Breathing Spaces

Nancy N. Chen's book Breathing Spaces, qigong, psychiatry, and healing in China, was published in 2003, by Columbia University Press. Before Chen's book there was nothing available about the history of Qigong in the 20th century that would satisfy a curious 12 year old, much less a scholar.

I have at least 45 post-it notes in my book. Why do I love this book so much?

Here is a brief biography form the back cover: "Nancy N. Chen is associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A medical anthropologist, she also teaches courses on food, ethnographic film, urban anthropology, China, and Asian Americans."

She grew up in the US studying gongfu, and like me, heard about this thing called qigong sometime in the late 80's. It turned out to be, at least partly, what we had all been practicing and referring to as martial arts warm-ups. But there where also lots of claims being attached to this new "qigong" that didn't seem to fit our experiences. There was a lot of religious feeling and parlor tricks too. There were strange and sometimes very specific claims made about healing powers associated with both the practice of doing qigong and these new "Masters" themselves.

Being a lover of history, the biographies various masters would pull out from the underside of their 'inner cauldrons,' were particularly irksome to me. Nancy N. Chen deals with all this beautifully.
So the only real question now is, why haven't you read it yet?

Measuring what Doesn't Happen

The notion of gongfu is new to the world outside of China. Within Chinese civilization gongfu is most certainly not new, but it's fair to say that there are new permutations, qigong as a distinct category being one of them.
Innumerable different methods and styles of qigong have made it into the 21st century. The rush of modernism everywhere has been quick to cast aside what seems worthless in a mad rush to discover and promote whatever will produce short term benefits. In this rush qigong has been stripped of context and pigeon-holed as just a health practice, a way to become powerful, or a mystical fantasy. Does the world need new fantasies? does it need new ways of becoming more powerful? If we take these explanations at face value there is no need to try and understand the origins or the real intent behind the creation and preservation of qigong. I think qigong deserves a closer look.

The experience of practicing qigong for a period of many years is not one of heroic accomplishment, it is more likely one of satisfying blandness.

The effects of qigong are difficult to measure by looking directly into the practice itself, there is more to notice if we look outwards. Our daily interactions with the world is the place where we are most likely to notice the impact of this increased sensitivity and ease.

If qigong is the practice of not leaving a mark on our bodies, then a possible result of working in the garden all day is that our back doesn't hurt. Absolutly worthwhile, yet in the short term it's difficult to measure something, that doesn't happen.

Yes, I know there is such a thing as an "outcome study," where we look at the incidence of say diabetes in the general population and see if a sample of qigong practitioners have a lower incidence rate.  Or we look at survival rates for a sample of people with a terminal disease  who practice qigong verses those who don't.  However the nature of a personal qigong practice, by definition, varies so much, and indeed personal commitment to practice varies so much, that getting a sample on the scale of a 100 or a 1000 people just doesn't seem likely.

So qigong is likely "falsifiable" only in the sense that you can do your own personal experiments.

How Physical Therapy Rattles Qigong

A by product of all the enthusiasm that is generated around sports are changes in the way medicine is practiced. (Enthusiasm about medicine has also changed the way sports are practiced.) Sports medicine is designed to get players back on the field as soon as possible so they can play again. The practice of building up muscle around injuries functions like pain killers, making it possible to return to the sport before the injury has fully healed because tense muscles limit sensitivity to pain, as well as mobility.

This principle is now applied in order to get people back to work faster, to resist all sorts of joint and back pain, and to 'fight' aging. This approach inhibits the natural healing process. From the point of view of Daoism this is a form of aggression known as 'attempting to put off your fate.' Eventually it returns (to all of us) and usually with a vengeance. (see chapter 30 of the Daodejing)

I'm not attempting here to accurately represent the methods of physical therapists, a constantly changing field, which is particularly skilled at getting people walking again after surgery. What I am suggesting is that common notions of how healing works can be obstacles to understanding and practicing qigong. A Qigong approach to relieving pain is to increase circulation to any areas of tension so that the possibilities of healing can take place. We stabilize the area with precise and balanced alignment and we practice moving in alignment within a smaller range of motion. In essence, we create a safe enough environment to let relaxation happen, dissolve tension, and let whatever healing can happen, happen.

Pain tells us an injury has taken place. Pain is often associated with tension. If the injury is so serious that no one thinks it will ever heal, than perhaps building strength (ie. more tension and with time, insensitivity) is the best option. It is a situations in which "you are trying to dig a well after you are already thirsty."(Nei jing,Classic of Chinese Medicine, Commentary on the Inner Classic or Chinese Medicine)

On the other hand, if the injury is associated with an area of strength, or chronic tension, and is exacerbated by habitually tense movement or posture, than strengthening more muscles will make the problem worse in the long run. In the short run the problem may appear to go away because it has been obscured...... but this is not true healing.

Strength and Modernism

The worldwide movement called 'modernism' seems to insist on squeezing everything 'traditional' to see what can be extracted of value. This view assumes that what is of value in tradition can and should be extracted from the valueless mumbo jumbo of belief and superstition. What this aggressive view misses when applied to internal arts is that they have already been refined many times- every generation goes through a process of unfolding the material of the past and making it their own. Internal arts, and gongfu in general, are super concentrated already.

When this 'separate out the chafe from the wheat' notion of modernism is applied to qigong, qigong seems to weaken and wither away. If we insist on examining qigong from the point of view of Modern medicine for instance, or sport based athleticism, at best qigong will appear to be mild hypochondria or a fantasy. It will seem too insignificant, too slow, too ineffective, and too boring!

But don't let that get you down. What happens if we turn the table around and use qigong to examine these other two? Modern medicine seems obsessed with inconclusive tests and invasive procedures, it's way too much- way too late. Sports look like competition induced trance, as a way to achieve glory with out sensitivity.

Such attempts to 'cross reference'-- or as the cliche goes, 'meld east and west'-- are delicate projects which too often bring with them a kind of enthusiasm which lacks sensibility. Fields of knowledge have their own inherent logic only when considered in context. We don't use molecular biology to analyze traffic congestion, or shipbuilding to analyze pastry making. This being said, indulge me in this brief look at what weight lifting is from a qigong point of view. I am often in situations of trying to explain qigong to people who lift weights. Normally I try to use language and terms which bring them into conversation comfortably, rarely do I get to explain what it is like to look out at the world from the perspective of someone practicing qigong. Here goes.

Weight lifters carefully damage muscles and other soft tissues a little bit at a time causing contractions in all the soft tissues around these minor injuries, generally restricting the circulation of qi. This then causes the muscles to grow larger and more rigid in order to reduce future injury to themselves and other soft tissues. Most people do it for the look or the feeling of strength. This suggests that they started out feeling weak, or are perhaps drawn to an idealized image of what they could be. Others lift weights because the work they do or the sports they play are characterized by regular injuries, the added bulk gives them some protection, and the reduced circulation makes it possible to sustain small injuries without feeling them.

The work and exercise people do often leaves a regrettable mark on their bodies. On the other hand, if you are good enough to play for the Chicago Bulls, do it! Why resist? Some fates are easier to unravel than others.

If my arguments seem to strong, perhaps there is a resolution. Daoism has always held that there needs to be many different ways for different people to fulfill their natures and that despite apparent differences we are all participants in a larger collective body and we actually need each other to be different in order to support a community, or a community of communities. The world is big enough for many different ways of being. My guess is that weight lifting has its true roots in the skillful wielding of heavy weapons and that perhaps what seems like two diametrically opposing views actually has a resolution in the practice of martial arts, something close to my heart.

If after reading this you still wish to lift weights, my suggestions are: Be graceful, develop evenly, and use loss of movement range as a measure of when you've gone to far. I will venture that the real distinction between muscular strength and muscular tension is: Strength happens where you want it to happen, tension happens where you don't want it to happen.

In the practice of qigong we do not want strength or tension and we tend to follow this simple adage: If it feels like strength-- it's tension! Qigong practitioners are adept at releasing unwanted tension from anywhere in their bodies.

Understanding Lineage

How does the process of resolving ones ancestors through the practice of gongfu manifest within the lineage of a particular practice?

From within a Chinese cosmological world view--when we practice qigong which has been passed down to us through many generations of adepts, we are receiving the collective "perfected" form of all the people in the lineage receding back through time. This practice resolves us (zheng). It resolves our fate (ming). It gives us a way to literally embody resolved action. If we remain sensitive to this process, the result --the fruition of practice -- is appropriate conduct in our daily lives.

This also works in the other direction. Imagine for a moment that the qigong we are doing seems to overwork our liver. Perhaps it is because someone in our lineage drank to much alcohol and her conduct is manifesting itself in the qigong we were taught and practice. If we keep precepts and practice appropriate action, our own healthy liver and our own healthy habits will eventually change the qigong practice itself, thus resolving the past and passing on to our students a healthier qigong practice. So the practice of qigong not only influences our ancestors and the lineage of our teachers, but also influences our students and our decedents.

Now I'm not a lineage fundamentalist, and I'm not a puritan either. But I think it is a little sad that just because Westerners don't understand Chinese cosmology, they toss it out like so much flotsam and jetsam.
In response to all the hucksterism and Qijocks in the qigong and yiquan worlds we are seeing more and more American qigongers and marital artists who reject any traditional Chinese ideas about how studying a martial art could improve your humanity or your health.

We now have qigong Atheists with a puritanical edge.

Understanding Chinese Culture #2

Cyrille Javary has some interesting things to say about the concept of yin-yang:

Since the idea of duality is so familiar to us, we are often presented with lists of the opposite qualities of yin and yang, such as:

yin yang
dark light
cold hot
low high
night day
interior exterior
rest action

This kind of list may be helpful, but it has one serious disadvantage, and that is the implied existence of the verb "to be" connecting the headings with each of their attributes. This kind of copulative verb, which binds a subject and an object, does not exist in Chinese. A Chinese cannot say that yin is dark, cold, or low. He or she cannot therefore think that dark, cold and so forth, are characteristics of yin but only that they are the results that manifest because of its action. Yin is not dark, it is a movement of darkness; it is not cold but a tendency toward getting cold; it is neither interior nor at rest but rather turning inwards and slowing down. The best way to express this particularity might be to use the verb "to become" in place of "to be." Therefore, yang would not be light but becoming light; it is not hot, exterior, or action but is becoming hot, becoming external, or becoming action.

Yin and yang are the concerted movements of life and exist only within the dynamics that unite them. (Javary 1997, p.7-8)

Roger Ames adds something to this thought and returns us to the concept yet not-concept of Dao:

In fact, categories used to define a Chinese world are fluid, and must be seen as often crossing the borders of time, space, and matter in an unfamiliar way. Dao so understood offends against the most basic of Western cultural distinctions, mixing together subject and object, as well as things, actions attributes, and modalities. Dao is at once"what is" (things and their attributes) and "how things are" (actions and their modalities), it is "who knows" as well as "what is known." (Ames 1998, 27-28)

Referring back to the previous post, ....The way in which conduct resolves and rectifies qi implies at least a two directional quality of time. Such action does not require intentionality (yi), rather it is our true nature (de), it is wuwei. Our completely resolved ancestors are like a supportive background to our actions. Resolved ancestors express themselves through us effortlessly as appropriate conduct --gongfu.

Understanding Chinese Culture

The perfect expression of a Daoist practice is simultaneously resolving and inspiring. Inappropriate conduct leaves things (qi) unresolved. Appropriate conduct resolves things (zhengqi). Unresolved ancestors manifest through the actions of those still living -- their descendants. Thus, we can see religious merit or gongfu, as the practice of resolving our ancestors inappropriate conduct through our own appropriate conduct. (Taoism and the Arts of China)(Schipper p.49)
The primary purpose of a Daoist funeral is to bring resolution to the recently dead.  It's as if they were not quite dead yet.

We in the West find these propositions difficult to grasp because we see the universe in terms of independent creation, causation and agency. The notion of qi presupposes that all events/things are mutually self-recreating.

Roger Ames makes some salient points about the nature of Chinese thinking. We says that are always participants in the unraveling of traditional Chinese subjects, never 'objective observers.'

From the Chinese perspective, agents cannot be decontextualized and superordinated in any final sense; to identify and isolate an agent [re: divine creator] is an abstraction which removes it from the concrete reality of flux, exaggerating its continuity at the expense of its change. Since change is interior to all situations, human beings do not act upon a world that is independent of them. Rather, they are interdependent in the world in which they reside, simultaneously shaping it and being shaped by it. Order is always reflexive, subject and object, are not contraries, but interchangeable aspects of a single category in which any distinction between the agent and the action, between subject and object, between what does and what is done, is simply a matter of perspective. (Ames 1998, p.20-21)

Tai Chi and Science

Here is a fun article about the Motion and Gait Analyisis Laboritory at Stanford University.

"Stanford Researchers Record 'Optimal Force' of Tai Chi Master"

The picture is of Chen Taijiquan teacher Chen Xiang, I don't know much about him but he is a senior student of Feng Zhiqiang so he is the gongfu brother of one of my teachers Zhang Xuixin.

I love these devices they have for learning about human movement. I also love that we now have scientific "proof" that Taijiquan is the most efficient movement in the world. (OK I think the article gets a little too enthusiastic but it's still a fun quote.)

It also raises the idea that taijiquan is a form of technology itself. Theory, and there is a fair amount of it, is subordinate to the technology. In fact, the technology is just a continuous transmission of movement experiments and experiences.

Medicine can't explain taijiquan, and probably these scientists won't be able to either, but they may accumulate some really interesting data that could lead to new technologies. And by technologies I mean both tools and movement techniques.  (My modest dream is that a Stanford scientist will someday say that muscle building is not necessarily smart.)
Since this center also studies gait, I would love to see what they think of baguazhang walking technique.  I think this is their main public website, look they have blogs too!

Update:  Here is the Video

Martial Arts approaches to Training

"Be uncontentious and no one can compete with you"  (Dao de Jing)

In recent years a lot of qigong that is popularly taught has been categorized as martial arts qigong.  (I think it is mistake to use this category in the first place, but if we do use it we will have to divide it up further.)  This would be qigong created by and for people who were put in the position of needing to fight.

Traditionally in China the army was filled by both volunteers and draftees.  Resisting the draft often carried the penalty of killing the resister's entire family, so Chinese armies often represented diverse segments of the population.  This fact and the cultural diversity of China naturally led to a wide diversification of approaches to the warriors' life.  People expected to have to go to war, some trained for it from an early age and some did not.  Again, differing views created different  approaches to qi gong, or in this case military training

For convenience, I've broke the topic up into three main traditions.
The first tradition is trance induced fighting and is very old.   The idea here is that winning is more important than living.  Winning is so good and loosing is so bad that it would be worse to come back a looser than to die giving it your all.   The best example of this is trance possession, war dances.  A milder form is the haranguing that happens at sporting events.

The second military tradition would be training to build stamina and resist pain.  If you imagine yourself suddenly drafted into the military at age 14, the sooner you could freely thrust a long heavy spear, the better for your survival.  Training with weights and qi gong practices like Iron-t-shirt and forearm conditioning are all good examples.

The third martial tradition is the so called neijia (inner arts) which includes taijiquan, xing yi and bagua.  This type has the flavor and reluctance characteristic of those who cultivate weakness.  In this tradition the battle field is viewed as an expression of qi.  The battle field substitutes for the body in which the smooth flowing of qi is a priority, not avoiding war, but being uncontentious.  Looking for resolution is different than trying to win, although winning may be necessary for your survival.  This is not a passive tradition, in fact attacking first can easily be the quickest cleanest resolution with the least loss of life on both sides. How this tradition came about is an interesting question I plan to continue exploring. Perhaps people who had been cultivating weakness, were drafted and this was a natural expression of their circumstance.  This third traditions takes the longest to develop usable skills, and seems like a privileged position with in a military world.

Chinese generals sometimes called themselves Daoists.   Perhaps they were trying to show affinity to certain chapters from the Dao De jing like the one at the top of this post.  There is no connection between generals who called themselves Daoists, and religious Daoist.  They had a completely different job description.

In reality, many training methods fall somewhere in between the three traditions I outlined above.  Shaolin quan is somewhere between the second and the third tradition, depending on how it is practiced.  Taiji quan can be practiced with flaring nostrils and ferocious growls.  It follows, of course, that in peoples attempts to preserve methods from generation to generation that these different traditions have often been combined or entangled, creating many hybrids and combinations of methods and views.

Winter Training

Winter is for Storing Qi.  Winter is the time to just maintain your practice.  At this time we try not to lose anything we’ve developed or gained, and of course we try not to get injured.  It is the time to practice lots of stillness.  This kind of practice is called returning to the root, stillness "tonifies" the Kidneys.  In contrast it is also the time to perfect circulation.  Lots of Winter practices have to do with testing or improving circulation, they include, various types of bathing, scrubbing, pounding, slapping, scraping, shaking, etc...
When Winter comes I will share some techniques for improving circulation and developing vigorous weiqi (the qi on the surface of the body.)

Why do we practice differently in different seasons?  Does it have a benefit?  Is there some fruition?