Charlie Chaplin in Java and Bali

Some interesting stuff all the way through but the dance lesson happens around 8 minutes in:

The Mind Body Split

Here are the parameters of human movement systems:

Quiet-Quiet. A quiet mind and a quiet body.  This is the standard notion of meditation where the body is still and the mind is also still.

Active-Active. An active mind and an active body.  This is the standard for competitive athletics.  The body is very active and the mind is racing all over the space looking for openings and opportunities.

Quiet-Active. A quiet or serene mind and an active body.  This is sometimes held up as the ideal for Shaolin - and external styles of martial arts - where the mind achieves a kind of peaceful calm while the body is in an explosive power flow mode.  It is perhaps more common for people who do long distance running or swimming, the mind becomes calm because the body knows what to do.

Active-Quiet. The spacial mind is very lively, and the body is quiet.  This is the exclusive territory of internal martial arts.  The quiet body is a process in which the intention to move or control is systematically  removed from the four limbs, and eventually the entire body, while being replace with an active spacial mind outside the body.

Of course these are parameters, not necessarily perfectible experiences.  Never the less many of my students have found it helpful in understanding how different types of movement and meditation engage us.

Surprise - The World Has Discovered that Kungfu is Good for Film

The misconception that Kungfu at some point in the past was purely and exclusively a fighting art is so wide spread that the Wall Street Journal is reporting AS NEWS that Kungfu is actually good for actors, and film making.  The article suggests that the technology of Chinese Martial Arts is being adopted or adapted to fulfill an urgent need world wide!  That need?  Better action in the movies!  More action too!

Maybe I'll write a letter to the WSJ explaining that before 1900 the dominant form of entertainment in China was a form of performance theater that used Kungfu to train its actors.  Perhaps I could also explain that in the old days it was through theater that most people got their knowledge of history.  Or even that this form of theater was commonly called "Entertaining the Gods" because statues of the gods were carried out of the temples on palanquins and set up in front of the stage.  And that it was all a huge money making event, often times with seasonal markets popping up around the main event.  And if I really wanted to go out on a limb with this letter I could point out that this "experience" was probably the dominant form of public communal religious expression. Or maybe I'll just go out and get hot chocolate instead.

Do read the article, it's fun.  Since it mentions the new Shaolin movie, I do have a comment.  I wrote out a wild rant about that terrible movie a month or two ago which I decided not to post, for now anyway.  But I will say this.  Enough about foreigners stealing antiquities already!  White guys with big noses did not destroy Shaolin!  Not now, not then, not in any way shape or form. And I'm thinking Jackie Chan owes me an apology.  Why does the Official Chinese Government Movie Script Contortion Department think it can get away with this?

Oh never mind.  Here, clear your mind with this stimulating big of fun!

Magic in the Tendons

I came across this article on Frogs which is saying what I've been saying for years about the role of the tendons in power generation.

Though its muscles still have a vital role - after all, a quarter of the frog's entire mass is in its legs just for this purpose - these jumps would be physically impossible without its springy tendons.

As the frog readies itself to leap, its calf muscle shortens. After about 100 milliseconds, the calf muscle stops moving, and the energy has been fully loaded into the stretched tendon. At the moment the frog jumps, the tendon, which wraps around the ankle bone, releases its energy, much like a catapult or archer's bow, causing a very rapid extension of the ankle joint that propels the frog forward. The entire jump — from preparation to leap — lasts about a fifth of a second, the experiments showed. Other frog species jump much faster.

China to build first Tai Chi theme park

China to build first Tai Chi theme park

WUHAN, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- China will build a theme park showcasing the traditional martial art of Tai Chi in Wudang Mountains area, legendary home of the marital art and a UNESCO World Heritage Site renowned as a center of Taoism.

The administrative office of Wudang Mountains and American company Landmark Entertainment will cooperate to set up the Tai Chi theme park in the central province of Hubei, said an official with the administration on Wednesday.

Folks were fretting about the commercialization of Tai Chi and Wudang Mountain on Facebook and then a cooler head pointed out that this sort of thing can work to filter out the more oafish tourists while creating a source of funds to nourish or protect tradition.  I just got excited about the Tai Chi Pirate Ride!  The Wuwei Bumper Cars that never actually touch!  And the Silk Reeling Roller Coaster is not to be missed!

Maybe they will have people dressed up as the Eight Immortals-- the way Disneyland does Mickey and Goofy.  Now that I think about it, if Landmark Entertainment wants to win hearts and minds they really ought to hire me as a consultant for this.

Caution this is Sparta

Some Cool Images Of Soldiers and Such

Click for originals and bigger size.

Visualizations, Videos and Learning the Sword

In traditional Chinese Internal Martial Arts visualizations are used to help people develop qi and the ability to move it.  The key expression is:  "To make imaginary real, and to make real imaginary."  This is one of the things that annoys me about the whole movement to make martial arts less theatrical and more "real."  Folks, that's level one!  It's only half the job.  Once those fighting skills are perfected and all the applications have clear intent, power, etc, etc, then the task is to make them so natural that whatever the mind does, it is expressed instantly and effortlessly.  The art enters the realm of imagination.

I recently have learned a lot about my Northern Shaolin Sword form (Wuhudao) from playing with Maija.  She's great. What amazed and delighted me the most is that every single move in this old opera form from Kuo Lien-Ying is totally functional.  Even the things that I had thought were artistic flourish turned out to be really useful techniques!



And while we are at it I have a new favorite visualization.  The most common visualizations of qi are clouds, steam, silk, water, fire...etc....   all that old school stuff.  But my new favorite thing to visualize is dry-cleaning plastic!  It puffs up, it floats down slowly, it spins around, it has a mind of it's own.

Dry Cleaning Plastic Dress by Susan Lenz

Mongol Ship Found in Japan

No way!
Wreck of 13th century Mongol invasion ship discovered

Here is more on the Archeology

The Glorious Kidneys

Autumn is the season for clearing heat from the lungs and refining technique.  One of the best foods for clearing heat from the lungs is the pear. The skin of the pear is used if the condition is medical.  So eat pears raw or lightly stewed with a dribble of honey.  The Classic of Medicine (Neijing) says clearing heat from the lungs protects against fevers in Winter.  Not sure what the mechanism is there, but I love pears so I'm sharing.  The suggestion to refine technique is a message about efficiency, the Autumn is about toning it down and taking time to integrate all the wild experimentation of the past two seasons.

And if you've been doing that, in about four weeks you will be ready to start transitioning into Winter practice.  In Winter we store Qi, water the root, and nourish the kidneys. So what does this mean?  In the days before industrial commerce made food cheap and plentiful, to the average peasant it probably meant eat whatever rich foods you can find.  The best way to do that in our era is with nutrient rich bone stock that you make yourself.  If you want organic stock bones, in my part of the country, you are in direct competition with the massive pampered dog population.  However, if you buy bones in bulk it's a little more reasonable.  We filled up our freezer with bones for the Winter for about $60.  'Watering the root' basically means drinking nutrient rich broth the way most of our ancestors did.  Think stews.

The Daodejing says, "to be full, hollow out," thus in order to store Qi one must first cultivate emptiness.  Once emptiness is established, storing Qi is automatic.

Well, not totally automatic.  You must also nourish the kidneys.  How does one do that?  Hold that thought.

Hopefully none of my readers were paying attention last year when I had an argument on the insane internal martial arts discussion website Rum Soaked Fist about whether the terms jin 勁 and jing 精 actually mean the same thing.  As my Indian Dance teacher used to say, "A little learning is a dangerous thing."

Jin is translated by Louis Swaim (I'm doing this from memory) as 'power which resembles the flowing of underground streams.'  Jin is an expression used in compound forms like pengjin (wardoff), mingjin (obvious power), or tingjin (skillful sensitivity), to mean a specific type of power which requires skill and time to develop.

Jing on the other hand is a much bigger and harder to explain key concept in Chinese cosmology.  It is usually translated 'essence,' because of it's association with purification.  But it generally refers to stuff that reproduces itself.  In quasi-medical terms it is sperm and eggs, scabs, what clots the blood, and when it is strong in the body--a full head of hair and strong finger nails.  In Daoism Jing is the most solid and substantial form of Qi. If we posit that the entire cosmos is one giant mind form, then jing is its memory function.  Stay with me...

Any first year Chinese Medicine student will tell you that Jing is stored in the kidneys.  They will also tell you that sex, drugs and rock'n'roll will deplete it.  Daoism has a precept against wasting jing or qi.  The term is pretty amorphous as you may have deduced by now.  In is particular Daoist precept the distinction is that qi wasting is unnecessary effort, while jing wasting is depletion to the point of injury.  So to damage ones body is to damage ones jing.  Why? because the moment injury happens, the kidneys start to release jing-- jing is released from the kidneys because it is what repairs us.

Obviously, jing is one of those concepts which, as Roger T. Ames might put it, offends against the most basic  notions of Western categorical thinking--it is simultaneously an event, a substance, a trend, and an action.  Jing repairs (verb), it is what repairs (noun), it is visible only indirectly and is measured by that which it repairs so to some degree it is the substantive aspect of our bodies.  Jing is the shape of our eye, and the dark circles that accumulate around them after years of not enough sleep.  Jing is the markings of age.  Jing as a substance decreases in either quantity or quality as we age.  But as a substance it remains pure.

Tension in our bodies is simply qi concentrated by the mind.  Disperse the qi and the tension will be gone.  But chronic tension is qi concentrated in the same location day after day.  Qi is pure and has no memory function, the tension's location is remembered by jing.  So chronic tension is regularly drawing jing out of the kidneys where the mind mixes it with qi.  Because jing and qi are both pure, they naturally separate, like oil and water.  For chronic tension to happen at all takes considerable and regular effort.

I would never have gotten into the argument at Rum Soaked Fist if I hadn't been repeating what I heard from George Xu: "Jing and jin are the same."

"What?" I asked, "How could that be, they are different characters in Chinese?"  (精 and 勁)

"It doesn't matter," he said, "They were once the same term and the same character."

Remember way up at the top of this post I asked the question, "How does one nourish the kidneys?"  We're getting there.  The kidneys love sleep.  They love sleep because they love stillness.  The kidneys are like a very fine instrument measuring vibration, shock, tension and fatigue.  If we can feel our kidneys they will indicate when we are exerting effort or experiencing strain.  And...They will tell us when we are using power. Ah hah! You say, power, you mean jin right?  Yes, young Skywalker, any trained or refined gathering of power or release of force is called jin, in Modern Chinese.  The kidneys experience all jin as stress, as a loss of jing.

Thus pure internal (martial arts) should be defined as not using jin/jing.  If an art uses jin, then it is mixing jing and qi.  It is exerting some strain on the kidneys.  The basic Tai Chi adage goes:  "The body follows the qi and the qi follows the mind."  If the mind causes jing to be released from the kidneys, qi will mix with jing in the body, and the mind will move the three all at once--thus destroying the mind-then-qi-then-body order of movement.  On the other hand, if the body is totally quiet, as measured by no loss of jing from the kidneys, then the qi will automatically float off of the body and the mind will easily lead it.  If the whole torso is also empty, it will naturally fill with qi.

And that is what it means to nourish the glorious kidneys.