Surrender?

The Taijiquan Classics say: "The most important thing in a fight is that you win!"

Not.

What I think is most often missed about the Taijiquan classics, because it isn't explicitly stated, is that they present Taijiquan as a conduct practice.

The literary roots of these classics are pretty clearly Daoist and Confucian. The style, language and even a few quotes make this clear. The Taiji classics are syncretic, meaning they draw on several sources yet give a feeling of cohesive wholeness.

Both Daoism and Confucianism conceive human beings, or perhaps I should say humanness, in terms of commitments. It is easy to argue that a person who starts eating human flesh has lost their humanity, but what makes Daoism and Confucianism distinct from "Western culture" is the notion that humanness is a continuum.

In other words, they pose the question, "Just how human are we?" Confucians answer the question by saying there is a protocol one can follow which is based in, and renewed by, an examination of our natural relationships with other people. How well we interact with the people close to us will influence how well each of them interacts with the people they know-- thus creating interlocking chains of good conduct leading all the way from the Emperor to every person in the nation.
Daoists agreed with this assessment, but they said that if a mechanism exists by which we are all connected, than it works on the cosmic level too. Thus our conduct must be connected to animals, stars and earthquakes. Popular Chinese religion often took this idea in to the realm of "wacky." Cults regularly sprung up saying things like, "If we regularly use too much energy getting across town, we will cause the icebergs to melt, the seas to rise and soil to become parched." Oh wait, that was Al Gore--anyway, you get the idea.

Confucians and Daoists both summerized their teachings with lists of precepts. I should add that Daoist precepts often concerned the inner workings of the body itself. While it is often posited that bad digestion must somehow be connected to earthquakes, the connection is not known, and keeping in mind that the connection itself is unknown--is a Daoist precept.

Oh yeah, I was supposed to be talking about Taijiquan. Well, if you take almost any saying from the Taijiquan Classics like for instance, "One's form should have no hollows and no projections" it is easy to see that this is a suggestion about how to perfect the efficiency of one's movement. Confucians think that efficient movement rectifies the heart/mind, and thus leads to clarity in one's actions-- which makes it easier to align what one intends with what one does!

If your intention is to resolve a dispute quickly and efficiently, it is entirely possible that the easiest resolution is to just drop your guard and take the hit.

The Re-generative Cycle

Here is a concept from Chinese Medicine which has a lot of currency for internal martial artists.

The body has two cycles: A generative cycle which is operative whenever we are active, and a re-generative cycle which is operative when we are sleeping and resting.

First I should remind everyone that people cultivate Qi in four ways: Eating, Moderate Exercise, Sleeping, and Resting.

The generative cycle uses up qi, if we stay in the generative cycle we will slowly get more and more tired until, if we are still healthy, the re-generative cycle grabs us and throws us on the couch. If for some reason we don't have an opportunity to rest our reserves of Qi called Yuan Qi, or original Qi, start getting used. This is what people sometimes call "getting their second wind." If we habitually tap into our reserves of original Qi, it often leads to insomnia, and then slow degeneration; the body's ability to store and distribute fluids becomes impaired leading to weakening of the teeth and spine, loss of flexibility, and eventually death (a final return to the re-generative cycle).

OK, that was grim. But remember sleeping and rest allow our bodies to re-generate so that we don't expend Yuan Qi. Eating, Exercising, sleeping, and resting are all essential. A change in one of the four will produce noticeable changes in the other three.

So where do internal martial arts fit in? If practiced correctly they fall in between exercise and rest. It is possible to practice in such a way that you move between the generative and re-generative cycles. The long term effect of daily practice is that you can easily start up the re-generative cycle while you are in slow motion, doing simple tasks, like making tea, or taking a stroll.

More on this soon: Internal Arts and Death

I got the Art work above from Jamie J. Rice, check it out

Ibex Clothing

I've been writing a bunch of material on Daoism and will likely post it on it's own page in a few weeks.

Also I've been reading Frank Allen's new book, the Whirling Circles of Ba Gua Zhang, published by Blue Snake Press, so I'll be reviewing it soon.

This week I started teaching new Shaolin Classes for 8 and 9 year olds. It is a 25 week residency in a public school and we meet twice a week (4 classes total). Will likely have a performance at the end.

I also gave my Taijiquan students at the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine their final exam, and did a demonstration for everyone.

So instead of writing some high fa-luting little ditty, I've decided to tell you about my favorite workout shirt! The Ibex form-fitting wool shirt. They are strong, thin and light weight. They don't get stretched out and they don't shrink. They actually fit me, which is amazing.

They don't smell bad the way synthetics do. They are totally amazing because the fabric breathes so well when I'm sweating and keeps me warm and dry the rest of the time, which is really important in San Francisco fog. I just totally love them. I have two short sleeve and three long sleeve shirts. One of the long sleeves is 17.5 Microns (fabric thickness) and has a zipper, that comes halfway down the front. I wore it everyday on my two weeks of mountain adventures this summer. It took me two years but that one has finally come to the end of it's life.

I can't find the 17.5 on amazon.com but the rest of the shirts are there, and if you buy one by clicking on my links, 15% goes to me! I haven't sold anything at all from my site yet, but it sure would be cool to make enough money to cover my beer expenses.

Mens Shirt

Womens Shirt

Strategy

Sun Tzu, the Art of War, is a pretty well known book. But what does it say?

You can not control the future, that is the first rule of warfare. When circumstances change, and they always do, your strategies must adapt and change too. Strategies must have built-in flexibility and a failing strategy must be dropped immediately.

Defense

If you know what type of attack is coming, and you have the time and money, you can build an effective defense. The history of warfare is simple-- a successful attack will inspire an effective defense against that sort of attack. Then comes a new type of attack, which inspires a new type of defense. Periods of good defense cover much longer periods in history than periods of new attacks. (Perhaps modern weaponry will change this, I don't know. There are now defenses for nuclear weapons, they suck, but shelters can be designed to survive an attack, and nuclear missiles can be exploded above your own cities to destroy incoming missiles.)

Not-defending

This explains why matched fighting uses so much defensive technique and real fighting doesn't. In a real fight you have no idea what type of attack is coming. This is one of the priciples that push-hands and roushou are suposed to teach. But of course if you always think and practice defensively, your push-hands will just be a waste of time.

Strategy involves intimate knowledge of everything from terrain, to psychology, to logistics. If you are more familiar with the details of warfare than your opponent, you can devise a winning strategy based on you opponent's weaknesses. Even if you are fewer in numbers or weaker in some other way, you can still win.

Losing Well

It is possible to lose well. All of these lessons are important to martial artists, but this last one is the hardest to learn. I'm reminded of the story of a group of reporters in the Congo whose jeep was stopped by a rebel road-block. The rebels, armed to the teeth with machine guns, took everyone out one by one and shot them. One guy burst into tears. The rebels laughed at him, he seemed utterly pathetic, and then they put him back in the jeep told him to drive off.

Now I'm not saying that reporter actually had a strategy, but if he did, there is no reason to believe it would work a second time. That's the nature of warfare, of fighting, and knowing how to lose well.

Although Sun Tzu doesn't say it, he fundamentally rejects the notion of honor.

Iraq "Mac"

I stay far away from politics in my blog. But yesterday's Wall Street Journal article about a self taught Tribal Warfare Expert named Iraq Mac is just too good to not submit to my readers too.

When the Mongol Armies conquered the known world they faced almost no significant opposition, they stopped for one reason and one reason only: Genghis Khan died and several of his generals felt they were in line for succession, so they returned home to "work it out." His two top generals chose not to return home, one settled permanently in Turkey, the other in Iran.

Generally speaking, when the Mongols encountered a horse riding people they offered them a choice: Join us or die. When they encountered other peoples they built pyramids with their skulls.

The Marmelukes were the only horse riding people to have success against the Mongols.

Mr. McCallister, the Marines' resident expert on tribal culture, settled on the perfect gift: a Mameluke sword. The swords, which all Marine officers carry, date back to 1804 when a Marine lieutenant led a group of Arabs in a successful attack on pirates and was awarded a sword by an Ottoman pasha.

Read the whole article. Or if that doesn't work try this Google News search.

Never Fight

There is an old Chinese proverb that I have always liked, but let me apologize in advance for any underlying misogyny or other offenses to contemporary morality.

Never fight a woman, a monk, or a sick man!

This proverb cuts to the core of Chinese martial arts thinking-- that's why I like it.

Never fight a woman because if a woman is willing to fight you, it's a sure bet that she has some surprises. Surprise is the greatest weapon of all. Women's martial arts start from the assumptions that one has:

1. A shorter reach


2. Less power


3. Less ability to use conditioning or physical integration for an effective defense. Basically, smaller bones can be made tougher but bigger bones will usually break them anyway.

Women's martial arts focus on using sudden overwhelming force on the most vulnerable areas. They often use tricks, surprises and small hidden weapons. (You have been warned.)

Never fight a monk because monks are known for their extraordinary discipline. It is likely that they have trained One Technique over and over again; and you don't know what it is.

Never fight a sick man, because he may be sick from training too much!

Rooting, the Spear, and the Phalanx

I think this picture helps explain why people developed rooting techniques. From the time of Alexander the Great until Julius Caesar this type of warfare was totally dominant.

Cavalries, when they were very large and well organized could be decisive against spear armies but in most places, most of the time, they didn't have the numbers to beat the infantries. (Later the Mongols were a big exception.)

When Julius Caesar came along he consistently defeated this type of Phalanx formation with something called a Centurion. A Centurion was 100 men divided into 20 groups of 5 which were capable of acting as a unit.

Each man carried:

• a 6 foot long javelin, which could be used for throwing or thrusting.


• a shield, which fit together with 4 other shields into a solid shape which angled up from the ground and could be used to get under the phalanx.


• a short sword.

American style football and the game of pool are both leftovers from the days of the Phalanx. Few armies have ever been as well organized as Julius Caesar's were, so the Phalanx continued to have play in the fields of battle until the gun.

Rooting techniques have some application in stand-up styles of wrestling, but their main application is being able to hold a long spear, shoulder to shoulder with other men, while you are facing a solid wall of on coming spears.

I believe one of the roots of push-hands came out of the idea of Champion Matches. These were fights held the night before a battle, where both sides put forward their greatest fighter. It was a chance for generals to meet, and sometimes find a settlement with out arms.  Failing that, if your champion won the other army was demoralized.

Tendon Twisting

This is a continuation of the series on jin, that started below with a discussion of pulsing.

Twisting integrates the body and is essential to make the mechanics of Taijiquan operative. Most sports, and even most martial arts, do not emphasis twisting enough. Twisting integrates the body because as you twist you take the slack out of tendons; if all the tendons throughout the body have an equal amount of twisting, the movement of the hand will be simultaneous with the movement of the foot.

This principle can be simply illustrated by stepping on one end of a towel and twisting the other end until it is like a thick rope. Movement at one end of the towel while it is slack at best sends a wave through the towel. After you have twisted it the whole thing moves as one flexible hunk.

Twisting unevenly will cause lots of damage. That's how joint locks and breaks work. Practice on a chicken if you want. For instance, to bust the wrist, just twist it while immobilizing the elbow.

This practice is the main reason that Chinese martial artists do not have or need big bulging arm or leg muscles.

Again, twisting is part of jin, it creates underlying dynamic structure. It is not itself a source of power, it does make the use of power more efficient.

Image: I got the image of the towel from this Heller Bodywork site, they are making a different but related point about the process of balancing.

Joint Pulsing #2

If you practice pulsing all the joints in the body, with a partner and on your own, many aspects Taijiquan will come to life. This is considered an original qi (yuanqi) practice because it is really obvious that babies do joint pulsing all the time. Most people loose much of this pre/post-natal action as they mature.

The wonderful thing is that this buoyant mobility is recoverable, even at advanced ages, because it relies on fluids not muscles. (Of course older people loose fluids as they age too, but not as fast as muscle.)

From a fighting point of view joint pulsing really amps up one's ability to hit with a lot of force using very little movement, and no wind up. In other words, fajing.

On the down side, there is a tiny delay in between opening and closing the joints that can be exploited by a fast and sensitive opponent. So if you want to reach the top level, you will eventually have to phase out the pulsing.

Here are the 6 stages of becoming a joint pulsing superhero:

1. Make the joints open, make the joints close.


2. Make the joints close, let the joints open. (the second part is passive)


3. Make the joints open, let the joints close.


4. Put opening the joints inside of closing the joints, and put closing the joints inside of opening the joints.


5. Dissolve the closing and opening of the joints.


6. Dissolve the intention to open and close the joints.

Joint Pulsing

In the bad old days of Taijiquan, there was hardly any detailed teaching beyond forms correction and simple push-hands. Now-a-days, there is tons of teaching and it's getting more open all the time. What constitutes the body of taijiquan basic knowledge is really growing.

So I expect most people have heard this simple description of jin:

Peng: Twist outward, close the joints, qi rising.

Ji: Twist outward, open the joints, qi rising.

Lu: Twist inward, close the joints, qi sinking.

An: Twist inward, open the joints, qi sinking.

This is the internal structure of Taijiquan, it is one of many steps used to unify the whole body. It is the way you transform your external body's shape so that you can issue power in many different ways. It is not the source of power.

If these "mechanics" are still murky for you or your student, I suggest trying peng to the back, with your arms behind you. For it to work your peng will become: Twist inwards, close the joints and bring qi up from the heels (instead of the "bubbling well.")

Now, many people have pointed out that the opening move in many styles of Taijiquan, where both the wrists rise up in front, is usually called peng and is done with the whole body rising. This is because the jin, the method for issuing power, is left in a potential state called shi. The term shi, has a huge number of meanings including: a taut bowstring, a trigger, and strategic advantage.  This can not be taught by watching, it must be felt.