Proprioception and Kinesthetic Awarness

To feel your body or not to feel your body, that is the question.

If only Hamlet had studied Tai Chi.

The tongue always feels things bigger than they actually are. If I try to feel the size of my hands with my eyes closed, they usually feel bigger than they actually are. I know how big they are supposed to be, but I still feel them bigger. If I keep my hands still for a few seconds with my eyes closed my sense of how big they are starts to morph into other shapes.

Taking drugs can disorient us so much that we do not feel our bodies. They can also cause us to feel our bodies in weird expansive or contracted shapes, or to feel intermittently. But we don't need drugs for this, if you are flirting to someone really hot, you might forget about your own body altogether. A great conversation, reading or writing, watching a movie, all of these everyday experiences can cause us to forget our bodies, to feel them in an exaggerated way, or to drift in and out.

Traditionally strange feelings and disembodied feelings were covered under the subject: trance and possession. Now we have the scientific categories of proprioception and kinesthetic awareness.

Extreme relaxation, or extreme stillness often result in the sensation that ones body has no boundaries.

Pain starts with exaggerated feelings of the body and often leads in and out of feelings of disembodiment. There is nothing like getting hit to make you feel your body, but if you are going to keep fighting you need to "shake it off." What is being shaken off? A contracted sense of space?

When big muscles are engaged and experience resistance they cause us to feel our bodies at the expense of our sense of space and movement. Thus my often repeated comment that they make us insensitive. But more specifically what they are doing is making us feel in a limited way.  Movement orients us, muscle tension reduces our ability of perceive.
There is a continuum of  proprioception ability from superb to dysfunctional.  The Sensory Processing Disorder website is a great place to learn about how to recognize proprioceptive problems in yourself and others.

Here is a really nice article that explains how proprioception interacts with other senses.

Here is an article about consciously training proprioception.  It got me thinking about how my body learns, but practicing internal martial arts does everything these silly exercises do.

Of course there is always Wikipedia.

The traditional Chinese categories of shen, xin, jingshen, yi, jin, and shi all refer to and encompass aspects of proprioception and kinesthetic awareness.  How else could "shi" be translated variously as: strategic advantage, a location at the center of change, potential energy, and the unification of active power with inner quiet.

A Wonderful Alliance

When it comes to the subject of Experiential Anatomy and Physiology, Daoism and Modernity fit quite beautifully together. Here are some questions and observations common to both traditions.

Does a baby experience pleasure before it learns to smile?
Do we experience time in the womb? Do we feel it, or is it experienced as some other kind of change?

Do we experience space or balance while we are in utero?

When and how do we begin to recognize distance, or inside vs. outside, expanding vs. contracting, wrapping inward vs. wrapping outward? When do we gain the ability to spiral one way and then the other? Is it simply an unconscious part of growing or do we have some volition?
Stages of development are quite well known, but like taijiquan training methods, a child can develop out of order, skip a stage, or even create a unique transition.

I once knew a great dancer who had skipped the crawling stage of development, he went straight from scooting to walking. He was naturally flexible, rarely wore shoes, and never needed to stretch before a workout.

Do we start from a feeling of having a body, or do we start with a feeling of having no boundaries?

After birth, one of the first things we do is turn our head to find our mother's breast. Is this part of your internal martial arts practice? Does a baby feel its bones, or its muscles? Does it feel hungry? Does it feel the turning? Where does the movement come from?

Eventually a baby will find its hand with its mouth. It will start to see, and track. Eventually it will point and grab, and push and pull. How does a baby initiate this movement. Do children feel outside of their bodies?
How does a baby get control over its arms? Is this a question you ask yourself when you practice internal martial arts?

The Difference Between Shen and Xin

I read an essay years ago by Mark Elvin that readers of this blog might want to check out. It is called, "Tales of Shen and Xin: Body-Person and Heart-Mind in China During the Last 150 Years." It was published in the Zone Series from M.I.T. Press.
Zone 4: Fragments for a History of the Human Body, Part 2

Translating shen as "body-person" instead of the standard "spirit," opens up new ways of thinking about it. One of the interesting points he makes is that, in Chinese art people doing work are portrayed with muscles and skin exposed while gods, immortals and high status people are portrayed as heads with lots of flowing fabric. The more rustic the work being depicted, the more likely people would be painted as muscle men with bare feet and a loin cloth. The more virtuous the immortal, the more likely she would be painted with a head, floating out of actively flowing robes, which would transition into clouds.

The shen of a person with muscles doing hard work is compressed up to the skin while the shen of an immortal is moving out and floating off and around the body.

The Art Work came from here.

Henri Maspero, Wilhelm Reich & Katherine Dunham

Wow, it was fun putting those three names together.

Actually they don't fit so well together, but what they have in common is that they all crossed metaphorical bridges that make this blog possible.

Henri Maspero was the first sinologist to recognized the scope of Daoism as a religion. Of course there were a bunch of sinologists that preceded him, but I think he was the first to think about Daoism outside of a Christian framework. He was murdered by the Nazi's at Buchenwald in 1945. Scholars of comparable depth didn't surface again until the 1970's, mostly in France (probably do to his influence there), and not until the 1990's in English.

Wilhelm Reich was a student of Sigmund Freud. He is such a weird character in history that most people are reluctant to credit him as a significant force in the development of ideas. But he is also hard to dismiss. He was the first scholar to try to prove that sex is good for you. Perhaps I should be crediting Oscar Wilde instead, or someone else who said such things but used humor as a cover. But Reich was the first person to use the expression body armor (and character armor) as a metaphor for explaining physical tension. He was the first person in Western Civilization to say that emotion can be stored in the body as tension.

Reich is also extraordinary because he was probably the first to say that Nazi's and Communists are the same. His reason was also way ahead of his time: They both used the same repressive physicality to perpetuate fear of self-awareness; a fear which makes people want to be told what to do.

Most people agree that when Reich came to America he went off the deep end. His coolest invention in that regard was the Cloudbuster. But when you read his writings on Orgone Energy you are going to think, "Oh, he means Qi." I believe it is highly likely that Reich was reading some kind of Chinese cosmology. So in that regard he represents the very worst part of Modernity; the habit of an taking an idea from another culture and pretending like you invented it!

Katherine Dunham was the great antidote to that lame habit of Modernity. She invented Dance Anthropology (or Ethnology if you prefer). She made the serious study of movement and physicality both central and indispensable to the process of understanding culture. Because of Katherine Dunham we can laugh at all the scholarship by stiffs who think that they understand something because they saw it or even read about it, and at the same time we can treasure the voices of those who actually join the dance.

I don't know much about the earliest film documents of martial arts, but 1936 was pretty early. Dunham caught some great stuff!

Daoism in San Diego

Here is an article from SignOn San Diego about a Dragon pacifying ritual and academic conference at the University of San Diego.

When the dragon was complete, the priests began an elaborate ceremony replete with drama, dancing, music and even some martial arts. As about 200 people watched the colorful scene unfold in a courtyard at San Diego State University, the dragon was consecrated and blessings were sought.

The article gets a sound bite from Charles Taylor who wrote The Ethics of Authenticity. Since I didn't like the sound-bite, but did like his book, here is a sound-bite about his book by another great thinker, Richard Rorty.

London Review of Books : The great merit of Taylor's brief, non-technical, powerful book...is the vigor with which he restates the point which Hegel (and later Dewey) urged against Rousseau and Kant: that we are only individuals in so far as we are social...Being authentic, being faithful to ourselves, is being faithful to something which was produced in collaboration with a lot of other people...The core of Taylor's argument is a vigorous and entirely successful criticism of two intertwined bad ideas: that you are wonderful just because you are you, and that 'respect for difference' requires you to respect every human being, and every human culture--no matter how vicious or stupid.
--Richard Rorty

Heat or Ice

Yesterday, having just gotten into my warm car after watching the latest Stephen King movie and nearly freezing to death talking to a fellow movie goer in the wind, I saw a small group of high school girls crossing the street. Very sort pants, low socks, t-shirts. One of them had big lumps of plastic wrap around her knees and ankles. I suddenly registered that they were athletes and that the plastic wrap was holding large amounts of ice on the unfortunate young womans legs.

Many people think sitting in an ice bath after a workout is a good way to train. Most people who would be reading my blog know that Chinese medicine almost never uses ice.

There are a whole bunch of theories about why ice is good, but my experience tells me that mostly it is terrible. It is better than nothing on burns, but if you have burn cream, it is better. There is no question that ice can bring down swelling after an injury. For a really bad injury I would put ice on it right away. But as part of a training ritual, it is barbaric. It develops bad, tense, stiff, muscle quality and in the long run it probably leads to arthritis.
I love hot tubs and steam baths. When I was young and road my bicycle at high speed over steep hills to all my appointments, swam in the freezing cold ocean, did kungfu and dance for 6 or even 8 hours every day, and sat still (or slept) in stupid classes at school--a nice hot bath once or twice a week was very close to Nirvana. Still, as a training method it contributed nothing. I was tired and stiff because I was training too much of the wrong thing. It would be better just to train right. Too much hot drains the qi.
Cleaning and scrubbing the surface of your body every time you sweat is really important to maintaining good muscle and joint quality. This is why internal martial artists, especially when they get older, try not to sweat most of the time. If at the end of your practice you aren't near water and a place where you can be naked, at least towel off and change some of your clothes.
A short little dip in hot water, a one minute ice massage after a sprain, fine; Don't make a habit of it.

Daoist Shoes

I've been looking for information on Daoist ritual shoes. I was sure that somewhere I'd seen special Daoist ritual shoes which are 3 inch high stilts. These shoes make it impossible to put weight on the toes or the heel since the stilt post goes down from the center of the foot. Since the base the the stilt is thicker at the bottom, kind of like a mushroom, there is a plenty of space to balance. The problem is I have been unable to find these shoes (so no picture). Did I dream them? How embarrassing.

Dream or not, these shoes represent ultimate shamanic power. The symbolic steps Daoists take in ritual cover huge distances. They circumambulate the empire, the world, and they traverse the distances between stars in the sky.

It gets confusing. Daoists are not shaman, but there is a part of Daoist ritual in which they take on the role or the position, or more accurately, the qi of all shaman. This is done by taking on the physicality of the Chinese prehistory shaman the Great Yu, and acting out key parts of his life. The difference between normative shamanic power and a Daoist embodying the Great Yu is the difference between power and potential power.

There is a direct parallel with taijiquan and other internal arts. First a taijiquan student develops the ability to clearly and unambiguously demonstrate and replicate peng jin , lu jin, an jin, and ji jin (ward-off, rollback, etc...). To get these types of power one must know exactly which part of the foot to use. Then he or she strings peng-ji-lu-an seamlessly together so that these types of power are part of a continuous circle. To achieve this one must be continuously shifting from the ball of the foot to the heel. Once this jin level is achieved the student then moves on to the shi level. Shi roughly means potential, it implies a strategic position, a drawn bow, and having ones hand on a lever.
The jin level is like shamanic power. The shi level leaves power unexpressed, unused.

Shaman get power through covenants with spirits, deities, or even natural forces. The physical "fear and trembling" necessary for summoning shamanic power requires engaging the "pushing and pulling muscles" of the legs which involves pressure in the balls of our feet or in our heels. With these Daoist ritual shoes on, our legs would easily stay in a weak potential state. At the shi level of taijiquan we do not push from the balls of the feet or the heels. Our power remains potential.

UPDATE 12/21/07: Here is a picture of the shoe, it's called a Manchu Shoe. I have now written more on this subject!

More American Qigong Ethics (part 4)

If you are making offerings or commitments (bowing, praying, sacrificing, burning incense) to a teacher or an idea or a deity, or any unseen force--be explicit and upfront with your students. If they are expected to make the same commitments make that clear at the beginning. Do not include students in your commitments or covenants with out their permission.

The above paragraph is a rule.  But I've been having trouble pinning down a rule with regards to subordination and pain.

What makes qigong work is unknown.  Pain is so utterly un-transferable to others that we can not measure change in another persons pain level.  Pain is highly subjective, but fortunately, subjectively felt pain is what matters.
How can I say people shouldn’t subordinate themselves to something if in the process they end up reporting less pain? or more friends? or deeper bonds? I know I’m not half as good as some teachers are at getting students to change their behavior. Are some teachers lying to people for ‘their own good?’

The Gate of Fate

The Chinese term for the lower back kidney area is mingmen which means "the gate of fate." The name implies the Chinese notion that prenatal qi, yuanqi, is stored in the kidney system. The kidneys regulate fluids in the body and they also produce jing. Jing is that aspect of qi which comprises the self reproductive quality in nature, it is stored in the kidney system where it is available both for making babies and for making repairs. Jing produces new tissue when we are injured, bone, muscle, scabs, etc. It is our ancestral memory.

The number one purpose for studying martial arts is to not have a rigid fate. I wish more schools explained this up front. This idea is closely linked to the area known as the mingmen. When the lower back is stiff and deficient we literally have a rigid fate.

How is it possible that a person gets stuck on an idea in their twenties and despite heaps of evidence which accumulates during their lifetime which contradicts that idea, they still cling to it. Traditionally these rigid ideas or notions or ideologies have been conceived as hungry ghosts or wandering demons that are invisible to us but slowly eat away at our kidneys whenever we "check out." By "checking out" I mean staying up too late, forgetting to eat, taking drugs, or unleashing political rants. The day after we become food for little hungry demons, our lower back gets stiff and starts to hurt.

I don't think there is a perfect correlation between physical rigidity and a person's inability to freely make choices based entirely on what is real. There is some correlation, but I've met some amazing people with pretty screwed up bodies. Still, sit-ups are dumb. Six-pack abdominal muscles are O.K. against a boxer with gloves on and that's it. Like the "core-strength" fad, sit-ups break the unity of a person's body, they restrict the freedom of the torso and they tighten the breath. Why choose a rigid fate?

Why I'm Unbalanced

Several years ago, one of my advanced Baguazhang students said to me, "My ankles are wiggling all the time and I'm completely unstable on my feet." It was a break-through for her. She was experiencing things as they are, ziran. This is high level gongfu, this is the purpose of cultivating weakness.

A person standing on two feet is an unstable structure.

There is no such thing as balanced movement. There is only unbalanced movement. The feeling of balance is the result of an unconscious process in which we are constantly readjusting. Fear of falling causes us to develop foot and leg muscles which are constantly at work to keep us feeling balanced. What most people call "rooting" in martial arts is simply a continuation of this process.

One of the reasons the higher levels of martial arts are so hard to achieve is because we are afraid to give up this unconscious reliance on our legs for balance.

Toddlers balance by moving their torsos while their legs remain soft and springy. In Taijiquan we say, "Move from the tantian," but most people use their leg muscles for balance and power which limits the expression of the tantian. To achieve the higher levels of martial arts the legs must be part of the movement of the "tantian," not a separate force. If toddlers can do it, so can you!
The way I learned Baguazhang, I was told to always be "on balance," and to always be able to "turn on a dime." Thus forward motion was propelled by twisting and pulsing the legs. There is a Yin style Baguazhang school in San Francisco that teaches the opposite. They teach that one should always be leaning so that one's spirals will be driven by the momentum of falling. Both these ideas are missing the mark.