Blocking

I've said in earlier posts that higher-level martial arts don't use blocking. Those comments created a few ripples of discontent among my readers. It was pointed out correctly that at the technique-level Xingyi (and many other arts) use a type of punch which cuts across the opponent's strike in such a way that the opponent's power is defused and your punch strikes first.

At the technique-level circular movements are often used to simultaneously re-direct and strike. These moves are in a sense blocks even if they are also strikes.

But when I was ten years old and started learning Springy-Legs, Tantui (Northern Shaolin), I had to develop solid stances. A good way to test six harmonies power in each stance is to see if the student can keep their arm up while you take a swing at them. Beginning students should pass through a blocking-techniques stage of practice. Good blocking skills can help with integration, structure and relaxation.

I went to a middle school (age 11-13) where kids wore razor-blades on chains around their necks. It was a sweet time. The Latino gangs were the most dangerous, but I was on the inside of that by the middle of my second year. Some of the taller black kids were under a lot of pressure to prove themselves violently and they started the most fights.

At the end of the P.E. (Physical Education) period we went into the locker room to change out of our P.E. uniforms and back into our street clothes. The locker aisles were exquisitely dangerous, we all learned to change in under 20 seconds. But the time alotted for changing was more like 10 minutes so about 50 of us would cram into this space with the lockers to our backs and the doors to freedom in front of us for 9 minutes and 40 seconds.

This wide hallway had a red line that split the room in half. O.J. Simpson went to my Middle-School and his first-place time in Track was on the top of the board in this very hallway. On one half of the hallway were the doors to freedom and a gym teacher, on the other half all of us, crammed together. We were all wearing backpacks which served as a little bit of spine protection. The taller black kids would practice punching everyone else. If you kicked or punched back, the possibility of major escalation was high. The best strategy was to block the punches.
I did not advertise my Shaolin training, however those blocking skills proved to be pretty handy, and earned me some "respect."
Blocking skills should be discarded if you want to develop higher level, non-defensive, skills. Still they have a place.

Grip

I stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere on the way to the mountains last month. I checked the oil and it was pretty low so I bought a couple of quarts. I worked in a gas station when I was 14 so I know some tricks for getting a good grip, but my engine was really hot and the oil cap wouldn't budge. I went looking around in my trunk for someway to get more leverage and came up empty. I felt my manhood was being challenged. Just then a thick stocky man, about 6 inches shorter than me said, "Can I give you a hand." I'm sure I looked embarrassed but then I looked at his hands and they were clearly twice the size of mine, his fingers were as thick as cigars. "Sure, uhh...thanks" I said, and he unscrewed it. I asked where he got such huge hands and he said it was his Scottish ancestry.

Bone crushing power like that can not be trained.

I've been looking around the internet for a good picture of a bundle of chopsticks used for developing twisting power and grip strength. I don't see one, but I've done a fair bit of this type of training and I recommend it.

Grabbing is often considered inferior to striking or throwing because if my hands are closed around my opponent's body they aren't free for fighting. In a one-on-one match if someone grabs my wrist, I still have my hand free.

But that's generalizing, in reality there are many different types of grabbing that are effective.

If your grip is strong and well placed it can cause a lot of pain and injury or death to your opponent. For this type of grip to work your wrist, elbow and shoulder must be free to move, not rigid. Your nails must lengthen out like a cats claws with the intent to pierce the skin. The two smallest fingers are actually the strongest part of one's grip for holding, but the two larger fingers combined with the thumb are often superior for piercing.

In Taijiquan the movement "Cai" or plucking is a type of very light grabbing used only when your opponent is already leaning. Cai uses the two larger fingers with the thumb to move you partner on a 45 degree angle toward the ground. It requires no strength training, just sensitivity and clear intention (yi).
Likewise, good grappling technique does not require strength, it is all about positioning and timing. If I get you in a hold it's because I'm sensitive and you've made yourself vulnerable; it can't be planned unless one is using a surprise attack. If I've got you in a hold I can increase the pain or brake the joint with little effort. If I don't have you in the hold, strength isn't going to help me get there.

Half grips are used a lot to suddenly jerk your opponent. Done well these can cause dislocations, but they don't require that you hold on to your opponent, so a light grip works fine.

Curved fingers are used for plucking tendons. This technique is like a grab but the hand doesn't usually close.

What is important about a grip is that it connects to your torso. Twisting a bundle of chopsticks is a good technique for developing this because you are effectively twisting one arm against the other and the two arms meet in the torso where the real power should come from. You can do a simular thing with two hands on a spear.

I also practice a light dynamic grip by using a jian (double edged sword) with a slippery handle.

To develop the ability to inflict pain, you need a willing partner who lets you know what really hurts and what doesn't. You can also practice on yourself to some extent.

Making fists correctly will really develop your hands and improve your grabbing skills. If you don't practice making fists all day long, you're probably not a martial artist. It is painful to hold a solid, tightly packed fist for five minutes unless your technique is good. If it hurts, it is wrong (the spirits have left the body.)

Grabbing should be relaxed. When your hand closes it should feel like your whole torso is wrapping around something, all your organs and big muscles should support the movement. Developing Popeye forearms is a waste of time.

Eyes

I went to two parties after teaching all morning yesterday, so I haven't had time to edit all the comments in moderation. Sorry I'll get to it soon.

On the way home from one of the parties Sarah, the possible future mother of my possible future children, said people at the party were laughing about how I used my eyes. Apparently there was a certain woman I consciously, or unconsciously, did not want to talk to--and everyone knew this by looking at my eyes. Fortunately, this particular woman also had a sense of humor and made a lot of jokes about it.

George Xu once said that many fights are determined by the eyes before the fight even starts. Bing Gong taught me to begin a Shaolin form standing still, looking far into the distance, then drawing everything I see into my eyes, then down to my feet at which point I should lift my foot, stamp the ground and sink; this will bring the shen (spirit) to the top of the head.

It is a very effective way to start a performance.

Bing also taught me to relax and "soften" my focus while doing standing meditation and while doing the Guang Ping Yang Style Taijiquan form. This means that when something enters your field of vision, your eyes do not track or latch on to it.

Years ago, George Xu talked about developing "killer yi." Yi, which roughly translates as intentionality, can be partially read by looking into someones eyes. At the time I understood "killer yi" to mean your gaze should pierce your opponent very much in the literary sense of, "if looks could kill!"

He now says, "Your eyes should drawn-in the distance the way a predator's eyes do. When you move forward, you should have the feeling that objects- people, rocks, trees- are being drawn-in toward you, not that you are getting closer to them." (I'm paraphrasing here.)

I interviewed a street-level assassin once who was trying to get out of the business. He was beaten often as a child. He said that when he got involved in acts of violence he would remember the very beginning, entering a space, seeing a car pull up, and then he would remember surveying the carnage as he left. But he rarely remembered actually fighting or killing. He would in some sense black-out. His eyes were like deep pits. You could look into them but he neither appeared to be looking straight at you, nor did he appear to be avoiding your gaze.

It is clear to me that this brutalized gaze is what Chinese martial arts is, at its core, trying to avoid.

I learned eight distinct different uses of the eyes in my baguazhang training, which will be the subject of a future video and blog post.

What is a root (part 2)

• Sinking one's center of gravity.

Sinking one's center of gravity is often referred to a having a root. It can be done by actually taking a lower stance or by internally sinking, which is a process of relaxing while keeping one's alignment. This is not very hard to train. In some Asian countries, like Japan for instance, this ability is just considered normal. In English speaking countries we often hold up our chests which can make us a bit top heavy.

It is easy for even well trained martial artists to lose their root when they become upset (excessive anger will usually do it.) Trances associated with anger or jealousy usually involve forcefully exhaling from the chest through the mouth. This is called qi overflowing.

• Aligning the basic structure of one's body so that if outside force is applied it will transfer to one of the feet.

This type of root is not internal. However many internal martial artists put great emphasis on perfecting it. It is part of basic Northern Shaolin. The student will hold a stance and the instructor will push on, or forward slap, the point at the end of an extended arm to make sure it transfers directly to a foot.

What is a root?

From looking around the net, and fielding comments on Youtube, I've found that lot's of martial artists are obsessed with having a good root. Unfortunately that seems to mean lots of different things, so let's try to sort it out.

First there is using imagination to visualize and/or feel a tap-root-like shape descending downward into the earth (or the downstairs apartment if you live in a flat). Many people call this a spiritual root but I find that word annoying. The root can become huge, or spread like a tree, or keep going down infinitely.

Imagination is a necessary part of feeling. Feeling in some kind of pure sense, like when we are infants, is not very functional. To be able use our senses to comprehend and to continuously adjust or integrate with our surroundings requires an active imagination. It does not necessarily require any visualization. When you are running full speed and jump to catch a football, you don't "think" about the ground, but you feel where it is. In Chinese this use of the imagination to feel or sense goes by various names including qi, yi (intent), shen (spirit), jingshen, and shi (potential energy). This internal mechanism is natural, functioning at all times, and can be improved by training.

Other meanings of "root" that I will cover in the next few days are:

• Sinking one's center of gravity.

• Aligning the basic structure of one's body so that if outside force is applied it will transfer to the back foot.

• Using sensitivity to attach to a forward moving opponent and then spinning them off of one's center.

• Various types of dynamic integration which allow one to neutralize/dissolve or simply relax an opponent's attack.

The bigger problem however is that people try to use this "root" as a defensive strategy. A corollary of this problem is that people fight with their qi on their back instead of surrounding their opponent.

The Shaolin Grandmasters' Text

When I saw a book titled, The Shaolin Grandmasters' Text, History, Philosophy, and Gung Fu of Shaolin Ch'an, I ordered it immediately. I've been totally unimpressed with the histories of Shaolin Temple that I've seen, so I was hopeful with this one.

It's not as scholarly as I'd like. What is fascinating about it is that the authors  claim to be part of an unbroken oral tradition and on this account it comes across as pretty convincing.

The authors claim that all the Abbots of Shaolin Temple fled China by 1910 and many of them rendezvoused in New York (yes, a knife a fork a bottle and cork.) They abandoned their robes, grew their hair out, and started teaching 'indoor' students. Wow.

The main part of their teaching was a unique lineage of Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism. But they also taught martial arts (yeah.)

They dis' a little on all the Shaolin circus clowns coming out of the Chinese "Temple" these days, which makes for good reading. I'm hugely pro-circus, so I think it's funny, but they seriously wish that "their" name was not used irresponsibly.

Anyway, the book goes into depth on the martial and religious code of Shaolin Ch'an. It dives into a full accounting of what was actually taught and when (remember "Oral" history here, not documented, but still fascinating.)

The short section on Philosophy was a bit of a yawn, and the authors sometimes sound preachy. However, I think their basic premise, that Shaolin is a religious tradition with martial arts as an historical side-car is correct.

If you do any kind of Shaolin Quan, you should own this book.

Martial Arts approaches to Training

"Be uncontentious and no one can compete with you"  (Dao de Jing)

In recent years a lot of qigong that is popularly taught has been categorized as martial arts qigong.  (I think it is mistake to use this category in the first place, but if we do use it we will have to divide it up further.)  This would be qigong created by and for people who were put in the position of needing to fight.

Traditionally in China the army was filled by both volunteers and draftees.  Resisting the draft often carried the penalty of killing the resister's entire family, so Chinese armies often represented diverse segments of the population.  This fact and the cultural diversity of China naturally led to a wide diversification of approaches to the warriors' life.  People expected to have to go to war, some trained for it from an early age and some did not.  Again, differing views created different  approaches to qi gong, or in this case military training

For convenience, I've broke the topic up into three main traditions.
The first tradition is trance induced fighting and is very old.   The idea here is that winning is more important than living.  Winning is so good and loosing is so bad that it would be worse to come back a looser than to die giving it your all.   The best example of this is trance possession, war dances.  A milder form is the haranguing that happens at sporting events.

The second military tradition would be training to build stamina and resist pain.  If you imagine yourself suddenly drafted into the military at age 14, the sooner you could freely thrust a long heavy spear, the better for your survival.  Training with weights and qi gong practices like Iron-t-shirt and forearm conditioning are all good examples.

The third martial tradition is the so called neijia (inner arts) which includes taijiquan, xing yi and bagua.  This type has the flavor and reluctance characteristic of those who cultivate weakness.  In this tradition the battle field is viewed as an expression of qi.  The battle field substitutes for the body in which the smooth flowing of qi is a priority, not avoiding war, but being uncontentious.  Looking for resolution is different than trying to win, although winning may be necessary for your survival.  This is not a passive tradition, in fact attacking first can easily be the quickest cleanest resolution with the least loss of life on both sides. How this tradition came about is an interesting question I plan to continue exploring. Perhaps people who had been cultivating weakness, were drafted and this was a natural expression of their circumstance.  This third traditions takes the longest to develop usable skills, and seems like a privileged position with in a military world.

Chinese generals sometimes called themselves Daoists.   Perhaps they were trying to show affinity to certain chapters from the Dao De jing like the one at the top of this post.  There is no connection between generals who called themselves Daoists, and religious Daoist.  They had a completely different job description.

In reality, many training methods fall somewhere in between the three traditions I outlined above.  Shaolin quan is somewhere between the second and the third tradition, depending on how it is practiced.  Taiji quan can be practiced with flaring nostrils and ferocious growls.  It follows, of course, that in peoples attempts to preserve methods from generation to generation that these different traditions have often been combined or entangled, creating many hybrids and combinations of methods and views.

Quan (Ch'uan)

What does quan mean? As in the terms taijiquan, xingyiquan, shaolin quan. The standard answer is that it literally means fist, but in context means boxing or art. Thus taijiquan means 'the taiji style of boxing' or 'the fighting art of taiji.' (For a definition of taiji see my previous entry.)

This is a bit misleading. One should ask the question why other languages don't have an equivalent term? Korea and Japan mainly use the term dao (do in japanese as in 'way of' that we also discussed in an earlier post); hapkido,karatedo, Aikido, judo. (Taikwando uses both: kwan is the same word as quan). In English we just say boxing, or fencing. We have different terms but not a category like quan.

As I've said elsewhere gongfu has many historic roots. The most important for explaining the meaning of quan is it's roots in village level trans-medium religion. There were cults to local deities, heroes, and ancestors. Each cult had a central shrine and an incense burner and as the cult grew, ashes from the original incense burner would be distributed to satellite shrines in other villages. Processional celebrations for each cult would travel between villages according to a ritual calender. This is one of the ways that villages renewed their ties of social order, commercial vigor, and mutual defense. Along a procession, depending on the nature of the particular cult, a village would sponsor a festival. These festivals were sometimes very complex and could last weeks. This created a kind of "unseen" or "celestial" extra-government or social order.

One common aspect of these festivals was performance. A standard thing to perform was a demonstration of your village's martial prowess. People were usually invited and paid to perform in other villages but when you performed in your own village you did it for free. What you performed was your village quan. So quan really means a traditional routine that demonstrates your village's prowess. Prowess was, of course, understood in terms of gongfu or accumulated merit.

It is still common in 2007 for a Chinese person in San Francisco to ask another Chinese person, "What is your home village?"

These festivals also had what we would call magic shows, circus arts, and theatrical performances that told religiously significant stories. Thus, gongfu and Chinese Opera are really different components of the a single tradition.

Gongfu (kungfu) and Trance

Another possible source of gongfu is as a form of physical training to survive trance. As I've already said, the trance-medium tradition was pervasive in China for most of its history. Full-on possession by a god, as happens in both African religion and Chinese religion, is extremely taxing on the body. Wild movements may toss, whip, shake and gyrate the possessed person. I suspect that at some time in the distant past, this experience was a near death one; people who were repeatedly possessed had shorted lives. Yet in Africa as in China people who become possessed have extraordinary physical training which allows them to survive, some even with radiant health. In Africa this training is dance, and in China, at least in Taiwan and the South East Asian Chinese Diaspora, it is gongfu.

This is also one of my favorate explanations for the difference between internal and external martial arts (neijia and waijia). In Africa and the African Diaspora, priests and drummers are required to be familiar with the rituals for each deity and his/her particular characteristics. For instance, a particular deity is invoked through specific rhythms, dances, songs, and sacrifices. A deity might be known for being jealous, carrying a sword, being female, being associated with the color green, having a sharp wit, and of course, wielding power in a particular realm. However, both priests and drummers are forbidden to become possessed by the deity. Should they become possessed they lose their ritual statues. They are experts in managing and differentiating the different types of human trance.

Chinese religion is very similar. Orthodox Daoist priests were forbidden to become possessed yet their training involves becoming intimate with each type of trance. Daoism is, among many things, a systematic ordering of all types of deities by the characteristics of their local or national cults--and by the specific types of trance that lead to possessions by particular deities.

Taijiquan, xingyiquan, & baguazhang each teach different types of trance. Taijiquan, for instance, teaches peng, ji, lu, and an. Xingyi teaches the five 'phases' and the various animals.

External martial arts is training to survive possession by a deity. Internal martial arts is training to become familiar with the ways in which our bodies fall into trance so that we don't become possessed. What we know in the 'West' as Chinese martial arts is actually fall out from this religious tradition.

Here is a great article about trance-mediums in China.

Update: Because the term "priest" doesn't real translate perfectly into any language, it would be more accurate for me to say about African religion that atleast one person in a given ritual has the role of not going into trance.  Sometimes the "priest" may be the only person possessed.

The origins of Gongfu (Kung-fu) (part 1)

A saying of Confucius: "never worry your parent’s unless you are sick" has been interpreted to mean that children (starting at age 7 or 8 ) should be given substantial responsibility for maintaining their own health. This often manifests through the study of gongfu.

In traditional Chinese society health is considered a kind of accumulated merit which you dedicate to others-- and to the resolution of your own unresolved ancestors. For instance, I might decide I’m going to eat only vegetarian food and dedicate that act to my mother, who is prone to illness. There is a confluence between religious Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism in which they all agree that there is a mechanism whereby the inappropriate actions of our ancestors can, to some degree, be rectified ('put right') by the upright conduct of their descendants. This notion is at odds with Western cultural distinctions but is intrinsic to the meaning of the word gongfu.
Inappropriate conduct in the Chinese context, a Chinese sin—if you will, is an action which creates ongoing problems for other people. It is an event which is unresolved. Thus appropriate conduct is action which resolves lingering problems, but it is also actions which are efficient in that they leave no need for further action—they are self resolving. The term for this process in Chinese is zhengqi. (The word means orthodox and upright, but also to rectify, resolve, or correct qi).
For example, I was teaching some Chinese elementary school students in San Francisco, and I had learned from a very smart 5 year old girl that her grandfather, a Red Army general, had come from China to live with her family and that he was very sick. After winter break I asked after his health and she stood very upright and said with a big smile, "My grandfather died two weeks ago." This was not the first time I had experienced this cultural phenomenon, but every time it happens my first reaction is shock. " She can’t be happy," I thought to myself. By smiling she was letting me know the facts, but also letting me know that I did not need to get involved emotionally in her family affairs. She was trying to limit the spread of those aspects of her grandfather’s life which were still unresolved. Her actions were zhengqi. Obviously this particular expression of cultural values doesn’t translate very well, otherwise I wouldn’t still be talking about it.
When a person dies, his inappropriate conduct, and his unfinished projects can linger. Most influence fades quickly after a persons death, but not everything. Imagine if you were to die right now? What actions would your family or friends have to take to resolve your death. If you have young children, someone is going to have to care and provide for them. This is why we write wills. But only issues of money and property get dealt with in a will. It is even possible that the will we left could create jealousy and lawsuits. If you were murdered the perpetrator would have to be found and punished. If you have a job, someone would likely have to be found and trained to replace you, or perhaps your business would close and all the people it serves would have to find that service elsewhere. Emotional conduct can linger after death too. Hatred of a particular ethnic group can be passed on to ones children, as can a habit of drinking alcohol to numb depression.
So the idea of gongfu, is to improve yourself. It is to improve your collective-family-self. It is to take actions which resolve bad habits you may have inherited, directly or indirectly.

Of course the influence of our ancestors need not be negative. Our condition and opportunities at birth are largely do to our ancestors. It is hard to say how much of the way our lives go is do to our own merit and how much we inherit. The idea of gongfu, accumulation of merit, acknowledges that the merit we eventually pass on to others is an accumulation of the merit of our ancestors, our teachers and our own upright conduct.
Gongfu means: self-improvement for the good of others.