A Long Strong Spirited Response

Dave Randolph over at iron-body offered a spirited response to my somewhat comic post entitled, "The Two Finger Rule." He offered several challenges to my anti-strength position so I thought it would be a good idea to explore them.

Do you see all the obese, people out there? People who can barely carry their groceries into the house. Frail old ladies & men who can’t get out of a chair by themselves or have to use an extension thing on the toilet so they don’t have to squat down so far.

Yes, I do see them. Obese people eat too much. People get old and die. I'm not sure, because I haven't done it yet, but I think getting old and dying takes a lot of practice. If you try to do it without practicing, you can expect some extra complications. Internal Martial arts like Taijquan can be understood as practicing for death.

Correct strength training does not impede the flow of fluids or qi.
Are you saying that all the old drawings of monks carry water up and down steps, swinging stone lock etc were wrong in trying to build functional strength??

Are you confusing true strength training with body building? Yes building bodies is wrong. It teaches muscle isolation and creates huge muscles that are not necessarily strong and that will creates circulation issues. But proper strength training, and I’m speaking of barbells & dumbbells, but things like kettlebells, clubbells, sandbags etc, that teach full body integration and coordination, causes so many positive responses the body in terms or weight control, mobility, flexibility, coordination not to mention the positive effects on hormonal balances, sleep, digestion, among other things

If the definition of "correct strength training" is that it does not impede flow of fluids or qi, than I would be inclined to agree. However; the people I've watched training with these AKC Kettle Bells (pictured to the right) do indeed restrict qi circulation, and they compress qi as well.

But let's agree to drop the word qi, because it has too many possible meanings for such a concrete disagreement. What I mean by qi in this case is a quality of animation that is characteristic of active children and predatory animals.

Monks in Asia carry water on their shoulders, people in Africa and South America carry it on their heads. The skill of carrying water is to continuously transfer all of the weight to the ground and not take any of it in your muscles. Since water tends to slosh around, this requires constant movement and is perhaps one of the reasons we see such great hip articulation in dances like the Samba and the Rumba.

I'll concede that if someone is really good at water carrying and they get help putting the water on their shoulders or their head, they can carry a heavy load and avoid loosing sensitivity.

...Part of my strength training includes lots of mobility work for joints and muscles as well as qi gong.

I think the Scott Sonnon, Iron-Body, movement to loosen your joints and use awkward weights to stimulate your body to be more efficient is wonderful! Now just drop the strength part!

I love business, and I love this new health kick. But if you are looking for high level internal martial arts, strength will inhibit your development. My point is not to convince the world I'm right, I don't think sensitivity is for everyone. Perhaps I'm a weakness elitist in that way. Then again, remind what we need strength for?

By the way can you pick up a 75 lb child with two fingers from each hand? No? then how are you going to pick one up & carry he/she if they are injured & can’t walk? Call for someone to help you pick them up?

I would like the world to know that I have two really strong fingers, and I'm undefeated in thumb wrestling. Also, I'm not saying only use two fingers, I'm saying test whatever you are about to lift with two fingers. After the test feel free to add the other fingers, a hip, a chin, or even a whole arm. (And we've all heard the story about the lady who flipped over a car because her baby was underneath it. If you're healthy and you really need the strength, it'll be there.)

As for picking up kids, two fingers in the armpits usually works, but in my experience they are not shy about biting, better to get help.

Since an injured kid is one less kid I have to teach, I should leave it at that but... I noticed the Iron-Body website does trainings for firefighters who obviously are in the business of rescuing people and their kids. This is great stuff. I admire the business model. But it does raise the question, do firefighters really need extra strength?

You know those ninja shoes? Well, they aren't actually ninja shoes, they are called jika tabi. All construction workers wear jika tabi in Japan. That's right, Japanese construction workers think of themselves as crafts people, not laborers. They don't drop things on their feet, so they don't need steel-toed boots.  Sometimes conventional thinking is a limitation.
When I was born, all the fire fighters in San Francisco were straight, white, over 6 feet tall, male, and at least 185lbs. We had a Whites Only Union until 1990! San Francisco currently has twice as many fire fighters, engines, and firehouses as we need. Whenever a city official with balls comes along, the Unions go to the sentimental-fireman-gushing-voters and have that official castrated.

If we didn't have to pay for all that fire fighter corruption we could afford to design and build all new lightweight efficient equipment and we could even have midget fire fighters. Strength is an issue here only because it protects a class of aging, compassionate and heroic men--that should have been let go a long time ago.

Dong Hai-chuan's foot

Just a simple image for today.

Most Bagua zhang practitioners have heard the story about Dong Hai-chuan breaking a cobble stone with his foot. The story goes, one day a junior student asked why as he was required to walk leading with his toes and pressing his back heal while Dong sometimes stepped on his heel and pushed off his toe? After giving the student a good thrashing for asking a question, Dong went over to a solid cobble stone about 6 inches thick, put his foot on it and shattered it into tiny pieces. Then he said, "When you can do that you can walk however you want!"

OK what's going on here? Old man crushes stone by pushing down on it. Even if he put double his own weight it would not be enough. I've crushed cobble stones--with a sledge hammer. It normally takes a very hard heavy object, like a hammer, being swung from a height to break a stone.

So what is the story supposed to teach us? That Dong was a god made out of steel? That we should just shut up and practice otherwise we'll have to listen to silly stories? That Dong had mastered bring down the Qi of Heaven? Whatever. No, there must be a point to the story.

My take on this story is that every stone has fissures and invisible crack already in it. Dong's foot was so sensitive that when he put his foot on the stone he could feel all the places where it would crack. As he applied pressure his foot expanded and spread all the tiny fissures apart and the rock just crumbled.

To do this your foot would have to be wiggly and dynamic like an octopus and it would have to be as sensitive as a baby's cheek! (OK that's your homework.)

The Two Finger Rule

I've got lots of material lined up to write about but much of it is in the category of "mind blowing" revelation and reinterpretation, so I want to really take the time to do it right. That means a lot of metaphorical heavy lifting, perhaps long posts broken up into sections. So I'm offering something a little lighter for tonight.

No, sorry to disappoint all you scholars of Neapolitan sign language, the "Two Finger Rule" is not a method for creatively responding to rude hand gestures, (although I hope to put out a video on that subject this Spring). The Two Finger Rule is a way to cultivate weakness and sensitivity.

You see, shocking as this may seem, normal human beings are really quite strong without any training at all. Just being fated to a human birth makes you a mighty, mighty strong and dynamic beast.

We are naturally strong enough. If as it happens you want to lift something very heavy, there are an enormous number of tools, from levers to cranes to pushcarts, which allow even the most effete among us to effortlessly enlist the gods of gravity to our cause.

And if you happen to find yourself without the right tool, you can always enlist a friend or a neighbor or two. The rule is simple: If it is too heavy to lift using two fingers from each hand, than it is too heavy to lift. Get help.

Those among you who have a natural inclination toward indolence, are no doubt planning to adopt this rule. But perhaps you are asking yourself, "What good could this possibly do me?"

Building up strength cuts off fluid circulation, and reduces sensitivity. The more strength you build, the less ability you have to continuously engage every millimeter of your body. Our bodies are dynamic enough that we can be more like tigers and octopuses, or we can be more like oxen and yaks. Which type of animal you are like depends a little on personal preference and a lot on fate. If you have the fate to practice internal martial arts than you can cultivate weakness like a tiger or an octopus.

Back injuries usually happen because people are insensitive to the situation they find themselves in. Often I've injured my back simply because I was angry. I was posessed (if you will) to a point in which I wasn't paying attention to my own limits.

One of the most common ways to injure ones back is to reach for a heavy pot on the back of the stove. If you follow the Two Finger Rule you'll be sure to pull that pot of black-eyed peas and bacon to the front burner before trying to pick it up.

The Two Finger Rule is one of those limitations that opens up new possibilities.

Because I just said a few things about back injuries I would be remiss if I didn't remind people that the number one cause of stiffness and insensitivity in the lower back is letting the legs get colder than the torso. Long underwear is a mighty, mighty tool. Use it early and often.

Systems

One of the basic ideas of Systems Theory is that if you have a complex system and you speed up one part of that system, you will slow down the whole system.

Likewise, if you make one part of a system more efficient you will make the whole system less efficient.

In martial arts, if you have one joint that is looser than the adjacent joints, the body will tighten up somewhere else to compensate for the loose joint, which will make the whole body less efficient.

Likewise, if you have one muscle or one muscle group that is stronger than the adjacent muscles, the system will be weaker and less efficient.

Systems theory, by the way, is really just a collection of observations about how stuff works. An important observation that is practically a rule of industrial commerce, is that for any given output or product created by a system with multiple variables, there is a way to make the system more efficient. I posit that this is why we can always improve our martial arts skill.

If you want to speed up and improve the efficiency of a whole system the best way to do it is to confine the output, limit the product produced, and then run the whole system at different speeds, both fast and slow, to see where the weak links are. Then you can focus on efficiency in that one location or component. Games like Push-hands, sparring, boxing, sumo, and even MMA, all confine output. They all "run our systems" with confining rules that limit output and thus allow us to find the weak links.

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 Formosa Neijia responded to my last post with a post of his own.  Systems theory would suggest that strengthening or weakening any one region of the body is a losing strategy unless you have already shown that for a given output that region is the weak link.  In other words, whole body unity should be a priority--both the measure of any intermediate steps, and the final fruition.

Proprioception and Kinesthetic Awarness

To feel your body or not to feel your body, that is the question.

If only Hamlet had studied Tai Chi.

The tongue always feels things bigger than they actually are. If I try to feel the size of my hands with my eyes closed, they usually feel bigger than they actually are. I know how big they are supposed to be, but I still feel them bigger. If I keep my hands still for a few seconds with my eyes closed my sense of how big they are starts to morph into other shapes.

Taking drugs can disorient us so much that we do not feel our bodies. They can also cause us to feel our bodies in weird expansive or contracted shapes, or to feel intermittently. But we don't need drugs for this, if you are flirting to someone really hot, you might forget about your own body altogether. A great conversation, reading or writing, watching a movie, all of these everyday experiences can cause us to forget our bodies, to feel them in an exaggerated way, or to drift in and out.

Traditionally strange feelings and disembodied feelings were covered under the subject: trance and possession. Now we have the scientific categories of proprioception and kinesthetic awareness.

Extreme relaxation, or extreme stillness often result in the sensation that ones body has no boundaries.

Pain starts with exaggerated feelings of the body and often leads in and out of feelings of disembodiment. There is nothing like getting hit to make you feel your body, but if you are going to keep fighting you need to "shake it off." What is being shaken off? A contracted sense of space?

When big muscles are engaged and experience resistance they cause us to feel our bodies at the expense of our sense of space and movement. Thus my often repeated comment that they make us insensitive. But more specifically what they are doing is making us feel in a limited way.  Movement orients us, muscle tension reduces our ability of perceive.
There is a continuum of  proprioception ability from superb to dysfunctional.  The Sensory Processing Disorder website is a great place to learn about how to recognize proprioceptive problems in yourself and others.

Here is a really nice article that explains how proprioception interacts with other senses.

Here is an article about consciously training proprioception.  It got me thinking about how my body learns, but practicing internal martial arts does everything these silly exercises do.

Of course there is always Wikipedia.

The traditional Chinese categories of shen, xin, jingshen, yi, jin, and shi all refer to and encompass aspects of proprioception and kinesthetic awareness.  How else could "shi" be translated variously as: strategic advantage, a location at the center of change, potential energy, and the unification of active power with inner quiet.

Daoist Shoes

I've been looking for information on Daoist ritual shoes. I was sure that somewhere I'd seen special Daoist ritual shoes which are 3 inch high stilts. These shoes make it impossible to put weight on the toes or the heel since the stilt post goes down from the center of the foot. Since the base the the stilt is thicker at the bottom, kind of like a mushroom, there is a plenty of space to balance. The problem is I have been unable to find these shoes (so no picture). Did I dream them? How embarrassing.

Dream or not, these shoes represent ultimate shamanic power. The symbolic steps Daoists take in ritual cover huge distances. They circumambulate the empire, the world, and they traverse the distances between stars in the sky.

It gets confusing. Daoists are not shaman, but there is a part of Daoist ritual in which they take on the role or the position, or more accurately, the qi of all shaman. This is done by taking on the physicality of the Chinese prehistory shaman the Great Yu, and acting out key parts of his life. The difference between normative shamanic power and a Daoist embodying the Great Yu is the difference between power and potential power.

There is a direct parallel with taijiquan and other internal arts. First a taijiquan student develops the ability to clearly and unambiguously demonstrate and replicate peng jin , lu jin, an jin, and ji jin (ward-off, rollback, etc...). To get these types of power one must know exactly which part of the foot to use. Then he or she strings peng-ji-lu-an seamlessly together so that these types of power are part of a continuous circle. To achieve this one must be continuously shifting from the ball of the foot to the heel. Once this jin level is achieved the student then moves on to the shi level. Shi roughly means potential, it implies a strategic position, a drawn bow, and having ones hand on a lever.
The jin level is like shamanic power. The shi level leaves power unexpressed, unused.

Shaman get power through covenants with spirits, deities, or even natural forces. The physical "fear and trembling" necessary for summoning shamanic power requires engaging the "pushing and pulling muscles" of the legs which involves pressure in the balls of our feet or in our heels. With these Daoist ritual shoes on, our legs would easily stay in a weak potential state. At the shi level of taijiquan we do not push from the balls of the feet or the heels. Our power remains potential.

UPDATE 12/21/07: Here is a picture of the shoe, it's called a Manchu Shoe. I have now written more on this subject!

Why I'm Unbalanced

Several years ago, one of my advanced Baguazhang students said to me, "My ankles are wiggling all the time and I'm completely unstable on my feet." It was a break-through for her. She was experiencing things as they are, ziran. This is high level gongfu, this is the purpose of cultivating weakness.

A person standing on two feet is an unstable structure.

There is no such thing as balanced movement. There is only unbalanced movement. The feeling of balance is the result of an unconscious process in which we are constantly readjusting. Fear of falling causes us to develop foot and leg muscles which are constantly at work to keep us feeling balanced. What most people call "rooting" in martial arts is simply a continuation of this process.

One of the reasons the higher levels of martial arts are so hard to achieve is because we are afraid to give up this unconscious reliance on our legs for balance.

Toddlers balance by moving their torsos while their legs remain soft and springy. In Taijiquan we say, "Move from the tantian," but most people use their leg muscles for balance and power which limits the expression of the tantian. To achieve the higher levels of martial arts the legs must be part of the movement of the "tantian," not a separate force. If toddlers can do it, so can you!
The way I learned Baguazhang, I was told to always be "on balance," and to always be able to "turn on a dime." Thus forward motion was propelled by twisting and pulsing the legs. There is a Yin style Baguazhang school in San Francisco that teaches the opposite. They teach that one should always be leaning so that one's spirals will be driven by the momentum of falling. Both these ideas are missing the mark.

The Dao of Learning

There is a common convention of Chinese culture in which the word Dao, meaning the way, is applied to any field of study. Thus we have the Dao of archery, the Dao of writing, the Dao of mothering, and even the Dao of basketball. This expression refers to a way of knowing and embodying which is unique to each pursuit, and implies both ease and confidence. It is somewhat like saying in English, "She really has the knack of tree climbing." In addition to implying that a person is really skilled at something, it implies that the activity itself transforms the person who does it, it is not just an act of doing, it is an act of mutual self-recreation.

Truly knowing a skill, or even a subject, further implies a curriculum. Thus many books have been written describing the Dao of Archery, the Dao of making Tea, or even the best selling book The Tao of Pooh.

In Japanese, which uses Chinese written characters, Dao becomes "do," in many familiar arts like Karatedo, Judo, Aikido, Budo (the warrior code), and Chado (the art of tea).
For most of the last 1500 years in China the first lessons one received when learning to write calligraphy were instructions on how to sit without obstructing circulation, how to hold and move the brush in coordination with ones breath such that the student might start discovering the Dao of writing from day one. In fact, implicit in this idea is the notion that one is learning how to embody the physicality of great public officials of the past. This is also true of all traditional subjects, music, martial arts, medicine, weaving, etc. In traditional Chinese culture the physical process of acquiring knowledge is not subordinate to knowledge itself-- How one learns is, in a sense, given priority to what one learns.
This idea is beautifully illustrated in the story of Cook Ding in the 300 Century BCE text, the Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu). The story is an ironic tale in which Cook Ding butchers an ox in front of the king, it is the title story of the third chapter called "The Mastery of Nourishing Life." In the story, the king is amazed by the dance like beauty, grace, and ease with which Cook Ding butchers the ox. When asked, Cook Ding explains how the naturalness of his skill came about and in the end the king declares that listening to these words has taught him how to nourish life.

Bowing

There is a Daoist precept against subordination. In fact there is a precept (one of the 180 of Lord Lao) that says, "Do not serve in the military. If you must serve in the military do not serve in a subordinate position." I take this to mean join as an officer and be in a position to make decisions about life and death.

I think people living as we do in a commercial society find the idea of not being subordinate both appealing and at times unworkable.

(Currently I feel subordinate to my web hosting service and my ISP which are never able to solve all the weird intermittent and indeterminate problems I have in my daily struggle/walk-in-the-sun to publish my blog. 2 hours on the phone, zero results. If you occasionally get a “Yahoo 404 Error� or a "500 error" when you try to read my blog, I’d love to hear from you.)

What is the purpose of bowing? A traditional class has at least three bows. The first bow is done upon entering the space. Why bow to the space? This tradition comes out of the shamanic practice of subordinating oneself to allies (gods, spirits, ancestors) in exchange for power. The power one gets through subordination is then used to exorcise, scare away, or subordinate all other beings in a given space. It is often called "purification." (Today at the farmer’s market I watched a large man attempt a rather weak version of purification while swinging a bible and shouting in a horse voice about revelation.)



The Japanese term Dojo means Hall of the Dao. It most likely comes from Sung Dynasty (900-1200 CE) Daoism. Clan halls, trade halls, and halls associated with the mega-deity-category "Earth," were used as community centers, places for everything (Dao). When you entered one of these halls to practice gongfu (meritorious martial training) it was important to clear the space of spirits that might try to possess you--dangerous spirits are particularly attracted to weapons and those who wield them.

When a shaman purifies a space, she uses her acquired strength to forcibly evict all the ghosts and spirits that have taken up residence there. Since Daoists did not practice subordination to other entities and they were weak by precept and commitment, they didn’t actually purify the space immediately. Instead they bowed. The act of bowing is a declaration that human beings are going to temporarily use the space for meritorious actions. Bowing doesn’t scare away ghosts, or banish them. Bowing is a way of asking spirits to temporarily clear out. It is a declaration that the practice about to be performed will not be of any interest to ghosts. A ghost is an entity defined by weak, deficient, or lingering commitments.

The second bow is usually to the teacher. The teacher joins this bow because the bow is not to the person but to the teaching itself. It is as if all the teacher’s teachers are standing behind him and he ducks so that the bow of the students will fly over his head to be received by all of the ancestors of the teaching itself.

(In many schools, before and after working with a partner people will bow to each other as equals. This bow again represents a declaration to practice only acts of merit.)

The third bow is to give up the space to who ever or what ever is going to use it next. It cautiously invites the spirits back. After doing this ritual in a space for several years the spirits attracted to dangerous behavior or people with weak commitments will have had time to find another place and will have moved on. Through this continual demonstration of acts of merit (gongfu) some spirits will have found the strength to complete themselves and become one with Dao. Thus we call this place a Dojo, a hall of the Dao.

Ghosts, Demons and Immortals

I hope you all had a lovely Halloween, hah, hah, haaa!

There are five basic types of human death; either we become a god, a ghost, a demon, an immortal, or a supportive ancestor.

Most people die and are forgotten, even their descendants forget them in a generation or so. Most people are mostly forgotten in seven years. People who die young, or die with a lot of unfulfilled potential may linger a bit longer. People who lived long fulfilling lives are generally remembered by their descendants simply as supportive ancestors, the more time that passes, the more generally we feel their support. I don't know how my deceased grandparents would feel about me writing a blog, they didn't live to see the internet, but they loved books and innovation, so I feel fairly sure that they would be regular readers if they were still alive.

But it is also safe to say that my grandparents are not completely resolved. I still wonder what they would think, and thus they live on through me and the many other people that knew them.

All ghosts, gods, demons, and supportive ancestors eventually become immortals--they become one with Dao-- they become undifferentiated from the totality of everything known and unknown. The Hindu God Shiva is one of the oldest gods, but eventually he too will be forgotten.

As you may have gathered, Daoism has a vast cosmology which is capable of incorporating new material, new world views, and also subsuming older cults, and mythologies. One of the "cults within the cult" is the quest for Immortality, called Xian in Chinese.

The cult of Xian is extremely diverse. While there are some general suggestions about how to go about becoming a Xian, even manuals and programs to follow, there really is no method that works every time. Even though there are routes by which one may become a xian, like "Rising up in broad daylight with one's dogs and chickens," every process of becoming Xian is truly unique for that person, time and place.

One thing I can say however, is that to become a xian, one must leave behind no unresolved entanglements, no lingering or unfulfilled commitments. An Immortal in that sense is the opposite of a ghost.

Going a little deeper into the subject, it is possible to be still alive and to have begun taking on a ghostly presence. Poor diet, drugs and aggressive behavior, all lead to what we call in Chinese Medicine, "deficiency." Deficiency, as a key concept in Chinese Medicine, takes many different forms, for instance it effects each organ differently and may only be noticed in one organ. From a Daoist point of view, "deficiency" is a draw for ghosts to feed and eventually take up residence in one's body. Ghosts if you remember, are weak commitments; commitments too "deficient" to follow through.

Thus we have one of the most basic connections between Chinese Medicine and Daoism. But don't think I'm letting you gongfu people off the hook. Gongfu, at its most basic level, is about establishing strong commitments. In Chinese Medicine the most potent way to "tonify" (the opposite of deficiency) the spleen and kidneys is through routine exercise. Health in this sense, completes the incomplete, it transforms ghosts into immortals.