Balance

Chief among the claims made about the Health and Wellness benefits of Tai Chi is it's ability to improve balance.

Health and Wellness justifies its existence by claiming that more visits to the doctor reduces the incidence of serious chronic ailments and thereby reduces the overall costs of healthcare for our society.

But it can also be viewed as a way to justify more and more comprehensive insurance, that is, more and more expensive.

A hospital administrator in Oakland told me that lots of people just wait until they are sick enough to go the the emergency room-- and that's an expensive visit.

I don't know, I like Toyotas because they are cheap, safe and last a long time.  If you ask me how to fix healthcare, I'll tell you to model it after the Toyota!

______

This is no longer just a fad.  There are numerous studies about Tai Chi and improvements in balance.  People are being sent to me by doctors for the single purpose of improving there balance.  Hospitals are now offering "balance" classes.  I'm game.  Teaching balance is so easy.  It's like cheering at sporting event.  Raaaaaaahh were winning.  It's a pretty small part of Tai Chi, and if that is all new students are interested in, I'm going to get bored pretty fast.  But it is amazing how much a person can improve their balance when they are given a few simply exercises!

Check out this fun video by fellow George Xu disciple Susan Matthews:

The New Definition of Fascia

Josh Leeger turned me on to a series of articles which are using a new definition of Fascia.  This article is particularly worth reading:

Fascial Fitness: Fascia oriented training for bodywork and movement therapies, by Divo G. Müller and Robert Schleip.

Many people I've shown the article to have commented that one of the authors is into a painful type of bodywork called Rolfing, and they have suggested that the authors may have created a Rolfing centric view of fascia.  Strangely no one has pointed out that the other author is into Continuum, which is a very watery type of movement exploration.

You'll get the new definition of fascia by just reading the article, so I'm not going to try to nail it down, but  readers should know that the old definition was a description of the clear or translucent film that surrounds all muscle.  The new definition includes tendon and ligament and sees all that juicy stuff as a single organ.

Whatever, right?  But what is important about this new article, and this new approach, is that it uses clinical language and conforms to kinesiology standards.  Until now there was no clinical explanation of how external martial arts work that any of us could use when talking to a physical therapist.  That's going to be a big change.

Fascia?

The article explains that tendons and ligaments themselves can take load and can spring.  What the authors don't seem to understand is that it is through the natural spirals of the body that all of these soft tissues function together.  They don't seem to realize that the reason they are getting these springy dynamic results from slow holistic lengthening is because their method builds on these underlying spirals.  Spirals are there in shortened positions too, as anyone who does whole body tie-up and throw techniques (think: Aikido) can tell you.

So, it's a good start.  It primarily deals with what we call in both internal and external martial arts, "the foundation."  That is the ability to get in and out of a range of deep, long, loaded, and spiraled stances while using smooth (wood), explosive (fire), fluid (water), and hard-solid (metal) movement qualities.  "The foundation" is what I usually refer to in this blog as "jing training," the first level of internal martial arts.  It is also commonly referred to in martial arts lingo as "the benefits of good structure."

The authors lose a few points in my book at the end of the article when they say this training, "should not replace muscular strength work, cardiovascular training, and coordination exercises."  That statement muddies the issue.  All that stuff is just included in basic Shaolin, it's already complete.  If we are building this "foundation" for learning Tai Chi, Bagua, or Xinyi, then we are going to leverage these underlying spirals to allow us to reduce muscular "strength" and discard the torso tension usually associated with "coordination exercises."

The author, however, should get extra credit for hinting at methods for developing higher levels of internal martial arts.  For instance, take the "ninja principle" all the way out, and the body becomes so light and quiet that our experience of the physical body becomes totally empty (xu).  Or take the idea of fluid movement all the way out, and ones habits of coordination and resistance become baby-like, unconditioned (ziran).

The Proprioceptive Refinement section of the article is the most interesting.  They discuss the, "need to limit the filtering function of the reticular formation."  This refers to a part of our brain which we can train to pay attention to certain kinds of nerve stimuli and ignore others.  Muscles transmit information slowly, that's why we need to turn them off and pay attention to other stimuli-- and that's the very mechanism which can make it is so easy to manipulate someone who is, in martial arts lingo, "too stiff."  Eventually we want to turn off most of our 'inside the body sensors' and turn on most of our 'outside the body sensors.'   The authors correctly identify the problems with doing any movement exactly the same way over and over, namely that we become insensitive to small errors which then become habituated.  This is why it is so important that our forms are empty! By cultivating emptiness, our movement is unconditioned by our mind.  On the other hand, always thinking about a specific and exact application of a technique, will turn us into robots.

Qi has no memory!  To practice martial arts with qi is to be continuously spontaneous.

To quote the Daodejing:

To be preserved whole, bend.

Upright, then twisted;

To be full, empty.

What is worn out will be repaired.

Those who have little, have much to be gained.  Having much, you will only be perplexed!

:5

Fascia?

XXlt;*/%.$2%,+C

6*-4+%=<:4<*-,%:2,+.?25%@$,;>%4-,/"$#-:4<*-,%

2,-".".?%-./%4$,/".-2"$.%+Z+,4":+:

Discarding Yes and No

If you've ever been around teens or tweens, or were one yourself at some point, then you are familiar with 'discarding yes and no.'  It is a look they give you that tells you they aren't listening, don't really care to be listening, and many not even be aware that you exist at all. Or as we use to say in Australia, 'I just couldn't be bothered.'

So what do you think happens when I tell my adult students that I expect them to 'discard yes and no?'  That's right! they all look at me quizzically, bring their faces forward a bit, sometimes tilting a little to one side, and nod 'yes'  --Thereby demonstrating that they have no idea what I'm talking about.

If someone I know is walking alone in the distance and I call over to them to get their attention, as they turn they will look first, and then direct an 'I recognize you' face in my direction.  With normal vision one can recognize this face from 100 yards away.  And even if one has very poor vision, he or she will still display the 'I recognize you' face in return.

Comic Ellen Degeneres has a bit where she waves and shouts to get someone's attention and then realizes it isn't them.  It's funny because she reveals how much socially stimulated pain this causes.

The effort it takes to communicate with our faces is usually completely unconscious.  But I would suggest to my readers that normal social communication using the head and face requires enormous strength and torso tension.  That's why teens and tweens sometimes just drop it.  You never actually know if they are listening unless you quiz them afterwards, and even then they may decide not to participate.  And the same is actually true for adults, they may be nodding 'yes' without hearing a single thing you've said.  It could even happen with a loved one on Valentines day!

At about 6 months of age, babies can lift their head and they are capable of a lot of communicative facial expressions.  However, their heads are so big relative to the rest of their bodies that they have to move their chest underneath their head in order hold it up.  At some point they also learn to nod 'yes' and 'no,'  but if you hang out with 5 year olds you'll see that, although they will give a very attentive 'I'm listening face,' they are often reluctant to nod 'yes' and 'no.'  When they do stoop to this adult mode of communication they often exaggerate it with a whole body movement-- undulating with a slack jaw for 'yes,' and shaking horizontally for 'no.'

So.  What's the point?

In martial arts and qigong, the head must be included in whole body movement for it to actually be whole body movement.  If we are using our head for communication, it is very likely that we are exerting enormous torso tension in order to keep it in that state.  As adults, stress is our default position in social situations.

I want to make a distinction here between structural integrity and whole body liquid mass.  A person can be holding their head in an 'I'm ready to nod yes or no' position and still have structural integrity.  As people age, the quality of the structural integrity tends to diminish, but it may still be there.  However, it is not possible to have whole body liquid mass and hold ones head in such a stressful position at the same time.

I suspect that until a student figures out how to get their feet inside their dantian, inside their perception of space, this awareness of the head may be fleeting if it is possible to experience at all.  When the whole body is inside the spacial mind it automatically includes the feet and head.  It is by looking at the relationship between the torso and the head that, as a teacher, or a dude watching too many sub-standard 'masters' on Youtube, I can tell if a persons body is inside their mind--or not.

The head weighs a lot.  Holding it in positions of dominance or submission is a major source of tension.  Holding it in positions of dominance or submission is an obstacle to whole body power.

Outer Inner and Secret

One way to get at the cosmological organization of knowledge in Chinese arts is to think about Outer, Inner and Secret.

Outer is the stuff I can teach by showin' and tellin'.  It is by far the biggest category of knowledge in Chinese martial arts.  A given movement, action, posture or position is either correct or incorrect.

Inner is the stuff a student can learn from interacting with me in a dynamic push-pull/yes-no physical conversation.   It's all stuff that is hard to name.  Though not as big a category as Outer teachings, it is still huge.  Probably the most talked about Inner teachings are structure and root.  These two terms mean different things in different situations.  They can be pressure tested in numerous contexts and nobody really agrees exactly what they mean in words.  But two people fired up in the midst of practice can easily agree on what is what. We know it when we feel it.

Secret teachings take a lot of abuse.  Keeping secrets is widely denounced as a moral offense against modernity.  But the truth is, the real secrets keep themselves.  Secret teachings are concepts, revelations, and experiences which can not be taught.  I can talk about them.  I can show them.  I can write about them.  And to a certain extent, my actions might help transmit them.  But it is just as likely that I'm confusing people and sending them off in the wrong direction.  Secret teachings have to be discovered.  And for such a discovery to happen there has to be a particular openness, a certain milieu, a series of experiences, and a perceptiveness about where to look and what not to do when the secret is found.  The dark irony is that people are discovering these treasures all the time and then just burying them again, unaware.

But the purpose of this post is not to talk about Inner or Secret.  Outer teachings are actually the most neglected. The Outer teachings take loads of practice and hard work.  The Outer teachings store everything else.  They were made by people who lived the secret and inner teachings.  They are the container.  Outer teachings get discarded because people don't understand why they matter, they are easily misunderstood.  Laziness is a problem too.  As is the tendency to be overwhelmed.  Setting aside the time commitment for both student and teacher is so daunting in this day and age that even though the interest may be there, the Outer teachings almost always suffer.  And as my Kathak teacher often bemoaned, "A little learning is a dangerous thing!"

I don't know how to get around this.  Students want Inner, and teachers want to teach it.  But without the Outer container the Inner just spills away.

This fact of modern life leads many teachers to re-formulate their teachings, to create contexts which go directly to Inner teachings, the Aikido dojo is a great example.  Teachers sometimes create whole new simplified Outer teachings to get around this problem, think Jeet Kundo or simplified Tai Chi.  And many teachers just give up.

Ideally we ought to be capable of creating new milieus which will transmit the whole Outer teachings.  When I try to imagine this I see myself focused on a group of 20 year old students.  I suspect that to work in depth on a daily basis with people in their 20's I'd also have to teach economic literacy skills, cooking, simple living, and some kind of emotional release (theater/therapy?).

It makes me want to step back from the whole project of teaching and think about how I might create institutions which would produce students who were ready to learn.  A sort of "Drop out now, ask me how," kind of thing.

The Ming Dynasty

This is a big event about the Ming Dynasty happening around San Francisco.

http://www.humanitieswest.org/currentMing.html

Looks like the best stuff on Ming Dynasty theater is on Saturday February 11th, 2012.  Some stuff on Dreaming on February 8th too.  Check it out.

UPDATE:

Hey I went to this.  It kind of sucked.  A room full of scholars talking down to us.  Scholars who are long winded, and answer questions about subjects they don't know anything about.  Yuck.  One of those 21st century experiences where the audience is better informed than the presenters.

I did get a couple of things.  The cross hand movement in Chen Style Tai Chi that comes right at the beginning of 'Lazy about tying ones coat' is used in Kunqu theater to mean, 'waking from a dream!' Cool huh?  Also I learned that it is likely that the ambassador of Burundi who accompanied Zhenghe back to Beijing in the reign of Yongle (1402-1424), brought an entourage with him and that they stayed in China for 2 years.  So it is possible since Zhenghe and many of his sailors were Muslims, that Liuhe Xinyi is a mix of African martial dance and Chinese martial arts.  The mechanism is there.

Sheila Melvin presented entirely on the contemporary revival of kunqu which was interesting particularly because theater is still seen in an intensely political light in China, and also because the situation vis-a-vis the government is so fluid.

Is Gina Carano a Feminist?

A number of new scholarly books on martial arts have come across my desk in the last month.  This field is in its infancy and I am exited to be part of the project of defining and inspiring it.  In that spirit, there is much in these works to praise, much to criticize, a yawn here and there, and a few things that need to be stopped dead in their tracks.

So this is the fourth of a series in which I will discuss individual essays within larger works.  The following essays are from a collection edited by Thomas A. Green and Joseph R. Svinth titled, Martial Arts in the Modern World (Praeger, 2003).



First order of business:  Is Gina Carano, the star of the new film Haywire, a feminist?  Gina has been a star of the MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) World for the past several years, she is hot, and she is now a Hollywood action star who is capable of doing her own stunts and fight choreography.  We'll get back to that.

"Women's Boxing and Related Activities: Introducing Images and Meanings," is an essay by Jennifer Hargreaves that delves into the cultural nuances of women and fighting.  She does a good job of covering all the cases, begining with an excellent history of women in the ring actually knocking each other bloody for money, all the way to the porno version of boxing done by strippers.  Is it masculine? Is it feminine?  Is it a special case?  Are they champions? are they exploited fools? are they happy subordinates?  are they victims or makers of their own fate?  Some female boxers in every case love it, some hate it.  Some are in it for dominance, some for money, some for excitement, some do because they crave risk, some seek health, some do it to look beautiful, some do it and find peace.  Self image?  It's all over the map too.  Hargreaves attempts to apply every post-colonial, feminist, cultural criticism she can find to the actual situation and history of women's boxing.  The result?  Not a single theory is consistent with reality.

I have read way too much theory in my life.  My fear is that even though Hargreaves (and many others, Richard Rorty comes to mind) have the honesty after years of studying post-colonialism, feminism, and critical theory to acknowledge it is faulty--people have invested so much time and university money in it, that it will live on as a ghost, haunting us to our graves.  I hope not.

My Great Grandmother was a prominent suffragette in New York.  As my Grandmother explained it to me, "If there was something that boys were good at, I wanted to prove that I could be good at it too."  I stand with my Grandmother on this one, it is wrong to put obstacles in the way of women trying to do whatever it is they want to do just because of their gender.  In the end, that is the only feminist idea that has any merit.

As for the film Haywire in theaters at the moment, it is a parody of b-movies which are vehicles for an action star.  If you go to the late show, sneak in a six-pack of beer and talk during the talking parts, you'll freakin' love it!

Martial Arts in the Modern World (Part 3)

A number of new scholarly books on martial arts have come across my desk in the last month.  This field is in its infancy and I am exited to be part of the project of defining and inspiring it.  In that spirit, there is much in these works to praise, much to criticize, a yawn here and there, and a few things that need to be stopped dead in their tracks.

So this is the third of a series in which I will discuss individual essays within larger works.  The following essays are from a collection edited by Thomas A. Green and Joseph R. Svinth titled, Martial Arts in the Modern World (Praeger, 2003).

____________

Yamada Shoji's, "The Myth of Zen in the Art of Archery," is a hilarious romp.  The German guy, Eugen Herrigel, who wrote the book, Zen and The Art of Archery, was so enthusiastic about Zen that he projected Zen into his study of Archery.  In Japan, Zen wasn't associated with Archery until Herrigel's  book was translated into Japanese.  The confusion is also do to the fact that the particular Archery teacher Herrigel hooked up with (Kenzo Awa) was more than a little eccentric, he had gone through a personal mystical enlightenment experience while practicing alone at night in which his "self" exploded into tiny grains of dust.  But even so Shoji suggests that most likely the connection of Archery to Zen was the result of mis-translations, like one that happened when Awa accidental split one of his own arrows in the center of the target while shooting at night in the dark.  In Japan, splitting an arrow is very bad form because you are damaging your equipment.  Awa probably said something like, "Whoops, accidents happen," and Herrigel took that to mean something like, "Actions happen of their own accord, this is do to Buddha Nature."

_____________

The next essay by Stanley E. Henning is titled, "The Martial Arts in Chinese Physical Culture, 1865-1965." It's a sort of journalistic survey of other works which is biased by a sort of 1970's Taiwanese Nationalism.  Here, "martial arts" gets reductively defined as utilitarian combat skills.  Not coincidentally, all he has to offer about martial arts prior to 1900 are accounts of sensational violence from what must have been a kind of tabloid entertainment rag (think: 'Baby Born With Three Heads!').  There is a parallel here between this approach and the approach of Daoist experts (1950-1990) who went around saying that Daoism is a philosophical way of life and not a religion, dismissing actual Daoists as superstitious and ill-informed villagers who perform silly rituals.  Henning's references to historical works about how Nationalists and Communists have influenced the development and perception of martial arts are excellent.  Anyone not already familiar with this material will certainly benefit from that aspect of this article. (Also see my review of Andrew D. Morris's Marrow of the Nation, of Qigong Fever, or here for a discussion of Lineages.)  But Henning's reductionist definition of martial arts can no longer be taken seriously.  To dismiss religious, ritual, and theatrical origins of martial arts as some form of failure, or deficiency, or superstition, or side track, or degradation from a past purity, is nothing less than cant.

Happy New Year

Martial Arts in the Modern World (Part Two)

A number of new scholarly books on martial arts have come across my desk in the last month.  This field is in its infancy and I am exited to be part of the project of defining and inspiring it.  In that spirit, there is much in these works to praise, much to criticize, a yawn here and there, and a few things that need to be stopped dead in their tracks.

So this is the second of a series in which I will discuss individual essays within larger works.  The following essays are from a collection edited by Thomas A. Green and Joseph R. Svinth titled, Martial Arts in the Modern World (Praeger, 2003).

__________

Svinth and Green's "The Circle and the Octagon:  Maeda's Judo and Gracie's Jiu-Jitsu," traces the interaction between Judo players and Wrestling in the early 20th Century.  Maeda Misuyo made the leap from Judo to competitive wrestling, starting in America, and then in England, Spain, Mexico, Cuba, and finally Brazil.  But competitive wrestling has the problem that it is either over in a few seconds, or it lasts for hours with little action.  So most of the wrestling involved slap stick and elaborate back stories and costumes.  He was a huge star, especially in Mexico and Cuba.  In Brazil he was part of a circus show, where he met the Gracie brothers who were also in the circus.  He taught them Judo and the rest is history.  In summary, neener, neener, neener, MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) comes from the circus and is a kissing cousin of WWE.

__________

Graham Noble's "The Lion of the Punjab:  Gama in England, 1910," tells the story of an extraordinary South Asian Wrestler named Gama who traveled with two other top wrestlers to the heart of the British Empire to claim the title of the world's greatest wrestler.  Do to the fact that most of the pro-wrestlers were performance artists with superb slap-stick skills, he had a terrible time getting anyone to allow themselves to be smacked down for real. As an American reading the story I was cheering for him to humiliate a few of the old Colonials.  But the expression 'chicken' is too good for them.  Finally a sympathetic American was recruited from New York to fight him and was soundly defeated.  They found a guy from Poland to fight him too.  Gama and his crew, after 6 months of waiting, returned home having had only a handful of fights.  The account of his rise in India, his insane workouts, and his drive to succeed, are inspirational.  A timeless tale of human achievement, stuck in a strange moment in time.

__________

Thomas A. Green has two essays on African martial arts, "Surviving the Middle Passage: Traditional African Martial Arts in the Americas," and, "Freeing the Afrikan Mind: The Role of Martial Arts in Contemporary African American Cultural Nationalism."  Green must get credit for publishing first on these extremely interesting topics.  Unfortunately I already devoured TJ DESCH-OBI's, Fighting for Honor (2008), which I loved and reviewed here.  Obi's notion of honor makes these essays somewhat out of date and goes a long way toward explaining the unique forms of African Nationalist martial arts Green describes in Freeing the Afrikan Mind.

___________

James Halpin's "The Little Dragon:  Bruce Lee (1940-1973)," is the best succinct history of Bruce Lee I've ever read.  His father was a comic opera star, which is really where he got his chops.  He was a rich kid that wanted street cred, so he trained at the Wing-tsun school and got involved in illegal competitive roof top fights.  He got busted and in court his mom asked the judge if she could send him out of the country instead of to jail, and that's how he ended up in the United States.   His ex-girlfriend said he had the maturity of a 12 year old.  He gave amazing lecture demos, published a book on the philosophy of martial arts, and wrote the original screenplay for the Kung Fu television series.  Lee was an awesome egomaniac who transfixed a generation and propelled the martial performing arts of China into an international sensation.  He died from an allergic reaction to a large Aspirin.  The essay covers a lot of territory, and draws on many sources.

___________

to be continued....

Martial Arts in the Modern World

A number of new scholarly books on martial arts have come across my desk in the last month.  This field is in its infancy and I am exited to be part of the project of defining and inspiring it.  In that spirit, there is much in these works to praise, much to criticize, a yawn here and there, and a few things that need to be stopped dead in their tracks.

So this is the first of a series in which I will discuss individual essays within larger works.  The following essays are from a collection edited by Thomas A. Green and Joseph R. Svinth titled, Martial Arts in the Modern World (Praeger, 2003).

_____________

In "Sense and Nonsense:  The Role of Folk History in the Martial Arts," Thomas A. Green notes that most lineage histories and biographies appear to be false, yet they serve important social functions which should be explored.  He also points out that many stories from different schools concerning different teachers are essentially the same story.  I like his take on the problem.  But I would add this; unless and until we achieve widespread acknowledgement of the theatrical roots of these arts we will be forced to physically flip-flop between telling our lineage histories as social glue, as educational flux and as inspirational catalyst on the front end, and transmitting our knowledge of history and how the world actually works on the back end.  The reason we as martial artists tend to be contorted over lineage histories stems from a failure to adequately place those histories within social and intellectual movements.

______________

Joseph R. Svinth's "Professor Yamashita Goes to Washington," is a superb history of the first people to teach Judo in the United States.  The highlight of this account is that Theodore Roosevelt studied Judo at the White House! Over the years the President demonstrated his throwing and flipping skills on many a hearty visitor to the Oval Office Dojo.  While Roosevelt felt that after a period of months he had at least managed to throw Professor Yamashita convincingly, the Professor gave a slightly different account,  "According to a journalist named Joseph Clarke, Yamashita said that while Roosevelt was his best pupil, he was also 'very heavy and very impetuous, and it had cost the poor professor many bruising, much worry and infinite pains during Theodore's rushes, to avoid laming the President of the United States.'"  It's a brilliant and fun read.

_____________

To be continued...