Unconscious Power

I have been quite reluctant until now to use the term unconscious.  Expressions like "the thousand yard stare,"  "trance-possession," or "a completely melted body" have been less jarring to my ears.  When trying to translate the esoteric meaning of a Chinese phrase like 'the jingshen moves the body,' expressions like, "over-come by a presence outside of the body" --such as fear, or love at first sight-- have seemed less confusing than the term unconscious.

But martial arts expert George Xu has been throwing around the terms unconscious and subconscious for a couple of years.  I've tried to dissuade him from using them because they have so much psychological baggage.  The average person is going to have to drop his or her preconceptions about what unconscious and subconscious mean anyway, why not start with a word they don't know?

George asked me: "When you are watching a great movie and you forget your own body--is that unconscious or subconscious?"

Me:  "I don't know.  These two terms refer to aspects of the mind which cause us to either act in a way we didn't intend to; or to act in a way we did intend to but didn't know it--and still might not know it even after the act."

The Chinese term jingshen is most often used in the negative.  For example, when a student is spacing out in class the teacher will scold, "You've lost your jingshen!"  So in a sense jingshen means presence in, or awareness of, ones environment.

Can we move our body unconsciously?  If I am not conscious of a movement, how can I be its cause?  On the other hand, how do we know that so called conscious movement is really conscious?  Maybe conscious movement is actually unconscious movement observed and then a split second later justified?  Maybe conscious movement is actually unconscious movement which we just happen to have planned in advance?  Or put another way, maybe all movement is unconscious, but some movement has a kind of mental tension surrounding it, attempting to guide it and control it.

Is it possible then, that we could drop this mental tension we normally call "conscious," and replace it with a kind of active spacial awareness?  And there by gain some control over unconscious movement?  Can we move our bodies using only awareness of our environment?  Can actively changing only ones feeling of "presence" actually move the body?

Jo Riley, writing about Chinese Theater, has chosen to translate "qi" in English as "presence."  Turning for a moment to  the theater realm, all of this talk of unconscious seems more reasonable.  Some styles of acting for instance instruct the actor to find a single gesture or movement-idea which represents the character he or she is trying to portray or embody.  That gesture is then injected into all the actors stage actions, and from this the actor will unconsciously begin inventing a whole way of moving which looks authentic.

So after a long hard struggle, I might have to admit that the term unconscious is as good as it gets.

An infant baby moves unconsciously.  Right?  How about a tiger stalking its prey?  That one is a little more difficult to pin down.  What about a baby tiger?  Just kidding.

What about a mother protecting her young?  We've all heard the stories of mothers lifting up burning cars to save their children.  Is that unconscious power?

Is it possible that we have access to this unconscious power all the time?

(Sometimes I think the pharmaceutical industry would like us to believe that everything from love, to super human strength, to good acting, is just a chemical discovery away.  Hormone theory is very enticing, but until I can see in front of me something as complete as the Periodic Table for the whole endocrine system, I'm going to reason that there are other mechanisms involved.)

This is where I start getting excited.  I've begun seeing unconscious power in other people.  I can see it in people waiting for the bus.  This natural power is in my opinion available all the time when people are relaxed.  I see the unconscious power but I also see two forces inhibiting it.

The first inhibitor is conscious intentional movement.  It is as if people are trying to drive a car with the emergency brake on and the power steering shut off.  Their maneuverability is restricted and they appear to be, in George Xu's words, carrying their own weight.

The second inhibitor is segmentation.  This is when we cause individual parts of the body to work independently.  For instance, when we sit down to write we turn off most of the balancing movement functions in our body and activate only the fine motor hand and eye coordination.  The result of this process is stiffness, which tends to occur at the location of segmentation--in the case of writing, at the shoulders, upper back, neck and for some people the forearms and the backs of the eyes.  Any segmentation whatsoever, inhibits power.

Just as a side note here, my ability to see this unconscious power has developed in conjunction with my own ability to express unconscious power.  But I also believe that my own mental training was for a long time inhibiting my ability to see unconscious power in others.  The type of analytic anatomic physiological thinking which allows us to see individual body structures like muscles, may be replacing what is actually happening with a mental proxy.  And thus, by eventually dropping those complex ideas about what we are, suddenly something that was always there appears.

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How did we get here?  Are humans victims of our own success?

Unconscious power is unconscious for a reason.  Human society requires us to plan out our intentions so that we can build things large and small, manifest visions, and carry out tasks.  It also allows us to be delicate and careful so that we don't break the things we create.

Unconscious power is familiar to everyone.  I guess it is how we felt as small children.  To a normal adult, unconscious power feels disorienting, vulnerable, weak and clumsy.

Expand and Shrink

Recently on Rum Soaked Fist someone asked a question about the importance of kai-he, which loosely means ‘opening and closing.’  While this may  be a good translation of the Chinese, the metaphor is confusing because it is easily conflated with the process of emptying and filling which requires opening key gates in the body.  To properly do kai-he, all the gates must remain open, there is no closing action.  The correct metaphor for kai-he is expanding and shrinking the way most wild animals do when they are showing dominance or submission.

As is often the case, the subject of shrinking and expanding does not have an inherent order.  Like so much of martial arts it is actually a process of unlearning (apophatic).  In attempting to invent a curriculum, the goal should be to reveal an underlying order, a natural way of being.  That said, here is one possible curriculum order.

Level 1.  Individuate shrinking and expanding in different parts of the body.  (Kumar Frantzis created a long list of different body systems which can be expanded and condensed, beginning with individual joints, muscles, soft tissues, internal organs, glands, blood vessels, meridians, the nine palaces, and cerebrospinal fluid.)

Level 2.  Shrink and expand the entire body with the breath.

These first two levels do not take long to develop (a year or two at most) but in order to maintain a big range of movement they require regular practice.

Level 3.  Shrink and expand the whole body without the breath.  That is, de-link the movement from the breathing.  This will make the movement softer and will reveal jin, or natural structure. To do level 3 well, requires that the spacial mind relax and expand out beyond the body itself.

Level 4.  At level 4 the spacial mind does many complex operations including shrinking while the body is expanding and the reverse, expanding while the whole body is shrinking.  To do this level well the body must be completely empty of tension and all the gates must be open--then one's power will increase dramatically and one's root will disappear.

Level 5.  Only the spacial mind is actively moving, the body follows unconsciously.

Because we are dealing with an entirely natural process it is possible to skip directly to level five.  In the theater world, the principle of using shrinking or expanding to control space is sometimes called a change in status.  It is the basis of dominance and submission in all animals.  If you see two actors on a stage set as an office or a home you should be able to tell which actor owns the space by his or her movements and positions.  If it is my office I’ll move as if everything is part of my big body, a guest will move only a limited amount of space around his body, if he sits in my chair he will look stiff.  Imagine the physicality of a worker sneaking into the bosses office to smoke one of the bosses cigars when he thinks the boss is away for the week, and then imagine the changes in the physical use of space when the boss suddenly walks in.
Because this is all automatic in real life, it can be taught with games.  Actors can use tricks to get their behavior to seem real.  Unconsciously we are all masters of shrinking and expanding, but when the process becomes conscious it has a disorienting affect and it tends to look fake.  So the trick is to make it conscious and then put your mind on something else so that it becomes unconscious again.

My favorite game for teaching this is called “siblings”:

A lazy brother, who doesn’t work, sits in a chair in the middle of the room.
The hard working brother comes home from work and finds the lazy brother’s underwear hanging from the door nob.  The lazy brother is sitting in the same spot he was when the hard working brother left for work.
The scene begins with the hard working brother making an accusation.  The director tells the lazy brother (secretly before the scene begins) that he is to admit to every accusation and that  when the hard working brother moves toward him, he is to take up more space, he is to expand his body.  They improvise from there.

I first played this game with Keith Johnstone when I was 15.  While I was playing it with a partner I suddenly realized that I already knew the game, that I played it all the time unconsciously with my sister.  I was good at this game, by changing my body size and shape I felt like I could move my partner around the room at will.  That evening when I got home my sister, as she was in the habit of doing, accused me of something I didn’t do, “Did you take my notebook?”  “Yes,” I answered while simultaneously expanding.  “What? You took it!” Her eyes flared, but because I expanded she couldn’t come closer, she had to move away.  “Yes,” I said, “There is some pretty interesting stuff in there.”  I shrunk a little bit and she moved in to take a bite “YOU READ IT!” Casually expanding again, I said, “Juicy.”  She moved back.  I could control her with my movements.  Within a minute I had her rolling on the ground tearing out her hair.

This was, I suppose, an enlightenment moment for me.  I had a choice at that moment to become a sociopath or to dedicate my life to truth and justice.

The monkey dance of dominance and submission that Rory Miller talks about works in the same way. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t been in a fight since I was 15.  Almost all fighting is monkey dance, almost all fighting is social and follows unconscious social rules, status transactions.  Asocial violence is a whole different cup of tea.  A desperate drug addict just wants to take your money and get away without being noticed, no need to assert dominance, it doesn’t matter to them whether you are still breathing or not.

This seems to be the source of a lot of confusion because shrinking and expanding is still the most efficient way to fight.  A tiger hunting still shrinks before it pounces.  It is crucial for dominance and submission, and it is also crucial for generating power while avoiding counter attack.  Some things are the same, some are different.  A dog challenging another dog will stare it in the eyes and make a low growl, a dog submitting will roll over belly-up and squeak. Dogs hunting a wild boar will attack the buttocks, and calves.  A policeman subduing a threat wants the threat face down on the ground because it’s easier to control him.  A wrestler wants his opponent pinned face up because it is more humiliating.

Great actors, great martial artists, and great dancers control space, they don’t do technique.  Many years ago I studied ballet.  I noticed that sometimes there were dancers who seem to have good technique but still weren’t dancing.  Ballet is a high status dance form.  The dancers are floating on clouds all the time.  The neck is always exposed, like the alpha wolf.  The legs are always turned out, the chest always lifted.  Sometimes a young dancer is introverted and yet is forced by the training to move like a high status princess.  The physical body can be open, expansive and exposed while the spacial mind, the spirit body, is sucked in close.  This disconnect is probably the source of a lot of compulsive behavior like chain smoking or not eating.

Over eating and muscle trucks among martial artists could be a similar phenomenon.

Extremes of status can be very entertaining.  Think midget wrestling, sumo, and the teachers in the cartoon South Park.

Being a good actor or dancer does not make someone a good fighter, even if they have the ability to manipulate space outside of their bodies.  Even if they have great unconscious shrinking and expanding abilities.  There is more to it than that.  And it is also true that someone can have good fighting skills without having mastered the shrinking and expanding of the spacial mind.  But put them together and they reveal enormous natural freedom.

The order in which one learns,  doesn’t matter.  The levels I described at the beginning of this post can be jumbled up any which way you want. In the end, however, there is an order, it is the order in which social behavior (conduct/qi), our physical body (jing), and our sense of place (shen) interact as one.

New Tai Chi and Qigong Class

Tai Chi & Qigong: 8 week session starts September 22nd, 6 PM to 8 PM.

Class location:

5841 Geary Street

@ 23rd Avenue

1st Hour Qigong

2nd Hour Wu Style Tai Chi

$200 Donation for eight Wednesdays.

Call 415. 752.1984

or email gongfuguy@gmail

to sign up!

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The space I'm teaching in is above Thom's Natural Foods on Geary Street.  It's quiet and has great natural light and a new wooden floor too.

If you have a health or movement oriented business, or belong to an interesting club, and would like to display some pamphlets about my classes I would be delighted to send them to you.  Just let me know.

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(This is my latest marketing rap, feed-back welcome!)

WHAT STYLE OF QIGONG IS BEST?

The purpose of all qigong methods is to move with a completely relaxed body in harmony with ones surroundings. There is a saying, “Forms are like blades of grass.” In other words it doesn’t really matter much which forms you practice because they all do pretty much the same thing. There is no doubt that the ability to relax both conscious tension and deeper unconscious tension has extraordinary therapeutic benefits. The best style of qigong is the one infused with life. The purpose of having a teacher is to teach you how to do that yourself, slowly, gently, over time unraveling the stale patterns stored in our bodies, thereby freeing our minds and spirits to act in harmony. We call this nourishing life.

TAIJIQUAN (T’ai Chi Ch’uan)...

is a traditional Chinese art known for its gentle power. Its beautiful silk-spiraling movements emphasize transformation, improved circulation, extraordinary balance and meditation in motion.
There are many reasons people decide to study Taijiquan. Some are looking to try something new. Some have tried it before, perhaps they learned a form and now they want to explore it in depth. Others have a really active life and seek new ways to move which will relieve stress while improving efficiency, alignment, and spacial awareness.
Taijiquan has also been a gateway for many people to explore culture, philosophy, art, literature, history, changes in diet, lifestyle and even world-view.
In addition to public classes Scott Phillips has been teaching at the American College of Traditional Medicine in San Francisco, where Taijiquan is a vigorous part of the curriculum for adults of all ages.

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Here is the link to the classes page on my website.

Here is a description of qigong.

Here is the description I put up on facebook.

Hope to see you next week.

Carhart Push-Hands

Tabby Cat has really ruffled his fur over the question, "What is push-hands?" In a slight-of-paw he has decided to avoid a direct confrontation by pulling a "Prince." He now refers to what he does as the Drill Formerly Known As Push Hands (DFKAP).  I can probably come up with fifty push-hands genre games or training experiments.  Why fixate on one?  Well, he tells us.

This one DFKAP is a method for revealing Deep Unconscious Tension (DUT).  He keeps telling us that we probably don't know the difference between Surface Unconscious Tension (SUT) and DUT.  I don't know why he is saying this.  In my experience reading a book reveals both SUT and DUT, my arms get tired after about 15 minutes, so do my eyes, at some point my spine too--that's SUT--the root of that SUT is deep in the torso and is distributed all over the body--it is Deep Unconscious Tension (DUT).  I understand the concept but I don't like the terminology.  Why?  Because it's neo-Reichian.  Just for the record, Wilhelm Reich said that the Function of the Sexual Orgasm is to release DUT.  So basically Tabby Cat is saying that push-hands is like an orgasm.  No wonder some people like doing push-hands with him and some people freak out!

I believe he is making a Cosmological Order Error (COE).  Reich was also obsessed with apocalyptic concerns, by the way.  Instead of DUT, I prefer to think of Inhibitions of the Spacial Mind (ISM).  How great are my ISM push-hands powers you ask?  So great that I already defeated Tabby Cat at Push-Hands last Tuesday and he wasn't even aware of it!  He still requires touch to reveal unconscious tension while I can do it from right here in the cockpit of my F160 Fighter Jet.

Not able to fully solve this problem myself I have asked a friend for help, so let me introduce guest blogger the MIT* Daoist:

"Tabby Cat stop worrying about peak oil.  The planet earth is a battery.  Half of this battery is being recharged by the Sun at all times.  The gaseous part of the battery only holds energy for a short time but the liquid and solid parts hold it for much longer, and life has all kinds of creative ways of capturing and storing energy.  All the world's oil is like baby fat, it's nice when you have it, nice when you don't.  Speaking of baby fat, humans are batteries too.  We take in water and air to keep the acidity levels optimum.  We recharge with food and sunlight.  We store energy in fats and sugars.  The purpose of push-hands is to extend our battery-life.  Push-hands does this by revealing both Energy Leaks (EL), and Energy Transmission Inefficiencies (ETI)."

Thank you MIT* Daoist.

What's that buzzing sound?  A mosquito?  It's whispering something in my ear...

Invest in loss.

Here is my unsolicited advice.  If Tabby Cat is so good at using DFKAP to reveal DUT he might enjoy giving up the combat mindset.  How about finding new ways to lose?  Can he still reveal DUT with just two claws of contact?  How about when starting with one paw in his pocket and with his opponent's hand on his face.  How about allowing his opponent to put him in an arm-lock and beginning from there?  How about putting both paws in his pockets and allowing his opponent to grab hold of his jacket and beginning from there?



While I'm giving unsolicited advice perhaps trying to never win would open up new possibilities.  Can you consistently stop yourself from winning?  Try to not win with your hands up by your head and yet still reveal DUT or ISM?

Tabby, you just scratched your ear with your foot didn't you?  See, I did that. Well I didn't actually do it, I just revealed your ISM and they you did it yourself.

I call it ISM because when I truly let go of DUT my Spacial Mind immediately changes.  Pure Tai Chi fighting establishes unity through completely melting DUT.  Once unity is established the Spacial Mind is free to dance with chaos and harmony.  Things like structure, technique, root, or intent are swept aside like those wooden stir sticks at Starbucks.  All mass is available to change without inhibition like a Transformer!  Why not do push-hands rolling on the ground?  It's fun!

Maybe the funniest thing about Tabby Cat's position is his insistence that push-hands is non-cooperative... Oh, never mind, let's do it your way.

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*Monkey Institute of Technology

Vulnerability

I've been sitting on this blog post for a while. It relates both to Sgt. Rory's workshop last weekend and the Tabby Cat push-hands debate, but it is more deeply about how and why I train.

We fight because we are vulnerable.  A little kid can say he wants to kill me but I have no reason at all to fight until I'm vulnerable or someone I care about is vulnerable.  It's a minimum requirement.

When animal predators attack they do so in ways that minimize their own vulnerability.  When human predators attack they usually do the same thing.  A victim may never have the chance to see their attacker, or may only see them as disarmingly charming and friendly in those seconds before the attack.

Here is how a lot of martial artists think:  I have great structure.  Once I have engaged with a threat I will avoid direct structural force against force contact with the threat until I have acquired a superior position.  At that point I will unleash all of my force, weight and structure where the threat is most vulnerable.

Martial games like Mixed Martial Arts, Push-hands, or Boxing all function by limiting both competitor's vulnerabilities.  The game then becomes:  How can I create a situation where I can exploit a limited subset of my opponent's vulnerabilities before she can exploit mine.  The goal is dominance, when that is achieved the game is over.  Which is why it is relatively safe.

When we train games we are training to ignore some of our vulnerabilities.  This explains why Tabby Cat was accused of ignoring the vulnerability of his head and why he countered that push-hands as a game ignores the extreme vulnerability created by close physical proximity, fixed positioning of the feet, and many other "rules."

To paraphrase the Tai Chi Classics:  Because I understand my own vulnerabilities, I understand my opponent's as well.  To the degree that my opponent does not understand his own vulnerabilities, I am totally free to act.

So a little re-framing is in order.

The history of warfare begins with attack and then run, followed shortly by attack from a distance with rocks and then run.  The next step in evolution was fortification which protected vulnerabilities while simultaneously allowing for counter attack.  This works great in the short term but in the long term people with time to plan will overcome your fortifications.  The next step was mobile forts, namely tanks and airplanes.  Then we got nukes and now we are back to fighting with our hearts and minds against terrorist insurgencies.

It is very logical to begin martial arts training with simple attack, defend and escape ideas.  Then to move on to structure training both as "fortification" and to improve power generation.  Next one needs to understand how good structure is broken, so more power training along with targeting and angles--like siege warfare.  After that it's important to make our forts mobile, and either tougher like tanks, or freer like airplanes.  Whether by conditioning (tanks) or sensitivity (airplanes) we avoid metal (think: structure) against metal confrontation until we have maneuvered into the superior position.

All fine and necessary.  But in the end it still comes down to working with vulnerabilities.  To really put vulnerability at the center of your training, to take it all the way--you need to get weaker.  This is not a good strategy for a nation on the edge of survival.  But for an already confident powerful nation it makes sense to train for attacks based on putting ourselves in the most vulnerable situations.  That's what we are doing of course, planning for systematic terrorist attacks, biological, germ, computer, etc...

The most thorough way to learn about our vulnerabilities is to cultivate weakness.

What did I say?  I said that martial artists usually train the best techniques, from the best positions, with the best possible structure.  Fine.  Go do that for as long as it takes you to see that no matter how good you get at it,  your vulnerabilities still don't go away.  Then start training without structure, from the worst possible positions, and with spacial awareness instead of technique.

The illusion that we have direct conscious control over our bodies is an enormous source of pain, aggression, and defensiveness.  When that civilizing pretense is dropped, the body follows the spacial mind without inhibition.

Am I Dead Yet Sgt. Miller?

Saturday morning I crossed the bridge to the bad part of Oakland.  The workshop took place in the clubhouse of the notorious East Bay Rats Motorcycle Gang Club.  It’s a block from a small park, which is an open drug market for addicts.  (My Mom lives nearby!)  The clubhouse is a little bigger than my living room, with a bar and a roll-up door to a small yard, but my living room doesn’t have a dirty concrete floor, a motorcycle in the middle of the room, or sharp edges and protruding things everywhere.  And my living room certainly doesn’t have  a motor-ski-plow-sculpture!  The yard had a lot of beer cans, dirt, some broken glass, trash cans, things for grilling meat, tools, and a beat-up all-weather boxing ring.  Twenty men and women showed up for the two day workshop.  Objectively speaking, there was enough room in there to teach Tai Chi to 4 people.  The stage was set for Sgt. Rory Miller's workshop.  (I reviewed his wonderful book Meditations on Violence here.)

Back in the days when I led adventure ropes courses, we would try to create a feeling of maximum risk with minimum actual risk.  At Rory's workshop, right from the get go everything felt risky.  He started off with a safety talk and then had us work with partners doing action exchange drills.  This is a slow motion practice in which one person begins an attack and the other fights back, but the moment of initiative consciously switches back and forth between the two fighters so that if one of them stops, all action stops.

The fact that the space felt so risky helped keep us non-competitive, which was essential for what he was trying to teach.

Sgt. Rory Miller

You know you are dealing with a great teacher if you experience the stuff you practice everyday failing, and yet you leave feeling elated!  My fighting system is based on not stopping at all, I try to fight like a waterfall.  So it’s not surprising that everything I do can fail if it is squeezed into an action exchange drill.  It was a great way to practice because it forced us to release more efficient whole-body violence into shorter and shorter periods of time.  It also allowed people with very little martial arts experience an opportunity to recover against people with a lot.  The exercise is also designed to insure that no one gets injured, while insuring that everyone feels pain, discomfort, disorientation and emotional boundary violations.  I got my nuts squeezed about twenty times.  I had people's fingers on my eyeballs over a hundred times.  We gradually built a lot of trust.

I’m so full of energy today it’s hard to write.  Hormone surges all day long especially during the scenario role-plays on the second day have left me a bit wired-up.  While I really enjoyed my failures, I left feeling that my training is superb.  My stuff transferred well to fighting in confined space and rolling on the concrete. The BJJ-Mixed Martial Arts people, by the way, had a lot of un-training to do.

Back in my twenties I did a lot of two person forearm and shin conditioning.  After a while it became really addictive, I just craved that rough contact, it was getting me high.  This morning when I went to do my practice I was craving that rough contact again.  I never realized this before now, but I think this type of conditioning training is really a way to practice bringing on and dealing with the hormone surge.  My morning classes for the last 3 or 4 years have had about 5 minutes of gentle external arm and leg conditioning.  But I think my internal practice is giving me another kind of really effective conditioning.  My body is primed to instantly pump up when I get the hormone surge.  Today I have that Arnold Schwarzenegger feeling in my body.  Not stiff--just pumped.  I’m sure it will go away in a day or two if I don’t feed it.  But it’s an important lesson about how the body works.

The familiarity with real violence that Rory brings is chilling.  One thing I realized is that George Xu trained me in vigilante violence, which in a dark kind of way is great because it includes many different types of violence-- Self-defense, domination, monkey dance, group monkey dance, police work, and surprise attack. Rory demands that we refocus our training on what is legal and ethical.  He also recommends that we stop training things which may be ethical but would be too much of an emotional identity destroying act for us to pull off (I guess some people have a problem with blood and guts).  What’s legal and ethical is usually clear in retrospect (not always), but rarely easy to act on in the moment.  Which is why training scenarios are essential.  Deciding what acts would be identity destroying is very personal.  I'm not sure where my limits are, all the encounters with violence I can remember have had at least some identity destroying power.

Reflecting on my training with George Xu I see that legitimate self-defense has always been a component of it, but it was part of a larger subject of vigilantism.  For instance I remember getting in George Xu’s head and practicing scenarios in which I was the aggressor with a knife fighting against another aggressor with a knife in which the goal was to incapacitate but not kill (terratorial dueling?).  Rory’s workshop brought up a lot of weird stuff like that.  For everyone I think.  But my somewhat rambling point here is that in order to make what I do fit the self-defense model I have to make a slight mental-emotional adjustment.  It’s an adjustment I made intellectually long ago, but I hadn’t fully considered how imperative it is that I actually change the way I train.

Because boxing is designed purely as a display of dominance it has very little resemblance to asocial surprise attacks or self-defense.  A boxer would have to make big adjustments to actually train for self-defense.  What I do most of the time is close to what Rory is teaching, but I do sometimes think in terms of dominance.  I'll imagine a monkey dance in which I approach a fight eye to eye, attacking straight-on like a rutting buck in order to assert dominance.  This is what he is training us not to do.  Fortunately I'm quite talented at a more Rory-esque self-defense style of training like getting behind someone and throwing them head first into a wall with pictures of guys with tattoos on it.

Readers are probably mocking me, "Ah what a fine ethical distinction."

Rory had us play so many cool scenarios.  He was wearing full body armor and a helmet.  The climax for me was when he came in from the back shooting his gun.  I looked up to see that he had already shot me and I froze as he shot me again and then shot the person next to me.  People near the door, after fumbling with the lock, opened it and started to run, but Rory entered and fired into the space the way a person experienced in killing everyone would do it.  I must have been one of the first to break my freeze because I remember beginning to run the five paces towards him and then the next thing I remember I had him pinned with my hand wrapped around his larynx, one knee on his xiphoid process, the other knee on his arm, and my left hand holding his gun hand flat on the ground.  During the debrief he said I was the hero who took a lot of lead (bullets).  The day before we were talking about how police assess whether people are lying or not, and he said he doesn’t believe it when people say they don’t remember what happened.  But between the time I started running and the moment I was on top of him positioning my knee on his xiphoid process-- I don’t remember what happened.  It is particularly interesting because I’m really good at recreating detailed two person movement sequences that happen spontaneously with my students in class.

He told me later that I scared him.  That coming from Rory felt a little like I accidentally won a gold medal at the Olympics or something.

My biggest criticism is that there were no undead in the scenarios.  Zombies next time!
The biggest surprise was how totally awesome the other people at the workshop were.  It was really fun hanging out talking afterwards.  New friends!  New ideas!  New inspiration! (More to come.)

Kong Ling - Empty and Alive

Over at millionaire genius Tabby Cat we have a little piece I can riff on.  Anyone who has ever done push hands with a Cheng Manqing lineage person has probably encountered the "why do I need to defend my head defense."  It is so weird, they never admit that they are making a mistake.  But Tabby does something interesting.  He claims that the difference in push hands methods is an indicator of a difference in the fruition that each person is seeking.

Here is what Tabby says the purpose of push hands is:

The Push Hands Drill of Tai Ji Quan is a diagnostic practice to identify tension in oneself and a partner and a developmental practice to foster skill in the application of internal energy to such identified tense zones to move the partner's entire body with a light physical touch.

He contrasts that with many other schools who teach push hands as a safe way to approach combat skills development.  He then points out the flaw of the combat approach by saying that the observable fruition does not support it's stated purpose.  For example, defending a position in fixed step push hands (the way many people do) simply doesn't work in combat.

He is using the observed fruition to examine the method.  What he should be doing is using the observed fruition to examine the view which inspired the method.  All views produce an experience.  Tabby Cat has made his view known on his blog countless times, he believes the human race is doomed and therefore he has chosen to become a cat.

For me, views always come first.  My view of push hands is that it is a game designed to get us to drop our aggression.  As the first Chapter of the Daodejing explains, when you drop your aggression the order of the cosmos reveals itself (note: there is no "it" or "self", the use of language creates some limits here).  One might ask, "After I have seen the order of the cosmos, why would I want to do push hands again?"  And the answer is that the order of the cosmos reveals itself differently each time.  Experiencing the order of the cosmos is not an advantage, it doesn't make us superior or more powerful, it is simply a moment of inspiration.

Can you use this 'order of the cosmos' inspiration to fight?  Of course you can.  It would be a very mundane usage by society's standards, but the cosmos doesn't care.

Now let's go back and analyze the method.  The method of push hands is to meet your opponent hand to hand while maintaining, embodying and expressing kong ling.  Kong means emptiness and ling means liveliness.  What I gather from Tabby's description is that his recent push hands partner (lets call him Mr. Pause) was ling but not kong.  I surmise this because Mr. Pause declared he could knock Tabby upside the head if he wanted to (a demonstration of ling), yet he was losing the matches because Tabby could feel Mr. Pause's tension and up root him demonstrating that Mr. Pause was not kong (empty).

Tabby on the other hand must be kong (empty) but not ling (lively) because he only feels obligated to cover his head when he is boxing.

How did it come to this?  If you are aggressive, you are going to have a strategy.  Having a strategy will occlude your ability to see the order of the cosmos.  Tabby's strategy is to be like water.  If he is like water his opponent will find nothing in him to push on, while he can simultaneously use extraordinary sensitivity skills to find a little sliver of tension in his opponent.  Once he finds that tension in his opponent he can expand condense or spiral his qi against the sliver of tension and the opponent will up root himself.  The problem with this method is that it works.  (Most martial arts methods have that problem.)  However, does it work when Tabby has his hands up at head level?  My guess is that it does not.  The test is not a quick hook punch to the head, it is a slow hook punch to the head with a soft lady-like hand.  It doesn't actually matter whether Tabby or Mr. Pause does the hook punch it's the hands going up that matters.

We already know the answer to our test because Tabby believes that boxing is a superior way to hit.  In boxing the body is like an on/off switch, it goes from dodging and weaving like water, then sudden switches on with an icy strike to the jaw.

Ali Video...



Of course boxers don't protect their groin because it is illegal to strike there in the game of boxing.  So what are we doing? trading the groin for the head?  No.  All the push hands teachings about protecting the head or the groin or the space on the ground (fixed step push hands) or the center line or whatever, they are all just mind forms, all limitations, all preliminary experiments meant to show you what not to do.  Even Tabby's idea about finding tension in the opponent is just a trick to get the student to see the limitations of focused sensitivity.  OK, you found the tension in my left baby toe?  you feel it?  You got it?  Now feel this right hook on your chin, subtle huh?

If you are kong the opponent can not feel the slightest bit of tension in your body, they can only feel a big unified whole.  If you are ling you can do anything, you can punch or kick, run around like a monkey, or eat some salad.  Kong and ling are pretty easy to do separately.  In order to do them simultaneously one must have a view which matches how things actually are.  Because we humans are always wanting stuff and setting goals and confusing what we see with what we wish we saw, our view gets out of sink with the way things actually are.  There is a Starbucks on practically every corner.

It's enough to make a person wish to be a cat!

When our view is in sync with the way things are, mind and movement are in harmony.  Then qi automatically fills the space between the quiet body and the active mind.   The body is kind of like a hotdog, wrapped in mustard and lettuce which is the qi, and surrounded by a bun which is the mind .  When you want to take a bite you pick up only the bun and move it to your mouth, don't touch the hotdog or the mustard.

The active mind is not busy or distracted, it is spacially involved like a person standing on the edge of a cliff.

Like crossing a river in winter.

--Laozi

When a person is kong and ling, empty and alive, at the same time he may still sense his opponent's tension-- but he doesn't need to look for it.  He just does whatever movement he fancies and the opponent will not be able to stop him.  With kong-ling there is no impulse to defend or to root.  That doesn't mean there is no defending or dodging.  Like punching or reciting poetry--they are options.

I'm always happy to debate these things over a bowl of coffee-flavored milk in Seattle, or to test them out next time I'm in Tokyo fighting Godzilla.

Mao's Last Dancer (Review)

I just saw the movie Mao's Last Dancer. As my readers probably know, I love horror movies and kungfu movies, and scifi-action type stuff. I love the types of movies which give me that male hormone rush! Which is probably why I hate drama and romantic comedy, you know, chick flicks. My half-wife and I now joke that watching chick flicks is a form of estrogen therapy. But whatever, sometimes I give in to my weaker side.



Mao's Last Dancer gets an A grade for acting, and an A for the storyline. I spent about two years training ballet very seriously, but going to the ballet is not usually my thing; ballet is usually so focused on stimulating female hormones what am I going to do? But this movie is a true story about a great male dancer and the guy who plays him (Chi Cho) is a great dancer too. You get to see the best parts, the male parts, of classics like Swan Lake and Rite of Spring. Lots of great dancing and great choreography. So it gets an A for dance too.

The politics aren't perfect, I give it a B+, but for a non-horror movie that's high praise. I love when his mom tells the party officials to f--- off. Politically it feels honest.
Taijiquan practitioners will love the hard-ass but caring dance masters. What do they demand of their students? "Fa song" (relax!).

Alright, whatever, I cried. I sobbed. I simpered. I'm a confident macho man with a sleek hairy one pack (not a six pack), but if you have any doubts about your manhood, avoid this great movie. (Perhaps you should rent 300 instead.)

More Video Libraries

More old martial arts stuff appears on Youtube everyday. This guy has assembled another library, like this one I've posted about before. I found this wonderful bagua video of Bai Yucai. I love the way he does turns off of his front foot from the swallow swoops down pose. Don't much care for the applications and I would like to see some fast movements, but great stuff:



I also found this. I haven't written about Zhaobao style of Taijiquan before because I don't know much about it, but it has created a bit of a stir because some of the practitioners are good and because unlike Yang and Wu it does not derive directly from Chen, in fact it may be older. Zhaobao village is very close to Chen village so the controversy is really about authenticity of lineages... which are all in dispute anyway. I like his way of moving, clean and lively:

A Piece of the Puzzle

Long time readers know that I've written a fair amount about the origins of Chinese martial arts and how they changed during the 20th Century.  I reviewed the landmark book Marrow of the Nation by Andrew D. Morris back in May of 2009.  Here is a little excerpt of what I wrote:

The lineages allowed people to pretend they came from a great and pure martial line of masters dedicated to nothing but martial virtue and pure technique.  Inventing the lineages allowed people to write religion, rebellion and performance out of history. Some of the lineages may have been real, but they were not pure.  By claiming a lineage people were also renouncing the past, both real and imagined, they were saying in effect,  ‘Now THIS art, which was unfortunately secret for many generations is now totally clear and open!  Anyone with four limbs and two ears can learn it!’

There was a guy named Chu Minyi who served as a minister for the Kuomintang.  He invented something called Taijicao (Tai Chi Calisthenics) and in 1933 wrote a book called Tai Chi Calisthenics Instructions and Commands.  “Whereas traditional tai chi was simply too difficult for any but the most dedicated martial artist to master, tai chi calisthenics were pleasingly easy to learn and practice.”  They could be done in a few minutes and they used a counting formula like jumping jacks.  He also gets credit in the book for inventing the Tai Chi Ball practices.  (Hey, I didn’t write the book, but those tai chi ball exercises always looked a little too much like rhythmic gymnastics for my taste.)

Chu’s Tai Chi Calisthenics were performed on stage at the 1936 Olympics.  Fortunately or unfortunately he was a peace activist and so naturally supported the Japanese when they invaded and was later executed for treason.  But not before performing one last taijquan set in front of the firing squad.

Before reading Marrow of the Nation I had not heard of Chu Minyi.  But low and behold he has appeared on Youtube!  This stuff is mind blowing. 



His form and the push-hands are good, 'though I think it gets less lively in the later part of the form.  But the outfit is awesome!  Make sure you watch the whole thing because you see him doing Taiji ball and "stick" exercises on some weird apparatuses he invented.  This was before the invention of bungee cords or even dynamic rope so he must have done this with natural rubber.  Great stuff.  Then we see him playing tai chi hacky-sack! wow.  But what is he doing in his undies?  Grilling hotdogs maybe?

Tragic, weird and wonderful all at the same time.