outward, open the joints, qi rising.

Lu: Twist inward, close the joints, qi sinking.

An: Twist inward, open the joints, qi sinking.

This is the internal structure of Taijiquan, it is one of many steps used to unify the whole body. It is the way you transform your external body's shape so that you can issue power in many different ways. It is not the source of power.

If these "mechanics" are still murky for you or your student, I suggest trying peng to the back, with your arms behind you. For it to work your peng will become: Twist inwards, close the joints and bring qi up from the heels (instead of the "bubbling well.")

Now, many people have pointed out that the opening move in many styles of Taijiquan, where both the wrists rise up in front, is usually called peng and is done with the whole body rising. This is because the jin, the method for issuing power, is left in a potential state called shi. The term shi, has a huge number of meanings including: a taut bowstring, a trigger, and strategic advantage.  This can not be taught by watching, it must be felt.

Philosophy of Fear

Imagine you are a wolf, or some other predator, who is absolutely terrified. Not just passing fear, but the kind of fear that colors everything. Tree branches could fall on you at at any moment, the sun burns and dehydrates, the night freezes. Even the air you breath is frightening.

When you enter a fight, it is with total fear. You must kill to survive, but because everything is experienced through fear, nothing is treasured, and there is nothing to defend. You fight because you are afraid, but you are no more afraid of this opponent than you are of your own mother.

The entire universe is out to get you. Because every centimeter of your being is fear, there is no way to tense up. Fear has already permeated everything.

This is one path to Dao. It is the path of the Shaman-warrior, who charges off into battle, Baguazhang style, with a deadly poisonous five-steps-down snake in each hand.

Contrast all this with total transcendence. The vision you hold of the cosmos has become so expansive that the entire human race's existence is less than a mite on a fleas ear. You experience yourself, not in terms of your own birth and death, but as part of this gigantic, unfathomable, limitlessness.

For you a fight is no different than walking or riding a bicycle. You are utterly fearless because your own death is no more significant than anyone, or anything, else's. Because your detachment is so complete, you have nothing to defend.

This is another path to Dao. It is the path of perfection, it is how gods are made.

What if you didn't know why you are here? or where you are going? What if fear came up and then dispersed easily? What if transcendence came and went like the clouds? What if not knowing were actually the only constant? What if you were just normal?

When you fight it is a dance. You treasure every bit of flying dust, every rotating muscle, the ground and the sky. You use no technique at all. Because you accept not being able to control the future, you have no need for intermediaries, like technique, strategy, or even hope. Your only tool is intimacy.
This is called the path of wuwei, it is also a path to Dao.

"You have no doubt heard of those who are good at nourishing life."

Labor Day Weekend

I'm working on some posts about fear, but they aren't finished yet.

I'm being pulled away to go play, so no blog today, but I have been leaving comments on the last few post of FormosaNeijia that readers may find interesting, like this one below:

Well, yes, you should know and train every technique in the form with an active partner, preferably one that is better than you and starts nice but gets rougher. I was taking that for granted.
Still, I’m starting to think the Bridge idea is in conflict with Taijiquan theory. My training in Chinese martial arts, in general (Northern Shaolin, Lan Shou, Xingyi, Bagua) taught me not to defend. In taiji theory every centimeter of your being is in the fight, if you dedicate some part of your body to defense at the moment of contact you might as well put your neck out and offer it to your opponent as a snack.

Kuo Lien-ying's Diagram

The T'ai Chi Boxing Chronicle, Compiled and Explained by Kuo Lien-Ying, translated by Guttmann, (1994, North Atlantic Books), contains this diagram.

The top third and the bottom two thirds are two different diagrams. I find the bottom two thirds the more interesting of the two. Stand yourself at the top where it says "Centrifucal force." The 'wiggle' below the word Peng is, I think, meant to represent "An jin" or hidden power, just below that is the bridge to your opponent.

There are lot's of things here for all you push-hands players out there to think about. For instance, notice that Pivoting and Grabbing are almost out side of the picture, far beyond the opponent's center.

I believe he intended us to see Ji, Lu, and An (I can't bare to translate them) as contained in the words: Open, Close, Give, Empty Receive, Adhere, Evade, Connect, and Stick.

The Bridge as a Metaphor

I often hear the bridge metaphor in martial arts talk. It has a number of different meanings. Zhang Xuexin used it to describe what he called the bridge stance. His metaphor was a rainbow bridge, probably bamboo, which was a brilliant Chinese structural innovation of the Sung Dynasty.

The idea is that your legs are like huge bundles of bamboo stuck in the ground at angles leaning over a river. These bundles then have more and more bundles tied to them at progressively lower angels until the two sides of the bridge meet in the middle. By staggering the bundles you create many triangles in the structure and it becomes a self supporting woven structure, which is both strong and quite flexible.

In other words, he was saying that the two legs are a connected structure which is constantly redistributing the weight of the torso.

Luo Dexiu and the gang over at formosaneijia are using the metaphor to mean the act of crossing over. If you are going to have a fight at a bridge and you meet your opponent in the middle, you both have equally limited space to maneuver. Step back and you are below your opponent, step side and you're in the drink.

However; if your opponent decides to cross the bridge first you can gain an advantage by attacking him just as he is exiting the bridge, at the moment where his maneuverability is limited and yours isn't.

This complex metaphor is used to talk about how we enter a fight and close the gap between us. Speed, power, technique, and the use of timing all change dramatically as the two fighters get closer and closer together. (Basically we move through this approximate progression in an instant: Kicks, jabs, stomping, slaps, hooks, throws, knees, elbows, shoulders, more throws, grappling.)

Thus the bridge is often the movement or technique one uses to get in closer. If you "cross the bridge first" your technique should compensate for that moment of vulnerability just as you "get off the bridge." For instance, someone will often step in fast faking with the back of their hand outstretch, if this is met by the opponent's hand, one can can sense the opponents intentions, direction, and power at the moment of contact and spontaneously use that information to inform the next part of their attack.

Others, like the Blacktaoist, are, by extension, using the term bridge to mean one's arm. If the arm is the first contact with the opponent then it needs to have extraordinarily good structure, so that it can take all the heavy traffic that is going to be traveling over it!  More traffic, more power.  If you have a weak bridge (that can't handle much traffic), it doesn't matter how good your techniques are, your opponent's bridge will send more heavy traffic (o.k. how about troops then?) to dominate your side of the the bridge.

Appetite and Discipline

One of the biggest challenges of being a teacher is that students are always trying to get me to equivocate. For instance, I say, "Practice standing completely still for one hour early in the morning, everyday, before you eat breakfast."

Some student will always want to know what will happen if they don't? I usually answer, "Sifu will kill you!" But they always laugh, and then ask what if they only stand for 20 minutes? or do it in the evening? or every other day?

The truth is, I don't know. I've always practiced the whole thing, without equivocation. I can guess or I can ask other teachers. But honestly, what I really know is what I've practiced. The reason I don't stop practicing is because I have a real appetite to practice as much as I do. I stand in the morning for the same reason I eat in the morning.

There is another way, and I've used it on solo retreats. It is called the Wandering of the Mare. I have several artist friends who live this way all the time. They eat when they are hungry, they sleep when they are sleepy, they paint, or read, or call up a friend totally spontaneously whenever they feel like it. I'm never surprised to hear that they have been up all night painting.

On a solo retreat, I'm the same way, I sleep until there is absolutely no more feeling to sleep, and then I close my eyes one more time to make sure. I sit still, or stand still, or walk the Baguazhang circle, until I'm done. No schedule, no limits.

But most of us work for a living. We have people to coordinate with.  We have to at least try to stay awake during meetings. Five days a week we have to get the kids off to school with a good breakfast and matching socks.

Hermits and anyone on a long, private retreat, can freely follow their appetites. Many of the most potent and profound Chinese disciplines were created by hermits. What to a hermit is natural discipline, may seem to us, living as we do in the world with other peoples needs and expectations, like "militaristic discipline." To spontaneously follow one's personal appetite(s) is to be in an on-again, off-again, conflict with the social world.

We might do better to think of Taijiquan, Baguazhang etc... as the "ritual resetting" of our appetites.  By "winding" us back to zero once a day, they allow us to follow our appetites spontaneously--within the social world.

Talisman (Fu)

Formosa Neijia posted the last two paragraphs of this article by the Author of Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals, Brian Kennedy.

The Dark side of Talismans
It was March of 2006. A pregnant woman and her unborn baby had been murdered. The Taiwanese police had narrowed their suspects down to one person, the boyfriend. A police raid is conducted on his house and the police find a most eerie thing when they burst through the doors.

The murderer has plastered hundreds of Taoist talismans over every square inch of his apartment. His purpose was obvious, at least to Taiwanese observers, and that was to protect himself from the ghost of his murdered girlfriend and their unborn murdered child.

Although Taoist priest and pundits were quick to try and distance "legitimate" Taiwanese Taoism from the dark evilness of the murderer, nonetheless folk belief in Taiwan is that such talismans are, for better or worse, "morally neutral," meaning they will work regardless of the motive or personal morality of the users. It is noticeable to any observer of Taiwanese Taoism or any observer of Taiwan's criminal element that the two things often go hand in glove. For example Taiwanese gangsters often wrap their illegal firearms or knives in Taoist talismans.

First of all let me recommend a really great Horror Movie on the subject, Double Vision (Taiwan, 2002) [review].

Kennedy is right that Talisman (as a whole category) are "morally neutral," but so are Emergency Rooms, Technology, and the Law. An emergency room will take anyone who bleeds.

Confucius listed four categories that he would not discuss. One of them was random/domestic violence. His reason was that it is so common, it happens everywhere to all types of people. The horrible scene above is all too common, a young man, probably in a possessive rage, kills his pregnant girlfriend. If the story is like so many others, he was instantly filled with unbearable guilt.

Kennedy says the Talisman are Daoist. It would be more accurate to say "Red-Hat Daoist," sometimes referred to as Wu, and in this blog what I have been calling Trans-mediums. However, there is no central authority in Daoism, so if someone puts on a black hat and calls themselves at black-hat-orthodox-Daoist, they may be able to get away with it, especially where people are uprooted from their traditional communities.

The Chinese term for Talisman is fu. Fu means contract. A fu, in this case, is a contract between the living and the unseen world. Those talisman he put up around the murder said something. Probably not "I'm sorry" and also probably not, "burn in hell," they were likely an attempt to protect the man from his own intense feelings of guilt. He was afraid, as anyone in that situation would be, that he was going to carry feelings of guilt for every minute of the rest of his life. The newly dead, had in a very real and even physical way, implanted themselves in his body.

These fu were likely a request that the dead be resolved as quickly as possible. When people die, especially young people, and especially people who die violently, they often leave intense unresolved problems, and feelings behind.

Does ritually creating and hanging a contract asking for resolution actually bring about resolution? I don't know, but I'll bet he is going to do some time behind bars.

footnote: The ad photo for Double Vision at the top, has a slogan for the English speaking audience about belief. It ain't in the movie.

Three types of Teachers

In the martial arts world I've encountered three basic types of teachers, all of which are great and all of which have draw backs.

The first type is the Perfected Example. This type demonstrates the physical and energetic height of the art. Students tend to develop from the outside inward, meaning that the students try to copy the look and feel of the teacher. The teacher is a perfect example of what one should strive for.

The second type is the Refined Guide. This type specializes in being able to explain, and come-up with exercises which reveal, the deep inner workings of the art. They can explain how to modify or adapt the practice for different types of people or to achieve different types of fruition. A high degree of refined skill is made up of lots of smaller skills. This type of teacher breaks everything down into digestible nuggets. They tend to be interested both in innovation and in the history of how each aspect of the art developed.

The third type is the Constant Trainer. This type teaches the student how to train every aspect of the art. Their motto is, "One day missed, ten days lost." This type will usually practice with the student, so that the student sees exactly how to apply constant discipline to any training method. Without constant, yet natural, discipline, even the greatest methods produce mediocre results.

For Chinese Martial Arts to survive and thrive into the future we need all three types of teachers.  Ideally, everyone should have access to all three types.

Eyes and Baguazhang (continued)

In the fourth Palm Change (zhen), the eyes smoothly transition back and forth between looking far off into the distance and zeroing in on a point, like clouds forming and then dispersing and then forming again.

In the fifth Palm Change (li) the eyes are trained not to respond to, or get drawn off when arms come in and out of the field of vision. This is done by circling the arms in the coronal plane, while turning and walking. It is also used for training us to not blink when bursts of air or hands come suddenly toward the eyes.

In the sixth palm change (kan) the eyes do the same thing they do in the third palm change, but instead of spinning the body, the head looks spontaneously form side to side, creating a similar blur or whirl effect while doing the palm change.

Again, it is easy to imagine these uses of the eyes becoming different types of possession. The fourth, taken to extremes is what people who are manic look like after not sleeping for a few days.

The eyes of the fifth are important for any type of fighting, but would be dangerous walking through brush because we need to close our eyes quickly if a branch is snapping toward them. I know of an old Gongfu master who worked bank security and kept a bit of metal-filings dust in his pocket to throw in peoples eyes if necessary. Better hope your blink reflex is operating if that happens. Taken to a possessed extreme, these are the bug eyes we sometimes see on crazy people.

The eyes of the sixth can be many things, among them an Exorcist head spinning type of effect, also seen in African and Chinese possessions.

If it is not obvious already, there is some danger in trying these yourself. The danger is minor as long as you:

1. Are relaxed, the eyes should never ever feel like they are doing work.
2. Understand that you are learning what not to do.
3. Are comfortable trying to be just below average.
4. Know in your heart that cultivating weakness is O.K. because we humans are strong enough already.