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.

Strength vs. Weakness

Many people find that the idea of "strength in softness" challenges everything they've ever been taught about how to be. When I say "experiment with cultivating weakness and not controlling outcomes," I really mean it. Embodying this may change your experience of the world and all the little things you do, like opening doors, picking up spoons, and brushing your teeth. I am not asking you to take what I am saying on faith, do your own experiments, trust your own experience.

That being said, it is not easy to communicate the "reason" we do certain practices, like standing still. I'm glad I didn't ask a lot of questions about the purpose of standing still when I first learned it. The truth is I made a bunch of assumptions, some of which were actually wrong. Fortunately in my case, I got help and figured it out. Most people hang on to their false assumptions (or their teachers misleading explanations) and end up disenchanted. (And here I mean both definitions of disenchanted.)

I'm not convinced that someone can understand the reasons for standing still until they have done it without fail for at least a year. Understanding would at that point emerge spontaneously in conversation. Perhaps I can sit here and type out a brilliant explanation of standing, but the truth is, it's too simple for that. The purpose of standing is that it reveals what we actually are.

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.

Breathing

In general I teach that yin proceeds yang. Structure leads to function. However, the opposite is also true. Where you begin, what you emphasize, will create a different style of qigong.

Generally speaking the correct posture will automatically have the right breathing and the right breathing will get you to the correct posture. In practice, however, the way we breathe tends to hold us in certain postures. Breathing is a natural anesthetic, which covers up all types of pain. When we use our breathing to try and force circulation to a certain area, the area tends to become numb. Over years, we accumulate these numb spots and our posture becomes more rigid, our breathing more restricted.
I generally teach people to stand, and to move, before teaching them breathing; however, the two are really inseparable.
Body Image


Cultural conceptions about how to breath and how to stand (posture) are so tied up in emotions, passions, fantasies and identities that either approach can take a bit of unraveling. My experience is that if I say to someone "take a deep breath," they lift up the front of their ribcage (actually constricting their lungs which are mostly in the back) and they tend to harden their diaphragm in a muscular, sometimes even aggressive way. If I say, "breathe naturally," they become self-conscious ("you mean I'm not breathing right?"). Anxiety leads to tension which produces more restriction.

Instead I say, "Take shallow breaths in and out from your nose all the way down to your belly(dantian) and slowly/gently allow the breath(qi) to fill up your lower back/kidney area(mingmen)"

Your breathing should be like the silk spinner and the jade carver.

The silk spinner uses a gentle continuous pull, no sudden jerks, and a smooth even turnaround.

The jade carver doesn't leave any scratches; the breath is inaudible, silent, with no rasping.

The great jade carver discovers what is in the jade as he is carving it, the mediocre jade carver plans out what they are going to carve in advance.

Breathing is essentially about taking the nutritive qi of heaven into all the channels of the body. Our posture is formed in our qi environment, home, school, work, car etc.... How we breath is formed inside our posture. Trying to force a particular type of breathing which doesn't match the physical structure and posture of our bodies will simply be a strain. Frustration itself is a kind of breathing.

The way to change breathing is to change physical structure and posture. The way to change posture is to change the environments we live in and move through, this is the subject of fengshui. The aspect of fengshui that relates directly to qigong is the question of what environment will be most supportive of our practice. Through practicing qigong in a supportive qi environment, we develop sensitivity to the effects the larger bodies we are living in have on our constitution, and on our breathing.

Qigong should not be used as a way to overcome a negative environment.

A Non-Epiphany Art

Chinese Martial arts and Qigong from a Daoist point of view are non-transcendent traditions.

These arts are primarily about revealing the way things actually are, they are not self-help or self-improvement regimes.

However, most people are on a transcendent path. We want to improve ourselves. We want to heal. Or we want to get a 'leg up' on the next guy, spiritually, morally, physically, or intellectually. So most of us regularly, and all of us sometimes, practice these arts in a transcendent way. We try to get better!

The basic Daoist outlook is that life is not a struggle, we're alright the way we are. We're nice enough, strong enough, smart enough, and we have enough qi. Practice is just a way of tuning our appetites for exercise, stillness, sleep, fighting, nutrition, contact with other people, etc.... We are naturally disciplined and curious.

This outlook is sometimes framed in a quasi-transcendent way as a simplification process, a letting go, a returning to our original nature(s).

Thus, epiphanies are really not part of the tradition. Now and then we learn a trick, or discover something cool, and we get excited. But it's not like most Yoga classes, where people brag about being filled with the glorious pure light of the universe everyday, before knocking back a double soy latte, jumping in the hybrid for an hour commute and then punching the clock.

Anyway, in almost 30 years of practice I've actually had two epiphanies.

1. After years of practicing with very low stances and yet constantly hearing "sink your tail-bone," "go lower," and "song;" one day I did just that, I sank my tail-bone. I simply understood on a kinesthetic level what my teachers had been trying to teach, and from then on I did it correctly.

2. After doing a couple years of chansijin (taijiquan silk reeling exercises), one day my chest just relaxed. For a week after that my appetite for food dropped to about half a meal a day. Presumably I was using so much effort keeping my chest up, that when I stopped my body had some reserves left to run on. After a week my appetite came back, but it's been a little smaller ever since that day.

Shoot first. Ask Questions Later.

This is pretty much my approach to teaching martial arts.

"Shoot first. Ask Questions later." It is description of American pragmatism. We get the job done, and then we figure out how to explain it.

I've been listening to woefully inadequate explanations of the origins of Chinese Martial Arts all of my life. I started this blog largely to express what half a lifetime of study has revealed about those origins, so I'm not surprised that I've got people saying I'm wrong.

The first question that has to be answered is a tough one and will probably take me at least 10 postings:  Why did Chinese culture create Martial Arts, when no other culture did this? (I plan to stand by this outrageous statement and I will deal with the exceptions in  in a future posting--they are Indonesia, Cochin-India, Muay-Thai, Korea and Japan.  I've already dealt with Africa in my videos.)
The term "cultivate qi" is used in Daoism a lot, to some extent in martial arts, less so in TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), and for practically everything in qigong.

I asked my future wife(?) who is an Acupuncturist, what she thought "cultivating qi" meant? Her answer, "Live Free, or Die Hard!" Which we both saw and loved.

To 'cultivate qi' means to do experiments which reveal your true nature (de). This of course can be contrasted with experiments which obscure your true nature.

But this poses the question, what is your true nature? The Chinese term 'true nature' is de, which has many different translations because it actually means a whole bunch of really different things. For instance, in Confucius Analect's, it is usually translated "virtue." It was on the basis of this translation that European Enlightenment thinkers were able to argue that a non-Christian could be virtuous, and thus fully human.

100% Qi Free?

I took the following quote from Joanna Zorya at Martial Tai Chi:

100% Qi-Free

Our own teaching completely rejects the concept of qi, also known as chi, ch'i or ki. Other instructors coming to the MTA [Martial Tai Chi] should also reject the idea completely. However, on this website there are a couple of articles which specifically deal with the issue. Qi is also dealt with briefly on our "Taiji Concepts" DVD - the clip (in "3 internal harmonies excerpts") is shown on our "Techniques" video clips page. We have found it necessary to address the issue of qi, because most people in the Tai Chi mainstream are utterly obsessed with it, and we wanted to make our position on it absolutely clear. The concept is at best obsolete and at worst dangerous. Significantly, the notion of qi is simply not true.

The way I see it the word Qi is polysemous. It has many different meanings depending on context. So if the teachers at Martial Tai Chi want to ban the word, they aren't necessarily banning the concepts that come with it.

The word qi might in a particular context mean the totality of everything you can feel. Or it might mean the feeling of blood or lymph pulsing through your body. But in another context it means the bubbles in a glass of soda pop. If the term qi is not clearly defined in context, it can be used to create intensional vagueness. Such vagueness is often used by Charismatics to create a feeling of authority among witnesses to a performance of healing or other subordinating demonstrations of power.

However, we really aren't sure what it is we are feeling inside and even outside our bodies. The term qi can be used in conjunction with other words to communicate the density, directionality, size, or relative temperature of something we feel. I'm not going to argue that it is a necessity, just that it can be used appropriately.

Here is my LONG definition of Qi. I wrote this 10 years ago, so it may need some updating, but perhaps readers will have suggestions.

UPDATE: I've had some interesting exchanges with Joanna Zorya in the comments for a previous post on Lineage. I mention these books:

Thinking Through Cultures, On Beauty and Being Just, The Trouble with Principle.

Balance

It is a standard of Chinese martial arts that one should cultivate balance. When I learned my first broad sword form (wuhudao) my teacher, Bing Gong, had me learn it with the sword in the left hand because I am left handed. This meant that I had to learn a mirror image of the form he did. Being the precocious kid that I was, I taught myself the right hand too.Later a second teacher, George Xu, taught me another sword form (baxianjian). At the beginning I suggested that perhaps I should learn it left handed. His response was memorable, and classic gongfu-teacher-speak, "You don't have any idea how to use either hand...yet." (I learned it right handed.)

Balance can be measured or assessed in a number of different ways. Here is a short list which I will elaborate on in a future post:

TYPES OF BALANCE

• What is Comfortable to use: One's preference for left or right can be balanced by using the "good side" less

• Body shape and size (including balancing muscles on the left with muscles on the right). Think losing muscle to get to balance, instead of building muscle to get there.

• Weight distribution (front to back and side to side)

• Range of motion (functional range of motion and optimal range of motion.)

• Muscle strength or weakness as distinct from size

• Ability to move qi, fluids, micro-articulation of circles (or other shapes)

• Since the internal organs are never balanced in terms of weight and size they can be balanced in the sense that they can all be felt with equal clarity.

• Multiple layers of qi. Starting a Weiqi (the feeling of the surface of the body) and then going inward layer by layer, sensing left to right, front to back or top and bottom.

• Balance is also part of complete embodiment. What feels balanced?

• Lack of balance in range of motion lower down in the body effects the verticalness of the spine and all angles above the hips? The levelness of the hips dramatically effects the verticalness of the spine.

• Fighters know that you can have a 'blind spot,' a place in your preception where you don't sense things very well. For instance punches that come from a certain angle are more likely to hit you. These can and should be 're-embodied.

Shen (Spirit?): What does it mean?

Elisabeth Hsu wrote an article in Culture Medicine and Psychiatry, in 2000, called Spirit (SHEN), Styles or Knowing , and Authority in Contemporary Chinese Medicine. The article is a summary of her book from 1999, The Transmission of Chinese Medicine, (Cambridge University Press.) I got the article free through Interlibrary Loan if you are just interested in ideas, but I recommend the book too.

The book tells a cool story. In Kunming, in the late 1980's Hsu signed up to study three different forms of Chinese medicine and compared how they were transmitted. She did this as a medical anthropologist, in other words, she was always looking beyond the subject she was studying to a larger field of knowledge. This is how good social thought gets produced.

First she signed up to study TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) at a government college which taught clinical medicine in a TCM Hospital. Then she found a qigong master, who did treatments on difficult cases. Finally, she found a teacher of the Neijing (Inner Classic of Medicine), really a "doctor's doctor", who had completed his studies before the two big changes in Chinese Medicine took place; the first being the invention of Clinical TCM and the other being the Cultural Revolution.

What she found is that each style of transmission uses the Term SHEN very differently. These differences have profound implications for how these various types of practitioners assert authority and make claims about what is real.

1. Clinical TCM: Shen is a list of observations that correspond closely with what we call functions of the brain in Bio-medicine (you know regular modern medicine.)

2. Qigong Master: Shen is a very vague idea, no one seems to be able to define it, yet people agree that it is what improves (or doesn't improve) with a series of qigong treatment performances.

3. The Neijing expert: Shen means different things in different parts of the text. The teachers uses the text which is often metaphorical or obscure, to impart his traditional knowledge and extensive experience about medicine. Thus the teacher asserts some authority about what Shen means at any one time, or in a particular context. Hsu calls this quality of having multiple meanings polysemous.

In my teaching I falls in to category 3. I use terms like qi, shen, jin, yi, to mean different things in different contexts.