What is a Jing?

A TRADITIONAL CHINESE ORIENTATION TOWARD KNOWLEDGE.

Sometimes when a Chinese teacher is trying to explain a term they will instead explain a term which is a homonym. Because there are so many words in Chinese which sound alike, simular sounding words can, over hundereds of years, take on parallel or related meanings and so in this chapter, instead of explaining jing, the solid, more structural or dense aspect of Qi, I will instead explain jing, a classic.

The term jing (ching) is usually translated: Classic. "...(It) is the underlying structure, both in the human body, such as the meridians of acupuncture, and in the body of knowledge of a civilization. This is the general name given to all the "master texts," such as the Tao-te ching, ... [or the I Ching (Yijing)]. It can be used to describe books that are not philosophical (e.g. Nei Ching, "The internal Classic," the master text of Chinese medicine) or even Chinese (e.g. Shen Ching, "The Holy Classic," the Bible). The literal meaning of this character is "warpage" (the threads stretched out lengthwise in a loom that give structure to the fabric that is woven),...." (Cyrille Javary, Understanding the I Ching, p. xii.)

What is the appropriate attitude with which to approach a traditional Chinese subject? How do we go about the process of unfolding the subject of the Internal Arts keeping in mind their traditional context?

The classical version of traditional literature uses very dense concentrated metaphorical and symbolic language to describe a topic. Often it is a consolidation of many earlier texts which have made mention of the topic at hand. These concentrated classics are committed to memory. Understanding is expected to come over an extended period of time, with experience. In some ways this is a good summary of what a Taijiquan form or a qigng movement series is in itself.

Out of this literary tradition grew a tradition of commentary and explanation, probably the consolidation of many generation of practitioners notes from the margins of their copies of the original classic. A popular way to begin a study of a classic, or jing, is for the teacher to take only the first character of the text and from just that character, reconstruct the essence, or "view" of the entire text. Commentaries which really pull apart or expand the meanings of a classic text tend to read like overwhelming layers of wafting clouds passing through the reader; too much to actually grasp, likely to invoke sleep, an inventory of embedded meanings meant to have an influence over time.

Studying Internal arts is something like memorizing a classic (jing). A classic, like a an Internal arts routine, embodies conservation, efficiency and the unfolding of the totality of previous experience in a concentrated form. In both cases the relationship of student to practice and student to teacher is the processes of unfolding and revealing the text or form and then re-embodying it in its concentrated efficiency.

I'm calling it concentrated efficiency because that is what it seems like from the outside looking in, but to actually embody either a classic text or a internal arts form feels plain, bland and simple. A traditional Chinese scholar can seamlessly weave a classic, they have memorized, in and out of their speech in such a way that someone who is unfamiliar with the classic won't notice. In fact, scholars who have memorized and embodied many classic texts can play games together where they seamlessly string together classic quotes and yet speak to each other from the heart about things which are important to them. In fact, China has a tradition of scholars with huge appetites for study who can actually quote continuously with genuineness and sincerity. To truly embody an internal practice is the same. On the outside one appears to be doing regular everyday movement, but inside the form (or we could say qigong) is happening all the time, it becomes second nature.

The practice of Push-hand is analogous to the senario where two scholars are spontaneously exchanging quotes from classic texts while discussing a third topic.

Criticism

I interviewed George Xu the other day. I expect to have a video of him talking uploaded soon. He said he has video of him demonstrating in Germany that will likely go on the web by October.
One question I asked him was: In the past 15 years, since I studied with you full time, what is the biggest mistake you have made in your training?

He answered that although there were probably 200 or so small errors, the biggest problem was not having an outside eye to correct him. Had other teachers been willing to offer helpful corrections, and constructive criticism, he could have saved a lot of time--and the art of Taijiquan itself would have been furthered.

He says that when he offers helpful criticism to other teachers they don't want to hear it, they see criticism as a challenge to fight, not as a way to further the art.
In essence, his challenge to us is to create a taijiquan culture of helpful criticism.

Youtube video exchanges/debates are a fun place to start and I really hope to see more of them, but we're really talking about understanding Taijiquan as an ART not just a fighting system. When we view it as an art, we can all take pleasure in our personal contribution, but we can also take pleasure in the furthering of the ART as a whole.

I would love it if a few people would post comments about the biggest mistakes they have made in their training, for everyone else's benefit.

What does "Song" Mean?

The term song (the "o" is pronounced like the "o" in soot) is most often translated sink or relax. It is for sure the most common thing that Taijiquan teachers say to their students.
Louis Swaim has this to say about it:

Etymologically the term song is base on the character for "long hair that hangs down"--that is, hair that is loosened and expanded, not "drawn up." Therefore, "loosened" and "loosen" are more accurate renderings for song and fang song. The phonetic element that gives the character song its pronunciation means, by itself, "a pine tree," which carries an associated imagery of "longevity," much as evergreens are associated with ongoing vitality in the West. This may provide a clue to the Taijiquan usage of this term, which must not be confused with total relaxation, but it closer to an optimal state of the condition referred to as tonus in English anatomical parlance; that is, the partial contraction of the musculature, which allows one to maintain equilibrium and upright posture. The aligned equilibrium that is prescribed in Taijiquan is associated with imagery of being "suspended" from the crown of the head. One can, therefore, draw upon the available imagery of both something that is loosened and hangs down, and that of the upright pine, whose limbs do not droop down, but are buoyant and lively.

Understanding the cultural and historic significance of hair in China will really help give meaning to the underlying metaphors of song.

Even going quite far back in Chinese history, hair styles were always regulated by the government. The way you wore your hair told everyone your status and rank. Hair was worn in a top knot with a pin. The Chinese concept of "pulling the pin" has some resenance in English because it is like our concept of "letting your hair down."

To "pull out the pin" meant to 'drop out,' to resign, to retire, it meant to give up your status and rank, thus dropping in status. Thus by inference, song means to sink. But it also means to discard worrying about what you think you should be doing- or even what other people think of you.
Another important reference comes from the fact that from 1644-to 1911 China was ruled by the Manchu, an eastern Mongolian ethnic group called Jurchen allied with other Mongolian and Tibetan groups. All Han (ethnic Chinese) males were forced to wear their hair in a cue as a form of national humiliation. If you cut your cue the penalty was death. Historically the cue was used at night by the Jurchen people to tie their slaves to a post. So the term song could easily be understood as harboring some revolutionary bravado.

Gods also have hair styles. Zhenwu, or Ziwei, is the Chinese god of fate and the central deity of the Chinese pantheon. He is the North Star, the point on the top of your head, and the perfected warrior. He represents the physicality of fearlessness, the perfect mix of pure discipline and extraordinary spontaneity that is the basis for Daoist meditation. In his iconography his hair is song, part of it is tied back in a loose braid with silk and chain to protect his neck from sharp blades, the rest is long and hanging loosely about his shoulders. His hair is a throwback (I couldn't resist) to ancient shaman-warriors who showed their utter lack of concern for status by letting their hair go wild.

Does this sound like what you're doing?

UPDATE: George Xu and I were talking about "song" and he said it is like a pine cone opening. A simultaneous spreading out into space and letting go.

Peng: The First Movement of Taijiquan (Continued)

The key Taijiquan term peng has generally been translated 'ward-off.' I think that was a good start, after all, in Chinese it is only one word, but it has a really specific meaning so I'm going to try to render it into English.

But before I do that let me say something about the various ways peng is taught. Often a teacher will push on a student and say, 'buhao'--no good-- until the student by luck or accident, responds in almost the right way. Then the teacher says 'hao.' (Or perhaps they yawn and look up at the sky as if to say, "What have the heavens brought me?") Then the teacher has you push on them and you try to feel how they respond to your push. (Actually the word is not feel in Chinese, it is tingjin, which means: try to sense the inner processes you feel and translate those feelings into your own body, as if you are listening to a piece of music and wish to grasp the sentiment behind it.)
Peng is primarily taught, not by words, but by feeling, it is transmitted through touch from generation to generation. In taijiquan lingo--it is a qi transmission.

If you have older siblings, who were in the habit of poking you in the stomach, you probably already have some 'peng' skills.

When an older sibling pokes you, several responses become available: 1. Run to mommy. 2. Try to hurt them back. 3. With a smile, and with speed, nudge their hand away from your centerline before it hurts you, being careful not to provoke them further. Obviously number 1 is ineffective in the long run. Number 2 means getting beat up. So we get good at number 3.
Peng is an aggressive act, but it is a mild aggressive act. We could say it is a small beginning that hopes not to grow into a full possession.

When we are possessed by desire, we see only the desired manifest. Daodejing

To correctly practice peng, is also, fundamentally, to admit that we do not have control over the future.

Here goes:

Stand upright, slightly bend your knees, relax all of your joints and lengthen the top of your head upwards and your tail bone downwards. Relax your abdominal muscles so that your breathing no longer moves your ribs, but instead moves your lower-back region (mingmen).
Simultaniously do all of the following:

1. Gently begin closing all of your joints, drawing your limbs inward towards the center of your body, like an amoeba shrinking. The distance between each of your bones should shrink as the sinovial fluid sack in each joint changes shape.

2. Gently wist all the tissue on your limbs in an outward direction, moving the bones as little as possible so as not to change the alignment of the knees or elbows.

3. Gently wrap the tissue of your torso, internal organs, and generally anything you can feel, in an outward direction. Be particularly carefully not to arch your spine or collapse your chest.

4. Using the least possible effort move your writs (upward and forward) at a perfect 45 degree angle.

5. Shift your weight very slightly forwards from the center of your feet, so that if someone were pushing you from the front while you are shrinking, you would move almost imperceptibly underneath them.

OK that's the underlying structure: the jing component. Here are the qi and shen components.

Update 7/29/07

1.  If your alignment is correct you will feel something rising from the ball of the foot, bubbling well point, which travels up your legs, then up your back, through your arms and then out the wrists.

2.  Fill your whole body with the feeling of steam, so that circulation to every part of your body is robust.

3.  Feel clouds circling around the surface of your body in the direction of the twisting and wrapping.

4.  Draw up a thick heavy black goop from the earth.  (This one is not universal, there are versions of it that use water or sand.  Others connect to heavenly bodies, or spontaneously plan routes out into the distance.  This is known as the jingshen component and can be invented.)
5.  Sense outward in all directions.
Is this what you do?

By the way the picture is of Chen Manching doing one handed peng, so it is a little different than the description, but internally the same.

Nei Jia Quan

Jess O'Brien edited together a bunch of interviews with internal martial artists called Nei Jia Quan Internal Martial Arts, Teachers of Tai Ji Quan, Xing Yi Quan, and Ba Gua Zhang.
What I like about the book is I can really imagine these various teachers are talking to me. In fact, it's pretty funny, because a lot of the time I have this sense that the teachers are shouting at me. I'm willing to bet Paul Gale likes to shout. Here is a nice excerpt:

"'The bottom of the foot is the back.' There's a physical reality of it that the bottom of the foot is the back, meaning that the bottom of your foot is pulling your back forward. You have to learn to move that way, otherwise there's no foundation. You'll always get swept and knocked down because you'll be top-heavy."

I think my favorite section was the interview with Luo Dexiu where he talks about the cultural barriers he had to get around in order to learn from very traditional teachers. In that traditional setting a direct question would have been perceived as a challenge to the status of his teacher, and his teacher would have gotten very angry. He and his fellow students came up with all sorts of ingenious ways to get questions answered with out actually ever asking a question.  At one point he and another student stage angry huff and puff arguments and then ask the teacher to settle them.   This technique got some their questions answered.
I noticed a theme that many of the teachers brought up.  They said qi is given too much attention and that yi (intentionality?)  is not given enough.  I guess that's true with some teachers, but it wasn't true with any of mine.

It's impossible to generalize about all the student teacher relationships out there, but in my opinion once you've internalized about 300 martial applications of various sorts, yi in the application sense of the word becomes less important.  One can continue using the word yi by tweaking it's meaning but there are other terms for this "higher level" yi such as jingshen. 

It's a good book and I had fun arguing with the various teachers.  I would have shortened most of the interviews if I was editing it, but I'm planning to buy volume 2 if there is one.
The book includes interviews with these teachers: Gabriel Chin, Tim Cartmell, Paul Gale, Fong Ha, Luo De Xiu, Allen Pittman, William Lewis, Tony Yang, Zhao Da Yuan, Bruce Frantzis. Check it out.

Do you own your legs?

Readers can comment on this provocative idea:
George Xu claims to be the source behind Chi Running. One of the things he said is that most people let their legs carry their bodies, they don't use their bodies to carry their legs. By this I understand him to mean that most people lack both integration between their legs and their torso, and they also lack a kind of mind or embodiment.

This integration of the legs and torso, once gained, can be measured as a smaller, more efficient range of motion.  Xu refers to this type of embodiment as the predator mind. It is a kind of fearless self-possession. It is a predatory way of seeing and moving.  It is relaxed yet ready to pounce. It is drawn in toward the center but not closed, not  contracted.

Tai Chi and Science

Here is a fun article about the Motion and Gait Analyisis Laboritory at Stanford University.

"Stanford Researchers Record 'Optimal Force' of Tai Chi Master"

The picture is of Chen Taijiquan teacher Chen Xiang, I don't know much about him but he is a senior student of Feng Zhiqiang so he is the gongfu brother of one of my teachers Zhang Xuixin.

I love these devices they have for learning about human movement. I also love that we now have scientific "proof" that Taijiquan is the most efficient movement in the world. (OK I think the article gets a little too enthusiastic but it's still a fun quote.)

It also raises the idea that taijiquan is a form of technology itself. Theory, and there is a fair amount of it, is subordinate to the technology. In fact, the technology is just a continuous transmission of movement experiments and experiences.

Medicine can't explain taijiquan, and probably these scientists won't be able to either, but they may accumulate some really interesting data that could lead to new technologies. And by technologies I mean both tools and movement techniques.  (My modest dream is that a Stanford scientist will someday say that muscle building is not necessarily smart.)
Since this center also studies gait, I would love to see what they think of baguazhang walking technique.  I think this is their main public website, look they have blogs too!

Update:  Here is the Video

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.

Tuishou vs. Roushou (push-hands vs. soft-hands)

Tuishou and roushou are what we might call martial arts parlor games. They are gentrified, limited two person fighting games.
For me, and many martial artists, tuishou and roushou are the arts of not becoming defensive.

How does this work?
On the emotional level one must train how to lose well before developing skill. The pride of winning is totally addictive. Because the parameters of both arts are strict limitations on actual fighting, someone who wants to win will keep trying to change the rules, or the parameters of the game. They will up the ante by, for instance, resetting their foot in a game of fixed foot tuishou. I often have a student handicap them selves so that they can practice losing to someone who is less skillful than they are. I tell beginners, the goal is to make your partner happy. To do this you have to really try to get to know your partner. If you practice correctly, an experience of intimacy replaces the desire to win.

How is this done?
There are many steps so I'm just going to cover a few of the ones that deal with undoing defensive responses.

First you must make and feel a ring shape with your arms (later it becomes a ball). Practicing very slowly at first, have your partner use their arms to make contact with your arms on the outside of your ring. Keeping contact your partner then slowly moves their hands toward your neck. A small increase in the size of your ring will arrest their progress (once they are stopped they should not keep trying but instead break contact and start again). This un-trains the defensive response often called against the wall, meaning using your back muscles to pull your arms apart (a reflex we use to protect our head and neck when falling backwards).

Second, you make the same ring but have your partner use their arms to make contact with the inside of your ring. Again they should proceed to attack your neck. Arrest the attack by making the ring smaller. This time you may have to also turn at the hip socket so that they don't touch your body, but shrinking the ring will stop their progress toward your neck. This un-trains the defensive response often called pincering, in which one uses chest and pectoral muscles to force the forearms together making a narrowing corridor shape with the arms.
Do not respond to these attacks by moving your arms up or down, just change the size of the ring. Then try the same thing with one arm inside the ring and one arm outside the ring. Repeat the exercise daily until it is second nature.

Once you have basic tuishou skills and you know how to keep your frame, you can try roushou. The big difference between the two is that roushou allows slapping with a soft hand. The basic rule is that I can only slap with as much force as I can get sliding off of my partner's defense. The harder or more actively my partner defends, the harder and more often they get hit. And of course, the same goes for me. So first you learn to defend lightly, than not to defend at all. Very cool.

Since both practices train sensitivity, it's fair to say that the muscularly stronger opponent has the disadvantage. Still it would be a mistake to say that we cultivate weakness because it gives us an advantage. The real reason for cultivating weakness is that it reveals our true nature. It's not that our true nature ever actually goes away, it's just that strength and the fears or fantasies that produce strength tend to obscure, or one might even say numb, our true nature.

Just a note: Searching google video for 'push-hands' gets lots of interesting results, but searching for 'roushou' gets nothing I would actually call roushou.  Time to make a video.

Putting the Quan back in Taiji Quan

This exciting website argues that quan exclusively means "fighting skill." While I strongly disagree with that assessment, she makes lots of other great arguments about the problems with the way taijiquan is taught.

http://martialtaichi.co.uk/articles/how_taiji_lost_its_quan.php