What is Double Weighted?

What does the term Double Weighted mean?  This term became a problem because one of the five Tai Chi Classics boldly states something to the effect of--if you've practiced for a long time and you still suck at push-hands, it's probably because of 'double weighting.'  I am going to settle the question of what Double Weighting means once and for all, definitively smashing all ambiguity asunder.  

Allow me to first try and preempt any possible death threats by explaining that there are indeed two important and useful skills which others have tried to label "double weighting" but which are a terrible match for the term.

The first is a skill any good stand up wrestler can often acquire quite quickly simply by practicing a lot with a partner.  If Bob and Joe are locked in a stand up struggle and Joe transmits all of Bob's force through his body to just one of his feet, he makes himself very vulnerable.  However, if Joe knows this he can align himself such that he can suddenly change the transmission of Bob's force from one foot to the other.  This creates an opening for Joe to attack if Bob tries to chase the force transmission going in-between Joe's feet.  Maybe it doesn't sound that simple but anytime you see two Greco-Roman Wrestlers locked in a standup battle, that's what is happening.  In Tai Chi push-hands practice because the spine stays vertical, this particular skill is counter intuitive, but it is still an effective beginning strategy.  So it is often taught that--if one fails to shift his partner's force from one foot or the other, he is double weighted.  One can see how if Bob's force and Joe's weight are both going to one foot it might be called double weighting.  But that's a mistake this skill should really be called something like a 'clinch set up,' or a 'weight/force transfer reversal.'  

The second fallacious usage of the term double weighting refers to the failure to conform to a basic matrix of push-hands skill.  This can get quite complex but I'll try to make it simple.  In upright push-hands if Bob and Joe are attached or connected in such a way that their mass can function momentarily as a single unit then it is possible for one of them to execute a throw using rotational force.  However, a rotating mass can have only a single axis!  Imagine the impossibility of trying to spin a globe which has two vertical axises.  It just won't spin.  To create a single axis for this type of finesse, Bob must spin his and Joe's weight entirely around a single vertical line going from one foot through his spine and head.  The reason failure at this particular skill is wrongly referred to as double weighting is that people sometimes try to finesse it with their weight on both feet, and of course it fails.  But why call this failure double weighting?  It should be described in the affirmative as rotational throwing off of a single leg or around a singe axis!  Why would failing at it need a separate name?  Especially when there are actually a whole bunch of other ways this particular skill can fail.  

So what does Double Weighted really mean?  It means that you are carrying the weight of two people.  Let me give some examples.  Bob and Joe are now grappling on the ground.  Bob tries to get as much of his weight on top of Joe as possible because Joe will find it harder to move if he is carrying Bob's weight in addition to his own.  This is a very basic tactic of all systems of ground fighting.  Make your opponent double weighted and they will find it difficult to move and will shortly run out of energy trying.  

Here is another example:  

The Football player in yellow is being forced to carry the weight of the player in white, thus, he is double weighted.  

Now Tai Chi push-hands is a practice which generally has very little obvious momentum, so the use of mass and weight is a counter intuitive advanced skill.  If Bob and Joe are pushing hands and are in contact and standing vertically and Joe feels Bob's weight on him, Joe is double weighted.  The skill of giving the entirety of your weight to a push-hands opponent is a big advantage because when your opponent tries to move, he will be carrying you.  In order to carry you he will have to expose the entirety of his structure.  If you make the mistake of being double weighted in push-hands you are toast.  

The main reasons most push-hands practitioners never learn the art of making someone else double weighted are listed here for your convenience:  Loss of frame, folding in the kua, lack of awareness of the head, leaning, and the inability to create whole body unity via melting into emptiness.

It is important to remember that in the deadly spontaneity of defending oneself against a threat, having someone give you all of their weight is not the end of the world, it can be turned into an advantage-- it's a really bad situation, but we train for bad.

Philosophy Is Often Too Weak

I picked up this book at the library last year and forgot to review it.  Such a great title: Martial Arts and Philosophy Beating and Nothingness, Edited by Graham Priest and Damon Young,  Vol. 53 in the Popular Culture and Philosophy® series.  

The sad truth is, I rarely find philosophy compelling.  I very much like live discussions where (my) ideas become the center of attention, so when philosophy is a voice in the mix it's fun. Nothing in this book struck me as novel or stimulating until yesterday when a student of mine graciously sent me a link to an article from the book.  In the context of a student taking an interest in the specific arguments of Gillian Russell I suddenly had a reason to reflect more deeply on them.

Here is the article.

And here is my response:  

If a person doesn't know the historical and religious origins of martial arts it is pretty easy to make unending categorical errors about the purpose of training, and to completely miss the fruition of practice.  If Gillian Russell were to come to class I think her mind would be blown.  If a person is completely unaware of what the fruition of weakness might be, how can he or she be expected to recognize that fruition when it appears?  If her methods require strength, then she is in a self-referential loop.  Are there really no down sides to strength in her experience? or is she simply ashamed of her own natural strength limitations?  

When we truly accept who and what we are, and appreciate our true nature the way it is--the result is freedom.  Why would we want to cover that up with strength unless we feared it?  (Or even weakness for that matter, as she laments a fellow student --and wannabe qi jock-- did.) 

Because we, as human beings, have yet to find the limits of what are, every method we teach is wrong.  Or rather, a method is only right in a particular context at a particular time to the degree which it serves to reveal something true.  Methods always have some fruition, the two are inseparably linked, but the fruition is not always what we expect.  We can never truly know the fruition of someone else's practice or what views they hold about themselves and the world.  We can only know what they communicate to us. 

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As a footnote I would like to add that I often encounter martial artists that believe what they have been taught was the method itself; that a given method is the correct way to stand or move or execute a technique.  There are only three methods I'm aware of in which the method is the same as the fruition.  They are wildness, stillness, and emptiness.  Everything else is preliminary or apophatic.  Everything else is wrong.

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Also as a footnote, because I mentioned philosophy, I have to say how disgusted I am by a show on NPR called "Philosophy Talk."  Their bad tasting tag line is, "We question everything except your intelligence."  Really?  Well it doesn't pan out because the hosts are so narrow minded and limited in their experience of both the real world and ideas that even when there is an interesting guest or topic they seem to squash it with their own pontificating.  Yesterday they were talking about the recent Citizen's United Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States.  They were completely oblivious to the pro-commerce arguments which obviously informed the majority of the court.  

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OK, since I seem to be in a confrontational mood, perhaps bought on by the large amount of time I've been spending around baby goats these last few weeks, please send me any and all links to books or articles about philosophy which you think might stimulate my horns to grow.  Thanks for listening.

 

The Right to Vote and Self-Defense

I have been saying now for a few years that 'self-defense' is a relatively new idea.  The basis of moral self-defense is a consequence of lower status people claiming parity against a majority.  Chinese actors (a degraded caste) must have found it very difficult to claim justifiable homicide or self-defense in the courts against a commoner--because actors were required to step into the gutter when a commoner passed them in the street.  

The same is certainly true of Jews in both Europe and the Middle East.  

For women, the possibility of independence from the protection and authority of a man was closely related to a woman's ability to earn independent income.  Along with income, and the right to vote, the notion of self-defense began to take shape.  

I'm very excited to see other people are taking an interest in the history of the idea of self-defense.  Here is a must read article:

One of the western world's first female martial arts instructors, Garrud, who died in 1971 aged 99, is thought to have learned jujutsu in the late 19th century. She began working with suffragettes between 1908 and 1911, eventually at her own women-only training hall, a room at the Palladium Academy dance school in Argyll Street

....."Woman is exposed to many perils nowadays, because so many who call themselves men are not worthy of that exalted title, and it is her duty to learn how to defend herself," [Edith Garrud].

Click the image to buy on Amazon!

A Note About Training Female Martial Artists

This is a difficult subject for me to take on, but I've had an opinion for so long I might as well put it in print.

Modesty is a form of education which inhibits movement to ensure specific cultural role conformity.  That's the definition I'm choosing to work from, and for the sake of this post I'm ignoring two other behaviors which are often conflated with modesty.  Namely; avoidance rooted in feelings of vulnerability, and choosing not to reveal oneself for strategic, experimental, or dispassionate reasons.

This education is intense, for example a women recently told me her mother was always asking her sarcastically, "Why do you always sit like a truck driver?"  I don't think I need to go into the 'how it's done' or 'why it happens' discussions.  Everyone with a pulse and a conscience has already thought about this.

Boys and girls in America do a lot of the same physical activities and get a lot of the same training.  Yeah, there are more boys playing baseball, and more girls doing ballet, but for the most part both genders get a lot of opportunities to practice complex coordination with running and jumping.  

And then puberty hits and young women's hips grow a lot wider.  In order to maintain running and jumping skills young women have to go through a process of re-learning how to run, jump and even walk.  Most don't dedicate the time and effort to make these changes, and because of this, they develop with their knees and ankles aligning not below their hips but more narrowly in-between their hips.  In fact, this alignment is often thought of as normal.  When men pretend to be women they often imitate this poor alignment.

One of the results of this narrower alignment is knee injuries, specifically torn ACL's (Anterior Cruciate Ligament).  Girl's soccer is one giant busted knee.  It doesn't have to be like this.

For martial artists the issue is very serious because body structure, integrity, force transfer, force absorption, frame and mobility are all dependent on good alignment of the legs.  Unfortunately it's hard to teach because modesty education and role conformity get in the way.  It can also take a long time.  Even more unfortunately, many teachers just decide to ignore the problem because it's a potential emotional landmine.  

I should probably make a video about this because I don't even know how to describe the slight dislocation of the hip joint that happens during complete weight shifts with momentum and it's force repercussion for the knees, ankles, and feet--or how to describe the power lost.  Men, by the way, often have the same problem to a lesser degree, but I've never noticed it tied into emotional content other than humility at having to re-learn something.  And let me make it clear, some women don't have this problem at all.  I have good things to say about the nation's gymnastics and dance teachers!  They get it.  And some women figure it out for themselves, perhaps driven by athletic or artistic passions.

That's pretty much all I have to say.  Now you know what is going on if your teacher tries to get you to walk like a cowboy all the time or some such thing.  I sincerely hope that we can begin to talk about this openly.  The barefoot running movement has been wonderful for clearing up a lot of confusion about what a human being is, but without addressing the hip-modesty-alignment issue the lessons of barefoot running will slowly get lost.  

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For those of you who were wondering if I'm going to talk about boobs, the answer is no.  It is my hope that a female blogger will take up this tissue (oops, I meant issue), as it is in serious need of attention.  This post by Rowan Johnson is a good start, and the third comment is intriguing. 

 

I spent an hour looking for good images to demonstrate what I'm saying.  Check out Zoe Bell (A+) next to Uma Thurman (C+).

 Uma ThurmanZoe Bell

Yin Yang

I wouldn't be a martial artist at all if I didn't love the "doi!" moments where I hit my self-on the forehead because I've just realized how wrongly I've been practicing for x number of years.  That's because those moments are transitions to new freedoms.  

Yinyang theory is among the most basic aspects of North Asian cosmology so I'm not going t go into it here because most of my readers already know it.

What got me excited is that I suddenly came to understand the yin and yang meridians in a way I never had before.  Or rather, I put together a bunch of discrete experiences into a coherent whole.  So I'll just make a list.

Zhang Xuexin taught that qi rises up the meridians on the insides and back of the legs, then moves to the yang meridians coming up the the back over the head and out along the tan side of the arms, and then comes from the palms inward along the yin meridians of the arms and down the face and then down the front of the body and then, moves down the yang meridians of legs which are on the outside edges and along the front.  Kumar Frantzis taught the same thing.  And generally this is part of any heaven-earth qigong series.  

Liu Ming expained that meridian flow, like the flow of qi in meditation, happens by itself, of its own accord, effort only inhibits it.

Markus Brinkman, on his roof in Taiwan, explained and demonstrated channel theory as it applies to martial arts using a finger counting system.  He was astonished at how fast I picked it up.  I puzzled on it for awhile and did a bunch of experiments.  The idea is that force is generated, defused/transformed and transmitted along specific groups of meridians in sequence.  The theory is in this book: Applied Channel Theory in Chinese Medicine Wang Ju-Yi's Lectures on Channel Therapeutics. 

I figured out through my own experiments that the yang meridians are better for defense and yin meridians are better for attacking.  In the language of tai chi, pengjin takes force on the yang meridians, jijin issues force via the yin meridians.  A corollary for this is that yin is gathered when our structure is organized towards the inside edge of the feet, yang is gathered when our structure is organized towards the outside edge of the feet.  

In an attempt to reduce all structural power (jin/jing) in my body I figured out that I could put my foot down during baguazhang walking as if it were a vacuum cleaner, allowing qi to draw inward as my foot takes weight. 

George Xu said to me sometime in the last year, "The yin and yang meridians have different jobs."

Anyway, all this fit together for me recently.  All these things have to happen at once --simultaneously and continuously.  Without this piece, we can not achieve an 'I know you, you don't know me,' situation.  Without the crystal clear differentiation of the roles of the yin and yang meridians, the dantian can not do its job of meeting our opponent before our mass does.  

It wasn't that hard to say, and no doubt, I believed many times over the years that I understood it intellectually and physically.  But until it was happening in my body under the pressure of testing and resistance, it was just words.  

There are so many ways to be wrong, it feels good to get a few more of them out of the way.

• For more background read this article on making a sandwich.  Or for tai chi structure theory read this. For the concept and rationale of reducing jing/jin read here.

Two Talks at Soja Martial Arts

Two talks at Soja Martial Arts in Oakland this month.  Join the fun.

Exploring Theatricality in Chinese Martial Arts with Scott Phillips 

Saturday, Date: 6/23/2012From: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM

For Soja's 2nd Summer Lecture series: Scott Phillips will be presenting a workshop/lecture on: Exploring Theatricality in Traditional Chinese Martial Arts Saturday, June 23, 7 – 9 pm Soja Member pre-registration price $20, or $25 @ door. Non-soja members pre-registration price $25 or $30 @ door. The mix of Martial Arts and Theater Arts has captured the popular imagination through super stars like Jackie Chan. But few people realize that before the 20th Century most martial arts were connected to some form of theatrical performance. These ranged from the numerous distinct styles of both folk and classical physical theater, known as ‘Chinese Opera,’ to festival skits, public exorcisms, martial processions, street performances, and improvisational games--all intimately built around actual fighting skills. This workshop will present the seamless confluence of martial arts basic training as a way to explore physical character development, mimic gesture, and as a tool for improvisation and crafting stage presence. This workshop will consist of a mixture of lecture and movement formats. All experience levels are welcome!

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The Shared history of Yoga, Dance & Martial Arts with Eric Shaw 

Saturday, Date: 6/16/2012From: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM

Eric Shaw will be lecturing for Soja's Summer lecture series: The Shared history of Yoga, Dance and Martial Arts Soja Member pre-registration price $20, or $25 @ door. Non-soja members pre-registration price $25 or $30 @ door. The Great Sage Bodhidharma is said to have traveled to from South India to China in the sixth century, where he taught Ch’an Buddhism and fighting arts to the monks at Shaolin. In the Kerala region he came from, they practice Kalaripayattu, a martial art that is also used by dancers to prepare for the stage. This is only one of many connections in the historical lineage, structure and purposes of these three practices. Come learn the complex story of their rich interweaving in Asian history from ancient days to our living moment, in this presentation rich with images.

Update on 2012-07-09 02:55 by Scott Park Phillips

Here is the Talk I gave!

What Is Emptiness?

Amazing Teachers

I've been teaching Northern Shaolin as a performing art in public schools for about 12 years.  A lot of these classes are residencies in which I visit an elementary school class once a week for an hour for a period of anywhere form 8 to 35 weeks depending on funding.  I usually do back to back classes in a gym or a cafeteria and sometimes outdoors.  The number of students ranges from 15 to 35, usually in the mid-20's.  Current rules require that a credentialed teacher be present in the class while I am teaching. Some teachers ignore this rule and leave their students with me.  Some sit in the corner grading papers and ignore what is going on.  Some try to "help" me teach.  Some, by their very presence,  inhibit students or cause over reaction in students. Some try to actually take the class as if they were a student themselves.  Some stay close by to help manage a student or two they personally have trouble with.  Some try to help me manage student behavior in general.  Some watch attentively and nothing else.  I've gotten a close look at a large number of teachers, good, bad and mediocre.  Let me describe two of the best teachers I've worked with.

One teaches second grade.  She stands tall and has a slight southern accent.  I get the sense that she is very "direct" because she doesn't move her head very much when she is talking to me.  She also has a generous smile, and has lately been walking with a limp.  Her second grade students consistently dominate the fifth graders in the school wide spelling bees (unless the fifth grade competitor was fortunate enough to have had her in the second grade!).  I generally meet with teachers the week before the residency begins, and that was the case with this teacher.  I remember very clearly how she brought her students into the cafeteria and then said to me, "Ok, then I'll be back in an hour."  A bit surprise, and worried, I said, "Really, you're just going to leave?"  "Yes," she replied, "You seem extremely professional and experienced and I'm certain my students will behave well."  I've had the opportunity to teach her students 5 or 6 years in a row and they consistently learn at nearly twice the rate of other students.  They are attentive, enthusiastic and supportive of each other.  They are also, and this is frankly amazing, capable of doing much more physically challenging material than most classes.

Another teaches third grade.  He is tall and has a buoyancy about him.  He wears bright colors, like pink and orange, and rides a big fast motorcycle.  He teaches bilingual Japanese and by the end of the year his students are conversant.  He has a full drum set in the room too.  I've worked with his students 5 years in a row and whenever I've had a reason to walk into his room, his students have accosted me with some request.  For instance, a student with a small note book in hand and a pencil behind her ear asked me one time, "Would it be OK if we estimated your height weight and shoulder width and then measured you?"  "Sure...I said."  Seconds later I'm surrounded by students with pads of paper in their hands and pencils behind their ears calling out estimates as they write them down.  Then they cooperated in the "fun" of measuring and weighing me, sharing in the shock and delight of recording real numbers next to guesses.  This teacher actually takes my class as if he were a senior student, sometimes reminding "other" students what the proper way to be a student is.  The second year I taught his class he told me that after taking my class the year before, he got his wife and kids involved in martial arts and that it is now something they love to do together as a family.  His students also learn at nearly twice the rate of other classes, they are comfortable asking complex questions about history and culture and tend to bring out aspects of my curriculum I didn't see coming.

I just finished teaching a 15 week residency with two back to back classes, a 4th and a 5th grade.  These are "new comers," meaning they don't speak English, so I have to teach them without much spoken language.  The 15th week was a 20 minute performance for some parents and the rest of the school.  It went really well.  These two teachers are very happy with my teaching (their both delightful to work with too by the way!).  A comment I often hear is that students are better able to focus in the classroom when they take my class.  My theory about this is that I value not-focusing in my classes as an appropriate way to learn martial arts.  When students have a context in which they are valued for being un-focused they are much more willing to accept and try to improve their ability to focus in other contexts.  I've worked at this school for 6 or 7 years, this year on the 14th week a student teacher with a PE credential happened to notice my class and decided to watch.  She was very excited about what I was doing; acting, dance, music, martial arts, strength, flexibility, complex motor memory, spacial awareness, cultural awareness, improvisation, interpersonal cooperation and competition.  She came back for the performance and expressed incredulity at the notion that I had only been working with them for 14 hours and had gotten them to develop, memorize and perform so much material.

I dare not compare myself to these amazing teachers but I can at least hope that some of their magic has worn off on me.

These two teachers teach at different schools.  It has occurred to me that if I had kids of my own I would fight to get them in these two teacher's classes.  But alas, there is a lottery for schools in San Francisco and the chances of getting either one of them is low.  Neither of these amazing teachers are doing what they do for the money or the pensions, ('though I do sense they cherish their long Summers!)  but I can't help thinking that if these two teachers were paid in some relationship to how much they are in demand, how much they are worth, that other teachers of this caliber would come out of the wood work, perhaps from other professions.  I don't want to dwell on the negative, but it seems worth noting, that as good as these teachers are, there are teachers out there who are as bad as these teachers are good.  And in the case of bad teaching, time spent in their classes...is damage.

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Reflecting on my own experience as a teacher is truly hard to do.  Can I trust my evaluations of myself?  Can I trust the evaluations of others?  Can I even hear them?  Here is my thought.  There are somethings that are important for students to learn that I am not particularly good at transmitting.  And there other important things which I'm an absolute marvel at transmitting.  I ought to be finding people to collaborate with on teaching.  A group of teachers who know and value each others strengths would be an amazing resource for students.

Dream Practice

The five practices of orthodox Daoism (Zhengyidao) are zuowang (sitting and forgetting), jindan (the golden elixir), ritual (the spontaneous and routine nourishing and re-balancing of living communities), daoyin (revealing ones true nature through exploring the limits of stillness and wildness), and dreaming.

I'm not sure anyone is really qualified to teach dreaming.  The other name for dream practice is "day and night the same."  In my own practice I have been experiencing a mind-body sensation that feels like dreaming.  It first started in my kua (hip area) and has spread to my entire body.  Sometimes it is intermittent, and sometimes it is only a portion of my body.  So it has become a measure of "good" practice that my entire body feels like it is dreaming.  Perhaps I could describe it as being outside of time.  Another characteristic of this "dream body," is that when I want to move, I move the environment around me.  I just think, "put the house behind you," and my body turns away from the house.  The sensation I get is a sort of short cut to doing what I've already been doing.  In that sense it may simply be the integration of new material.  But it feels deeply familiar.  Dream-like.

(Here is a post I wrote in 2007 on Tai Chi and Dreaming)

Sign-Up!

I'm reposting the info about Camp Jing below.  If you are interested in attending please contact me immediately!  I have had some enthusiastic interest but not enough sign-ups to run both weeks so I'm going to cancel one of them by May 16th-- I need to decide which one to cancel so people from out of town can buy plane tickets.  Give me a call or drop me and email:

gongfuguy@gmail.com    415.200.8201

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Basic Chinese Internal Martial Arts 5-Day Training

Lafayette, CA

Session 1 - JUNE 11th-15th
Session 2 - JUNE 18th-22th

The internal martial arts are famous for the cultivation of qi and effortless power; however, the qi levels
and spirit levels can only develop from a physical base.  Without a solid base of practice the higher
levels are in accessible.  This class will focus on physical prowess and high-level body mechanics.  We
will use spiraling, lengthening, shrinking, and expanding to connect the whole body into a powerful
platform for spontaneous freedom.

Zhanzhuang - The practice of standing meditation also called yiquan or wuji.  No one ever got good by skipping this step.

Neigong - Internal power stretch and whole-body shrinking and expanding. This is all the soft stuff!  It develops the four corners of martial fitness -  Unliftable, Unsqueezable, Unmoveable, and Unstoppable.

Jibengong - Basic training for internal martial arts, which includes individual exercises to develop irreversible body art (shenfa), exquisite structure (xing), and refined power (jin). Taiji, xinyi, or bagua focus, depending on your experience.

Lecture-encounters will include a Daoist text studies introduction and history, along with group exploration of the experimental links between theater and meditation. All instruction will be given in the classical one-to-one naturally disheveled style in order to meet and match each person?s unique experience and insights.

Two Person Practices develop spacial awareness and technical spontaneity while systematically testing every part of our physical and emotional bodies. This includes everything to do with resistance, light contact, throws, rough footwork, tui shou, and roshou. How can we discard our social need to dominate or submit, and embody nonaggression without giving up marital prowess?

Schedule
Begin in the parks around Lafayette, CA
6 AM  Zhan Zhuang
7 AM  Neigong
8 AM  Jibengong
*9 AM  Breakfast  (Optional: rice porridge made from bone stock with pickled foods)
10 AM Two Person Practices Training
12 PM Lunch - bring your own or eat locally.  Take a nap, drink tea...
2 PM Lecture/Encounter
4 PM End

*Breakfast will be based on Traditional Chinese Nutritional Theory.

Sleeping
There is camping in the area, hotels, youth hostels, and many other options. We will be walking distance from a BART train stop which means you can stay pretty much anywhere in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Cost per session - $350

To reserve your spot send a check made out to:
Scott P. Phillips
62 Stanton St., San Francisco CA 94114

Feel free to email gongfuguy@gmail.com or call 415.200.8201 to discuss details.