Nam Singh's cooking with Chinese Herbs

Nam Singh, is a teacher of mine, a fellow student, and a friend. He is a fantastic and creative cook.

A good cooking class should do the following:

1. Really get you familiar with the ingredients. In this case the qi qualities of the ingredients-- What they do, how they are nutritious, and where and when to find the best quality. But all cooking classes should teach you how to know the best ingredients, what they do and how to use them.

2. Teach cooking methods. Deep knowledge of the basic methods is essential for experimentation.

3. Teach preparation and presentation.

4. Teach you great classic recipes, and how to vary them according to ingredients, taste, and appetite.

Probably the most important thing about learning to cook is that it refines your appetite. Being able to really trust your personal appetite to tell you what and how to eat is the definition of health!

Nam Singh teaches through these organizations:

CCD Innovation, Pacific School of Herbal Medicine, The Academy of Healing Nutrition.

Since practicing internal martial arts and qigong will likely improve your digestion, you will have to learn to eat less. At first it won't make much difference but if you are over 35 and have been practicing for 10 years you will likely balloon up unless you learn to eat less.  The best way to do that is to really learn the qi qualities of the foods you are eating.

In this context, we could drop the term qi because any good traditional cooking class will teach you detailed information about the qi qualities of food.  In depth traditions of cooking all over the world are storehouses of knowledge about how to combine and bring out the best nutrients from local ingredients.  And since nearly everything is local now we have a lot of choices.

100% Qi Free?

I took the following quote from Joanna Zorya at Martial Tai Chi:



100% Qi-Free


Our own teaching completely rejects the concept of qi, also known as chi, ch'i or ki. Other instructors coming to the MTA [Martial Tai Chi] should also reject the idea completely. However, on this website there are a couple of articles which specifically deal with the issue. Qi is also dealt with briefly on our "Taiji Concepts" DVD - the clip (in "3 internal harmonies excerpts") is shown on our "Techniques" video clips page. We have found it necessary to address the issue of qi, because most people in the Tai Chi mainstream are utterly obsessed with it, and we wanted to make our position on it absolutely clear. The concept is at best obsolete and at worst dangerous. Significantly, the notion of qi is simply not true.


The way I see it the word Qi is polysemous. It has many different meanings depending on context. So if the teachers at Martial Tai Chi want to ban the word, they aren't necessarily banning the concepts that come with it.


The word qi might in a particular context mean the totality of everything you can feel. Or it might mean the feeling of blood or lymph pulsing through your body. But in another context it means the bubbles in a glass of soda pop. If the term qi is not clearly defined in context, it can be used to create intensional vagueness. Such vagueness is often used by Charismatics to create a feeling of authority among witnesses to a performance of healing or other subordinating demonstrations of power.


However, we really aren't sure what it is we are feeling inside and even outside our bodies. The term qi can be used in conjunction with other words to communicate the density, directionality, size, or relative temperature of something we feel. I'm not going to argue that it is a necessity, just that it can be used appropriately.


Here is my LONG definition of Qi. I wrote this 10 years ago, so it may need some updating, but perhaps readers will have suggestions.


UPDATE: I've had some interesting exchanges with Joanna Zorya in the comments for a previous post on Lineage. I mention these books:


Thinking Through Cultures, On Beauty and Being Just, The Trouble with Principle.


Balance

It is a standard of Chinese martial arts that one should cultivate balance. When I learned my first broad sword form (wuhudao) my teacher, Bing Gong, had me learn it with the sword in the left hand because I am left handed. This meant that I had to learn a mirror image of the form he did. Being the precocious kid that I was, I taught myself the right hand too.Later a second teacher, George Xu, taught me another sword form (baxianjian). At the beginning I suggested that perhaps I should learn it left handed. His response was memorable, and classic gongfu-teacher-speak, "You don't have any idea how to use either hand...yet." (I learned it right handed.)

Balance can be measured or assessed in a number of different ways. Here is a short list which I will elaborate on in a future post:

TYPES OF BALANCE

  • What is Comfortable to use: One's preference for left or right can be balanced by using the "good side" less



  • Body shape and size (including balancing muscles on the left with muscles on the right). Think losing muscle to get to balance, instead of building muscle to get there.



  • Weight distribution (front to back and side to side)



  • Range of motion (functional range of motion and optimal range of motion.)



  • Muscle strength or weakness as distinct from size



  • Ability to move qi, fluids, micro-articulation of circles (or other shapes)



  • Since the internal organs are never balanced in terms of weight and size they can be balanced in the sense that they can all be felt with equal clarity.



  • Multiple layers of qi. Starting a Weiqi (the feeling of the surface of the body) and then going inward layer by layer, sensing left to right, front to back or top and bottom.



  • Balance is also part of complete embodiment. What feels balanced?



  • Lack of balance in range of motion lower down in the body effects the verticalness of the spine and all angles above the hips? The levelness of the hips dramatically effects the verticalness of the spine.



  • Fighters know that you can have a 'blind spot,' a place in your preception where you don't sense things very well. For instance punches that come from a certain angle are more likely to hit you. These can and should be 're-embodied.

Do you own your legs?

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

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

Shen (Spirit?): What does it mean?

Elisabeth Hsu wrote an article in Culture Medicine and Psychiatry, in 2000, called Spirit (SHEN), Styles or Knowing , and Authority in Contemporary Chinese Medicine. The article is a summary of her book from 1999, The Transmission of Chinese Medicine, (Cambridge University Press.) I got the article free through Interlibrary Loan if you are just interested in ideas, but I recommend the book too.

The book tells a cool story. In Kunming, in the late 1980's Hsu signed up to study three different forms of Chinese medicine and compared how they were transmitted. She did this as a medical anthropologist, in other words, she was always looking beyond the subject she was studying to a larger field of knowledge. This is how good social thought gets produced.

First she signed up to study TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) at a government college which taught clinical medicine in a TCM Hospital. Then she found a qigong master, who did treatments on difficult cases. Finally, she found a teacher of the Neijing (Inner Classic of Medicine), really a "doctor's doctor", who had completed his studies before the two big changes in Chinese Medicine took place; the first being the invention of Clinical TCM and the other being the Cultural Revolution.

What she found is that each style of transmission uses the Term SHEN very differently. These differences have profound implications for how these various types of practitioners assert authority and make claims about what is real.Qi Healing Power

1. Clinical TCM: Shen is a list of observations that correspond closely with what we call functions of the brain in Bio-medicine (you know regular modern medicine.)

2. Qigong Master: Shen is a very vague idea, no one seems to be able to define it, yet people agree that it is what improves (or doesn't improve) with a series of qigong treatment performances.

3. The Neijing expert: Shen means different things in different parts of the text. The teachers uses the text which is often metaphorical or obscure, to impart his traditional knowledge and extensive experience about medicine. Thus the teacher asserts some authority about what Shen means at any one time, or in a particular context. Hsu calls this quality of having multiple meanings polysemous.

In my teaching I falls in to category 3. I use terms like qi, shen, jin, yi, to mean different things in different contexts.

The Kinesthetic nature of Internal Arts

There is a convention of dividing gongfu into internal and external, and following that logic qigong is also sometimes divided this way. When we refer to qi, we often mean the animation of the interior world, the felt world. This is meant to be distinct from the seen world, how our bodies look, our form, the external shell. The traditional way to learn something is to begin with the external, and gradually become more internal. As the internal develops there is a movement outward toward refining the external, and then back toward the internal again; a circular process. The real distinction is that ‘internal arts’ put more emphasis on the internal, and do it sooner, almost from the beginning.

Taijiquan is the most well know internal art, but baguazhang and xingyiquan along with hundreds of qigong exercises (many of them abstracted from one of those three arts) have been steadily gaining in popularity. The following is meant to be helpful in understanding the term, 'internal.'
If you move your tongue around in your mouth and then do the same thing looking in the mirror it will appear that your tongue is moving differently than it feels. The tongue tends to exaggerate the size of objects it touches. This becomes really obvious when you have a cut on your tongue. Similarly, the back of the palms and the front of the wrists perceive heat and moisture quite differently. (You can try it right now.)
The internal organs move around like the tongue and each has it's own very specialized sensory and motor nerves, as well as its own intelligence. The feeling of lifting up your right kidney feels very different than the feeling of lifting up your right shoulder, but both can be felt. Rotating your liver feels very different than rotating your head, but both move independently. Our internal organs move around semi-consciously most of the time, completing specialized functions automatically.
This 'internal' movement necessarily supports all our other movements. This is experience is the basis for Structure school of Chinese medicine. The premise of which is that chronic illness, injury, "deficiency" or "excess" will have a physical impact on the underlying structure of our bodies. It will eventually reshape even our bones.
All our 'external' movements like waving our hands or wiggling our toes are interdependent with internal movements for support. This is part of the function of our organs, our vessels, glands etc…, form is inseparable from more obvious function( their form shape and movement have a function in addition there systemic functions). When that support is partial, inhibited or too abrupt we say qi flow is inhibited or restricted. Over time these qi restrictions may become imbalances, stiffness, collapsing, or pain, in both 'internal' and 'external' movement.
Qi gong teachers have many devices for developing students' sense of the internal. Remember that the concept that qi itself is not restricted to or limited by ideas of internal or external personal space, it's bigger than that. Working with the concept of qi means not restricting our view to just organs, or even the limits of the physical body, it would suggest an expansive view, and a softened focus. [Where you practice matters!]
Thus it follows that this seemingly infinite movement inwards also continues as our gestures, movements, and our senses move out into space. Tying the internal to our conduct and to the shape of the environment we live in.
Imagination is a necessary component of feeling. Most people feel their liver moving, they just haven’t named it and thus, in not naming it, they have not differentiated it. (is it still part of undifferentiated chaos?) Feeling is a type of distinction which requires some imagination and some practice.

Therefore I’m dubious of distinctions between mental and physical.

Traditional Chinese Subjects

All Traditional Chinese subjects have three types of teaching:
A.  Outer: can be memorized, learned by watching, holds to a standard
B.  Inner: must be taught, transmitted-- requires sufficient qi (time) and jing (distillation) in order to learn.
C.  Secret: That which reveals view, inspiration, and manifests fruition.

For instance, the study of Poetry:
A.  Committed to memory (jing)
B.  Explored, investigated, animated (qi)
C.  Found, through experience or intimacy: Embodied (shen)

In lineage and classical traditions (think classical music or dance), curriculum is understood as the "outer" standard which is committed to memory.  From there with the expertise of a mentor and plenty of time that curriculum becomes animated and skillful, but it does not yet an artist make.  To be an artist means to truly be at play with inspiration, manifestation, and vision.

Shuijiao Chinese Wrestling

bookEveryone interested in Chinese Martial Arts should have a copy of The Method of Chinese Wrestling by Tong Zhongyi, Translated by Tim Cartmell.

The first reason is that it is beautiful. It is a complete translation of a book on Shuijiao from the 1930's with grainy black and white photos that are easy to see and very detailed. (No editing necessary! Thanks North Atlantic Books.)
The second reason is that it is material that helps to put internal arts in context. Shuijiao is a kind of gentrified form of Mongolian wrestling, stand up throws, with similarities to Judo take downs and Sumo too.

Shuijiao isn't however all that gentrified, (push-hands should get the gentrified wrestling award). Shuijiao throws are elegant, they make great police training for dealing with drunks, which historically is the biggest part of a policeman's job.

Practitioners of internal arts will quickly see how shuijiao techniques are a part of every taijiquan and baguazhang movement. It is kind of a mini-subject within a subject.

Go get it!

The origins of Gongfu (Kung-fu) (part 1)

ConfuciusA saying of Confucius: "never worry your parent’s unless you are sick" has been interpreted to mean that children (starting at age 7 or 8 ) should be given substantial responsibility for maintaining their own health. This often manifests through the study of gongfu.

In traditional Chinese society health is considered a kind of accumulated merit which you dedicate to others-- and to the resolution of your own unresolved ancestors. For instance, I might decide I’m going to eat only vegetarian food and dedicate that act to my mother, who is prone to illness. There is a confluence between religious Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism in which they all agree that there is a mechanism whereby the inappropriate actions of our ancestors can, to some degree, be rectified ('put right') by the upright conduct of their descendants. This notion is at odds with Western cultural distinctions but is intrinsic to the meaning of the word gongfu.
Inappropriate conduct in the Chinese context, a Chinese sin—if you will, is an action which creates ongoing problems for other people. It is an event which is unresolved. Thus appropriate conduct is action which resolves lingering problems, but it is also actions which are efficient in that they leave no need for further action—they are self resolving. The term for this process in Chinese is zhengqi. (The word means orthodox and upright, but also to rectify, resolve, or correct qi).
For example, I was teaching some Chinese elementary school students in San Francisco, and I had learned from a very smart 5 year old girl that her grandfather, a Red Army general, had come from China to live with her family and that he was very sick. After winter break I asked after his health and she stood very upright and said with a big smile, "My grandfather died two weeks ago." This was not the first time I had experienced this cultural phenomenon, but every time it happens my first reaction is shock. " She can’t be happy," I thought to myself. By smiling she was letting me know the facts, but also letting me know that I did not need to get involved emotionally in her family affairs. She was trying to limit the spread of those aspects of her grandfather’s life which were still unresolved. Her actions were zhengqi. Obviously this particular expression of cultural values doesn’t translate very well, otherwise I wouldn’t still be talking about it.
When a person dies, his inappropriate conduct, and his unfinished projects can linger. Most influence fades quickly after a persons death, but not everything. Imagine if you were to die right now? What actions would your family or friends have to take to resolve your death. If you have young children, someone is going to have to care and provide for them. This is why we write wills. But only issues of money and property get dealt with in a will. It is even possible that the will we left could create jealousy and lawsuits. If you were murdered the perpetrator would have to be found and punished. If you have a job, Boy Scouts 1937someone would likely have to be found and trained to replace you, or perhaps your business would close and all the people it serves would have to find that service elsewhere. Emotional conduct can linger after death too. Hatred of a particular ethnic group can be passed on to ones children, as can a habit of drinking alcohol to numb depression.
So the idea of gongfu, is to improve yourself. It is to improve your collective-family-self. It is to take actions which resolve bad habits you may have inherited, directly or indirectly.

Of course the influence of our ancestors need not be negative. Our condition and opportunities at birth are largely do to our ancestors. It is hard to say how much of the way our lives go is do to our own merit and how much we inherit. The idea of gongfu, accumulation of merit, acknowledges that the merit we eventually pass on to others is an accumulation of the merit of our ancestors, our teachers and our own upright conduct.
Gongfu means: self-improvement for the good of others.

Stance Training

horsestancegirl

All Chinese martial arts schools do stance training. It is often considered the most important training for developing a gongfu foundation.

I estimate that I have stood still for on the order of 6000 hours, probably more. The longest period of time I have held a single stance is 6 hours. My shaolin students learn and train the following stances: Horse, Cat, Falling stance, Bow'n'arrow, Monk, cross leg or t-stance, and natural step (ziran). Every movement in taijiquan should be held, and basically the same goes for xingyi and bagua.

Wang Xiangzhai, the highly influential 20th Century founder of Yiquan said quality stance/stillness training was what all great Chinese martial artists have in common.

My own experience is that deep stance training is more effective than stretching and high kicks for re-making young Northern Shaolin students bodies so that they have a bigger range of movement potential. This is sometimes called, "getting the qi in the channels."
While in my twenties, an hour a day of low stance training initially made my thigh muscles and shoulder muscles bigger, but as time passed and my alignment improved my muscles got smaller and smaller. This is sometimes called, "qi going into the bones."

It's true, my muscles got smaller. My alignment improved and along with it my ability to issue power, to connect (integrate), twist, and pulse (open/close). Believe it or not, I got weaker. Not lazy or deficient but muscularly weaker and functionally more sensitive.

falling stance at 7 years oldAs time has passed I feel my use of higher stance training (still an hour a day) has helped develop more freedom and naturalness in my everyday movement. This is sometimes called, "Writing the Classics (jing) on your bones."

Stances on one leg, both high and low, are essential for developing kicking power, and are of course great for balance (in a future post I'll explain the physiology as I understand it.)

There is a ton more I could say about this subject and probably will in future blogs. I encourage readers to add your comments about what role stances have played in your training. In your opinion, what does and what doesn't stance training achieve?