More Rain, More Books, More Ideas

My computer has been having a crash fest lately and that's a good thing because it put my nose into some great books I'll be blogging about over the next month.

Class was canceled this morning.  We were caught in a down pour even though Yahoo Weather was predicting 1% chance of rain.  We finished standing and did push hands under the trees for a little bit anyway.

This weekend I saw George Xu, also in the rain, and he delivered a few printable topics.

The 5 Types of Training Predators Do:

1. Power stretch


2. Standing still with the mind outside the body


3. Slow movement


4. Fast movement


5. Shaking

Power stretch means stretching from the inside out.  Standing with the mind out side the body means the mind is on the prey and the surrounding environment.  Slow movement includes stalking, shrinking and expanding, six dimensions power, etc.... Fast movement must be unconscious of the physical body.  And shaking is used to insure that the prey can not fight back once it has been seized.

The Great Rice Ball

Diets are annoying because everyone is different.  Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.  Sometimes they sort of work, for a while, and then they don't.

I'm more interested in principles of eating based on a practical understanding of the process by which food becomes blood which is capable of re-animating every part of our bodies.

A healthy person, by definition in Chinese Medicine, will choose foods which keep them healthy.  A healthy person will have an appetite perfectly appropriate for what they need.  A healthy person's appetite will fluctuate depending on weather conditions and how much exercise, rest and sleep they get.

People doing a lot of mental exercise will need rest.  However, most people these days work themselves at jobs which expend mental energy and they don't allow for spontaneous naps.  In this situation a healthy person's appetite will step in and tell them to go get some sugar.  This is especially true as the afternoon wears on (but it can happen at anytime of day or night).

Sugar is what the blood needs to keep transporting qi to the front lines, or oxygen to the cells if you prefer.  The effect of eating sugar is instantaneous, but it also wears off quickly, leading to another craving.  Eating sugar for a boost occasionally is not a problem.  However, doing this for years on end leads to degeneration of the internal organs.  A long list of diseases could follow here, from just being a whiny neurotic spaz, to advanced-stage-limb-amputating diabetes.

Often times people with this late afternoon craving for sugar will try to suppress it.  While I have no doubt that there are people with extraordinary discipline making this work, most people will crack under the pressure.  Cracking leads to binging.

Many people know they don't have the discipline so they turn to appetite suppressants like tobacco, coffee or tea.  Each of these has potential negative side affects, however, depending on where you work, they can be good for your social life, which is one of the strongest statistical indicators for longevity.  Of course, because I'm into Chinese medicine, I have to say that if we are comparing appetite suppressants, green tea has the least negative side effects .  But I've seen plenty of people abusing green tea.

Chocolate and Diet Coke (or other caffeinated sodas) are a sort of self back-stabbing compromise between sugar and suppressing the appetite.  The average "health" bar, with 52 suspicious ingredients you need a PhD in Chemistry to digest, is just as bad.

Rice Balls to the Rescue!

What if, when that late afternoon weariness starts to set in, instead of getting sugar or caffeine, instead you eat a rice ball?  Rice is a complex carbohydrate.  In order for rice to become sugar in your blood steam, your digestive organs have to do some work.  Because they are doing work, they won't get lazy, and when they don't get lazy, they don't degenerate, and when they don't degenerate they don't lead to all those nasty diseases.

The boosting effects of eating a rice ball are not as instantaneous as drinking a Coke but the energizing effects will last much longer.  Also rice balls have seaweed on the outside and usually something stimulating inside like umeboshi (sour plum), a pickle, or a small piece of delicious fish.

Rice balls are really really good snacks.

If you live in Japan, you can get them everywhere at 7-Eleven corner stores.  You probably know that once the nori (seaweed) has been applied to the rice, it will start to get soggy.  After about 6 hours it becomes chewy instead of crisp.  But 7-Eleven solved that problem with the worlds most brilliant and longevity inspiring technology.  They wrap the rice ball in plastic then put the seaweed on, then another piece of plastic.  And they have those anti-moisture-oxygen absorbing packets in there too.  If you pull the three tabs in the correct 1,2, 3 order (see picture), the seaweed wraps around the rice ball as you pull off the wrapper!!!  They are fantastically fresh and tasty!  Why don't all 7-Elevens carry rice balls?  It isn't fair!  Write your Congressman today, tell them how you feel, tell them that Rice Balls are the answer to America's problems.

(In the interest of full disclosure, while writing this post I drank some pu-erh tea, ate a pickle and had a small piece of chocolate.  Now I'm going to take a nap!)

4 Becomes 1

Try this simple exercise.

Put your feet shoulders width apart. Put you attention on the bubbling well point of each foot, and put your attention on the center of the heel of each foot; that's 4 points all together.

Now shift your weight from foot to foot while attempting to keep the pressure totally equal on all 4 points. It's a simple task but difficult to do. The more sensitive you are to fluctuations in pressure, the more you'll be aware of mistakes. After doing this for a few minutes, relax into feeling all 4 points as one distinct thing, one constant experience--as if all 4 points were in fact a single structure.*

In English, we tend to call this process "integration." It's like when you learn to juggle. At first you are trying to keep each ball in the air. Later, you just juggle. It's one thing. (Until you try to add a new trick.)

The exercise above is called 4 Becomes 1. Actually, we could call it "5," because the integrated state is a new thing. There are many "4 becomes 1" types of exercises.  Sometimes they are labeled by the 5 Elements (Wuxing), wood, fire, metal, water--with earth being the fifth element.

4 Becomes 1, is not just an exercise, it is a principle of movement. Learning in martial arts is very often a process of taking several different ideas, feelings, or qualities of movement and making them a single thing.

This can be a great source of frustration for students if they don't understand the principle. As a teacher, I have in my mind 4 things I want to show you. I teach each of them to you as a distinct practice and then I try to get you to do them all together. Students, however, will try to cling to the one exercise they think they got "right." They want to get "good" at something. The teacher, however, doesn't want the student to do the four exercises separately. Getting good at just one would actually move the student away from the final goal. As soon as a student can do each of the 4 exercises at a basic level, I will try to get her to combine them.

Sometimes there aren't four distinct exercises to integrate. Sometimes four exercises will build on each other so that you learn one and then add to it. Doing the "one" plus something else, and then adding to it again, and then again. The result, however is supposed to be a simple singular activity-- composite perhaps, but also whole.

(Note: * The 4 in 1 exercise at the top is probably a really good exercise for golfers.)

Shrinking and Expanding

Shrinking and expanding, or shrinking and pouncing, is something every predator does.  If you want to develop martial arts skill you must replace bending and stretching with shrinking and expanding.

The error of bending and stretching is a human epidemic.  Not that it is a crisis or a struggle or a life and death situation, humans can freely carry on merrily bending and stretching from now until internal arts are in the Olympics (or eternity, which ever comes first).

Without shrinking and expanding it is impossible to get effortless three dimensional power; up/down, left/right, front/back, and spiral/turn.

When predators fight they always attack using whole-body shrinking and expanding.  This allows them to simultaneously strike, uproot, and rotate their prey.

Predators are also very cautious about receiving injuries.  Shrinking and expanding allows a predator to diminish the force of their prey's counter attack without reducing the force of their own attack.

Shrinking and expanding does not require strength, in fact, for the most part, strength will inhibit it.

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!

Flying Fish

Most people don't have a very clear sense of their spine. There are hundreds of different martial arts and qigong exercises which bring sensitivity, awareness and mobility to the spine. This material is very rich.

The vast majority of this material must be taught in a small class because each person needs a fair amount of feedback and interaction with the teacher. That's why it's not very well known or understood. It's this lack of personal attention which leads people to keep doing brutish things like sit-ups.

I thought I would offer one image which my student have often found helpful.

When the arms lift in Heaven Earth style qigong (or Baguazhang circle walking or numerous other internal arts/movements I could point to) the protuberances (Spinous Process) on the spine starting in the lumbar region move upward. This is true whether you start with the arms moving to the front or to the sides.

This movement matches that of a flying fish jumping out of the water. When the fish jumps its dorsal fin (the one on its lower back) goes up and forward (towards the head). The dorsal fin on a fish is actually the spine, it is simply a spine with long spinal protuberances (Spinous Process).