25 Years of the Blind Leading the Blind

I just taught a workshop at the Lighthouse Center for the Blind.  Here is their blog.  It was fun.  The workshop was a two hour introduction to push-hands (tuishou).  Most of the students really couldn't see me or each other.  The title of this post is what is written on the outside of the building.

Most of my teaching methods had to be modified a little in order to work for blind people, it was a fun challenge.  Because I was teaching in their space they knew where the walls were and that chairs were stacked against the walls, which we picked up at one point and used as props and they put away with out any bumping.  But they often didn't know how close or far away they were from each other and  I would have to say, "everyone put your right foot forward," instead of, "put opposite feet forward,"  because they didn't know what their partner was doing.

We did a lot of touching, feeling, and pushing.  As students go, they were fairly aggressive, which I appreciate.  They seemed to get a kick out of my demonstration of school yard fighting styles and the similarity to Taijiquan principles.  The most difficult thing was that I am totally addicted to reading students facial expressions, not to mention relying on student's to read my face for clues when I'm joking.  Blind people don't make a lot of facial expressions even when they are aggressively struggling at push hands like two elk competing for a mate.

The next time I teach at the Lighthouse (probably in April) it will be a class open to anyone.  So if you are one of my private students who complains that you always lose against me, well, here is your chance test your mad skills!

Pantomime

I took a workshop about teaching performing arts to kids a couple of weeks ago.  The guy leading the workshop was an actor and the vehicle he used to demonstrate teaching techniques was pantomime.  In other words, he taught a class in pantomime with the goal being for us to learn something about teaching kids, not about pantomime itself.

However, when I was asked to perform using pantomime, I got a lot of laughs and gasps and other audience responses.  It struck me that my martial arts training has heaps of pantomime in it.  Chen style taijiquan is particularly good training for creating objects in space, but the precision of Northern Shaolin stance training is also solid ground for pantomime.  I know exactly where my fist is in space, whether it is behind me level with my shoulder or exactly one fist's distance away from my left temple.  I can easily establish a consistent height for the ledge of an invisible window using horse stance.  I can hide the murder weapon on an invisible top shelf for later retrieval using the precise height of monk stance.

Of course this should be obvious right?  I mean every kid knows that when you are doing a martial arts form you are pantomiming beating up every mean kid who has ever set foot in the playground.  No?

Storytelling with ones hands and body is a skill that can come in handy in a lot of situations.  In places where you don't speak the local language it can be used to put money in your pocket or to defuse a potentially violent mis-communication.  (Pirates also need these skills to communicate with each other ship to ship on the open seas.)  I have been disappointed during my travels in China at how rarely I could get people to explain things with their hands.  In Turkey it was even worse, if I tried to use my hands people would become noticeably anxious and upset.

Peer Evaluations

Getting an Outside Opinion

Teaching is a skill.  Aspects of teaching are charismatic and intuitive; however, charisma and intuition alone do not make a good teacher.  Obviously competency in the subject is a prerequisite to teaching but competency-- even excellence-- in a subject does not make someone a good teacher.

I believe teachers should ask for peer evaluations with some regularity, maybe once every year or two.  Find someone who teaches groups of people and ask them to watch you teach and give you feed back and suggestions.  The evaluator could be someone who teaches martial arts/qigong but that isn't necessary.  Good teaching is good teaching.  Mediocre teaching skills can be improved once the deficiencies are understood.

Asking someone in your lineage to evaluate your teaching may be a good idea but it is a different process.  The simple fact that they teach the same or similar material is likely to get in the way of good feed back.

I get evaluated as a teacher twice a year by peers at Performing Arts Workshop, and the criticism is always helpful.  I also attend regular teaching skills workshops.  I've been evaluated three times by peers at the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

I learned a trick at my last evaluation that other teachers might find interesting.  It's called "One Minute Papers."  Hand out pens and half-sheets of scratch paper to your students and ask them to write to you for one minute-- questions, feed-back, thoughts, whatever.   Do this at the beginning, the end, or during a break in your teaching--let them beanonymous if they want to.  By doing this I learned that students often have questions they don't feel comfortable asking out loud.  I also learned that students can polarize to extremes--like for instance, half the class wants me to stop and explain, while the other half wants silent practice time.

Getting eyes and ears on the outside can make even a great teacher better.

Is 70% Enough?

The following is another essay by a student in my Taijiquan class at the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, enjoy:



One concept in particular that I initially had trouble with was the idea of doing at 70%. Instead of using my full range of motion, use around 70% of my range, or less if injured. I also initially had some difficulty with the idea of emphasizing the middle not the ends. I was raised from a very young age on the concept of doing everything at 100% or not doing it at all; in essence do or don’t do. Because of this I have always lived my life according to this philosophy. When I do something I do it to my best ability, give it all I have, or I do not do it at all.

At first this concept of 70% and emphasize the middle not the ends seemed wrong, lazy, half assed, and noncommittal. But, I also decided to have an open mind and try to look at things from a different perspective. After allowing myself to consider that my preconceived perception of how to do things may not be the only way of doing things, I discovered that only going at 70% and emphasizing the middle not the ends was NOT weak, lazy, half assed, etc. but was in fact in its own way a strong, active, committed way of approaching something.

While I have opened up to the idea and see it in a much different and positive light, at times it can still be quite a challenge. The areas in which I noticed it the most was in paired exercises especially when I was following my partner. I had a very hard time following. I always wanted to lead, be in charge, be aggressive, attack or defend at maximum strength. In so doing I found it very hard to perform the exercise. For example, in push hands, I hard a very hard time reacting and following my partner because I was so aggressive, hard, rigid, unforgiving. I had a very hard time staying stuck to my partner because I was rigid not soft. It was only in softness and by not trying so hard that I could even get close to sticking to my partner.

In addition I also found learning and practicing the form to be much easier when I was not trying to be perfect from the get go. At first the idea that it did not need to be perfect and that you did not even want it to be perfect was very uncomfortable and disturbing. However, now I understand and to certain extend even enjoy the idea that it does not have to be precise or perfect or performed with everything I have to my maximum ability. Once I let go of the perfectionist ideology I found the form even more enjoyable and beneficial

In what to me seems a related issue, I never knew and would never have guessed that Taijiquan is a form of martial art. I had always thought of it as some kind of Taoist meditative exercise routine to promote good health and long life. I would never in a million years have thought that it had any martial aspects or applications. Again I saw it as weak, passive, non-aggressive and associated that with weakness, passivity, non-aggression, and allowing oneself to be pushed around. I could not have been more wrong. I now can at least see how weakness, reacting, following, etc. can be a in its own way very strong.

While I have allowed myself to see the world in a different light, I still have a long way to go. I look forward to continuing my Taijiquan practice and further pursuing this new way of thinking.
To me it seemed that you demonstrated many different aspects of Taijiquan, giving us an idea about the many aspects of the subject. Obviously, in 11 weeks or 22 hours of class time, there is no way we can become Taijiquan masters. While at times you definitely challenged my preconceived notions, I think that was in actuality the best aspect of the class – trying to get us to see things in a different light, from a different perspective, to be a little uncomfortable.

One example that comes to mind was when in class we performed the form very slowly. In one aspect I enjoyed doing the form very slowly but it also was very difficult. In doing it slowly I came to realize that I have a very strong issue with double weighting. I do not like at all having all my weight on one foot or the other. For some reason I perceive this as a weakness. During our class discussion on the topic of double weighting, you clearly demonstrated that in all actuality, the weakness is being double weighted. Having discovered this concept I now have something to explore further. After having experienced both sides I believe that less emphasis on double weighting in a number of aspects of my life will have a profound improvement for me. In conclusion, thank you for a different, challenging, and eye opening experience.

Sensory Integration Disorders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A 160 Pound Bone Hammer!

The quest for power is endless.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A 160 pound bone hammer pay off.

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

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

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

Caring for the Body and the Spirit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carpal tunnel syndrome

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

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


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


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

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

UPDATE: Jan, 2011:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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