Simple is beautiful

The practice of zhan zhuang, tai-chi, tai-chi nei gung or meditation can be dauntingly mythical. When I was a kid first learning the art, I had my fair share of initial frustration. After I did my best to manage my Jing (tai-chi internal power), my father would always frustrated me by saying: "You're too hard". In all frustrations, I tried again and be as relaxed as I could, my father would say: :"Are you sleeping, be more alert!". Now that I am teaching the stuff (not my bread-and-butter trade), I will try my best to make it simple for my students. In my case, I guess I have no choice. People come to me with problem(s), given a right attitude on their part, most of the time I will be willing to give some advice. Being not in the trade, I have to make sure that they can at least get some benefit from my advice within the first lesson (because some never have the opportunity to come for a second lesson!)  In other words, I don't have the luxury (or the financial pressure :)) to have a group of students hanging on to my side for a year or more.

As a result, in my practice, I have been trying to make things as simple as possible. And most of the time, it can be done. Having said that, sometimes I will displease certain practitioners who have taken a long time (perhaps a life time) to perfect their act. Their usual comment will be "It's not that simple" (which I agree, but things can be learned better from simplicity) with a subtext like "you're degrading the art", or worse with the subtext "you don't know the real thing yourself". Actually I don't mind them revealing their sub-text to me, although I can also understand that being polite they are too kind to cross me directly.

The most powerful simple tool is visualization. Like "holding a ball" or "embracing a tree" in zhan zhuang. It's not like really holding a ball or embracing a tree, but to fool our mind-body into believing such, and with our non-critical mind (therefore the zhan zhuang mold has to be between wake-up and asleep) guiding our mind-body to react likewise or "to do their job" now that it is needed like for real.

And like doing the 24 styles tai-chi nei gung for power building, I have come up with some novel visualizations, including weight lifting in Golden Turtle, and discus throwing in Sheep.

Recently I came across a book by a famous tai-chi master in Mainland China who praised the mythical power of non-contact combat (!). Most of his text rambled on mythical, historical and irrelevant narratives. And all of a sudden, I noticed a line in his chapter on Kua (跨 pelvic joints) opening. And he said something like this, "I am going to reveal a secret in my training method, try visualizing yourself swinging back and forth in a kid's swing".

I smiled to his good insight, "After all Simplicity is his secret!"

PS: My dear reader, can you tell me which master used similar technique (without mentioning the concept of Swing) in an English book on tai-chi nei gung?

The beauty of a simple swing