Scratching The Uncarved Block

The Uncarved Block is one of the primary metaphors for the concept/anti-concept known as wuwei. The Daodejing suggests that we be like an uncarved block of wood.  The implication is that once a block of wood is fashioned into something, it loses it’s potential to be something else.  Once we make a decision, it cuts off certain options.  In other words, it is often good to wait.  But the Daodejing isn’t telling us to be indecisive.  It doesn’t say, “in difficult situations--waver!”  It also doesn’t say be slow, like a tree; or “be inactive,” like a log or a stump.  It says be like a partially processed block of wood.  Since the Daodejing doesn’t give us any idea how big this block of wood might be, or what it might be for, we can speculate.  Our block of wood could be carved into any sort of deity or icon, or perhaps a boat, a cabinet, a ladle, or a coffin.  The Daodejing is using this metaphor to point to a process which takes place when we make something.  It is not saying, “Don’t make stuff.”  Sometimes a decision can position us for more possibilities, sometimes a decision can limit us. Is this better than that? Be comfortable with ambiguity, but have a few uncarved blocks hanging around in case you need them.

There are a couple of other ways to look at this too.  A block of wood is simple, a block of wood has no preferences, a block does not calculate it’s advantages.  A block of wood can be an image of innocence, and of embracing the unknown.

The process of carving a block changes our nature as human beings.  It changes the carver.  Carving is a skill which requires particularly fine motor control, and a very specific sense of three dimensional mental imaging.  It is a sort of trance.  A sharpened focus.  It creates patterns of conditioning in our bodies and habits of mind.
Thus, the concept/anti-concept of wuwei is not a method. It is a challenge to the type of thinking which looks at everything as a method.

Yes, this type of method might be better than that one. But methods are just vehicles for transforming a vision into an experience--a result...in process.  A method always comes from something, like an uncarved block, and always gets discarded in the end.  Making and measuring is an aggressive mind-set which easily causes us to loose sight of the bigger picture.


Internal martial arts can be understood as a vehicle for discarding methods.
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I’ve been reading Tabby Cat’s blog irregularly and I noticed that he has been ranting against any other blog which describes or promotes a method which involves alignment, structure, or anatomical and physiological analysis.  He even dismissed my reluctant post on the three big muscle groups, and hinted that I might be an Posture Nazi. What is this all about?   It seems our little Tabby wants to be like the uncarved block but just can’t seem to pull it off.

His Taijiquan tradition is all gush, gush about Ben Lo, and gushy, gushy about Ben’s teacher Chen Man-Ching (the "Professor"), and, of course, ultra gushy wushy about Chen’s teacher, Yang Chenfu.  All that gushing is a form of Shamanism.  I define Shamanism as:  Making contracts or alliances with powerful unseen entities in the hope that one will acquire that entity’s powers. A word to the wise, do not get in the way of other people’s contracts with unseen forces.

In that school there isn’t much teaching.  There isn’t much attempt to create methods which will help people develop.  There is an emphasis on relaxing.  Do the form a lot, get the postures just the way you’re told, with out explication or modification.  If you lose  a bout of push-hands to a senior student, it is because you aren’t relaxed enough.  Now, honestly, there is nothing wrong with discarding methods.  --Remember the uncarved block!

Taijiquan really can be practiced as a revealing of our true nature without any inquiry or experiment.  Heck, who needs the form?  Who needs a teacher?  Just stop carving! Stop making and measuring, stop calculating and stop seeing everything as a method!  I concur!

Readers may be thinking, oh, yeah, I could move to a cabin in the Montana wilderness and live a life of quietude and leisure and then my every movement would become Taijiquan, right?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  If it isn’t working for you right here, it isn’t all that likely to work for you out there either.  But so what?  Wuwei is the idea that a return to simplicity is always an option.  Always a possibility.  Everywhere.  Always.

The moment I start writing a blog post, or you start reading one, the danger that we will lose sight of wuwei increases.  Because reading and writing is a form of carving. The moment we put pen to paper we risk crossing over into the land of methods.

Does embracing a method mean we have lost sight of wuwei? Maybe, maybe not.  This is one of the essential questions the Daodejing asks.   Some people have translated Dao-De-Jing as "The Classic of the Way and It’s Power” (Dao=way, De=power, Jing=text) meaning that it is a book of ultimate methods.  But Dao and De resist definition.   We could say there are Dao style methodless-methods, and De style methods which perfect us back toward simplicity.  The two together are one, Daode.

Our true nature is without limits.  Sometimes we go into survival mode and make contracts with the unseen world in hope of getting an advantage, a leg up, or accumulating power (Shamanism).  Other times we are content to explore, inquire, and experiment--wandering at ease (De).  And sometimes we find ourselves without an agenda at all (Dao).  These three categories of human experience, Shamanism, De, and Dao, are practiced to some extent by all humans.

If Tabby Cat ever stops scratching his post and decides to come down from his anonymity and share a bowl of milk with me--we might find ourselves together with no agenda.  (Yes, I’m offering!) He certainly makes a habit in his blog of purring in the direction of methodless-methods: “Just Rrrrrelax, it’s just Mmmmind, nothing but Eeeeenergy.”  But then he hits himself with his own bludgeon.  He goes to Ashtanga Yoga for alignment, and thinks Boxing is the perfect method for learning to hit.   Au contraire my fair kitty, I surmise from this that he has become trapped in a method.  He believes that Taijiquan works through using sensitivity to find an opponent’s weakness and channeling energy/power effortlessly up from the ground to uproot his opponent.  This is a perfect description of a water woman reverting to an ice woman.  This would also explain why he thinks he can’t hit someone using Taijiquan.  At that level he gets some power from weakness, but using sensitivity for power and advantage is a form of aggression which will block further fruition.  Power (jin) and energy (qi) have limits, weakness has none.

Big Muscles

As someone whose job it is to translate ideas from one culture to another, the pressure to use more familiar language is always floating around in the background.

Many people would like me to describe the fine details of Chinese Internal Martial Arts using vocabulary from sports or physical therapy.  This is always problematic for two reasons.  First, one can only go so far describing kinesthetic experiences before one starts  sacrificing subtlety--language is an imperfect tool.  Second, by discarding Chinese concepts, one loses the primary organizing metaphors of Chinese culture, and what might be simple suddenly becomes complex.

Still, sometimes we give in to the pressure.  Today is one of those days.

There are three big muscles on our backs which are extremely powerful and efficient. Unfortunately, the problem with humans is; we don’t use these big muscles very well.  Our arms are just too smart. We habitually use our many smaller arm muscles to do complex and repetitive tasks.  This is the cause of a lot of stress and tends to shorten our lives.  For this reason advanced internal martial artists have developed ways to make use of the three big muscles.

We evolved these three big muscles as four legged creatures with our torsos parallel to the ground.  This is important because on a horizontal torso the three big muscles hang  in a relaxed way towards the front of the body (originally the underside).

• The diamond shaped Trapezius muscle hangs from the spine wrapping the ribcage towards the arms.


• The Latissimus dorsi muscle hangs from the spine around towards the belly and reaches around to the inside of the arms.


• The Gluteal Fascial muscle complex hangs off of the lower spine and pelvis onto the outsides of the legs.

If you naturally move from just these three muscles, you are probably a very strong and efficient cave man--because this is not how humans normally move.

To activate these three muscles is a fairly complex process.  Normal sports training doesn't do it.

First we have to get them to hang loosely.  Most of the time when we are moving around or working, the three big muscles are being used for stabilizing.  They stabilize the pelvis, the spine and the arms.  (This is an important function in the event that we get hit by a car or a buffalo, but it isn't necessary to walk around all the time using these muscles as stabilizers.)

Basic structure training in Internal Martial Arts gets us to stop using these three big muscles for stabilization by getting us to put our weight directly on our bones.  The other 400 or so smaller muscles in our bodies are then used to focus force along our bones through twisting, spiraling and wrapping.  In that sense, the early years of internal martial arts training teaches us to use our muscles like ligaments; or put another way, the primary function of the smaller muscles becomes ligament support.  (To develop this capacity in ones legs requires many years of training.)

Once the three big muscles are relaxed and loose and the rest of the muscles are being used for ligament support, a transition begins.

The transition is difficult because it requires turning off the active quality of the smaller muscles. The main function of the smaller muscles then becomes simply to transfer force or weight from outside the body (like from an opponent or gravity) to the three big muscles of the back.  The smaller muscles also have a minor secondary function of changing the direction of force coming out of the three big muscles.

This minor secondary function is not to be confused with active control.  To make this transition means practicing doing nothing with your arms for hours everyday and connecting the unengaged emptiness of your arms to an equivalent lack of active muscle engagement in your legs.  (In practice, this usually looks like loose flailing or slow spongy movement.)

The three big muscles are already so big they don’t need to be strengthened but they do need to be enlivened.  All three muscles should be like tiger skin or octopi, able to expand and condense and move in any direction.  They then can take over control of the four limbs in such a way that movement becomes effortless--even against a strongly resistant partner. If you accomplish this all of your smaller muscles will be doing the task of transferring force to the three big muscles---preventing an opponent from being able to effect your body through your limbs.  Yet whenever your limbs make contact with your opponent, he will be vulnerable to the force of your three big muscles.

In the Taijiquan Classics they call this, "I know my opponent, but my opponent does not know me!"

(Note: weightlifting/surgical ideas about anatomy are so dominant that the gluteal muscle fascial complex doesn't actually exist as a picture on the internet.)

Steamy Woman, Watery Woman, Icy Woman

The practice of Taijqiquan push-hands is a feminine art.  Even when practiced by men, it unleashes feminine qualities.  For the fun of it, we could compare it to ballet.  Even though most people are familiar with a few famous male ballet dancers like Nijinsky, Nureyev, and Baryshnikov, everyone thinks of ballet as a feminine art.

The first level of practice is called "Icy Woman."  At this level we develop a root so that when pushed the opponent's force is directed through our body down to the ground.  As the Icy Woman's structure improves she is able to keep this rooted quality continuously during dynamic movement.  If played as a game, both people will try to keep even pressure on their opponent's root.  The moment the pressure is broken either partner can move to sever their opponent's root. The game can also be won root-to-root.  In this case each person uses a blend of twisting, wrapping, expanding and condensing to improve the integration of their root.  Root against root, the better root will win.

There are two side tracks many teachers take with the Icy Woman.  The first side track is technique.  90% of the push-hands on youtube is a demonstration of this.  Techniques include tricks, grappling, striking, pushing, plucking martial applications and so on.  The other side track is trying to develop sensitivity.  This confusion arises when an Icy Woman has a broken or ineffective structure or an inferior root, and yet still wants desperately to win.  Sensitivity does not need to be developed.  Sensitivity is innate, we are born with it, no assembly required.  The only way to reduce sensitivity is with aggression.  The Daodejing makes this point on the first page, (the concept is called wuwei).

In innocence we can feel the subtle essences.

When possessed of desire we can feel only the yearned-for manifest.

The second level of practice is called "Watery Woman."  At this level it is necessary to become weak.  If played as a game, the goal is to try and find some ice in your opponent.  Ice is either structure or rootedness.  The Watery Woman does not attempt to compete structure-against-structure nor does she try to uproot her opponent.  She gives up rootedness and structure for fluid movement and weight.  The Watery Woman sloshes her weight in and around her opponent, she only wins when her opponent makes a mistake--the mistake of becoming icy.

The Watery Woman is not hard to achieve, because it is also an innate human quality.  Many people get stuck with the Watery Woman because they try to fall back on Icy Woman skills and techniques when they are losing.  A heavier Water Woman has a huge advantage over a waifish one.  A half-frozen Icy Woman can beat a half-dried Watery Woman.  Being an Watery Woman is not an advantage in and of itself.  One can get stuck at this level by developing very effective mixed ice and water techniques, including vibrating, bouncing, or shaking oneself.  If it only moves fast, it isn't water.

When the Watery Woman becomes comfortable, lively and uninhibited-- the pleasure of the experience  becomes steamy.

The third level of practice is called "Steamy Woman."  At this level her body becomes cloud-like.  Empty and full at the same time.  When the Steamy Woman meets ice or water in her opponents she simply floats them out of the way.  Her mind is not on her body at all, but all around it at play with the elements of volume, momentum, and density.  Inside a steam-like feeling moves around freely without regard to purpose or concept.  Like a cloud, it has no agenda.  Outside the game is played by the shifts and swirls of presence.

For those of you who have been following my discussions for sometime, you will probably see the three Daoist "views" permeating the practice of push-hands:  Wuwei (effortless, natural, return), Transcendence (perfection, enlightenment), and Shamanism (contracts with, or sacrifices to, powerful allies,--in this case female super hero allies.)  Push-hands is a method which can be practiced using any of these views, but each view will produce a unique type fruition.

No doubt, some of my readers are thinking, "Where did you get this Woman thing from."  Here, I must admit that the Chinese term I'm referring to is ren, or "human," and it has no gender.  However, when George Xu, for instance, explains these three types of people, he makes the opposite mistake and calls them Ice Men, Water Men, and Steam Men.  I chose to use the female pronoun because it's consistent with Daoist thinking and practice.  Another key idea of the Daodejing is the centrality of our feminine nature. (Chapter 6)

The Valley Spirit is Deathless it is called the Dark Feminine.

The door of the Dark Feminine, is called the root of Heaven and Earth.

Subtle, it seems only tenuously to exist, and yet drawn upon it is inexhaustible.

I have been told there is a Fourth level, the "Void-like Woman."  It is effortless, and innate, it happens automatically with a completely resolved death.  Perhaps it is possible to reach this level while one is still breathing?

OK a little off topic, but pretty Icy!

Stanford Ortho 22

I blogged about this six months ago but I didn't notice the video at that time.  There is a class at Stanford called Anatomy of Movement Ortho 22 that works with the Motion and Gait Analysis Labratory.  Last Winter they worked with Taijiquan master Chen Xiang.  The results in the video are funny.  They seem to have zeroed in on 0.05% of Taijiquan and have succeeded in saying almost nothing.  Hey, that's good science, don't get me wrong.  We have to start somewhere.

Here is the problem for you my dear readers.  What hypothesis about Taijiquan can be tested with this equipment?  Can you propose a better test, or a more relevant hypothesis? What other questions does this inquiry raise?  What evidence would disprove their hypothesis?

I'll get you started:

--Can this much force be generated by this much mass using another method?

--Is his force easier to inhibit at certain locations?  Or is his force continuous despite the fact that his speed is changing?

--If he carries a weight in the non-striking hand will it increase his force in the striking hand?  (Fluid dynamics hypothesis).

--Does this sort of power require uniformity of muscle relaxation/tension?  Can it be inhibited by electrically stimulating a random muscle while he is in motion?  Can we get some sensors on a range of muscle groups to see to what degree they are "firing" and in what order?

Note:  I am available for scientific evaluation.

Muscle Training Questions

Below I have answered some questions that were sent to me via email about the post I wrote last week, 5 Levels of Internal Muscle Training.   I love getting emails.  For reference the 5 levels are:

1. Moving and Coordinating


2. Static Structure


3. Continuous Structure with Movement


4. Empty and Full at the Same Time


5. Whole Body Becomes a Ball

Why do the steps laid out in the "5 steps of muscular training" post seem so rigid and schematic?

You are correct that the "5 Steps" are schematic and rigid.  They are part of a larger project in which I am developing ways to communicate with people who have some physical training background other than martial arts.  Martial artists rarely frame what they do entirely by the muscles;  However, weight-lifters, Pilates, and many athletes do frame their understanding of activity in terms of muscle development.
The whole truth is a much fuzzier type of logic.  I will stand by the notion that muscle training must follow the 5 level progression.  However, there are many other aspects of martial development which transcend and traverse these levels.  I tried to make that clear in the "notes."  Also, it's always possible to go back and fill in gaps in one's development later.

At which point does one start "grounding force?"

At level 2, you practice transferring your opponent's force directly into the ground.  This must be done for the entire surface of the body and with forces going in every direction.  It requires the aid of a teacher or partner.

At which point in the five level progression does a person touching you--give you the feeling that his/her force is directly going to the floor through your body?

Your opponent is not doing that, you are.  If I make my body very stiff and rigid, my opponent's force will move me like it would move a piece of heavy furniture.  If  I make my body very soft and mushy, my opponent's force will plow right through me.  If there are stiff places in a soft body, they will be broken--they will not transfer force to the ground.  The only way your opponent's force will go to the ground is if you direct it there (however, the process may be unconscious).

This is a common problem for students beginning level 3 training.  Level 3 is essentially level 2 in continuous motion.  In Aikido, for instance, this falls under "blending with the opponent."  At level 3 our body has superb structural integrity but we use sensitivity to avoid ever using that structure against any direct force.

If I try to push directly on someone who has good level 3 skills they will blend (or connect) with me, move out of the way of my force, and then "position" their structure so that I have no leverage or momentum for an attack.  If they are fighting they will use that "position" to injure, disarm, or throw me.

In Taijiquan, this is the continuous and spontaneous linking of the four jin: peng, ji, lu, & an.  If there is a break in the execution of jin-- a sensitive opponent and a strong opponent will both be able to "find it" and exploit it.

I'm totally losing my muscular strength, as well as my weight... in your training did you experience weight loss? I'm 12 pounds less than I used to be when I started training taiji one year ago, and this is not necessarily going to stop. Teacher said, oh, you'll replace that with taiji strength, don't worry?

Did I experience weight loss?  Yes, there was a period long ago where I lost some weight but not 12 lbs.  Weight gain or loss can vary a lot from person to person; however, the practice of internal martial arts will make your digestion more efficient and your appetite more sensitive! Ignore this at your own peril.  Many martial artists have gotten fat because they responded to improved digestion by eating more instead of less.

If you are paying attention to your appetite, you will simply want to eat less.  It's also a good idea to experiment with different types of food, and different styles of cooking.  I'll go even farther, if you are under 35 and having this experience, you need to learn how to cook.  It's not necessary to learn how to cook with Chinese herbs, but if you are in a place where that is easy, I do recommend it.  Learning how to cook any tranditional cuisine will include in-depth knowledge about ingredients and cooking methods.  Without this part of the practice all that appetite sensitivity training that the Daoist tradition infused in the martial arts will be wasted.

(Of course, make sure you are not losing weight because of some disease or parasite.)

While it isn't popular to say it, you are actually getting weaker and no, it will not be replaced by strength.  We don't need strength; humans are strong enough as we are.  That being said, if you have a big "appetite" for movement, if you like to practice a lot, you will develop superior integration, denser bones and sinew, more efficient dynamic muscles, new types of power, and the second of Laozi's treasures: Conservation.

Training with my Chinese "uncles" is at times pretty much not funny.  Sometimes I think their biggest goal is not losing face.  Their understanding of cooperative training seems quite different from mine.  I mean, I don't have to use muscular strength, but  this Chinese man in his 60's is stiff as hell, and strong too, so the natural reaction would be to use more strength than him. I see these gentleman (and ladies as well) who have been training for years but still rely on muscular, stiff strength, and I guess they are happy like that.  How should  the transition from muscular strength to a more song, tongtou, strength feel?  How does it work?

That's a tough one.  Your question is more about intimacy than method.  Intimacy and betrayal are kissing cousins.  My advice?  Make yourself more vulnerable.  Forget about trying to learn and just hang out.  The fruition of weakness is sensitivity.  The fruition of stillness is freedom of movement.  The fruition of not controlling the future is spontaneity.  The fruition of  trusting your body's "appetites" is that life no longer feels like a struggle.

My Chinese "uncles" seem to have only "success/fail" exercises.  I'm not getting "learn to feel" or "get more sensitive" exercises.  Am I just too un-sensitive or are they giving me inappropriate exercises for that type of development?

Another tough one.  Being un-sensitive is often just using a yard stick where a micrometer is called for.  Most of us have the "tools," it's just figuring out which one to use.  Chinese culture is big on "Hao, Bu hao," types of learning.  It's easy for someone from a Western culture to get frustrated.  Remember there is no moral content, failure says nothing what-so-ever about your character, you are just doing it wrong.  The more you enjoy your failures, the faster you will learn. Yes, learning methods can always be improved, sometimes you have to teach your teachers how to teach.

Yes, it is possible your "uncles" are teasing you, or patronizing you, or even intentionally screwing you up.  It's possible they themselves are confused and it is also possible that they are jealousy guarding what took them decades to learn.  None of that would be surprising.  But honestly I don't know.

Five Levels of Muscle Training

This is a description of internal martial arts from the point of view of muscles.  These five levels apply to taijiquan, baguazhang, xingyiquan and (applied) qigong:

1. Moving and Coordinating; running, jumping, rolling, lifting, stretching, etc.


2. Static Structure; The ability to hold a static shape for a long period of time, and transfer force applied on any part of the body to the feet, the back or another limb.


3. Continuous Structure with Movement;  All muscles must move in twists and spirals following the flow of the bones and ligaments.  Muscles weaken and become sensitive.  Force can be applied in motion at any angle from any part of the body.  Force can be avoided without losing whole body integration.


4. Empty and Full at the Same Time;  All muscle tension must be discarded along with all intention to move.   Any solid concept of body structure must be discarded or melted away.  Muscles function like liquid and air.  (Power becomes unstoppable but unfocused and difficult to direct.)


5. Whole Body Becomes a Ball.  Resistance training for big muscles only.  Small muscles are used mainly for sensitivity and force transfer (ligament support).  Muscles move only by "ten directions breathing," they move in all directions using expansion and condensation, not lengthening and shortening.

Notes:

The separation of jing and qi, which happens automatically in stillness, needs to be available in motion to enter level 4.

In order to act through a body, that body must be felt as a dream.  Dreaming is not like the conscious mind.  If you think about running, you are likely to stumble.  In order to run, speak, or do any of these types of muscle training, you must first dream it.  In order to reach level 5, levels 1 through 4 must be felt as dream.  In other words, they can be done spontaneously by feeling, without thinking, or willing.

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Thoughts:

From my experience, this order is essential.  Each level takes a minimum of two years training.  Some internal traditions attempt to start their training at level 4 and then go back and fill in gaps in levels 1 and 2 through diligent forms practice.  The attempt to fill gaps in level 3 through push-hands training.  That seems like a mistake.

The quickest way to get level one skills is through rough play or dance (forms with speed and rhythm).

Level 2 can only be learned through a teacher/partner who tests your structure.

Levels 3 and 4 will be inhibited by strength training.

The key to transitioning from level 3 to level 4 is non-aggression, wuwei.  Aggression is refined to perfection and then discarded.  This transition probably requires working with emotionally mature partners.

Applications do not work at level 4.  Period. But paradoxically, the ability to use weight and momentum improves.

The good news! Yes, it takes at least ten years (two years for each level, and a minimum of three hours everyday), but levels 2 through 5 can be practiced at any age.  Levels 2 through 5 actually get easier with age because muscles become weaker and skin becomes looser!

Not Your Grandmother's Tai Chi

(Someone out there is probably thinking, "you never met my grandmother."  My apologies to those of you who are the offspring of an unrestrained warrior woman.  Here is an alternate title for you: Pure Fighting.)

Kids have less of a filter, they often say what adults are thinking but are too reserved to say directly.  In a way, the practice of Taijiquan is about trying to be less reserved.  I know that sounds funny; aren't softness and weakness near synonyms for being reserved? But the goal of practicing Taijiquan is to reveal your true nature, if you are by nature reserved, than fine, but I think most people have what Freud called the id, a wild unrestrained, unrefined, spontaneous nature waiting underneath their ego.

But it's wrong to say that we are "trying" to be less reserved, it's more like we are letting go of the need to control, temporarily dropping our social guard, in order to rediscover how our body works.

One of the most popular questions kids ask, particularly about slow circular Taijiquan, is, " Can you use it in a fight?"  I have 100's of posts on this blog talking about Taijiquan as a healing art, a performing art, a pantomime art, a dueling art, a wrestling art, a throwing art, a religious ritual art, a spiritual development art, a game, a form of social engagement, a tool for developing police type threat control skills, a self-defense tool, a way to deepen intimacy with oneself and others, a way of managing stress associated with overwhelming guilt, embarrassment, or fear, a mental relaxation tool, a movement meditation tool, and best of all, a way of revealing our true nature--the way things actually are.

But I would be remiss if I did not occasionally address the Pure Fighting aspects of Taijiquan.  (I believe you can practice in all these ways simultaneously, especially if you set aside a lot of time for it, but it's just as beautiful to choose just one of these ways of practice.  If you don't care about Pure Fighting, that's great!  It is not important.  Really if you want to do something to reduce your chances of ending up in the hospital, wearing reflective clothing while crossing the street is a much better use of your efforts than studying martial arts!  Please skip the rest of this post and plug one of the phrases from the last paragraph into the search box!)

Pure fighting requires discarding restraint.  As an act of necessity it requires being truly wild yet totally committed.  Pure fighting presumes (and this is a huge and difficult presumption to make) that all the moral or psychological restraint one may possess has been discarded.  (Can you tell I'm a big fan of horror movies?)

For Taijiquan to "work" as a pure fighting training system it must be "practiced without pretense" (the first precept of religious Daoism).  I say this because it is very easy to fall into bad habits when practicing with a partner.  Push-hands (tuishou) is the most common two person exercise people use to practice taijiquan.  There is a school of Push-hands which has popularized the expression, "Invest in Loss."  This is absurd, ironic, and also wrong.  They mean that if you practice loosing for a while, you will eventually figure out what your partner is doing and start winning.  This is a fools errand.

To train for pure fighting you must completely discard the notion of winning.  In pure fighting you must be capable of vanquishing multiple threats who are bigger stronger and have longer arms.  In fact, you have to assume that every attack is a potential sacrifice move, meaning the threat is risking everything in order to either, strike you in a vital area, knock you into something hard, get you on the hard ground, or make you vulnerable to one of the other attackers.  Sacrifice moves work, but martial artists don't usually train them because the risk is too high; however, dangerous people can and do use them.

All this while remaining light-hearted, good-natured, and lovable.  All this without becoming possessed by aggression.

The possibility of our art becoming a fantasy is ever present.  For instance, one cliche I hear batted around is that in order to learn fighting you must practice with a non-cooperative partner.  That is a sure way to create pretense.  In order to train for pure fighting your partners must be supremely cooperative.  They must expose all your errors to the light of day.

So now that I've gotten all that out of the way, we can talk about push-hands.  Obviously push-hands can be practiced for one or all of the reasons I listed above in the third paragraph of this post, but I'm talking about push-hands as training for pure fighting.  Of course, I'm only scratching the surface of this subject.

There are an enormous number of push-hands conventions, or rule sets.  Each one trains different things.  If you fail to acknowledge this you will train yourself for a fantasy.  For instance, there is a convention that if your partner moves their foot at all, they have lost.  In the convention, moving your foot is a stand in for being knocked to the ground.  In order to not make this convention a fantasy, you have to sometimes practice it all the way to the ground.  In a pure fighting situation moving your foot doesn't matter very much, as long as you can see where you are moving your foot.  And for this reason, in a Pure Fighting situation, moving forwards is often better than moving backwards.  (With multiple opponents, moving backwards exposes you to being tripped by an opponent on the ground.)

However if you step forward or lean forward without first finding an opening, your partner must show you that you can be struck; usually with an elbow strike, a slap to the head, or a hand on the neck or spine.  In training this doesn't have to injure your opponent, but it must convince them that they have made themselves vulnerable to damage.  Of course, in a Pure Fight, you can still continue to fight with some damage, so be careful not to presume that one strike is enough (but if you know how to chop, a chop to the back of the neck will sever the vertebra).  Similarly, if your opponent over extends, you must show them that you can dislocate their shoulder (cai).  If your opponent leans in, you have to presume they are willing  to sacrifice.  You have to presume that they are willing to take a strike to the head in order to strike you with their head, or wrap their arms around you and break your spine.  A partner leaning in with momentum, like a sumo wrestler, must be struck.  So in Pure Fighting training the better you get, the less you lean.

Tabby Cat actually had the audacity to say Taijiquan doesn't use strikes.  He says it isn't a striking system.  Look Tabby, in Taijiquan we fight using a ball, like a cat.  We don't point strike, or line strike, as Wang Xiangzhai put it, our "intent stays spherical."  This is because allowing our intent to come to a point, a line, an arc, or a ring will leave an opening. But that doesn't mean we don't strike.  Every movement in the Taijiquan form is a potential strike.  Period.  (Jianghu commented on that the same post.)

With multiple opponents, grappling is only used for sudden joint breaks.  You can damage and throw your opponent in less time and with less effort than it takes to seize and throw them.  In a Pure Fight you don't try to get your opponent to submit.  While it is always possible that a Pure Fight could happen in the shower or on the beach, chances are you and your opponents will be wearing strong clothes.  Grabbing or yanking clothing can be very effective, but it is not grappling.  Grappling gives the advantage to the bigger fighter.  Grappling in a multiple person fight leaves you vulnerable.

Now check out this video from the 60's.  They are training for a game, not Pure Fighting.  Watch at the end when the "loser" demonstrates how easy it is to get Stan Israel (the big guy) in a headlock.  Striking the neck would have been even easier.



Now jump ahead 40 years and watch Stan Israel's student Mario Napoli sweep away all the competition at an International Competition in the "birth place" of Taijiquan, Chen Village.



My hat is off to Mario Napoli.  Shirts off too!  A beautiful performance.  "Jiayou" America!  That must have been a load of fun.  But what did we learn?  First of all, the competition doesn't look very good.  Why?  Perhaps the old masters in China are too secretive.  Perhaps the highest levels of internal training never existed in Chen Village.  Perhaps the higher level masters had all left for Shanghai and Beijing by 1920.  It's pretty hard to avoid the conclusion that the training in New York has been better and more consistent over the last 40 years than it has been in Chen Village.

I don't blame Napoli for this, obviously Chen Village set the rules.  He played the game and he played it well, but that rule-set doesn't look like push-hands.  It appears to give the advantage to the thicker competitor.  Having long arms and legs is a disadvantage because you aren't allowed to slap, kick, or strike.  It looks a lot like Sumo.  Don't get me wrong, I love Sumo, especially "Skinny Sumo," but nearly everything they do seems like the opposite of what a Pure Fight form of push-hands would train.  If they were to put on Gi's, would they all lose to Judo guys?  How would a couple of college Greco-Roman wrestlers do with this rule-set.  I'm betting pretty good.

Despite my mellow temperament and fun loving, parlor game, deepen your intimacy approach to push-hands.  I've never lost sight of the Pure Fight.  Among my teachers George Xu, particularly, has never let me loose sight of it.  On the other hand, despite the fact that this is a really long post that took me all morning to write, I care a lot more about dancing than I do about push-hands.

I've never been to a push-hands competition (or a Pure Fight for that matter!), but  I wonder if there is a rule-set that would make me happier.  Would disqualifying a competitor for grabbing, or leaning, or taking a step back, or losing their frame make a more interesting game?  That would be giving a whole lot of power to the judges wouldn't it?

I stubbornly believe it is possible to create a push-hands milieu where everyone agrees that the fruition of competition is to set everyone free by revealing our true nature-- through the cultivation of weakness.  Training for Pure Fighting, does not require aggression, it does not require us to give up even an sliver of our true nature.

Oh well, it's a good thing we have so many fun things to try.

George Xu on The Ball

The Ball

George Xu used a surprisingly counter intuitive definition of a ball the other day.

The term "ball" gets used in martial arts and qigong all the time.  Of course there's "ball up you firsts," but there are lots of other uses.  The term ball is used as a metaphor, a verb, and as a spacial description.  George Xu was using it to mean something else entirely.

Here are the most common uses of "ball'

• Imagine you are sitting on a large ball


• Imagine you are holding a ball in your palm


• Imagine you are holding a ball using your arms and torso


• Imagine you are inside of a ball


• Imagine a ball next to you or behind you


• Turn, roll, bounce, shake, spin or compress and expand one of the above balls you have imagined (but actually do the movement


• Align your body and limbs in arcs, which are part of imagined balls, now move the balls


• Have your arms connect to each other through your opponent (this one is actually a ring)


• Connect your arms to each other or a leg or both legs, or through space using an imagined ball

I could probably keep going.  Am I missing anything big?  Any other uses of the term ball in martial arts?

The definition George Xu gave me was in someways more concrete.  He said a ball, like a basketball for instance, has a skin, a surface thickness.  As a ball inflates, deflates, rolls or bounces, the dynamic pressure on the surface of the ball must change.  The surface of our physical body is like the thick skin of a basket ball.  It is capable of changing in tone, or being stretched around a curved surface.  Use the surface of your body like a ball.

When you practice gongfu, you must always "have a ball."

4 stages of Qi

George Xu has simplified his explanation of the basic process of making martial arts internal.

First there is External-Internal, which means that the jing and qi are mixed.  Most martial arts use this method to great effectiveness.  It is high quality external martial arts-- muscles, bones and tendons become thick like chocolate.

Second is Internal-External, most advanced taijiquan, xingyiquan, and baguazhang practitioners get stuck here.  It means that the body is completely soft and sensitive.   While power is constantly available, the yi (mind/intent) is trained to never go against the opponent's force, so that when this kind of practitioner issues power it is in the opponent's most vulnerable place (in friendly practice it is often used to throw the opponent to the ground).  Unfortunately, if the opponent gives no opening there is no way to attack.  Also, at the moment of attack all jin, no matter how sneaky or subtle, becomes vulnerable to a counter attack.

The third is Pure-Internal, this is very rare.  All power is left in a potential state.  Because there is no jin, one is not vulnerable to counter attack. To reveal this aspect of a practitioner's true nature requires completely relaxing the physical body so that jing and qi distill from one another.  The body becomes like a heavy mass, like a bag of rice, Daoists call it the flesh bag.  Then one must go through the four stages of qi:

1. Qi must go through the gates.  The most common obstacle to this is strength, either physical, psychological, or based in a world-view.  After discarding strength the shoulders must be drawn inward until they unify with the dantian.  The same is true for the legs; however, the most common obstacle to qi passing freely through the hip gates is too much qi stored in the dantian.  Qi must be distributed upwards and released in order for it to descend.


2. Qi must conform to the rules of Yin-Yang.  As much qi as goes into the limbs must simultaneously go back into the torso.


3. The qi must become lively, shrinking expanding and spiraling.  (This is what I'm working on.)


4. This one in Chinese is Hua--to transform, like ice changing into water and then steam.  But George Xu prefers to translate in as melt the qi.

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Personal Update:  I'm going on a classical music only fast.