Our Teenage Qi Bodies

What ever type of movement or training we do when we are still growing has a lasting effect on the shape our physical body takes as adults. As the physical body is developing so is the 'shape' of the Qi body.  The particular quality and flexibility of the muscles we have as teen-agers will give shape to the qi meridians in and around the body, the body we develop as teen-agers will usually be the body shape which for us has the most unrestricted qi flow.  Practices like Northern Shaolin have been specifically refined to maximize qi circulation and should be taught in the schools.
Adults cultivating weakness should consider their development toward flexibility, softness, looseness, and internal connection in relationship to the body they grew into as teen-agers. For instance, someone who developed big muscles and played football as a teen-ager and now has muscles which are much smaller will tend to be sluggish  the circulation of qi will tend to stagnate in meridians that originally developed in a highly active muscular body.  Assuming such a person is not suffering from injuries they should consider building up the muscle a little to re-familiarize themselves with what their body feels like when qi circulation is at it's optimum.  If we take the uninhibited circulation of qi as our measure of health and our measure of how to practice- the best way for each individual to practice will reveal itself effortlessly.  The process of cultivating weakness should be a gentle peeling back of the layers of history, not an abrupt end.

Flexiblity, how important is it

Many people think of flexibility, muscle length or extension, as the opposite of stiffness, but oftentimes people are both flexible and stiff.

Looseness is a quality of movement which includes the ability to change spontaneously, quickly, and easily. Looseness and flexibility each require different approaches to training. Flexibility, looseness, softness, and internal coordination or 'connection' are four distinct qualities of movement which work together. Missing one of these four will create a deficiency. These four together support the uninhibited circulation of qi.

Stretching often feels invigorating, but it is possible to over stretch. In transitioning between stretches, ease and balance should not be over looked. If we focus primarily on developing flexibility by getting our muscles very warm, even hot, and then stretching, but little on transitions, we may end up reducing the flexibility we have when our muscles are cold, thus, making our comfort range in daily activities smaller. The nervous system becomes like a rubber-band: it stretches way out, but then it springs back in response to having been pulled out of its comfort range. This kind of flexibility is usually combined with strengthening, exacerbating the problem further with insensitivity.

In contrast, the qi gong approach is gentle,

and can be done without having to first warm up the muscles. Muscles which are always stretched to their limit don't know what a safe range of motion is, the muscles themselves appear to recoil in fear.

Someone whose muscles are very loose when they are hot but tight when they are cold will have to practice stretching in a much smaller range of motion in order to calm the recoiling effect of their nervous system. Much less common, but equally problematic, is combining over stretching with reckless looseness. Looseness with out evenness and balanced development or internal connection, can create over stretched ligaments. Many of the chronic injuries stemming from this type of looseness will be familiar to dancers.

The natural wrapping and twisting of muscles and tendons is an important developmental stage. Dancers who began their training at a young age sometimes skip this stage of development. The ability of all muscles to wrap and twist can be highly developed but it can also be overlooked in an attempt to get what is called 'a better extension.' Ligament injuries are associated with the impulse to release and extend in order to get the hands and feet as far away from the spine as possible. With out the the twisting and wrapping of muscles and tendons to support looseness in the joints, the ligaments eventually take the strain, and ligaments have little elasticity. People with these kind of injuries are usually taught to strengthen all the little muscles around the injury (a la Pilaties).

The qigong approach to dealing with this kind of an injury or tendency needs to be shown and felt first hand. It involves learning to draw qi into the central core of the body while simultaneously expanding, a sense of 'closing inside of opening.'

Individual muscles are capable of very complex movement, like the tongue which is a muscle that is only attached at one end. Many people think of muscle movement simply as a sort of on-off switch, contraction-release. In the case of most weight lifting the emphases is put on contracting muscles. Modern gyms use all sorts of apparatuses for muscle building, all essentially designed with this contraction-release concept of muscles.

Chronic tension in the spine is sometimes compensating for ligaments which are stretched to the limit by poor alignment. When the muscles around the spine attempt to protect the ligaments and become chronically tense, circulation and ability to feel the area are undermined. If any one part of the spine is restricted, it tends to restrict the movement of the rest of the spine, this is because the muscles and ligaments tend to release either in a wave sequence or simultaneously, not in isolation. When we attempt to stretch chronically tight regions of our spine, we are more likely to over stretch ligaments than we are to release the area of tension. Eventually many people strain ligaments, bone or discs.

The process of unraveling tension in the spine should be gentle and gradual. Having partners who watch or lightly place their hands on each others spine to give direct feed back about how the spine is releasing is the best way to learn this.

Many hip injuries happen in a similar way. People with a chronically tense hip, may have begun with very loose hips. The muscles around our hips twist and wrap in many complex ways. If the ability of these muscles to twist and wrap hasn't been developed in someone who has naturally loose hip sockets, minor dislocations of the hip can lead to strain on the ligaments which causes the hip muscles to contract leading to loss of mobility and sometimes chronic pain. Twisting and wrapping in muscles is a kind of developmental ground for the most dynamic and refined movement the body can do and it is an essential support for the development of healthy looseness in the joints.

When all the soft tissues in the body work together, the bones can move in effortless spirals. It's ironic that learning this is often easier for both young people whose bodies are still growing, and older people, who are losing muscle mass and find it difficult to build and keep new muscle. Those who find it easy to build dense protective muscle tissue tend to rely on bulky muscles to do everything. 'Why be weak when you can be strong?' is the conventional wisdom.

Gordon Liu

My favorite classic martial arts movie routines of Gordon Liu fighting and giving a Medical Cupping treatment and fighting while getting measured for a suit. Dreadnought!

Here you really see the roots of Chinese Opera in the Kungfu movie!  Gordon Liu was of course, the old master in the Tarantino film Kill Bill 2.

Standing Meditation

I over looked this book by author Lam Kam-Chuen because the people on the cover look like they are wearing pajamas and the title translates the word Qi as Energy, and I've had quite enough of that.

The surprise is that The Way of Energy is a good summary of Zhan Zhuang, or standing meditation, and I recommend it to beginners.   The pictures are clear and the instruction straightforward.

In the biography section of the book he explains that his teacher, Yu Yongnian, was a dentist who studied in Japan before the revolution in China.  In the fifties his teacher was involved in the creation of the modern (TCM) Traditional Chinese Medicine-Qigong curriculum.  The book includes a short section about research his teacher did on the various stages people go through when they are learning to stand still.  When someone with knowledge of history reads this kind of stuff we think of the Nazi doctors.  But who knows they could have all been willing members of his work-group.

Kam's teacher's teacher was Wang Xiangzhai, the famous unconventional martial artist who invented Yiquan.  My first teacher Bing Gong, was a disciple of Kuo Lienying, who was a contemporary of Wang Xiangzhai and also studied with him.  The material in this book is very close to what I teach about standing practice from a martial arts point of view-- it is also the best qigong practice there is for health!

The second half of the book teaches the Eight Silken Brocade which is a very common muscle tendon lengthening warm-up, now almost universally referred to as ancient qigong.

The book is better than most, but it has a few problems.  The funniest of which is the last page ridiculously  titled "First-Aid."  The last line of the book is:  "If you get a burn go the your cupboard and pour soy sauce on it!"  --Ah the lost art of editing...

Hot Water

Part of my Daoist transmission was on ritual bathing. Proper bathing is very important to good qi circulation. In Chinese the word shou, (the character is in the sidebar) means long life. But another Chinese word is sometimes translated as long life too, yangsheng.

Yangsheng (nourishing life) is actually a catagory which includes many different types of practices. It is in fact the idea that gongfu, nutrition, herbs, incense, bathing, resting, stillness, qigong, bodywork (tuina), and proper sleep, are all connected and meant to be practiced together, as one thing. Sometimes scholars call this daoist hygiene practice. The practice of just one of these with out the others really has no precedent in Chinese history.
Today I went to a new Koren style public bath in San Francisco. It has a great hot tub with jets, a steam bath with herbs(my favorite), and a sauna. There is a great spot to sit down and scrub your whole body. They supply everything including a toothbrush, q-tips and a razor. I got a foot acupressure treatment too. Ahhhhhh! It's called Imperial Spa, there is parking at the KFC.  To be honest, I'd driven by the place several times thinking "mafia," but turns out it's really nice. I bought 10 entrance passes for $120.
Last weekend I went to Tassajara Zen Mountain Hot Springs for the annual NoRace. I hobnobbed with the big mucky mucks of Californian Zen, the food was great the the baths are the best in California. Highlights: Impressed by Ernest L. Brown of the San Francisco Goe Institute, he said, "You are entitled to half the board. Anytime you consider taking more or think about defense, you have created an opportunity to lose territory." And of course my childhood role model David Chadwick was his usual buoyant self.

Three Daoist Paths

What do these three things have in common?
1. Taking a step and putting your foot down with out any agenda or plan. (Like in Bagua zhang)
2. These pictures and videos of the Goddess Mazu, in Taiwan.
3. The Chinese word for fist: quan. (By linguistic extension it also means a martial arts routine which can be performed.)
The answer is they are all different parts of a processional religious tradition. This tradition of performance and ritual cuts deeply across western conceptual categories of meaning.
A few days ago I wrote about Paulie Zink, and the difficulty I had making sense of his monkey style Daoist religious performance training. When we think of African religion, a dancing ritual expert is not so hard to imagine. How about a Chinese dance that is so full of unseen power that if word spreads it is about to be performed, people run home and lock their doors?
Kristofer Schipper in his brilliant work The Taoist Body, explains that people trained in monkey gongfu also played the monkey god (who steals the peach belonging to the Queen Mother of the West) in ritual performances which had a strong religious function for Chinese communities. Such performances were part of religious celebrations, festivals and processions associated with local temples and sacred history. He also talks about Daoist puppet masters:

"Puppets are rarely called in just for the show; their power is such that they are considered invaluable aids in the battle against evil influences. A troupe is called on to exorcise these influences in the event of disaster such as fire, flood, drought, or epidemics. They also come to purify newly built houses and temples or to consecrate important offerings, either to the gods or to the orphan souls. This is because the puppets do not just represent the gods: they are the gods."
"As a rule, a marionette ensemble consists of thirty-six bodies and seventy two heads. Together, these add up to 108, which corresponds to the total number of constellations. The puppets, therefore, represent all the essences of the universe. Before the play begins, the marionettes are consecrated in the same way as the statues of the gods and the tablets of the ancestors. They are thus infused with the spiritual force of the gods they represent. So fearsome is their strength that when they chase away demons with their chants and dances, and assail invisible devils with their miniature weapons, no one dares to look. The orchestra plays, the master puppeteer recites sacred formulas, the puppets move about, but the place in front of the stage remains empty and the common people stay home behind closed doors afraid that , in a panic, the demons might take refuge in their homes, or even it their bodies."

When a puppet god puts his foot down, does he have an agenda? Or is his foot embodying the Daoist idea of wuwei: nothing is done, yet like water, nothing is left unnourished?

Student Performance

My fourth and fifth grade students at Mission Education Center in San Francisco performed this week for the rest of their school. They really rocked the school yard. The show is a demonstration of 19 weeks of training once a week for 45 minutes. Check out the video!

Weakness

How do internal martial arts work?

One way to explain it is that they improve alignment and thus improve the efficient transfer of force through the body. Alignment, in this sense, is not static alignment, it is functional alignment while in motion.

This type of 'improvement' involves moving in a smaller range. Internal martial arts measure 'range' in many different ways, but for the sake of example we can simply think of 'joint range.' When we use a smaller joint range we do it because we are looking for that percentage of joint movement which is most efficient at force transfer. We then practice movement routines which use that smaller range until they become integrated or familiar.
Perhaps surprisingly, what happens when we do this practice is that we feel vulnerable. When we move outside of our efficient range, we notice the potential for misalignment or even injury. The more actual potential to transfer force one develops, the weaker, and more vulnerable one feels.

This is not the weakness one associates with being sick, over worked, or deficient. It is the weakness we associate with sensitivity and adaptability. I posit that all increases in power are do in some part to a reduction in range of movement while in motion.

As students improve they often exclaim something to the effect of, "I'm completely unstable on my ankles!"

Fighting between student's

One way I deal with violence is to get the students to list all the possible reasons for fighting.

To protect one's body, to protect someone else, to protect property, to take property or land, to get revenge or vengeance, to protect one's honor, to humiliate someone, to intimidate someone, as a form of rough play, or in a matched fight or performance.

I then try to examine these reasons historically, so students know that they are part of what is, and has always been, normal. I sometimes pull out a twenty dollar bill and ask if students know who this person is. President Andrew Jackson got into at least 30 duels (to protect his Honor) (some say as many as 100), he also abducted his wife and chased her former husband into the woods with a knife.

Discussing duels helps students understand why they want to fight, why it's normal, and also why it is inappropriate. Most fights at school are attempts to humiliate or intimidate someone. If students understand this they are much less likely to get into fights.

Once we have had this discussion, I can sometimes stop a confrontation between students by asking them if they would like to perform a fight to the death for the rest of us.

Paulie Zink

Paulie Zink is the foremost proponent of Monkey Style Kungfu. Unfortunately he doesn't teach or perform much of the kungfu anymore, which is a big disappointment to his fans, like me.
Here is a letter I recently sent him:

I was delighted to attend your Taoist Yoga weekend at the Marin Bay Club last month and I’m just getting around to writing you a paragraph about the Daodejing so that I might receive a certificate.

My training is in Dance and Martial arts and I’ve always found yoga sort of silly; the same way I feel about weight lifting. What’s the point if you are not expressing an idea or a feeling, what’s the point if there is no ‘applicatio next day. However I convinced myself that I would at least go back to the Bayn?’ So the first day of your workshop I went home thinking I wouldn’t come back the Club on the second day and take a steam bath. Then my feelings changed.
One thing is that I noticed Don, doing the video. We used to dance in a troupe together many years ago, and I wanted to tease him about all his work as a porn star.
Another thing that changed my mind is that I started thinking about the whole teaching you received and it’s context, not just the limited focus of the class.
I teach traditional Chinese martial arts, and what is now generally referred to as qigong. I have spent a fair number of years studying Daoism. The five central practices of Zhengyi Dao (Orthodox Daoism- the oldest and most traditional/central) are zouwang (sitting and forgetting), jindan(golden elixer), ritual, daoyin, and dream. I noticed an alter for the "Three Pure Ones" on your website, so you’ve probably heard this before.
Although I do not teach it, I also learned a very traditional form of daoyin. It seems like it would fit very snugly with the material you teach. Although I didn’t learn them, I was told that daoyin also includes animal postures that are used with ‘fixed staring’ to develop the four phases (not five, this material was said to pre-date the five phases standard). The system I learned is small enough that it can be done in a tea crate or a small cave. My understanding is that it is for long solo retreats. It involves repeating vigorous sets of stretching, rolling, bouncing, pounding, flicking, rubbing slapping and sitting still.
I’m intrigued by what appears to be the combination of this hermit Daoyin with performing arts. I have the strong sense that it developed to peek the interest of children. Since I teach a lot of children I immediately experimented with teaching some of the animal postures and movements you taught. Children do indeed love them. What would it take to get you to make a video for children? I imagine it would emphasize the different types of ‘animal walks.’ My sense is that if you showed each animal in an animated way first, some children would be enticed to do the practice necessary to get ‘there.’
All this raises an interesting question. Daoism, is a religion which does not proselytize. Daoists have been known to share and teach widely, but it would really be a violation of precepts to try to convince someone to become Daoist. Yet, as a performer, someone might be able draw students to them with genuine interest in Daoism and offer something healthy or entertaining to a general audience.
There are specific Daoist precepts against Clowning as a profession, still I find it plausible that in the interest of keeping the true depth of Daoyin alive through the ages, Daoists decided to create a Daoyin lineage of performers who could make a living ‘in town.’

I have chosen to comment on Chapter 5 (Wangbi sequence) also known as Chapter 49 (Ma Wangdui sequence):

"Heaven and Earth are not humane but ruthless.
To them the ten thousand things are only straw dogs.
Likewise the Adept is not humane but ruthless.
To the Adept all living beings are but straw dogs.

The space between Heaven and Earth is very much like a bellows.
Empty yet Inexhaustible.
When pressed it puts forth great supply.

Great Learning leads to exhaustion.
Far better to remain at the center."

This is the chapter that Hanfeizi used to justify the first ever strong central government (Qin), and because of that it is impossible to imagine a China with out it.
Xiang’er says this about chapter 5: "The Adept models himself on heaven and earth. He is humane to good people, inhumane toward evil people….Thus people should accumulate meritorious actions (gongfu) so that their jing and shen communicate with Heaven. In this way, when there are those who wish to attack and injure them, heaven will come to their aid. The common run of people are all straw dogs; their jing and shen are unable to communicate with heaven. The reason for this is that, as robbers and thieves with evil intentions dare not be seen by government officials, their jing and shen are not in touch with heaven, so that when they meet with dire extremities, heaven is unaware of it."

I interpret this to mean that most people are so careless with their bodies that they experience life as an internal battle. With in this battle they are in retreat, thus they avoid experiencing things as they actually are. This commentary has a real ‘smackdown’ quality to it, yet it also tends to ‘hit the nail on the head.’
The straw dog replaced the black dog as a sacrificial form of communication (supplication, exorcism, or renewal). The black dog replaced larger animal sacrifices (elephant/bull), which were practiced in an earlier era where humans were also sacrificed to the gods as a form of communication. Shang Dynasty battles usually ended either with the enslavement or sacrifice of prisoners. Virgin girls were offered to the great rivers that facilitated the creation of Chinese civilization.
So the chapter says: All living things are locked in communication with heaven & earth, the same way a bellows functions only because it is part of the entire atmosphere, which is itself a sort of bellows. Just like a straw dog has accumulated all the past history, stories or myths which give it meaning as a sacrifice—so too, all living things accumulate a story which gets carried along. "We are all just a story and a body" (Yang Chu from the Leizi). Daoist Adepts recognize the difference between a body and a story-- and in this sense they are ruthless!

The last line, about Great Learning, is repeated in other chapters of the Laozi. I take it to mean: Life is not a struggle and the world is not in crisis.

I have read all the books on your reading list and thought you might enjoy a copy of the a reading list on the same subject I recently gave out to students. (I have included it as an attachment)

More importantly I would like to hear your thoughts on children and Daoyin. I was surprised and intrigued to hear that you only practice daoyin twice a week. What does that mean? Are you doing no daily practice? Or are you doing some other practice? I love my life in the city and I find it hard to imagine life on a ranch with out ranching.
--warm regards,

Scott P. Phillips