Grip

I stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere on the way to the mountains last month. I checked the oil and it was pretty low so I bought a couple of quarts. I worked in a gas station when I was 14 so I know some tricks for getting a good grip, but my engine was really hot and the oil cap wouldn't budge. I went looking around in my trunk for someway to get more leverage and came up empty. I felt my manhood was being challenged. Just then a thick stocky man, about 6 inches shorter than me said, "Can I give you a hand." I'm sure I looked embarrassed but then I looked at his hands and they were clearly twice the size of mine, his fingers were as thick as cigars. "Sure, uhh...thanks" I said, and he unscrewed it. I asked where he got such huge hands and he said it was his Scottish ancestry.

Bone crushing power like that can not be trained.

I've been looking around the internet for a good picture of a bundle of chopsticks used for developing twisting power and grip strength. I don't see one, but I've done a fair bit of this type of training and I recommend it.

Grabbing is often considered inferior to striking or throwing because if my hands are closed around my opponent's body they aren't free for fighting. In a one-on-one match if someone grabs my wrist, I still have my hand free.

But that's generalizing, in reality there are many different types of grabbing that are effective.

If your grip is strong and well placed it can cause a lot of pain and injury or death to your opponent. For this type of grip to work your wrist, elbow and shoulder must be free to move, not rigid. Your nails must lengthen out like a cats claws with the intent to pierce the skin. The two smallest fingers are actually the strongest part of one's grip for holding, but the two larger fingers combined with the thumb are often superior for piercing.

In Taijiquan the movement "Cai" or plucking is a type of very light grabbing used only when your opponent is already leaning. Cai uses the two larger fingers with the thumb to move you partner on a 45 degree angle toward the ground. It requires no strength training, just sensitivity and clear intention (yi).
Likewise, good grappling technique does not require strength, it is all about positioning and timing. If I get you in a hold it's because I'm sensitive and you've made yourself vulnerable; it can't be planned unless one is using a surprise attack. If I've got you in a hold I can increase the pain or brake the joint with little effort. If I don't have you in the hold, strength isn't going to help me get there.

Half grips are used a lot to suddenly jerk your opponent. Done well these can cause dislocations, but they don't require that you hold on to your opponent, so a light grip works fine.

Curved fingers are used for plucking tendons. This technique is like a grab but the hand doesn't usually close.

What is important about a grip is that it connects to your torso. Twisting a bundle of chopsticks is a good technique for developing this because you are effectively twisting one arm against the other and the two arms meet in the torso where the real power should come from. You can do a simular thing with two hands on a spear.

I also practice a light dynamic grip by using a jian (double edged sword) with a slippery handle.

To develop the ability to inflict pain, you need a willing partner who lets you know what really hurts and what doesn't. You can also practice on yourself to some extent.

Making fists correctly will really develop your hands and improve your grabbing skills. If you don't practice making fists all day long, you're probably not a martial artist. It is painful to hold a solid, tightly packed fist for five minutes unless your technique is good. If it hurts, it is wrong (the spirits have left the body.)

Grabbing should be relaxed. When your hand closes it should feel like your whole torso is wrapping around something, all your organs and big muscles should support the movement. Developing Popeye forearms is a waste of time.

Compression Bands

It seems that all the big sports stars are wearing compression bands or straps. Why?

Moving an arm with a straight elbow is asking for a shoulder injury. Most athletes over develop their muscles and habitually straighten their joints. A straight elbow adds leverage to whatever torque one puts on the shoulder joint-- do this frequently and the shoulder will get lots of small rips and tears.

If you straighten your elbow in motion your shoulder muscles will get bigger to protect all the soft tissue from the regular damage you are doing. Keep it up and you will accumulate lots of scar tissue.

Compression bands stop one from straightening a joint and also help weaken over-developed muscles.

But I have to ask the question; why not just train right the first time?

Most martial artists know not to straighten their joints, but some schools are lax about it. Some schools even teach peoples to straighten their joints. I knew a taijiquan teacher who didn't speak English very well and was constantly telling students to straighten their fingers. The teacher probably meant lengthen.

Kinesio Taping

Taping is sometimes a good way to deal with injuries.  I haven't tried this type of taping myself but I like the idea.  The various websites dedicated to it have a lot of theory about how it works and I'm skeptical, but the method looks good.
The standard physical therapy method for dealing with lower back pain is to apply ice and strengthen the near by muscles, thus partially immobilize the injured area.  Taping seems like a better idea.  When an injury occurs it is usually important to reduce the student's range of motion while simultaneously increasing circulation and  sensitivity.  Building muscle usually causes inflammation, loss of sensitivity and inhibits circulation.

Taping seems like a big improvement.

Shyness

I've been teaching children for 20 years. In my opinion, there is no such thing as shyness. I believe it is possible that there is some type of mental illness which manifests as shyness; but for the most part what teachers call shyness falls into two categories: Reluctant deadbeats and indolent wannabe royalty.

Fear is real. Students may feel afraid that they are going to be humiliated, or that their assertiveness will result in abuse by their classmates. They may even fear adults.

Some teachers believe that the way to deal with such fear is to create incremental steps which allow students to make conservative choices. Modest choices which are not really threatening. The logic is that over time frightened students will see that participation is fun and will want to take more risks.

Wrong! That only proves that they were reluctant deadbeats or indolent wannabe royalty. If students are afraid, the teacher should try to create exercises which feel really scary. The teacher should simultaneously model supportive behavior. Teachers should communicate that anything that goes wrong in the class is the teacher's fault! I tell students "Blame me!" Give students honest feedback and they will trust you. Make it clear that you will take responsibility for anything that goes wrong and they will take risks.

Activities which seem frightening at the beginning become thrilling when they are experienced with out actual negative consequences. (That's how I got addicted to horror movies.) Children who are taught to take risks grow into spontaneous confident adults. Students taught to make conservative choices feel stifled and repressed.

Reluctant deadbeats are usually suffering from lack of sleep or bad nutrition (either too much food or not enough of the right foods.) These problems should be dealt with outside of class.

Indolent wannabe royalty should be given maximum responsibility, preferably control over life and death! Address such students by their proper titles; Prince Zhang, Princess Alia, Queen of the Elves. Allow them to pick the next "volunteer!"

That usually works, but sometimes a very skilled princess will pretend that they are afraid to speak. In that case pretend that they gestured with their eyes at some other student who wasn't looking and call that student up. If they are a true queen they will become indignant and declare that they did not, and would not have made such a choice. You have won. Now all the other students know they are not shy.

[I got this line of thinking from Keith Johnstone who wrote Impro, which is the best book on teaching I have ever read. It claims to be about teaching theater but all the principles are universal.]

Bathing Practice

Each culture has totally different standards and conceptions about what constitutes clean. Last year the New Yorker had some pictures of people living in a garbage dump in Nigeria. They were wearing bright beautiful clothing and looked cleaner than I do. Japanese are incredibly clean, I've watched men in public baths scrub their entire bodies as many as eight times before getting in the bath to soak. Yet I've seen rural places where Japanese will toss trash on the ground.

Within the United States, even among my friends, there is a lot of variation in what we each perceive as "clean enough." For instance I've noticed that female Italian Americans have very high standards of what constitutes a clean kitchen.

I must admit I find Chinese notions of cleanliness puzzling. Chinese brush-bathing seems to be as much about a feeling of health as it is about getting clean. The idea is to enliven the protective layer of qi on the surface of the body.

This layer of qi is called weiqi. The entire surface of the skin is stimulated so that the weiqi will be distributed evenly around the body. Uneven weiqi results in one part of the body being cold while another part is hot. It is also associated with the first stage of many illnesses, and historically with various types of spirit possession.

I highly recommend trying brush-bathing everyday for two months during the winter. After two months if you like it you won't want to stop.

Developing your weiqi will make you more sensitive to wind and changes in temperature. It tends to improve circulation and may help tonify the liver and the lungs.

Instructions

1. Bathing room should be clean, free of drafts, and not too bright.


2. Rinse in warm water, a bathing stool, a small bucket, a large bucket, a washcloth, and a brush.


3. Sit on the stool and fill the large bucket with hot water and douse yourself (repeat).


4. Refill the large bucket and use the washcloth on your head, neck and face.


5. Scrub your whole body thoroughly and evenly with the brush, beginning at the top and working toward the feet.


6. Douse yourself with the remaining water.


7. Use the smaller bucket to rinse yourself four times with hot water, then once with cold.


8. Rise your equipment and vigorously dry off using a rough towel.

Mung Bean-thread Salad

At the end of summer Daoists eat foods which cool blood to release any trapped summer heat before starting the tonification process leading into winter.  This bean-thread noodle recipe by Daoist priest Nam Singh is designed to clear heat.

Heat in the blood has symptoms very similar to mild infection.  If the heat is not cleared it can eventually become swelling of the joints, rashes or fever.

The word for mung beans in Chinese is chingdou, which can mean both clear or green. The long clear noodles made from these green beans are  sometimes called long-life noodles. Enjoy!

Prepare 

• 8 tender romaine heart leaves, washed and dried


• 1 small package dried beanthread, soaked until soft


• 2 large stalks of celery, cut in 1-inch strips and blanched in boiling water for 30 seconds


• 4 scallions, sliced thinly on diagonal


• 1/2 cup roasted unsalted peanuts


• 2 eggs, mixed and cooked like thin omelet, sliced as celery


• 1/2 cup fresh blanched peas or sliced snowpeas

Strain soaked beanthread and add to boiling water and cook until clear and tender.

Dressing

• 3 T peanut oil


• 1 T black sesame oil


• 1-1/2 T rice vinegar


• 1 T fresh peanut butter


• 1 T tamari


• 1 t curry or five spice powder

Blend all dressing items thoroughly with a wire whisk in a large bowl.  Use water to create a light and creamy texture.  Mix with beanthread and vegetables then chil for 30 minutes.  Serve in romaine leaves.

Clairvoyance-Annoyance

Many years ago I studied a mixed internal/external system of gongfu called Lan Shou (Open the Door) with George Xu. I was training 6 hours every day. One of Lan Shou's specialties is the development of ripping and tearing power. We were practicing techniques designed to rip off limbs. It was a lot of fun, no one ever actually got a limb torn off. Injuries were infrequent but when they did occur we used the same basic body of knowledge and experience to fix people that we were using to rip them apart. Years later I learned that we were practicing Tuina (healing massage, literally: push-pull).

When you train to tear off a limb you have to develop specialized Yi, often translated: intentionality. We trained our ability to see weaknesses in peoples underlying structure which could be leveraged to rip a muscle, tendon or ligament. The side effect of all this training is that I would get on the bus and see everyone's chronic physical problems. I would look at someone and imagine myself ripping them apart as if they were a chicken. In my mind each person would come apart in a unique and different way.

The more I trained, the more weaknesses I saw in everyone's underlying structure. It got weird. Finally I decide it was too weird walking around ripping people apart with my mind so I stopped doing that type of practice.

Still, I developed the ability to see and correct alignment problems, and to spontaneously create simple exercises that release tension and increase mobility in joints. This ability is a kind of intuition.

All forms of healing, medicine, and bodywork rely on intuition to some extent. Intuition and clairvoyances are closely related, the difference is that clairvoyance includes a claim of certainty. Superior forms of medicine attempt to verifying what is perceived through intuition, both before and after treatment. Clairvoyant claims are usually self-verifying, and tend to be dismissive of challenges.

In my experience, bodywork is between 60 and 90 percent intuition. The other 10 to 40 percent is technique. I strongly encourage people to develop their intuition, and to reject clairvoyance.

While we can get very technical about mechanisms of injury and repair, we can never be certain what causes healing.

Precpts

The Xiang’er Precepts of the Dao are meant to summarize what the Daodejing says about appropriate conduct. They are held and regularly renewed by all Celestial Master (Tianshi) daoist priests. In a traditional daoist village lay people would also be encouraged to keep these precepts. The word translated here as "practice" is xing which actually means "a way of moving":

The Nine Practices

Practice lacking falseness.

Practice flexibility and weakness.

Practice maintaining the feminine. Do not initiate actions.

Practice lacking fame.

Practice clarity and stillness.

Practice good deeds.

Practice desirelessness

Practice knowing how to cease with sufficiency.

Practice yielding to others.

Translated by Stephen R. Bokenkamp in, Early Daoist Scriptures.

The ninth precept, yielding to others, is wuwei. The first precept probably works better in English as "Be Honest." The second precept is often the tough one for people. The flexibility part sounds cool, but the weakness part is confusing. Here is what Wang Xiangzai says should be the second step of martial arts training:

If one does not have the basic mechanical ability, then no matter what the movement is like, it is all wrong. The same applies to using strength and not using strength. The movements of an ordinary person cannot have strength without constant unilateral tension that disturbs the blood circulation. Every kind of strength based on constant unilateral tension is stiff and inharmonious, and besides that, harmful to health. Having strength without constant unilateral tension is namely having strength without using strength, and when using it, one gains strength.

There is a type of strength that develops from fear of being weak. And there is a type of weakness that develops out of a fear of being too strong. The type of strength (shili) we are trying to reveal when we practice internal arts is potential strength--It can be cultivated while walking, sitting, reclining and standing still.

Walking #4

It's been a busy weekend but I've been reading this interview with Wang Xiangzai that "adz" sent me. It's from the 1940's and really captures Wang's voice like nothing else I've read. He riled people up in a good way. Check it out. If anyone knows the Chinese for "...intuitively perceiving the peristalsis of the whole body," I'd like to know the characters.

Here is my "Dao of the Day": We don't know how humans can walk on two feet.

Birds can walk on two feet but they have huge feet relative to the size and weight of their bodies. Humans have at least six different mechanisms which allow us to balance, a few of which we understand, like fluid in our ears. But basically walking on two feet is still a mystery. When my students are trying to learn something new that seems difficult I remind them that they have already mastered walking, and that's a skill way beyond anything I can teach.

Irreversibility

The reason for discipline is to make a practice irreversible.

There is a gongfu rule of thumb, "one day missed, ten days lost." If you start a practice and miss a few days of practice right at the beginning, you basically lose your momentum and have to start over. If you learn something new and don't practice it the next day, it is usually lost by the third day, you'll have to re-learn it. If you have been practicing everyday for nine months and you miss three days of practice, you've basically set yourself back a month.

Chinese martial arts work by momentum, that is why discipline is so important. In English we often say, "Practice it until it becomes second nature." This is a similar idea.

Problems arise when we don't really understand why we are doing a particular practice. Kinesthetic learning often starts out with a method that is supposed to reveal some type of fruition over time. Once the fruition is revealed it can be integrated into everything we do. Sometimes this means we can drop the method. Sometimes the method is itself part of the fruition.

For example, the Kitchen God lives over the stove in Chinese homes. He represents an irreversible commitment to keep the house clean. The method is cleaning on a regular schedule. When cleaning becomes "second nature" the method can become more spontaneous, but it can't really be dropped. The fruition is living in a cleaner, simpler, healthier environment, where things are easy to find, easy to store, and easy to get rid of.

But discipline itself is a hook with out a worm. If the fruition does not reveal itself, or if the fruition we thought we were going to get doesn't materialize, the experiment is a failure--the discipline should be dropped. With kinesthetic practices expect to have a clear idea what fruition will eventually become irreversible after about two months. It sometimes takes a little longer to get the idea. A method can easily take two years to truly become irreversible but you should know long before that what the method is doing and how it is changing you.

Most Daoist inspired methods reveal something about your true nature. Often it is an appetite of some kind. The most obvious example is that sitting or standing practices reveal an appetite for stillness. After about two years of discipline your appetite should be strong enough to direct your practice, rigid or militaristic discipline will actually hold you back. I know my morning standing practice is irreversible because if some anomaly or emergency disrupts my practice, the rest of the day I feel myself being pulled toward stillness--At the end of the day I jump into bed and savor the thought of waking up to my practice.

The rule of thumb is this: We are doing experiments which reveal our true nature; we are not signing up for self-improvement.