Xu Ling Ding Jin

The final papers from this Summer's Taijiquan class at the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine included some gems. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. This paper was printed with permission by the author:

Henry Lieu

The term "xu ling ding jin" is one of utter importance to the Tai Ji practitioner. The term xu represents "empty", "void", "extract", "shapeless". Ling means to guide, lead, or receive. Ding literally means the top of the head and jing is the common word for energy in the Tai Ji world. (Zhongwen, Mastering Yang Style Taijiquan)

When I was practicing Chen Tai Ji, my teacher always stressed on xu ling ding jin as one of the most basic fundamentals to have before beginning any Tai Ji practice. In fact, it was so important that it was at the top of the list for our basic thirteen principles. For me, xu ling ding jin was not something I could grasp right from the start. It took me many long months before I was able to truly apply this principle into my body. And even now, the technique is not at a high level for me. However, I am able to discuss in detail what I know about xu ling ding jin.

Xu ling ding jin is considered the gate that opens to heaven. Fu Zhongwen describes xu ling ding jin as "an intangible and lively energy that lifts the crown of the head." (Barrett, Taiji Quan Through The Western Gate) My teacher describes many of our techniques and principles through the use of our own imagination. For xu ling ding jin, he would have us imagine an almost threadlike material that connects the crown of our heads [bai hui] to the heavens and the other part of the same/similar thread which connects our dan tien to the core of planet earth. With this type of thread, one who practices this technique is able to root into the floor like stone and connect with heaven's qi at the same time. One need not use strength to execute the technique, instead one should only relax into it, but at the same time keeping their intent. The three treasures will flow harmoniously if xu ling ding jin is performed correctly. Qi and blood will flow correctly through the body, while jing is able to ascend and nourish the body and shen. It is for this reason why Tai Ji practitioners are always keeping their root within the medial center and are able to do it while in a standing position. Many kung fu practitioners need to use low stances in order to keep their root, but xu ling ding jin will provide the Tai Ji practitioner's main root. This represents the yin aspect of xu ling ding jin, the root of where our human understanding is more capable of grasping. The yang aspect of xu ling ding jin would be the bai hui point, where energy is capable of entering and exiting towards and from the heavens. The energy of this point should be empty and leading upwards. This is the aspect of the principle in which I have not fully grasped yet, especially since a student of Yang LuChan writes: "The whole body will be light and agile when the crown is suspended from above" (Yao, Song of Thirteen Postures) In my understanding, it would make sense that this is the ultimate balanced posture in almost all if not all aspects of life. Within this posture lies harmony and through harmony, one is able to go either direction as one pleases. He is able to root into the ground like a two-ton stone or is able to be light as a feather and agile as a leopard is he chooses.

In this position, I can also add the details according to what I believe to be the optimal positioning. In its most relaxed position, the arms should be at the anterior sides where the elbow has a bit of peng and hands are not in a fist nor palm position. Instead, they are also harmonized in a kind of baby's hand position. In this way, hands could either turn to fists or palms (yin and yang), elbows can either flex or extend, and shoulders can have ability to as it pleases. Feet should also be positioned in a similar manner where feet are pointed almost forward, but peng is present within the knees and gua and also a bit at the arches of the feet as toes can curl a bit to provide more balance and grip into the earth. Weight should not be focused on the legs, but rather the dan tien which leads the energy channels down into the legs and then through the lao gong points and attaching to where ever the practitioner puts their yi into. As for the dan tien itself, it should be at a continuously circling position, three dimensionally as if it were an invisible sphere. By invisible, I mean as small as a dot from a ballpoint pen as true masters of Tai Ji are able to create invisible circles where the body may look a bit rigid and yet centripetal force is completely manipulated by the practitioner. Breath itself should always be performed where dan tien and ming men are both expanding at the same time and the fifth bow (spinal cord) is constantly changing from curved to the opposite and chest will extend as ming men/dan tien contracts.

That is my understanding of xu ling ding jin. As for questions, I will probably ask you during class but in case I don't, I have one. I was always told that babies would breathe through their stomachs or dan tiens, but I was also wondering if this meant they were also breathing through their ming mens as well (both dan tien and ming men expanding at the same time). I would like to know if babies are naturally doing this and if this is natural for adults or do adults need to practice this technique in order to breathe through both ming men and dan tien at the same time?

Taijiquan Classics

(Originally Published in Frostbell, the Newsletter of Orthodox Daoism in America, Summer 2001)

Mastering Yang Style Taijiquan
Fu Zhongwen
Translated by Louis Swaim
North Atlantic Books, 1999

Readers of Frost Bell who practice Taijiquan are probably familiar with some of the many translations of the 'Taiji Classics' which have been done over the years. These five short poetical texts written during the Ming and Ching Dynasties are considered essential distillations of the art. Teachers use these texts as a guide for measuring the slowly unfolding fruition of Taijiquan practice.

Finally a translation has been done by someone who has a really good grasp of classical Chinese and many years of Taijiquan practice. With modesty and clarity Louis Swain explains all the key terms, uniformly using the pinyin system of transliteration and including the original Chinese texts along side the translations for easy reference.

Taijiquan instructors will be more than pleased with the depth and precision with which he discusses not only the terms but also the difficult phrases in the texts. He leaves meanings open ended when he feels that they are meant to be read that way in the original, and he makes the point that there isn't much in the language of the classics which is overtly martial in content. He also thoroughly reviews most of the previous translations which have been done.

The "Translators Introduction" is eloquent and helpful. It explores some of the difficulties in translating Chinese anatomical and physiological concepts for which there are no equivalent English terms. It also includes a remarkable elucidation the notoriously enigmatic terms song and jin.

Swaim makes use of his wider studies to point out poetic references to different Chinese traditions with in the texts. This is immensely helpful for those practitioners who would like to distinguish between Daoist ideas of macrobiotic practice and Neo-Confucian ideas of discipline.

The five 'Taijiquan Classics' are actually included as an appendix and the main section of the book is a translation of a book by Fu Zhongwen, a senior student of the famous Taijiquan master Yang Chengfu. People who practice Yang's style of Taijiquan will find the minute details of his entire 'form' written out clearly with helpful commentary and drawings. Even if you practice another style, don't hesitate to get this book. Louis Swaim's introduction, final essay and translation of the classics alone are well worth the price ($16.95 paper).

Click here to buy it! Louis Swaim

Sensory Integration Disorders

I took a short workshop on working with Special Education students last week. It got me thinking about how common low-grade Sensory Integration Disorders are. A Sensory Integration Disorder is a developmental problem, meaning it appears as a child ages.

Special Education is constantly redefining and re-categorizing its terms. These categories also have a habit of overlapping. Even highly functional people can show signs of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Asperger syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder, or my favorite-- Learning Disability.

I've known quite a few martial artists who were Obsessive about martial arts to the point where they really could not handle someone changing the subject. In some sense, it is people who have an insane ability to limit their focus that can also achieve greatness in a field which requires discipline. Some of them really can not sit still. I myself had no patience for sitting in class and listening to a teacher after age 14.

What was interesting about the workshop is that I realized that there is a significant percentage of people who love martial arts because they have some kind of Sensory Integration Disorder. Martial arts practices make these people feel good!

For instance, many people who have Sensory Integration Disorders like to hold or squeeze things in their hand. Squeezing their hand into a fist (or the knife hand shape) feels good. Holding a difficult stance while the teacher or another student pushes against one's body, testing "structure and root," is also the kind of thing that feels good to a person with a Sensory Integration Disorder. Wearing weights, armor, or very particular clothing is also helpful.

Part of what characterizes a Sensory Integration Problem is not being sure where your body is, or what your body is doing. So conditioning exercises which put pressure or impact on the skin and bones actually feel good, they help a person with this problem integrate. Building up muscles may also feel good. As does wrestling, or even getting caught in a football style pileup!

When you think about it, fighting is the art of giving other people a sensory integration problem! I'm not just talking about clocking someone-- the head fake, cross hands, the spiral punch, shrinking/expanding-- any kind of unexpected or unpredictable movement can cause a sensory integration problem in your opponent. All martial arts also teach us to improve our sensory integration so that we are not "phased" by what ever tricks or surprises are thrown our way.

Push-hands really, when you think about it, is a bunch of games that develop better sensory integration. When you lose at push-hands, especially to a far superior player, it feels like you just floated off balance. Often you can't really even figure out what happened. Often beginners are so sensorially disoriented that they don't even notice they have lost!

The Wind (Xun, or third) palm change in Baguazhang uses a particularly unnerving technique to disorient the opponent. We brush very lightly over the surface of our opponent's skin/body, not usually hard enough to move them, but very quickly covering as much body surface as possible. The effect of these quick light swipes is that it is hard to feel where the opponent is, and that moment of disorientation often effects balance too. It feels like you are fighting a ghost.

The therapeutic aspects of martial arts should be more widely acknowledged. Learning to fight is good.

A 160 Pound Bone Hammer!

The quest for power is endless.

However; we all know that no matter how frivolous or fruitless the quest for power becomes, people will still seek it.

The sacrifices we make in the pursuit of power are not small, and the likelihood of eventually becoming possessed is high. That's what power does, it possesses.

This is true of all sorts of power, including the most basic type: physical power. That's why demons in Chinese art are so often shown with "great" muscle definition.

Daoist precepts, which preclude the invention of internal martial arts, strongly discourage the development of physical power. Why? Because these precepts require us to be honest about just how strong we actually are-- from the beginning!

It is only through the quest for power that we come to think of ourselves as weak, or insufficient. Humans are naturally very strong.

Pure internal martial arts completely discard the idea of muscle force. They completely discard the idea that any form of exertion is necessary to generate force.

My hand, balled up into a tight fist, is mostly bone. So is my elbow, and so is the heal of my foot. I weigh a little under 160 pounds. If I can move, propel, rotate or swing my entire body weight and strike an opponent with all one hundred and sixty pounds concentrated at a single point, using my bony fist--what need do I have for muscle strength?

Even a 40 pound bone hammer can bring down most men with a single blow. Don't even waste your energy trying to image a 160 pound bone hammer, it's just too much force.

Relatively speaking, force generated from muscle exertion is pretty wimpy.

If you get possessed by the idea of being able to generate a lot of force; consider that time spent trying to move freely as a single integrated unit has a much bigger pay off than any muscle-force training.

A 160 pound bone hammer pay off.

Note: This post is a riff on Master George Xu's recient claim that he is a 160 pound bone hammer!

Second Note: The picture at the top of this post is from the Film "Hebrew Hammer," very funny, I recommend it! Shana Tova!!! (Yom Kippur starts tonight.)

And also I forgot to wish everyone a happy Double Nine Day (last Sunday)--It's Daoist New Year!!! and it's traditional to eat venison.

Soy Milk with Your Coffee?

I went over to Master George Xu's house yesterday to work on a writing project.

He has always had really interesting and weird ways of saying things.  I just thought I'd share a couple with you.

We were talking about how your mind should be when you are fighting or practicing internal martial arts.  He said that your body should be unconscious like when you are watching a movie.  He sometimes uses the word subconscious instead.  Both words are from psychology, and neither one really hits the mark.  One reason it's hard to explain is that America is a "what" culture, and China is a "how" culture.  We tend to think about "what" we should do, a Chinese person tends to think about "how" it should be done.

But of course George Xu's students ask, "What do you mean?"  George's answer is a combination of mime and words, but if it was just words it would sound like this, "It's like when your boss is yelling at you.  As he glares at you, shaking and pointing the finger of his right hand, he unconsciously reaches out to the side for his cup of coffee with his left hand, finds it, picks it up, brings it to his mouth, takes a sip and puts it back down.  All this without looking left, and without a break in his tirade.---  The hand that reached for the coffee cup was unconscious, the way your whole body should be when you are fighting or training internal martial arts."

In his kitchen, yesterday, after we had a few cups of tea he started demonstrating.  While he was throwing me into the walls and various kitchen implements, he pointed out that I haven't perfected my shoulders yet.  He said, "Your shoulders should be like Soy bean milk."  He demonstrated this for me, and repeated the phrase 4 or 5 times.  I tried to feel what he was doing as he launched me into the microwave.

Back a home about six hours later, I put my feet up and closed my eyes.  Suddenly it struck me just how outrageous and yet specific the expression, "Shoulders like soy bean milk" actually is. 

Now, Get to work!

Practicing Internal Arts Will Shorten Your Life!

Continuing on the previous post "The Real Purpose of Internal Arts," I would like to say clearly for the record, Internal Martial Arts will shorten your life.

Why?  You thought they were good for your health didn't yah? Not a chance.  Yang Chenfu, the most famous Taijiquan Master of the 20th Century died at like 54.  Many Internal Masters have died in their 50's.  They were all too fat.  Many internal martial artists have died from fighting injuries and venereal diseases too.

Lets get this clear.  Practicing Internal Martial Arts does not make you a good person.  If you are a ruffian goon, you will live and die like a ruffian goon.  If you think you are practicing everyday for some future attack, to fend off some wild assailant, that view will determine the type of fruition available to you.

Even if you practice the highest level art, with the most supreme teacher, your view will still determine what results your practice produces.  The constant search for power and superiority will shut out the other types of fruition that these arts were in fact created to reveal.

The problem is that modern Masters have been cut off from their own roots, they have historic amnesia.   I know all these history book writers keep telling us that Internal Martial Arts were created by professional fighters because their jobs as bodyguards or mercenaries required it.  Poppy-cock!  It's just not possible.  Why would someone weaken themselves if they were facing actual violent adversity on a daily basis?

No, the Internal Martial Arts were developed by people who had already cultivated a subtle body; a weak, sensitive, feminine (yes I said that), humble, yielding,  and desireless physicality.  A body cultivated with the idea that lack of pretense is not only a moral way of being; but a moral way of moving.

This is not the morality of being good. This type of morality is based on being real.

The Daoist practice of being real produces freedom and spontaneity (ziran). The inspiration to create from that "body" has led to experiments in every walk of life. 

In every realm of living-- effortlessness, naturalness, and the complete embodiment of an animated cosmos, found a way into peoples' daily lives, into the sacred and the mundane.

If you just practice any of the Internal Martial Arts or Qigong you will probably get fat.  Why?  Because these arts were created from a "body" that was incredibly efficient.

When you begin training martial arts, especially if you start in your 20's or younger, you will automatically work hard, and over do it.  When we are young we have too much qi in our channels.  All we can really do with that extra qi is waste it.  Hopefully we blow it off in ways that won't leave a perminant mark on our bodies.

When working hard and training hard, we naturally need to eat a lot.  But if you seriously practice Internal Martial Arts or Qigong, you will become more efficient in your movement and you will have to be disciplined about eating less. If you do that, your appetite intelligence (your spleen function in Chinese Medicine) will become much more discerning. It will tell you what is good for you to eat, and how much is the appropriate portion.  You will be able to trust your appetite(s).

In addition, your digestive system itself will become more efficient over time.  Your body will extract more nutrients from less food.  If, however, you fail to regularly and consistently reassess your appetite, you will over eat-- and you will get fat.

Improved digestion and movement efficiency will happen simply from practicing any Internal Martial Arts method, it makes no difference what you think or what you believe.  But the fruition I'm calling "appetite sensitivity" will only develop if your view is that you are cultivating weakness.

Boom and bust fitness routines, like Boot Camps, are one of the worst thing a person interested in developing a subtle body could do.  Your appetite sensitivity will shrivel up and fall off.

Caring for the Body and the Spirit

As many of you know, I teach at an acupuncture college where an eleven week 22 hour taijiquan class is a requirement. This last quarter I had an amazing student.

The administration called me to say there was a student coming to the first class who they had not yet let register because she had a disability. They felt she probably wouldn't be able to do the class but she wanted to try so they sent her to the first class to see if I thought she could do it.

She had been through some major injuries in the past 10 years and walked with a cane. One side of her body tends to tighten up so that one leg and one arm are often restricted. For instance she often has to use her able hand to manually open her disabled hand.

I asked her to stand without her cane and to shift her weight from one leg to the other. She could do it, but with difficulty. I said she could take the class. I advised her to practice everyday and not to worry, I would assess and teach her according to her ability.

While her injuries are severe, and perhaps some aspect of them can be considered permanent, there are clear signs that healing is still taking place.

There are optimists in the world, and there are pessimists, but it is truly unusual to meet someone who so clearly acknowledges hardship while meeting every new challenge with glowing optimism. And I do mean glowing. This woman beams.

Having worked with disabled people my whole adult life I've learned a few things to watch out for. Many people unconsciously treat disabled people like they are not very smart and need constant kindness. The constant sweetness of people around them sometimes causes one of two effects. The disable person is so used to having things done for them that they sometimes become personally so weak they don't stand up for themselves. On the opposite polar end, the disabled person can become mean, rude or objectionable, because people are too embarrassed to honestly tell them when it's time to shut up.

The student I had in my class this last quarter has neither of these traits. She has a sophisticated, charming, and positive outlook. She worked hard, she concentrated, and she brought warmth and sensitivity to her interactions with other students. She was a model for all of us. I have no doubt she will make a wonderful Chinese Medical doctor.

For the final exam, I have half the class do the form with their eyes closed while the other half watches, and then they switch. When she was doing the form, and she did do the entire form, It was obvious to me that she had learned more than many of the other students. Parts of the form looked difficult for her, but looking around the room, some students weren't even sure how a particular move was supposed to be executed. I wish every student had her stick-to-it-iveness. Heck, I wish I had her stick-to-it-iveness.

I think everyone's excuses for not having met their practice goals just fell away as they watched her do the form. Do what you can do right now. Is there anything more inspiring than that?

And all this was a great reminder that we aren't practicing for some future health, or some future fight. An accident can happen to anyone. It seems rather foolish to prepare for such a thing when all the benefits of practice are immediately available. It is only through the expensive maintenance of fantasies (about what we are, and what we can become) that we put off the fruition of our practice.

The reason we care for our bodies is not in the future-- if we do indeed care, we care right now.

Ailerons

Many people have pointed out that Taijiquan may be an art designed to keep the dynamic quality of our sea legs, while on land.  It is at least designed to get us to give up the predictability of our land legs.  The image often repeated in both martial arts and Chinese medicine of the dantian being an ocean would somewhat support this thesis to.  Shirley seamen realized that the gentle pitching and rolling of the ocean was good for the internal organs.  Perhaps they wanted to keep that quality of health once they gave up the sea life.

So naturally I recommend people try doing their taijiquan on a boat sometime.  I would recommend you try it on an airplane too, but now-a-days that will likely get an over reaction from your fellow air travellers.

Still, if we were making up a new martial art today we would have to consider that by far the most potent images of balance and power are fighter jets.

The first attempts at making an airplane had to solve the problem of creating lift and steering, but once those problems were solved the airplanes still didn't stay in the air because air is not even.  In order to keep an airplane in the air one must constantly correct the pitch and the roll.

That's what ailerons do.  And that is what internal martial arts must do too.  To generate continuious power while maintaining circular motion requires constant correction.  To have unbroken balance and power we must always have an active correction mechanism which allows for adjustments of up and down, front and back, left and right and spiral twisting.  These adjustments must all be simultaneous, we never sacrifice one dimension for another.

Are ailerons a good metaphor for this?

Gaining Control

A female friend of mine was recently attacked by a crazed crackhead half block from her house.  He was big and he kicked her in the ribs.

She thought her ribs were broken, she feared for her life, and she thought about the lives of her two new born infants who were thankfully not with her at the time.  Then she "went crazy on him," and he ran off.

In telling me about the incident she said she wished she had studied martial arts because she wanted to make sure he didn't hurt anyone else.  That, I think was the rational explanation, the more spontaneous explanation, I'm guessing, would be that she wanted to kick his ass.

A few days later while we were sitting at an outdoor table at a local bakery/cafe, she asked me how much martial arts training would have helped her.  I dodged the question and talked to her a bit about self-defense and what kind of training we do.  Then a 300 pound guy sat down next two her on a large green wooden box which had a sign saying please do not sit here.  The purpose of the box was to guide the flow of foot traffic around the tables and chairs, and thus, not for sitting.   It promptly toppled over onto her--bruising her arm.

The guy was naturally embarrassed and apologetic.  But that prompted her to ask me if studying martial arts would have prevented her from getting hit by the box.

So I was cornered.  Would martial arts training help with a surprise attack or a surprise accident?  Yes, probably, maybe, I'm not sure, I don't know,... how could I know?

Hexagram 10 of the Yijing (I Ching) is about just such a situation.  The title reads Treading (Lu):

Treading on a tiger's tail: one is not bitten.  Auspicious.

The image is of an innocent, perhaps a 10 year old child, stepping on the tail of a tiger and not getting bitten.  Why?  We don't really know.  Perhaps it is because the tiger isn't hungry and 'though surprised, it doesn't feel threatened.

Chinese Internal Martial Arts cultivated with a Daoist perspective achieve quite the opposite results of what most people think.  These arts are not about gaining control.  They are not about preparing for some monstrous future attack.  They are not about trying to control or predict the future.

To the contrary, they are about giving up the effort to control.  The basic  assumption or experiment of internal martial arts is that other options will present themselves effortlessly when we give up trying to control.  Does this really happen?  Yes, probably...maybe...How could I know?  I don't know, I simply have the experience that being less aggressive reveals other options.  I certainly don't know in advance what those options will be.  I keep repeating and simplifying the experiments because having options sometimes seems akin to freedom.

In Buddhism they have the expression, "Skillful Means," to describe brilliant techniques on the road to enlightenment.  But it's also kind of a Buddhist joke because the end result requires no skill at all.

In my opinion, this friend of mine who got attacked, did everything right.  She did get some bruises on her ribs, but frankly a couple of weeks training in martial arts could easily produce the same injuries.  After she chased him away by whatever crazy moving, screaming and raging she did, she even had the peace of mind to record all the details about his clothing and appearance for the police.

Her innocent response was good enough.

And that is the point of this post.  Not only are we cultivating weakness, we are cultivating innocence.  The skills we develop in all the Internal Martial Arts involve discarding our learned responses, discarding our preconceptions about what our body is and how it works, discarding our ideas about how events begin and how they come to a resolution.

Discarding pretense, embracing innocence.

Carpal tunnel syndrome

The other day in class I remarked that the cause of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is that people don't extend and contract their fingernails when doing repetitive motions with their fingers or hands like typing. Needless to say, this led to an attack on my authority. Have we entered the era of: 'Everyone Is An Expert?' To modify something my Indian Dance teacher was fond of saying, " A little Google is a dangerous thing." Of course, it is reasonable to ask a teacher, on what basis they are making a claim. Unfortunately, thirty years of martial arts experience seems to be about on a par with one feisty Google search. Beware of any problem ending in "syndrome." That means it is difficult to diagnose because there are many things which could cause the same symptoms. In this case what we are talking about is a narrowing of the Carpal Tunnels in the wrists accompanied by swelling, pain and numbness or tingling. 9 tendons along with nerve flow and blood pass through each Carpel Tunnel. Surgery for "fixing" this syndrome involves the cutting of the ligament(s) that contain the underside of the wrist. I've never had Carpal Tunnel Syndrome myself, and I've never cured anyone of anything. (I have offered suggestions for treating problems in which it was later reported back to me that, due to having followed my suggestion, the problem went away-- but I will always remain skeptical of my own ability to invoke healing.) I have had students who were diagnosed with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome before coming to study with me, but it is very hard to say with any confidence that a recommendation I made was more important than the 20 other things they were doing to try and cope with the problem. One student I recall was convinced that wearing wristbands with magnets in them completely cured her Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. This all came up because I was teaching a two person partner exercise called joint pulsing (kaihe), the opening and closing of the joints. When I first started teaching this years ago, nobody had seen anything like it. Then one quarter a student who was an assistant chiropractor said his boss had an expensive machine that he hooked people up to which did the same thing. Another quarter, a student said she worked with autistic children and the staff had been taught to pulse the children's wrists and elbows because the compression was calming. This quarter a student said she had already learned joint pulsing as an assistant physical therapist. Ugh!  Of course, nobody had been told that this information came from Chinese internal martial arts. Nobody had been taught that the purpose of pulsing the joints was to have a passive experience of what one's body can do naturally, on one's own. That is, that the manual experience of having one's joints pulsed reminds us of how we moved in the womb, as toddlers, and even up until age 5 or so. Once we are reminded of the experience of this quality of movement, we can recover the ability to move this way at will. The ability to move and animate our bodies the way we did in the womb is sometimes called Yuan Qi, or original qi. While becoming a human rubber band is a cool trick, the purpose here is to make our movement simpler. Simpler movement is more efficient. Efficient movement is more sensitive. Sensitivity to the ways in which we habitually waste qi, allows us to conserve qi. Conserving qi, is the equivalent of non-aggression- wuwei. Needless to say, none of these student "experts" had learned the easiest part of of joint pulsing which is extending and contracting the fingernails. In Chinese practical anatomy, the nails are considered the ends of all the tendons (Perhaps sinew is a better term because it is more general but tendons works fine for this example.)

1. Place any finger tip on the side of the index finger of the opposite hand and then place the thumb on top of that finger nail.


2. The thumb needs just enough pressure so that if it moves it will not slip but will maintain traction on the nail.


3. Gently move the nail inwards for 3 seconds and outwards for 3 seconds, repeating continuously for up to 20 minutes per nail. The motion is gentle and fluid, not forceful. It should feel like you are a cat that can extend and contract its nails/claws, albeit, much less movement than a cat can achieve.

After practicing this for a while, you will be able to extend and contract your nails at will. This is fundamental to internal martial arts training. For instance, in Taijiquan, the fingernails extend during ji and an, and contract during lu and peng. (Note: This is Jin level training. At the next level up, kaihe is left in a potential state.) When extending the finger to push down on a typing pad, one's nail should extend out first. For most people this is normal, unconscious, and happens at lighting speed. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is caused by unconsciously contracting (or drawing in) the fingernails while performing some repetitive finger motion like typing. I know this because when I contract my nails while typing I can feel my carpal tunnels narrowing. After a while they start to swell from the internal friction. But I'm not going to give myself carpal tunnel syndrome just to prove it to anyone else's satisfaction, and I don't know how to cure it once damage has been done to the nerves. So I'm not claiming curative powers here, just that I can teach people a skill that if maintained, will insure they don't get Carpal Tunnel Syndrome at some time in the future. Traditional Chinese long life practices have for centuries been a source for remedial knowledge about the body. Unfortunately the modern tendency to seek out individual methods, fractured from the source, results in a loss of information at best--and a complete obscuration of purpose at worst.

UPDATE: Jan, 2011:

Having just had an older student of mine go through a really bad case of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, including surgical intervention, I've changed my views somewhat. I still maintain that kaihe (open/close) skills are key to avoiding this syndrome.  However, nail pulsing should really just be seen as an introduction to whole body shrinking and expanding.

I now believe that there are a whole host of inhibitory movement constraints which can wear out the functional uses of the hands.  Carpal Tunnel should be understood as part of a larger picture with many possible contributors, which is why simple solutions like magnets or massage might work some of the time.

I believe what happened in the case I watched progress is that the inhibitory factors on both the top and the bottom of the hand/arm were both activated at the same time.  This effectively compressed the joints, made stretching very difficult and painful, and slowly reduced all mobility.  (Imagine two pulleys tightening up on opposite sides of  a tent pole at the same time, or pressing on the gas and the brake at the same time.)

The reason the exercise I described above is so good is that it is passive, which means that you can see or attend to the movement without putting your mind into the hand.  Once the mind is in the hand, the inhibitory muscles are on, and if that is the cause of your problem, no amount of "trying" to pulse is going to help.  To get an effective release, the movement has to cut the controlling frontal cortex out of the loop.  I can theorize that unconscious typing like the kind that used to happen in typing pools is not a problem, it is linking up the thinking part of your brain with the action of typing which causes stress.  And simply practicing pulsing an hour a day is a losing battle if you are thinking with your fingers for the other 23.  Like all qigong, the method has to change one's everyday behavior to be effective.

Unfortunately it's a safe prediction that Smart phones are going to make this problem worse.  I imagine people are already "air texting" while they are thinking about what to say to their partner when they get out of the shower.

Post surgery, in the case I watched progress, there was immediate pain relief and increase in mobility.  Very positive results.  However, there is a very strong continuous pulling of the palm downward.  This is an inward contraction from deep in the torso which is causing flexion of the wrist.  It is of course inhibiting expansion of the underside of the arm/hand and inhibiting extension of the wrist.  In other words, the cause, what ever it is, appears to still be there.

(Also see Comment #10 to Belbe below in the comments section.)