Appropriate Touching

When I was applying for the job of Taijiquan instructor at the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine six years ago, they asked me to put together a curriculum for 44 hours of class (which eventually got shortened to 22 hours). So naturally I asked a group of my friends who were already acupuncturists what they thought I should include given that 44 hours is a very short time considering all the possible things I could teach under the title Taijiquan.

The answer I still remember clearly was, "Most people enter and exit acupuncture school too filled with timidity. Include as much two person engagement, joint locks, throws, and general rough-housing as you can. Students need to know, and develop confidence about, what the body can handle."

Perhaps my acupuncturist friends were teasing me. I quickly found out that with a class of about 80% women who were there to learn "alternative" medicine, not martial arts, any physical contact has the potential to be controversial. Even the appearance of roughness required a preparatory lecture and a debriefing. The amount of talking I have to do just to get people on board with the idea that gongfu and medicine are part of the same subject is a real drain on actual teaching time; But it's necessary so I do it.

Even cutting out most of the martial aspects, I still include lots of sensitivity, discovery, and body exploration exercises. There is a percentage of people who are tactile learners, they will only learn the basics if they get a chance to touch. There are also aspects of Taijiquan which simply can not be taught any other way--these transmissions must be felt.

Historically, male teachers in China were very reluctant to accept students, period! Female students usually had to be members of the family. If the Master had a wife who also trained in martial arts, then it was possible for him to accept female students because he could direct his wife to do physical corrections and give direct transmissions. There are certainly exceptions to this, like men who studied with female masters for instance! China isn't one culture, and relations between men and women and their various gender roles have been constantly changing (not necessarily progressing). But more often than not, male sifu's did not teach non-family members who were female their "indoor" secrets!

My solution to this age old problem took four years and a few anonymously delivered vague claims of impropriety. So with no more further ado, I give you the...

Class Participation Agreement

I understand that this class, Taijiquan CM555, involves the development of palpation skills and physical manipulation sensitivity.
I understand that these skills, which are of a social, physical and emotional nature, are essential to the practice of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
I will always ask and receive permission before touching anyone.
When I ask permission I will make it clear where and how I intend to make physical contact.
If I do not wish to be touched during class for ANY reason, I will say so.
I understand that I am responsible for setting my own boundaries.
I understand that I never need to give an explanation for choosing not to make physical contact.
I understand that setting boundaries is a skill just as important as developing palpation skills, and that making these choices will be considered full participation in the class.
_____________________________________________ ______________
Signature Date
____________________________________________
Full Name

The Five Healing Sounds

I recently got this interesting question from a reader.

I'm interested in the subject of voice: of resonance/vibration and its relation to Qi, chakras (is there a Traditional Chinese Medical term for energy centers?), meditation, inner insight, and states of consciousness.

Joseph F. Morales has written an excellent summary in which he compares what various modern Qi-jocks call the Five (or Six) Healing Sounds. But since none of these Qi-jocks seem to have a clue where these sounds came from or what they were originally used for, I'll take a stab at it.

The first needle an acupuncturist inserts in any treatment protocol is referred to as, "Calling the Qi to Order." This has a direct parallel in Daoist ritual. To begin (after days of preparations), the Daoshi (priest) visualizes massive demon armies in an unlimited chaotic torrent of violence. She then lets out a high pitch sound "Calling the Qi to Order." Through out the ritual there are other loud calls accompanied by ritual actions and visualizations which command the demon troops to do her bidding in the service of wuwei. [Wuwei is often translated as "not doing" or "non-aggression," even "without artifice." The term as I use it here takes on a cosmological quality. That quality is most succinctly defined as the teachings of Laojun (the iconized author of the Daodejing, Laozi).]

The so called Highest Clarity (Shangjing) Daoist movement took shape during the Tang Dynasty. One of the things it accomplished was the integration of internal alchemy with external ritual. This is a massive topic. My reason for bringing it up is to say that yes, Daoism has equivalents of the Chakras, but it also has 100,000 other things, categories, spaces, and organizations of the inner world. (I promise to pick a few to describe in future posts.)

Where did Daoism get these "Calls to Order" used in ritual? Obviously, one source would be warfare itself. A commander had to be able to make earsplitting sounds to command troops on the field. This ability in and of itself could be considered having strong Qi. If we go back to an earlier era, Shaman-Kings command troops and ruled through both their martial and spirit controlling prowess. In our era, Shaman are no longer kings (unless you count Sarah Barracuda?) but we still have people who are experts at controlling spirits. Spirit Mediums, called Wu in Chinese, also use sounds to call, to command, to signal entrance or exit of a spirit from a possessed person, and probably many other functions I don't understand.

This vocal skill has also survived and flourished in Chinese Opera, which itself follows some of the protocols of Daoist ritual and has some roots in shamanic clowning.

Thus I dare say, healing sounds have been used for a long time. Especially if you consider healing to be the banishing or rectifying of Yin Spirits. So the modern Qigong (or Qi-jock if you prefer) practice of using the five healing sounds has a wonderful historic precedent they don't really want you to understand.

Did Traditional Chinese doctors sometimes cross the lines into performance or exorcism? Yes they did. A doctor might prescribe making a forceful "HA" sound a few times a day to clear heat from the liver (Heat is the body's healthy response to decaying yin, it only becomes pathological over long periods of time.) They also might make particular sound vibrations to stimulate (move) or calm Qi within the a patient's body. (This is a highly specialized skill which a few talented people may be able to use clinically in conjunction with other methods.)

But something is missing from this discussion, big time! Singing is the most common and most potent way to use sound for healing-- And to curse someone, I might add.

One reason the Chinese invented the idea of Qi is that it separated the health giving aspects of singing from the enmity maintained by singing songs about the terrible things neighboring tribes did to your people in the past. If you want to bring a lot of very different ethnic groups together to fight for a larger nation, why not have them breathe together rather than have them sing their traditional, division creating, songs.

So my advise to people interested in The Five Healing Sounds would be to avoid the qigong hysteria. I would also advise avoiding spirit mediums, unless you already have one in the family. If you can find a master Chinese Opera vocalist, he can to teach you how to sing from the different organs. Chinese Opera vocal training is likely to blow your mind.

If you are not in a place with Chinese Opera, a traditional African vocalist may be able to teach you the same thing. I took a class years ago from a Congolese vocalist whose first lesson was about how to sing from different organs. He said that to sing a song correctly one had to know which organ(s) it was emanating from. He also gave us visualization for the songs.

And if you don't have a traditional African vocalist nearby, perhaps you can find a Love Church in a black neighborhood! Their vocal choirs move large amounts of qi down there every Sunday.

When I studied modern dance with Sara Shelton Mann back in the early 90's, part of our warm-up was to use specific sounds to vibrate different parts of our bodies, starting with "nnngg" to vibrate the center of the head and ending with a deep "ooooo" to vibrate the tail bone. She got that material from Bonnie Bainbridge-Cohen whose workshops I took last May and June. Bonnie currently uses these vocalizations to activate specific glands and other parts of the endocrine system. Her studies were originally inspired by a 1960's understanding of Yoga and Daoism, but she has taken those ideas and made them more specific and precise than any vocalization teachings I have encountered from Asia.

Flying Fish

Most people don't have a very clear sense of their spine. There are hundreds of different martial arts and qigong exercises which bring sensitivity, awareness and mobility to the spine. This material is very rich.

The vast majority of this material must be taught in a small class because each person needs a fair amount of feedback and interaction with the teacher. That's why it's not very well known or understood. It's this lack of personal attention which leads people to keep doing brutish things like sit-ups.

I thought I would offer one image which my student have often found helpful.

When the arms lift in Heaven Earth style qigong (or Baguazhang circle walking or numerous other internal arts/movements I could point to) the protuberances (Spinous Process) on the spine starting in the lumbar region move upward. This is true whether you start with the arms moving to the front or to the sides.

This movement matches that of a flying fish jumping out of the water. When the fish jumps its dorsal fin (the one on its lower back) goes up and forward (towards the head). The dorsal fin on a fish is actually the spine, it is simply a spine with long spinal protuberances (Spinous Process).

Caring for the Body and the Spirit

As many of you know, I teach at an acupuncture college where an eleven week 22 hour taijiquan class is a requirement. This last quarter I had an amazing student.

The administration called me to say there was a student coming to the first class who they had not yet let register because she had a disability. They felt she probably wouldn't be able to do the class but she wanted to try so they sent her to the first class to see if I thought she could do it.

She had been through some major injuries in the past 10 years and walked with a cane. One side of her body tends to tighten up so that one leg and one arm are often restricted. For instance she often has to use her able hand to manually open her disabled hand.

I asked her to stand without her cane and to shift her weight from one leg to the other. She could do it, but with difficulty. I said she could take the class. I advised her to practice everyday and not to worry, I would assess and teach her according to her ability.

While her injuries are severe, and perhaps some aspect of them can be considered permanent, there are clear signs that healing is still taking place.

There are optimists in the world, and there are pessimists, but it is truly unusual to meet someone who so clearly acknowledges hardship while meeting every new challenge with glowing optimism. And I do mean glowing. This woman beams.

Having worked with disabled people my whole adult life I've learned a few things to watch out for. Many people unconsciously treat disabled people like they are not very smart and need constant kindness. The constant sweetness of people around them sometimes causes one of two effects. The disable person is so used to having things done for them that they sometimes become personally so weak they don't stand up for themselves. On the opposite polar end, the disabled person can become mean, rude or objectionable, because people are too embarrassed to honestly tell them when it's time to shut up.

The student I had in my class this last quarter has neither of these traits. She has a sophisticated, charming, and positive outlook. She worked hard, she concentrated, and she brought warmth and sensitivity to her interactions with other students. She was a model for all of us. I have no doubt she will make a wonderful Chinese Medical doctor.

For the final exam, I have half the class do the form with their eyes closed while the other half watches, and then they switch. When she was doing the form, and she did do the entire form, It was obvious to me that she had learned more than many of the other students. Parts of the form looked difficult for her, but looking around the room, some students weren't even sure how a particular move was supposed to be executed. I wish every student had her stick-to-it-iveness. Heck, I wish I had her stick-to-it-iveness.

I think everyone's excuses for not having met their practice goals just fell away as they watched her do the form. Do what you can do right now. Is there anything more inspiring than that?

And all this was a great reminder that we aren't practicing for some future health, or some future fight. An accident can happen to anyone. It seems rather foolish to prepare for such a thing when all the benefits of practice are immediately available. It is only through the expensive maintenance of fantasies (about what we are, and what we can become) that we put off the fruition of our practice.

The reason we care for our bodies is not in the future-- if we do indeed care, we care right now.

Ailerons

Many people have pointed out that Taijiquan may be an art designed to keep the dynamic quality of our sea legs, while on land.  It is at least designed to get us to give up the predictability of our land legs.  The image often repeated in both martial arts and Chinese medicine of the dantian being an ocean would somewhat support this thesis to.  Shirley seamen realized that the gentle pitching and rolling of the ocean was good for the internal organs.  Perhaps they wanted to keep that quality of health once they gave up the sea life.

So naturally I recommend people try doing their taijiquan on a boat sometime.  I would recommend you try it on an airplane too, but now-a-days that will likely get an over reaction from your fellow air travellers.

Still, if we were making up a new martial art today we would have to consider that by far the most potent images of balance and power are fighter jets.

The first attempts at making an airplane had to solve the problem of creating lift and steering, but once those problems were solved the airplanes still didn't stay in the air because air is not even.  In order to keep an airplane in the air one must constantly correct the pitch and the roll.

That's what ailerons do.  And that is what internal martial arts must do too.  To generate continuious power while maintaining circular motion requires constant correction.  To have unbroken balance and power we must always have an active correction mechanism which allows for adjustments of up and down, front and back, left and right and spiral twisting.  These adjustments must all be simultaneous, we never sacrifice one dimension for another.

Are ailerons a good metaphor for this?

Gaining Control

A female friend of mine was recently attacked by a crazed crackhead half block from her house.  He was big and he kicked her in the ribs.

She thought her ribs were broken, she feared for her life, and she thought about the lives of her two new born infants who were thankfully not with her at the time.  Then she "went crazy on him," and he ran off.

In telling me about the incident she said she wished she had studied martial arts because she wanted to make sure he didn't hurt anyone else.  That, I think was the rational explanation, the more spontaneous explanation, I'm guessing, would be that she wanted to kick his ass.

A few days later while we were sitting at an outdoor table at a local bakery/cafe, she asked me how much martial arts training would have helped her.  I dodged the question and talked to her a bit about self-defense and what kind of training we do.  Then a 300 pound guy sat down next two her on a large green wooden box which had a sign saying please do not sit here.  The purpose of the box was to guide the flow of foot traffic around the tables and chairs, and thus, not for sitting.   It promptly toppled over onto her--bruising her arm.

The guy was naturally embarrassed and apologetic.  But that prompted her to ask me if studying martial arts would have prevented her from getting hit by the box.

So I was cornered.  Would martial arts training help with a surprise attack or a surprise accident?  Yes, probably, maybe, I'm not sure, I don't know,... how could I know?

Hexagram 10 of the Yijing (I Ching) is about just such a situation.  The title reads Treading (Lu):

Treading on a tiger's tail: one is not bitten.  Auspicious.

The image is of an innocent, perhaps a 10 year old child, stepping on the tail of a tiger and not getting bitten.  Why?  We don't really know.  Perhaps it is because the tiger isn't hungry and 'though surprised, it doesn't feel threatened.

Chinese Internal Martial Arts cultivated with a Daoist perspective achieve quite the opposite results of what most people think.  These arts are not about gaining control.  They are not about preparing for some monstrous future attack.  They are not about trying to control or predict the future.

To the contrary, they are about giving up the effort to control.  The basic  assumption or experiment of internal martial arts is that other options will present themselves effortlessly when we give up trying to control.  Does this really happen?  Yes, probably...maybe...How could I know?  I don't know, I simply have the experience that being less aggressive reveals other options.  I certainly don't know in advance what those options will be.  I keep repeating and simplifying the experiments because having options sometimes seems akin to freedom.

In Buddhism they have the expression, "Skillful Means," to describe brilliant techniques on the road to enlightenment.  But it's also kind of a Buddhist joke because the end result requires no skill at all.

In my opinion, this friend of mine who got attacked, did everything right.  She did get some bruises on her ribs, but frankly a couple of weeks training in martial arts could easily produce the same injuries.  After she chased him away by whatever crazy moving, screaming and raging she did, she even had the peace of mind to record all the details about his clothing and appearance for the police.

Her innocent response was good enough.

And that is the point of this post.  Not only are we cultivating weakness, we are cultivating innocence.  The skills we develop in all the Internal Martial Arts involve discarding our learned responses, discarding our preconceptions about what our body is and how it works, discarding our ideas about how events begin and how they come to a resolution.

Discarding pretense, embracing innocence.

Cutting Off the Head of the Hydra

Some of my readers and students wonder why I'm always talking smack about some other "modality."  (Some of my dear readers, on the other hand, probably love it.)   There is a simple reason for my conduct.

The basic subject I'm trying to communicate (Daoism and Internal Arts) is actually characterized by the dropping of preconceptions.  To get someone to drop a preconception is no easy task.  One way people drop a preconception is through having an experience which does not fit into their world view.  Unfortunately, most people, most of the time, will discard the experience rather than drop the preconception.

So the task falls to me to point out just how outrageous and in appropriate a person's preconceptions are.

In a very really sense, our conversations use our preconceptions as a base from which to accumulate knowledge.  That is why Daoism and Daoist methods of cultivation seek to return to simplicity, to actually lose knowledge, to discard knowing in exchange for not-knowing.  It is not a total rejection knowledge and knowledge accumulation, it is rather a recognition that preconception is the basis for accumulating knowledge.

So if we are talking about the body, or the body mind connection or how something internal moves, we are going to have that conversation from our preconceptions.  If you've practiced Yoga, that's your door into the conversation.  It's not that I totally reject yoga (I'm actually happy people enjoy it so much), it's that in order to get you to understand what I'm saying I can't just let you think of it like a Yogi would, I have to do something to get you to drop that preconception.

I think of this like Hercules fighting the Hydra.  As he cut off one of the heads, two more would grow back in its place.  To beat the Hydra, Hercules had to smash each head between two rocks!  The heads of this Hydra are all different "modalities."  The ever growing vicious heads of this Hydra are Yoga, Pilates, weight lifting, physical therapy,  dance, the ever evil qigong jock, MMA, the Karate Kid, Mellow Zen Flow Tai Chi™, Boot Camp,  personal sports trainers,  the Olympics, and yes, your fist grade teacher who kept telling you to stand up straight!

Now that you have been prepared, dear reader, I would like to briefly repeat my injunction against Core Strength.  As far as I can tell, the idea of Core Strength came from Pilates and started spreading to other modalities from there.  The previous two posts have been about internal flexibility, and the post before that was about carpal tunnel syndrome.  As far as I can tell, Core Strength is internal tightness.  It is the systematic loss of internal flexibility.  It is the exact opposite of what we want to do.  180 Degrees.  It will increase your chances of repetitive stress injuries like carpel tunnel, tennis elbow and the like.

Was that the sound of a Hydra's head crunching?

The Rubber Band Effect

This is a continuation of yesterdays post on Internal flexibility.

Human beings are like rubber bands.  If you spend all day with people and come home to a crowded house and don't get any days off for months at a time...you will crave retreat and alone time.

And the opposite is true, if you go off in to the woods by yourself for two weeks, you'll be wanting to party.

I've done a lot of food experiments over the years.  At one point I was using my programmable rice cooker to make rice porridge (jook, bai jou, congee) every morning.  I varied the ingredients a lot.  First I would consider the season and the weather, then I would take my pulse and look at my tongue in the mirror.  For this time of year I might have ground sesame with a little bit of white fish, salt and a small amount of fresh green onion (scallions).  In Chinese medicine this recipe cools the blood while also strengthening it (also recommended for women who have recently given birth).  The green onion  helps with the transition to Fall, invigorates the qi, and releases the surface of the skin (helpful for  staying cool).

But everyday I would change the recipe, perhaps the next day my rice porridge would include  roasted pine nuts in chicken stock (Tonify qi, calm wind).  The variations were infinite but for about a year I was very strict  that every morning I ate rice porridge of some kind.

The results were great, my digestion was wonderful, I loved it.  The problem was the rubber band effect.  I couldn't go out to eat without feeling terrible the next day.  It all came to a head when I went to visit my sister in Seattle.  We had pad thai and something else fried two nights in a row, and breakfast was whatever, eggs, toast, cereal.  My tongue turned black.  I felt terrible.  My body was craving the regularity I had taught it to expect.  I realized that although I could get great results from strictly regulating my diet, it also made me really inflexible about what I could eat.

The rubber band effect is important for understanding stretching and flexibility.  If you stretch a lot in one day, you are likely to wake up tighter the next day.  I've known many yoga teachers who were really stiff when you met them for tea on a foggy afternoon, but in yoga class, after a warm-up, they could get into some serious pretzel shapes.  This is one of the differences between internal and external flexibility.  Internally flexibility is available all the time, external flexibility requires a warm-up.  (Bikram Yoga is the worst because they super heat the rooms, making the rubber band effect even stronger.)

I've found that I can reduce the rubber band effect by gradually increasing my stretch over a week or two so that the change doesn't happen all in one day.  But the long term results will still be external.  Internal flexibility is just a different animal.

So you might now be wondering, can I have both internal and external flexibility together?

To answer that question I should start out by saying, some people are naturally internally flexible.  It is rare, but I have a friend in Australia who can do the splits anytime, anywhere, and I lived with him for a while so I know he never stretches.  I've also known a few people who were naturally externally flexible, their joints are always loose because their ligaments are long.  These people (mostly women) are 'floppy' and often want to develop muscle tone in order to simply hold themselves together.  They really don't need to stretch but sometimes find themselves in jobs as Yoga teachers or even contortionists because it's so freaking easy for them.

Chinese have traditionally given a lot of attention to training people before puberty because the body you have during puberty is remembered as kind of a stable state.  It is what you will tend to rubber band back too if you have enough exercise, qi, sleep, and a modest diet.  If the body you had through puberty was flexible, you'll tend to find that flexibly easier to keep or to recover.

Now that I've got that out of the way, the answer is yes, you can have both internal and external flexibility in the same movement.  It just requires that you don't create the rubber band effect by stretching past your internal threshold.

Many martial arts teachers teach stretching routines like 'chin to toe.'  I believe that some of them are both internally and externally that flexible.  I don't want to give the impression that internal flexibility is permanent or that it requires less of a time commitment.  Like my external flexibility, my internal flexibility changes from day to day.  For instance, after getting sick for a few days my internal flexibility can shrink down to almost nothing and I'll feel internally tight.

Internal Stretching vs. External Stretching

I wish there was a simple way to explain this.

I'm not genetically flexible and although I did train martial arts before puberty, I didn't do enough to make me significantly more flexible than an average guy you might meet on the street. So at seventeen when I really got into dance for the first time, I started stretching a lot, everyday. And when I say everyday, I mean, everyday--I didn't miss a day of stretching for probably 5 years.

All that yoga prop junk is just for people who are short on time, if you have the time to stretch you don't need a prop. (There is one exception; sometimes a coach will advise a prop because someone is stretching unevenly, for that it is an extremely good idea.)

Stretching the same muscles day after day while doing kicks and jumps that use your maximum range of motion is painful, but it's muscle pain, it's the kind of 'hurts so good' pain that all athletes love. It's not debilitating pain, it's not nagging pain. Who am I to tell people not to do it?

I'm nobody. If you do it and you like it, keep doing it. But I have a duty of another order. I'm here to be a voice for another way of thinking and experiencing life. I'm here to represent the unique study of Chinese Internal Martial Arts and their relation to a Daoist view of what a human being is.

About 13 years ago, the idea of internal flexibility started to take root in my body. It did not come from stretching, nor did it come from standing still or meditation. It came from doing what most people these days would call qigong. Specifically I was doing Tiandifu (Heaven Earth Contract) style of qigong. Most Taijiquan classes include this type of movement; expanding the dantian in all directions while extending the arms over the head and then drawing everything back in. The thing is I did more than most people do and I was really focused on lengthening the spine.

At this time in my practice I could do what they call in gymnastics a back walkover. But in order to do it I needed to do a lot of stretching, especially bridges. From doing the internal spine lengthening, the quality of my flexibility totally changed, I was able to do a back walkover cold. Cold means without warming up, without stretching out first.

Then about ten years ago I was on a backpacking trip and I fell with a heavy backpack on. I really hurt my arm and my back. For the first time in my life I was waking up in the middle of the night in pain. It took a long time to heal and I've never gotten back to the point where I could do a back walkover cold. Bummer huh?

The plus side is that now I have a lot of expertise about spine injuries. Also I've thought about and tried a really wide range of stretching routines.

So what is the difference between internal stretching and external stretching?

External stretching is when you put pressure on a joint or a muscle or a muscle group in order to get it to relax and/or lengthen. When we do this type of stretching we cut off the connection between our dantian and our limbs. If we do this kind of stretching we have to do the same stretches everyday because the dantian will automatically try to suck our limbs back into itself while we are sleeping. (If you don't sleep for 24 hours you will likely be really flexible but also at higher risk of muscle/tendon/ligament tears.)

Internal stretching may not look like stretching. To stretch internally our arms and legs have to be a part of the dantian. Once a person has this feeling in motion, the stretches are easy to find or invent.

The dantian expands, condenses, rolls and twists. As it moves, so must the limbs move with it, as one continuous whole. You've probably heard that before, but are you doing it? Is the movement of your thigh the same movement as the movement of your belly? Is it simultaneous? Does it have the same quality?

This is one of those things which is so simple most people miss it. In order for a person who is flexible by training to develop internal stretching, he or she will have to give up what they are already good at.

Su Dongchen and Luo Dexiu

Su Dongchen and Luo Dexiu are gongfu brothers from Taiwan.  They both teach Gao style Baguazhang, 5 Element Xingyi and some Taijiquan.  I've taken workshops with Luo and he is great.  I've seen a lot of video of Su Dongchen (someone gave me 4 hours worth a few years ago) but I've never met him.  Because they are both so good, both into fighting, both do the same stuff, and...yet have differences...they are interesting to watch and compare.

While most of these videos are designed to communicate basic stuff, I hope it is obvious that there is no way anyone can get this good without lots of spontaneity and experimentation.

Essence of Evolution is Su Dongchen's site.

Watch his videos here.

Some of Luo Dexiu's videos are here.

This is his site in English, in Chinese. Enjoy.