Is Humanity Blind?

Is humanity blind?  In asking the question I'm not referring to the limitations of our eyes, I'm speaking metaphorically.  But since I brought up the limitations of the eyes, here is a quick review.  1) Peripheral vision mis-perceives distance, I first discovered this while doing outside crescent kicks in a row with a person on either side and my eyes cast straight ahead.  If I don't make students look to the sides before kicking, chaos ensues.  2)  Motion and color are learned functions of the imagination.  This is so hard to conceptualize because we learn to see color and motion so early, but when children are born blind and gain sight through a surgical opperation after the age of 3, they don't see color and they don't see motion.  In place of color they see complex patterns of reflected light.  In place of motion they see something akin to stop-motion- objects get larger and closer but aren't 'seen moving.'  Weird huh?  3)  Tunnel vision is in focus, everything else that we think we see in focus is imagined.  You can test this by staring at one word in the middle of the page and attempting to read with your peripheral vision.  4) I'm betting readers can contribute many other examples of human sight inadequacy.

A reason for all the spinning and head turning in Baguazhang is to train the eyes to see without focusing.  Welcoming the blur, as it were.  Thus reducing the effort and time normally wasted convincing ourselves that we are not blind.

And on that note I have a few items from the News for my dear readers.

First off, Why Placebos Work Wonders from the Wall Street Journal.  Before you get your hopes up, the article does not convincingly answer the question and it says noting about Nocebos.  Depending on where you happen to be standing in the 'what is medicine' debate you may be shocked to learn that sham acupuncture out performed real acupuncture in one of those double blind thingamajiggies.  Just hearing about it is enough to give me a hot flash!  Also, a study suggests that the more indulgent we think we are, the less we will eat.  If I were juggling just now I would have drop my balls.  After reading this article you may drift beyond the  question of whether humanity is blind, and might find yourself wondering whether we exist at all.

And off to a good start, why not ask; is humanity deaf? Can anyone actually hear the difference between a modern violin and a Stradivarius?  I got a good laugh when the maestro compared the double blinded musicians to people trying to distinguish a Ford from a Ferrari in a Walmart parking lot.  Umm dude, them Walmart parking lots is pretty big, and I think I could tell a Ferrari from a Ford upside down in a ditch, with earplugs, a blindfold, a shot of whisky, and in my pajamas. (Perhaps the NIH will fund the study?  If not then surely the NEA.)

Meanwhile, Tai Chi folk have known for some time that our stomach is a brain.  This science-blog is choca-block with links pointing to the notion that Your Gut Has a Mind of It's Own.  I should be heartened by this news since it suggests a host of new angles with which to approach the idea that Tai Chi is medicine.  I guess my serotonin levels are flagging.  Perhaps I should be doing Tai Chi before dinner?  As an aside, it occurs to me that the movement of (from?) one person's dantian could sync up with the movement of another person's dantian to create mood and other outlook changes.   There are many studies looking at how we coordinate movement and breathing (sic) unconsciously, it's not so far fetched.

Perhaps you still believe that despite the fact that we are blind, deaf, and emotional robots, we still might have that old saw free will?  Turns out what we have is free won't.  Here is another study showing that violent crime is linked to brain injury.  It's a bit off topic but this summary of the debate about the drop in violent crime is a good starting place to throwing up your hands and declaring with fervent lusty abandon, "I just don't know!"

Why I Hate Breathing

I have contributed a guest post to the venerable blog Dark Wing Chun. I commend it to my readers. I also wish you all a Happy New Year!

To entice you to click through I offer this little appetizer:

I was driving in my car the other day and a woman comes on the radio and starts telling me how important breathing is!  Not like there was any actual content there, it was just a disjointed emotional rant scientifically calculated to sell HMO Medical Insurance.  That’s when I realized, I hate breathing.

Gross Motor and Fine Motor - Reconsidered

I've been puzzling over the meanings of the terms gross motor and fine motor.  A while back I proposed that we could coin a new term to describe the movement of internal martial artists--monster motor.  I got this from pondering and imitating the way wild predators move.  That's fun, but on re-consideration it might be more prudent of me to push for definitions of gross and fine motor which are more consistent with my understanding of human movement.

Fine motor control seems to be mainly about stuff we do with our hands.   Since most body action and control has been observed to develop from the torso outwards, fine motor control develops after gross motor control.  Gross motor is the more challenging term.  This particular list of infant development is helpful in defining gross motor:

1. Symmetrical Bilateral Integration. Symmetrical bilateral integration involves both sides of the body working in mirror-image unison, where the actions on one side of the body mirror the actions performed on the other side.


2. Reciprocal Bilateral Integration. Reciprocal bilateral integration involves moving both sides of the body at the same time in opposite motions.


3. Asymmetrical Bilateral Integration. Asymmetrical bilateral integration involves each side of the body acting in a different way to complete a single specific task. For example, one foot may kick a ball as the other foot plants on the ground and balances the body.


4. Crossing the Midline. The “midline” is the imaginary line down the center of your body from the top of your head to your toes). Crossing the midline involves instinctively reaching across your body to complete an activity.

These are all process of basic spacial awareness that fall under the larger gross motor label.  The problem arises for me when we start applying the same term to actions like throwing a ball or skipping rope.  These actions in practice require a great deal of fine motor control on top of gross motor skills.  Even proper adult walking (the way I walk when I want people to think I'm normal) requires peripheral and distal (away from the torso) precision.

The physical therapy kinesiology world may have become confused because it has emphasized the use of  muscles and muscle groups to describe action categories.  It's my suspicion that because they possessed a detailed "scientific" map of the muscles early kinesiologists felt obligated to reference it as a way to confer authority on the field as a whole.  But individuated muscle groups don't exist in a mind which is learning new movement.  If we parse our imagination into muscles it will actually inhibit learning.

I'm still having trouble with the categories.  I want one category for movement in which the mind is inside the body guiding and controlling!  And I want a second category for movement which is driven by visual or auditory impulses seen, felt or imagined outside of the body!

Then again, I'm almost willing to accept that gross motor movement is the same as whole body power.  And then re-define fine motor control as movement strategies which reduce, limit or focus power.

I'm suggesting that gross motor movement starts out pure, with the mind always leading the qi. Babies bodies are empty (kong) and don't store any stress in the muscles (xu) therefore their locomotion is only initiated by changes in spacial perception.  Because they are xu, qi floats around the their body not in the muscles and bones. Because they are kong the shape of their whole torso changes to support and propel their actions as their spacial mind changes.


In any event, the process of learning internal martial arts forces me to consider this problem deeply.  Lately I've been trying to take my Shaolin Wuhu Dao (five tiger broad sword) and my Baxian Jian (8 immortal double edged straight sword) forms and make them purely internal martial arts.  I find that the big challenge is in the grip!  To use internal power the sword must be inside my qi body.  To accomplish this my connection to the entire sword has to be solid, and that requires a firm grip, like a baby grabbing your finger.  However the techniques in both forms require a lot of fast loose changing of angles.  The traditional grips I learned are ever changing, sometimes loose, sometimes tight, sometimes rolling.  If I take out all that fine motor control in the grip it feels great--there is so much whole body power behind the swords.  But many of the techniques don't look right--I simply don't have the wrist flexibility to execute them with a firm grip.  Yet.

His Bones are Soft, his muscles are weak,

But his grip is very strong! --Laozi

Now check out how a baby at 6 months can lift his head!  I key gross motor skill. Ask yourself honestly, do you know any adults that can do this?  With grace and power?  With soft enthusiasm?  Every time qi rises in the body this is how it should look and feel.  The Chinese term for this is zheng -- to be upright, to rectify, cosmic harmony.

Becoming Left Handed

I was talking to George Xu the other day and he compared the process of changing from being an external martial artist to being and internal martial artist to the process of changing from being right handed to being left handed.  To accomplish that, you would have give up writing and feeding yourself with your right hand and learn those actions with your left hand.  Simple enough, I suppose, if you're a hermit in the mountains with a years supply of edible mushrooms.

However, if you are going to keep your life going you'd have to accomplish it in steps, gradually going back and forth between left handed and right handed actions.  I imagine it would take a lot of confidence and determination.

Of course we aren't trying to change from right to left, we are trying to change from so called "external" to so called "internal."  Add to the problem that there are few people who can model it well, and even fewer that can clearly explain the task-at-hand.

But my point here is that learning internal arts has a real similarity to trying to do stuff with your non-dominant hand.  You have to turn off the well established how to messages, and replace them with clumsy awkward undeveloped ways of moving.  And you have to do this consistently, in an experimental feedback loop, over an extended period of time.

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