The theory of friction walk

Friction walk (摩擦步) is the hallmark of muscles-as-one execution in movement of Master Wang XianZai' system of healing and internal martial art. It is a highly innovation practice in solving the training problem: "how can a student be to learn to keep his chi-filled state during movement" - a more likely mode than stationery standing in combat or daily life!

In traditional practice of internal martial arts, like tai chi, movement often involve raising one's feet before stepping forward. The raised feet will cause the body to lose some chi - if not in very slow focused practice at least in actual normal speed movement.

In my own teaching, I always start with prior training of slow (or very slow) tai chi walk, to open my student's hip joint (Kua) before proceeding with friction walk. Indeed friction walk is more "advanced" in the sense that one can't reap its full benefit without a foundation in tai chi walk. The Kua must be loosened before it can generate powerful chi during friction walk.

What are the important points to note in friction walk, besides prior training in tai chi walk?

1. There must indeed be friction! The feeling of friction (the concept of internal feeling is of paramount importance in the internal arts) is created through controlled weight to the feet/sole of the advancing leg.
2. The body must be moving at a fixed horizontal level.
3. The pair of stretched hands are for body balancing and internal chi balancing.
4. Weight distribution on feet: about 90/10.

What internal feeling to expect (or to be targeted)?

Muscles-as-one.

Friction steps

The importance of training objectives in the internal arts

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don’t much care where--" said Alice.
"Then it doesn’t matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"--so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you’re sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."
(Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 6)

It is true about Alice and more true about practitioners of the internal arts.

A few years ago, a prominent Taoist/tai chi/martial arts (including Muay Thai) master affiliated with a major Taoist temple in Hong Kong gave video-taped public lectures on tai chi chi kung for health. On passing, he made fun of practitioners who did like "one zhan zhuang stance for an hour and another zhan zhuang stance for another hour, tiring themselves out". "There are much easier ways" and he demonstrated his, primarily through activating ones' pelvic floor muscles (including or initiated by anus contraction and relaxation), vocalization and some shaking. Zhan zhuang was included but not "the one hour this and then that" type.

So, is it "the one hour this and then that" type of zhan zhuang no good? Accordingly to our master (and your author's view) the answer is no. For most people doing chi kung or nei kung for health, that is simply not an effective and efficient method. The choice of method should depend on one's training objectives. Thanks to the proliferation of training methods made public nowadays (through Youtube and the like, plus publications, and.... personal blogs of course), a practitioner or his teacher can choose whatever are suitable to one's training objective (assuming good understanding and sound coaching).

This is progress. In contrast, those who still hang on to "their own" traditional methods regardless of objectives, no matter which lineage their claim to have, in my view, have unnecessarily limited themselves to less than the best method(s) for specific training objectives (I have assumed that they indeed have genuine training objectives other than the "objective" of "learning a certain lineage").

Sometimes I was appalled seeing some of these practitioners even refusing to acknowledge the "correctness" an advanced form of a practice (e.g isometric contraction, isokinetic movement or nano-movement). Why? Because their teachers never taught them! I'm not joking, a few days ago, a student of mine told me that he discussed with a few tai chi practitioners the other day, and a sifu vehemently argued that Sink your breath to the Dan Tian  氣沉丹田 is an incorrect concept in tai chi!


Where you want to get to?

Chi kung training for mobility

We stretch because we want to increase our mobility. The most important areas that a practitioner of any sports wants to tackle are the mobility of his shoulder and hip joints. When I was a boy, my father told me that it was a heart-breaking scene, when he was a young boy, seeing kids trained for mobility in the Cantonese opera group his younger uncle ran in Canton (Guangzhou). That was a forced kind of stretching. The quickest and most effective method for kids, and most painful too – all the kids cried, my father told me. For adults training for mobility for a fitter body and mind, fortunately there is a better way – chi stretching.

The essence of training for mobility is relaxing, lengthening and strengthening each piece of muscle around a targeted joint. The degree of flexibility required depends on the objective of our training. The gist of learning stretching is to learn a method (or methods) that can do the relaxing, lengthening and strengthening. Forced splitting and chi stretching are only two methods out of many. The former is most suitable for kids with an objective for maximum flexibility while the latter is most suitable for adults who want to achieve good (not maximum) flexibility while training for whole body fitness at the same time. I shall explain the latter further below.

Tai chi and chi kung is all abouit training our internal sensitivity. When we say chi flowing stronger inside our body we also mean we can feel the tiny bits of individual muscles and muscle/body tissue groups. When we have achieve a heightened level of chi sensitivity we can feel the more targeted or isolated muscles that we need to focus our attention on. And with each hurdle being overcome, we can feel another, deeper, level of blockages (muscles that need to be tampered) that we should work on. This understanding is most important in the training of flexibility the chi kung way. In order to do chi-flexibility training, you must begin with an initial training to cultivate your chi sensitivity. Some training of zhan zhuang is the best way to achieve this initial training objective.

Assuming that you have achieved a certain level of chi sensitivity (which might take about six months’ training time), you can do your own healing. While doing your regular tai chi or chi kung exercises, you should start focusing on identifying specific area of blockages in your body, and you target them for healing. In other words, chi flexibility can be included into your regular training, with different mind-focusing during the exercise.

How to heal (open/strength 松沉) your blockages? It is by synchronizing your breathing with the specific blocked area(s). By single-mindedly focusing on the mechanism of your breathing (abdominal breathing that activates both your diaphragm and your pelvic floor muscles, with your Dantian [a few inches behind your belly button, the exact location varies with individuals] as your focused power point) and your blocked area, you will be able to use your Dantian powerhouse to gradually open your blockage. Synchronization is the key, learning from a teacher will be helpful.

It is a two step method that has to be trained in that order. That means if you have not been trained to have a certain level of chi sensitivity, you cannot be trained using the healing method as taught above. Needless to say, having learned the training method itself is only the beginning. In my father’s day it was called entering the door (入門). And an essential quality for a student to called inner circle student (入室弟子) was that he has entered the door. Entering the door is not everything. It is only the beginning a fruitful journey.

No pain no gain?

Acupuncture vs chi kung – competitive or complementary practice?

The practice of chi kung has a long history in China, predating tai chi and other internal martial arts.  In ancient China, chi kung practice was the main treatment method for poor people when they were sick. And the teachers of chi kung were sometimes Taoist masters in local Taoist temples. Sometimes such treatments were accompanied with religious faith, more often, it rested upon the trust of a local healer who learned from Taoist masters.

The practice of acupuncture also has a long history. Primarily it was an supporting medical practice for traditional Chinese medical doctors using herbal medicines for healing. In addition to opening internal blockages for healing, another important usage of acupuncture is to suppress the sensation of pain and was used as anesthetic for surgical procedures in Dynasty China.

In our contemporary society chi kung is now practiced as mind body exercise rather than as medical practice. On the other hand acupuncture is practiced as a traditional Chinese medical practice. In Hong Kong, everybody can claim to be a chi kung teacher (whether or not he has any student/"patient" is not an issue here) while practicing acupuncturists are regulated - passing a Licensing Exam with prior Undergraduate degree.  The question is: do these two discipline overlap?

Both acupuncture and chi kung aim at opening blockages in our body. The former aims at reaching finer area to heal specific disease while the latter target as broader area aiming at opening more holistic muscle/body tissue groups. The former depends on the activity and sensitivity of the acupuncturist while the latter depends on the activity and sensitivity of a practitioner (and his teacher). Both need to be trained. The former depends more on “prescribed method” based on classical texts and oral tradition while the latter depends almost exclusively on the inner sensation of a practitioner (or as perceived by his teacher).

Does an acupuncturist need to learn chi kung for his practice? The answer is no. Needling sensitivity is different from chi kung's chi sensitivity. Therefore a chi kung master doing acupuncture has no additional edge (and vice versa). If your acupuncturist tries to impress you with his chi kung background, don’t listen to him. It is just his sales pitch. Judge him on his needling skills only.

When doing acupuncture, a patient is advised not activate his chi (assuming that he has learned how to activate his chi through his chi kung training). He should relax completely so that his acupuncturist can feel or sense his internal chi and manage his needling accordingly. Any internal activation will interfere with, instead of, helping the needle healing process.

One exception that I have heard of from a learned chi kung master and meditator. It is that a certain school of Neidan (Taoist yoga) of the Dragon Gate lineage has a “secret” needling method for stimulating chi going up one’s spinal cord – the classic microcosmic circulation. To properly jump-start the microcosmic circulation, a practitioner needs to boost up a huge amount of concentrated energy. These “needling practitioners” was reported to have a method that uses a special method of needling around the tip of the spinal cord. With the practitioner using such stimulation as a way to activate chi, a massive amount of chi energy was said to be able to boost up to create a proper microcosmic circulation. A speedy way to open the blockages in our spinal cord without the lengthy method of deep meditation, as a proponent of this method proclaimed. I didn’t personally know anybody having tried this method. Therefore I cannot judge its efficacy. Personally I don’t want to have somebody needling the tip of my spinal cord. In theory, this method might just work.

Traditional acupunctural points

What mind body exercise is all about

Mind body exercises are training of our mind and body. What are the training objectives of mind body exercises? What are considered good training results? 

One liner wisdom blog Aphorism of the Day is one of the few blogs that I follow. The author's most recent entry Body and Mind gave the best answer to the above questions. It says:

Movement is the freedom of the body; stillness, of the mind.

In mind body exercises our ultimate objective is freedom.

In the body part of mind body exercises, we train our body's flexibility and core strength, so that we can move our joints with ease, and we can move about with light feet. It is not muscular, but muscle tuning is essential. It is not flexibility training, but joint movement with equal degree of freedom at all possible directions. It is not sweating all over (sweating though is acceptable and good), but body filled with warmth. It is not no pain no gain, but we can choose the level of strenuousness.

In the mind part of mind body exercises, we train our mind to become still, not stillness as without passion, not stillness as death. It is stillness with calmness. As warm as our tempered body, as passionate as our heart and as controlled as our breathing.

Our mind wants to be free from the constraints of our body. Before that can be achieved, we have to free our body first. Finally mind becomes body and body becomes mind. No more inner civil war between our body and mind. A sound objective for everybody who has passed the meridian of his life.

Different aspects of our mind

What is the meaning of mind? Mind has many different meanings in different disciplines and different approaches in the same discipline. When people say mind, they may mean quite different things.

When Descartes wrote: I think therefore I am (Cogito ergo sum), he meant our mind defines our existence. One cannot talk about existence, and anything, without a mind. In extrapolation, before human existence, there must be a Mind to make existence of the physical world possible, which pointing to the existence of God, however one defines God. There are endless debates about whether God exists. Good for mental training. But like all ontological issues, each speaks within his own system of constructed concepts, each, rightfully, believes that he is totally logical (within his own system), and therefore any discussion seeking for any ultimate truth across systems is futile. A more complex and finely argued system may not necessarily be superior to a sloppily argued system in terms of ultimate truth. The classical difference between efficiency and effectiveness. Besides the Divine might prefer comedy over philosophical drama!

The postulation of a Universal mind can lead to the postulation of the existence of telepathy, the transmission of information from one person to another without using any of our known sensory channels or physical interaction. According to teachings of Buddhism and Taoism this is a special power of enlightened practitioners obtainable through the training of deep meditation. Experiencing that special power is however still the experience of an individual's conscious mind, as far as what evidence scientists can see, it never steps beyond psychology into physical science. Of course that doesn't diminish its significance or importance. Miracles are oftentimes needed for uneducated believers. Our major religions nowadays have more or less do away with miracles. Special power is therefore de-emphasized. As such telepathy nowadays belongs more to popular culture in the form of popular fictions, TV dramas and movies, though telepathy is still eagerly pursued by some New Age spiritualists who are fond of experimenting with all kinds of contacts, including hypnosis, shamanism and telepathy, with the spiritual world. As one of my spiritually inclined friend once wrote: you may think that I am superstitious, but shamanism offers an avenue to get in touch with the spiritual world, and this avenue has existed for thousands of years in all cultures. What he meant probably is I place more truth in my direct internal experience than what scientists say. Fair enough.

For psychologists, there is our Conscious mind and our Subconscious mind. Our Subconscious raises its sometimes ugly head during our Freudian slips. The common usage of mind in our daily language only means our Conscious mind. Our subconscious mind, according to psychoanalysis, is the cause of most of our psychological disorders as experienced by our Conscious miind. The cure of such disorders will be counseling for minor cases and psychoanalysis (now almost a lost art) or prescription of psychiatric drugs in major cases, with a lot of in-between treatments. Nowadays, our psychologists have taken over the duties of shamans, though for minor cases, many people will seek alternative treatments like astrology, fortune telling, and mind-body exercises.

For mind-body exercises, the mind is an entity to be trained so that it can be in sync with the body. The process is to allow the mind to temper the body and then allow the tempered body to re-temper the mind, in a circular upward spiral. For the body it becomes a tuned-up and healthy body. For the mind, it becomes free from stress, frustration, anger, irritation, phobia and other psychological problems. How effective it is depends on different systems, teachers and individual students. Mind-body exercises can also lay an essential foundation for people seeking spiritual objectives. Spiritual pursues without tempering the body in the process can possibly lead to cases of psychological disorders.

In summary, a philosophical quest on the mind produces insight. A spiritual quest on the mind produces enlightenment. A psychological quest on the mind produces understanding. And a mind-body quest on the mind produces.... results.

Our mind

The new fad of mindfulness meditation

Many years ago, Hong Kong company executives like to join groups doing fire walks and board breaking. What is it all about? This is what is being said in a website on the subject:

We’ve all witnessed Martial Arts experts effortlessly and gracefully break boards and bricks with just their bare hands. You can too, as long as you harbour no doubt, resistance, or shrinking back when you strike. Behind these activities lies a lot of physics.

In short:
•Speed not strength is the key.
•No time to be timid.
•100% commitment to follow through.
•No self doubt.

Give it 99% commitment, then the physics wins! The board and brick workshops are a great metaphor for learning how to control limiting self talk, setting past goals and breaking through challenges and self doubts.

This is self-help plus. But like reading self-help books, the effect doesn't last long (for best selling self-help books, the effect may last as short as a week-end and one have to pick up another book again, or forget about "the whole damn thing" when on Monday your boss or spouse is onto you again!). That means to keep the effect going, one has to go on firewalks or board breaking workshops periodically or regularly. Like going to regular group dynamics workshops run by psychologists for similar purpose. Fire walks and board breaking are no longer popular nowadays in town.

The IN thing is mindfulness training. Recently the English channel of a local TV station ran a documentary on this trend. Why English channel? Because Western educated middle-class locals are more onto it.

What is it? This is what is being said in a website on the subject:

It’s a busy world. You fold the laundry while keeping one eye on the kids and another on the television. You plan your day while listening to the radio and commuting to work, and then plan your weekend. But in the rush to accomplish necessary tasks, you may find yourself losing your connection with the present moment—missing out on what you’re doing and how you’re feeling. Did you notice whether you felt well-rested this morning or that forsythia is in bloom along your route to work?

Mindfulness is the practice of purposely focusing your attention on the present moment—and accepting it without judgment. Mindfulness is now being examined scientifically and has been found to be a key element in happiness.

In essence mindful meditation is junior/lightweight Zen meditation. Full weight Zen meditation has its benefits and shortcomings as I discussed in a previous post: Why Zen meditation does not work (and how to make it work). Mindfulness meditation is a marketing concept. It is meant to devoid from specific religion and to aim at transforming the age-old Zen training objectives into one with more relevancy to the modern men, in particular company executives and professionals with a more Westernized and scientific mind. As marketing is, it is all about getting people to open their purse.

Only little effort is required, perhaps a little more than reading a popular self-help book, though such little effort can sometimes be elevated/marketed into "hard core" or "the real thing", or any power concept one can imagine. The benefits are huge. Boosting one's morale, instilling a positive outlook, a calmer mind for more vigorous secular tasks, good husband/wife, good parent, good worker, good neighbor etc etc being promised.

A guarantee for easy gain nullifies a practice where hard work is required. A fallacy committed by many, not just mindfulness meditators. It is so easy for an internal art to be practised as low-impact routine, up to a point where the core is totally lost. The gist of the matter is if one cannot change oneself physically first in the internal arts aiming at mind transformation, one has to go back to get spoon-fed/encouraged mentally (well, with some limited physical efforts) to keep the effect going. There is a good reason why the internal arts are called mind-body exercises. Both mind and body conditioning are equally important in our art.



Firewalking 

Sufi meditation

Whatever happened, happened for good. Similarly: God has a purpose in everything. A good consolation to those who have suffered a lost or are unfortunate enough to be in a difficult situation in life. Martin Luther King, Jr held different view when he proclaimed: I have a dream. Karl Marx called it: Opium of the people. As it was said to be preached by religions. Some meditation schools nowadays teach their students to focus on and accept the here and now. It is said to be the route to enlightenment. Or is it?

Is the practice of Tao about accepting what is or does it advocate change? Is life a transient fantasy and hence we should focus on the eternal instead? Interesting enough, most organized religions today advocate change for the good of others while most New Age spiritualists advocate self-enlightenment to seek the eternal and look down upon efforts in promoting changes in our transient physical reality, as I have observed. 

Recently I took an interest in Islamism, as an area of spiritual interest. There were not many Muslims in Hong Kong when I was brought up. In the past decades, Hong Kong families took in more and more Indonesian maids (most of them Muslims) at their homes. Today Indonesian maids outnumbered Pilipino maids, in the past the latter were the only foreign domestic helpers in town. Pilipino maids are more professional while the Indonesian maids are more compassionate. With the aging population, Indonesian helpers are becoming an important human resource. As I can see it, they took care of the grannies with more compassion and love, oftentimes disregarding their personal interests and leisure time. Jihad has a different meaning for many Indonesian maids in Hong Kong.

If the compassion of an Indonesian maid represents the day to day practice of good Islamism, the road of a Sufi-to-be represents the higher level spiritual way of self-enlightenment of Islamism. Typically a student of Sufism will follow a Sufi master in the relation of a master and his disciple. The relationship is, behaviorally speaking, completely one sided. The student will have to follow the instructions of the master completely, without holding on a bit of his judgment (not even an attempt to avoid his own physical harm) or emotions (not even compassion towards others). The personality of the student becomes an adjunct to the master, who will test such dependency by requesting unreasonable tasks and meaningless duties from time to time, until such day the master proclaims the learning process of his student is finished and successful, or terminated and unsuccessful. The gist of it is totality: total acceptance and total dependence. And from which liberation comes.

But does that mean totally accepting the worldly reality, however one defines it, or not defining it at all?

No. For a Sufi, the only reality is total acceptance of and dependence on Allah. The master is only a signification of this spiritual enlightenment process. Only through total dependence can one be totally free to act in services of the Divine. Change is the end while dependence is only the means. A fundamental understanding of Sufism as well as all internal pursuit of experiential spirituality. It cannot be otherwise.

Sufi meditation

Miracle healing

Recently a reader asked me to comment on a miracle chi-healer from Indonesia. A quick research showed that, as with many other claims on miracle healing, there are netizen comments that said It is possible and other comments that said the guy is a crook.  Healing here means healing of the body instead of the soul.

Miracle healing by definition means that a purported healing has not yet been supported by rational or scientific means. To demonstrate his ability, the healer usually did some spectacular acts. The Indonesian guy was, for example, seen to light up a light bulb with his fingers and his touch could send electricity-like shock to people. The specular acts served as proof that the guy has miracle power, which would, as patients were made to believe, that he has magical healing power. In short, the miracle acts is marketing, the supposed healing effects is the product offered.

These miracle acts have not be proved to be staged show (otherwise they will not be called miracles). The point is however, as in this case, nobody will be interested in asking the master to perform such extraordinary acts per se, like generating electricity to light up a bulb. Rather his purported power is the reason for believing in his healing power.  The scenario can only be one of the below: You believe in his miracle power and you might also believe in his healing power. Or you believe in his miracle but you don't believe he has healing power. Or you believe in neither. He hoped that you will take the first option.

From the above analysis, we can see that a discussion on individual miracle healer cannot generate conclusive or interesting results.

A more interesting question: Has miracle healing  been only practised by alternative healers?

When people are in desperation, some seek miracles. In Hong Kong, major illness like cancers are treated in Government hospitals with good facilities at HK$100 for residents, all inclusive per day of hospital stay, and free for those on Welfare. Doctors are professionals and would recommend needed treatments. To cover cases outside Western medical professions, some public hospitals also have their Chinese medicine departments. In addition to physiotherapy treatments, public hospitals also offer tai chi and chi kung courses for certain discharged patients. All additional services are with reasonable charges.

Yet some people still seek miracle healing, whether buying over-the-counter miracle potions or seeking a miracle healer in person. The rich might choose to go to places like Thailand, Taiwan or Indonesia where more services are on offer, besides, mountain ranges do offer more hope for miracle power which the concrete jungles in Hong Kong failed to inspire.

The use of "miracle healing" in mainstream medical practice is less well publicized. Typical cases are the recommendation of remotely relevant surgical procedures and prescription drugs. One can imagine, this happens in private practices rather than Government clinics or hospitals. But what are the spectacular acts that can induce unquestioning belief? Typically of their credentials, like a (former) professor of a prestigious University - such credential is equivalent to, and as good as, lighting up a light bulb with one's fingers. The miracle believers will follow his recommendations without asking for additional professional opinion or advice, or still follow his advice despite contrary advice from other medical professionals - "Other doctors can't but our professor can! That's why he is the best in his profession!"

When desperate people seeking for miracles, miracles will always come, irrespective of whether it is Indonesia or Hong Kong. Perhaps unfair to practitioners of alternative medicine, mainstream miracle healers usually can get away from the sanction of our law court easier, because they can argue more scientifically in court and our society has more trust on them in general. Not all cases go wrong and indeed there have been "reported" cases of good healing effects. However, if anything goes wrong, the lost will be upon money, physical injuries and/or sex. Now and then one such healers will be put behind bar in Hong Kong.



Healing of the body by miracle

In praise of cocktail therapy and training philoshopy

Jack of all trades is someone who prided himself to know or to have learned many different disciplines, but master in none of them. A student of general commercial studies know many subjects but specializes in none. A friend of mine who studied industrial engineering jokingly tell me that he was not an engineer because he was not an expert in any engineering subject. Interdisciplinary studies in University usually end up in the same category. It is a fact that there are simply too many subjects. When one ties too many subjects together, it is a matter of time before one suffers from indigestion and become a JOAT.

Yet Dr. David Ho (a Taiwanese American) was made famous for his cocktail treatment of HIV. Ho helped devise the HAART or highly active anti-retroviral therapy, which prescribes a cocktail of drugs to treat AIDS, on the theory that it would be more effective to combine powerful protease inhibitors with other HIV medications.

What is the difference between jack of all trades and cocktail? And how is it relevant to healing and the internal arts in particular?

Take tai chi as an example. There are many family lineages of tai chi (Chen/Yang/Wu etc), and there are many internal variations with each lineage (north/south, wide/narrow, Mr.X vs Mr. Y vs Mr. Z etc), sometimes with contradictory training methods. Moreover, like many traditional arts, many teaching methods are taught as "untouchable" methods, the teacher has no responsibility to explain why he teaches this way or that way, the student on the other hand has the responsibility to follow his teacher's instructions to the letter. As a matter fact, how many people have the time and energy to learn more than a couple of lineages, not to mention the ability to digest them!

What then is the different of learning a number of tai chi lineages (and other internal art forms) and the use of cocktail treatment in HIV? The difference is that the latter starts with a concrete objective - a treatment objective to be specific.

To get the benefit of cocktail, a student of the internal arts has to set up his own learning or training objectives and seek from whatever styles, lineage or training method that he believes will be useful for him to achieve his objectives. On the part of the teacher, his role will have to be changed from one who teaches a set of pre-determined movements/forms to a personal coach who tailor-makes a training method (based on his own learning and knowledge) for his student based on his student's training objectives.

Recently I was introduced to a graphic presentation of different approaches to yoga and meditation. The author asked me to let my readers know. Readers interested in the subjects or the philosophy of cocktail training may find it interesting to have a look HERE.

 

The concept of cocktail

Tai chi as personal art

A casual browse on the internet, a student of tai chi can access much information, many are free, like this blog, on the subject, in particular for those who can comprehend the Chinese language. Even those who do not understand the Chinese language, there are ample information available for any eager student. An over flow rather than an under flow. The problem with abundance is that it is almost impossible for a beginning student to judge which is right (and among the right which is appropriate to his own particular body and his level of progress), and which is wrong. Unfortunately there are indeed incorrect information available. Tai chi (and similar internal disciplines) being an unregulated industry, to avoid unnecessary debates, most learned practitioners tend to refrain from pointing out "not so correct" paths.

Seeing this bewildering offerings of help (some free), some students take the route of hiding behind his own lineage door. "This is not what my lineage master told me, therefore it must be wrong". Some, keep on reading and trying, hoping that one day he can enter the speedy door. Unfortunately, both approaches fail. Every master is limited by his own learning experience. A good master of tai chi, like a master in any profession, has to update his own professional knowledge. On the other hand, any new trick without the required learning progress, cannot deliver good results.

I will use the concept of Jing (internal power) as an example.

The muscular theory of Jing is very simple: you focus on your extension muscles to move your limbs (and other parts of your body in sync) rather than your contraction muscles. When you push your arm forward, you focus on your biceps, and gradually extend them. Likewise when you pull it back, you focus on your triceps. As simple as this. The result is that you will get a sluggish chi sensation. And as a student, your responsibility is to make this process smoother and smoother, with your internal chi (sluggish) feeling stronger and stronger, and your body is more and more in sync (i.e. not exercising your arm alone).

But wait, this is not my teacher told me about Jing!

Hei, I tried it, but no jing, therefore it didn't work for me. Are you sure you understand the concept? Should you yourself find a good teacher instead?

I have told you, haven't I?

Tai chi is a personal sculptural art. You can rationally learn to appreciate Zhu Ming's tai chi sculptures, but you have to create your own tai chi sculpture using your body as raw material. No other way!

Tai Chi - by world renown Taiwanese sculptor Zhu Ming

The most misunderstood concept in tai chi

What is the most misunderstood concept in tai chi, even for some with years of experience? It is the tai chi essential of Use Yi (mind) instead of Li (muscular power). I had been puzzled by and misunderstood the concept for many years learning tai chi from my father when I was a kid. My query was "How can one fight without muscles strength?" A very valid question!
By refusing to use muscular power, many tai chi practitioners practice their martial art like a meditator. A meditator has other objectives. He aims at opening his inner chi channels, in particular his central channel (zhong mai 中脈). He sits for hours after hours daily to build up his required level of chi to move it along his, often blocked, chi channels. He has patience and he needs to have it. On the positive side, this is THE way to calm a meditator's restless mind, which is one of his learning objectives in the first place.

Recently I came across a Taoist Neidan (Taoist deep meditation) book written by a well known Taiwanese master. He said that in our fast pace modern world, meditators should also learn some internal martial art, like tai chi, or at least some chi movement exercises (Dao Yin 導引) to facilitate the building up of chi. Apparently the non-muscular method has failed even the modern meditators who do not have time to practice a minimum of 3-5 hours of undisturbed seated mediation daily.

But how come ancient tai chi masters told us to Use Yi (mind) instead of Li (muscular power)? Are these master wrong all along?

The simple answer is no. To solve the puzzle, we have to go back to the basic concept: masters of internal disciplines primarily talked and wrote about internal experience. And, like any important internal concept, the reasoning is simple - though getting the right internal feeling needs some good practice. This is my take:

To lift up an object from the ground to our shoulder level with our right hand we contract our biceps. This internal feeling of muscular contraction we call Li. But if we visualize ourselves slowly lifting up a heavy object with a stretched hand (i.e. not making a tight-fist) and focus our mind on our triceps and related muscles at four forearm (and energized them simultaneously), we can feel all the muscles in our arm being energized (all muscles contracting!) And this energized internal feeling is called Chi, and the manifestation process is called using Use Yi (mind)

But this is not what my tai chi master told me all these years? Why?

I have no answer to this question.

Dao Yin exercise for meditators

The three essentials of internal martial art - No 2: Managing your internal chi sensation

This is the second article of the subject. The first article can be read here.

There is an interesting phenomenon in internal martial art: everybody talked about movements and subtle movements but hardly anybody talked about internal chi sensation as an independent subject. And internal chi sensation is the steering gear to the practice, like a conductor of an orchestra, or the CEO who seems to be doing nothing concrete.

Fair to say, internal chi sensation is a difficult, and almost impossible, subject to talk about. Taoist mediation (or Neidan) is all about internal chi sensation. The reason is that there is no visible external movement! There are loads of old texts talking about internal sensation by diseased masters, some were secret texts, some were published texts. Nonetheless, readers have been puzzled by the texts for hundreds of years.

Classic tai chi texts is the in-between. There are movements and there are internal chi sensation, intertwined together. But it hasn't made things easier for tai chi students (or sifu teaching it). Modern readers are still trying, frequently in frustration, to decipher them.

Without an understanding of chi sensation, how can a student learn, not to say manage, chi sensation?

The answer is simple. One starts learning about love after one falls in love. The same for chi sensation.

The criterion for a successful learning of chi sensation are: firstly you can distinguish what is chi sensation and what is not chi sensation; and secondly you are able to feel the state of increasing chi sensation. The first ensures that you know what to look for and the second ensures that you know what is progress or where to go.

The best way to learn it is through a teacher who can teach it to you in person.

Master Mi Jingke (秘静克), a student of master Wang Xiangzai (founder of Yi Chuen 意拳，大成拳), talked about her experience in learning zhan zhuang from master Wang (in her books on the subject). She said that whenever she practised in front of Wang she would get a higher level of chi. Master Wang simply moved her stance at a few points and there it went, chi grew.

The logic is simple, if not its actual execution. A good teacher will be able to infer his student's internal chi flow, and therefore the blockages, simple through observing him doing a stance. And by creating additional chi points in his student's body, he can manage his chi flow to achieve a higher chi level or move chi to open a particular blockage. On the part of the student, he has to remember such internal sensation and try to recreate it during his solo practice.

In tai chi lingo, a master has to know himself (understand his own internal chi flow) then he has to know others (understand his student's chi flow) - before he becomes a good teacher.

Madam Mi added another requirement to be a good chi kung teacher: he must be able to judge whether a new system of chi kung is good or bad.  A good chi kung teacher should be able to recreate the internal chi sensation through doing the form or movements of the system.  After that he can judge the effectiveness (genuineness or harmfulness) of that system. 

A book by Master Mi

 

The concept of chi walking

When the term "chi" has become part of mainstream modern workout lingo, any workout program can be added a qualifier: "chi". One of them is chi walking. It is all legit, if you can understand the concept behind.

Courses with the qualifier of chi have oftentimes claimed to be easy. It is not like lifting a hundred pounds in gym, you just relax and you have done your workout! It is a nice way to attract new students, but a hindrance to study the real thing.

I just browsed the web and noticed the following easy steps on chi walking:

1. feet-aligned, hip width
2. balanced pressure in feet
3. straight posture
4. shoulders over hips over feet
5. focus on core
6. evenly transfer weight

For all intents and purposes, the above is walking with good posture and alignment. It is like saying "when you walk in good posture and alignment, chi will be generated". But is that the whole story?

Let's start with a definition. I define chi walking as walking that can maximally generate chi or walking that can be qualified to be a chi kung exercise. 

Like everything else in chi kung, concepts are easy but execution takes patience and continual practice to perform - in direct contrast to popular "chi walking" teachers/courses that fail to explain the training concept but simply tell you that execution is easy.

In proper chi kung, in the first stage, a student/practitioner should be able to use his breathing muscles to generate chi to open his hip joints (which opening create a positive feedback loop in chi generation). The best way to train this is through doing zhan zhuang or standing meditation. The opening (and closing) of your hip joints is the primary source of chi energy.

After you are able to generate chi like this while doing stationery zhan zhuang, the next step is to train yourself so that you can generate chi while moving slowly. This covers the movement parts of any sound chi kung training system. Such movements will include doing tai chi form, 24 styles tai chi nei kung and combat stance with nano movements. 

Once you are proficient with the above controlled movement forms (and be able to generate chi through them), it will be easy to transfer your learning to your daily walking. You simply walk as usual (not standard tai chi walk) and generate the bouncing effect of chi generation every step you walk. Needless to say, you need to mindfully do your chi walking, like you need to mindfully do your tai chi form or 24 styles tai chi nei kung.

How about good posture and alignment? In chi kung, we consider our posture and alignment always need to be perfected (it is not an assumption, but an empirical fact supported by trained internal sensation or perception, which will be sharpen continuously as a student progresses). We do not to have perfect posture and alignment (which in fact is an impossibility for the majority of people) as a chi generation starting point. Through chi kung exercises (chi walking included), we move towards better alignment every moment in our practice. It is the process rather the result that counts.

Easy concept with diligent practice open you a whole new world of chi. Easy execution without a valid concept leads you no where. 

Corollary: Diligent practice with complex, muddled or mythical concepts leads you to an unnecessary long path, assuming that there is a path to begin with in the first place. 

Chi walking

The three essentials of internal martial art - No 1: Isometric contraction and relaxation

Master Wang Xiangzai is one of the most important (if not the most important) contributor to internal martial arts in the modern era after the Qing Dynasty. Master Wang's contribution goes beyond his style of YiQuan (意拳) or Da Chengquan (大成拳). In the later years of his life, he focused his teaching on healing. In Chinese, healing is always primarily physical or medical in nature, with psychological healing plays a second fiddler. I am going to write about the three essentials of his advanced contribution (beyond his contribution to standard zhan zhuang) as emphasized differently by his three important students.

In this article, I shall talk about Master Wang's first essential as presented by his student, the late Master Yu YongNian 于永年 who passed away a few months ago in Beijing. Master Yu became famous in the West mainly through the teaching of his student (or grand-student) Master Lam Kam Chuen who now resides in UK and has established an internal martial art academy there (teaching tai chi is included, as most Westerners know tai chi more than any other styles of Chinese internal martial art. It makes good business to teach on tai chi, irrespective of anything!) Master Lam has also written a number of good books on zhan zhuang and related topics on internal martial arts. Interested readers will have no problem Googling his books on internet.

Master Yu's contribution had mainly been in the area of healing. He had written only one book on the subject (though printed in two different versions in China. An interesting phenomenon in China's publishing industry, which is highly boisterous, is that many published books there come and go quickly, a new version with different name but the same materials sometimes appear with a new publisher a few years later. The reasons behind such phenomenon I shall not deal with here.) In one chapter of his book, he wrote about his method of advanced zhan zhuang, a subject most authors hardly touched upon, and if mentioned at all, nobody pays much attention anyway. Stories of touch (or even no contact) and throw, though unrealistic, are more interesting than advanced workout methods.

In his book Master Yu focused on presenting different kinds of stationery zhan zhuang, tailored made for patients with different problems. He was not a professional chi kung healer, and he did not impress me with his clinical skills as presented in his book (which contribution came from another student of Master Wang Madam Zhuang whom I shall write about in the second post on the topic). His main contribution is his system of widely applicable stationery forms, together with his advanced techniques for the more eager students.

His advanced technique, in the briefest sense, is to use isometric contraction and relaxation during zhan zhuang, preferable using combat stance. In the beginning, two nearby points/joints will be selected, for example, left hand and left shoulder. While in zhan zhuang, a student focuses on these two points and does isometric contraction and relaxation. All muscles will contract at the same time between the two points and then relax. From then on, different points and different parts of the body will be engaged for isometric contraction and relaxation. In the limiting case, the muscles of a student's whole body will contract and then relax together. A special manifestation of muscles-as-one. In demonstration, a student's calf can be felt, by a touching hand, as contracting and relaxing rhythmically. Finally in the most advanced form, one point will be fixed outside a practitioner's body.

While the concept of martial art as Zen is a not uncommon among Master Wang's students, Master Yu interpreted his practice as expressed by Lao Zi's Tao Te Ching. In particular, in his healing system, a patient is to search for the thing （物) inside his body. And the thing is the manifestation of Tao in our body according to Tao Te Ching. It is called Searching for the thing （求物). Interestingly this thing was interpreted to be falling within the philosophy of materialism of the Chinese Communist Party. Whether this is a genuine thought or an idea loaded with political expediency I will not venture to speculate.

Anyway, what Master Yu worked on is a system of healing practice that focuses on finding the correct internal sensation inside a patient or student's body. And his advanced technique of isometric contraction and relaxation is a means to find and magnify this internal feeling: the thing in Tao Te Ching.

His approach makes good sense for any student or patient who are interested in using internal martial art for healing. The definitive guideline for a student is to find the thing inside his body and to cultivate this thing. It is not something mythical. It is something one can feel internally. And by the method of contracting and relaxing one's muscles isometrically, this thing can grow. The existence, growth and management of this thing together is the healing method par excellence.

Master Yu had certainly made a good contribution in the art of healing.

The second essential can be read HERE.

The theory of muscular contraction in tai chi

Studying tai chi requires persistent and continual practice. Reading a book cannot teach you tai chi. Yet, without a good understanding of theory, you might waste a huge amount of your valuable practice time, if you are able get there at all in the first place. The theory of muscular contraction in tai chi is simple, yet important. Reading this article is of no practical use if you do not practice tai chi or other mind-body exercise. "Understanding" with no practice is not understanding.

The theory of muscular contraction starts with two observations:

1. We can feel the exertion of muscular contraction when we contract our contraction muscles (contractors), and we can feel relaxed when we contract our extension muscles (extensors) - see picture below.
2. When we feel tensed psychologically or mentally, our contractors contract, and when we feel relaxed, our extensors contract.

The definitive requirement of doing tai chi is that our contractors and our extensors shall contract at almost the same magnitude, with one just slightly more than the other to make movement possible. The slow movement of tai chi is a natural outcome of a practitioner mindful balancing these two forces at all times during practice. In other words, the subjective feeling is not "to do slow movement", rather "to balance the forces so that slow (and graceful) movement will result". In other words, a tai chi practitioner contracts his muscles in a special way, rather than relaxes all his muscles during practice.

"Use Jing (or Yi) instead of Li" (用勁/意不用力) is an important tai chi essential. If we can feel we are exerting our muscles, we are overly using our contractors. When we are balanced in our muscular contraction, we do not feel the exertion (or Li). Our internal muscular feeling will be "muscles-as-one" or "body-filled-with-molten-lead".

In our working lives, most of the time we overly use our contractors. The result is that our joints (mainly our shoulder and hip joints) will likely be moved into slight misalignment when we approach middle-age, if not earlier, resulting in various kinds of pain in our body. And in our hectic lives full of psychological stress (which is normal rather than unusual), our emotional stress will be trapped inside our muscles and joints.

The practice of tai chi aims at releasing such misalignment and trapped energy, and to bring about good physical and mental health. In order that such benefits can be achieved (rather than just bragged about), a student of tai chi has to understand the theory of muscular contraction in tai chi and put its implications into practice. Needless to say this is only the beginning of everything.

 

Tai chi pushing hands and massage therapy

Tai chi pushing hands can be applied to achieve two objectives: as combat training foundation tool or as a healing tool. In both cases, it is an application of activating one’s internal power. In this post, I shall discuss the tai chi pushing hand as a healing tool, applied as massage therapy.

The better known method of massage therapy in tai chi chi-kung is Dantian massage. A practitioner rubs or massages his lower abdomen with his palms in circulation motion (without rubbing the skin, instead carries the skin along). In most massage therapy, the masseur loosens or relaxes his client’s muscles to achieve his healing objective. Tai chi Dantian massage is different. A practitioner massages his own abdomen. His objective is not to loosen or relax his abdominal muscles. Rather using his chi-connected body (tai chi lingo: muscles-as-one) as the medium, he massages, in the first stage, his pelvic floor muscles; in the second stage, his diaphragm and in the third stage, establish a chi point inside his abdomen so that chi can radiate from this chi point.

The use of pushing hands builds on what has been achieved in Dantian massage. Specifically, the practice of pushing hands aims at activating chi to the muscles of our torso. In body building it is called core strength, in martial art, it is called iron-shirt, and in healing it is called chi-filled. Our aim is to direct chi to flow towards and around our torso, always with prior foundation of whole-body chi-connectedness or muscles-as-one.

In pushing hands, a healer and a client (student) are involved. The touching point is at the upper forearm next to the wrist. The healer does the pushing and the client does the receiving and channeling the pushing energy to his torso and to generate chi in the process. In the beginning level, in order that chi can be generated, the client shall allow the healer to push his (client's) elbow and arm touching his body, while maintaining the triangular force between his upper arm and forearm (at about 90 degree, otherwise withstanding power will be lost and the healer's pushing palm will collapse the client's arm structure and will directly push against the torso via client's forearm which now touches his own body. In that case, the healer's palm power will push the client's whole body away instead of be transformed into internal massage force. This is a very important point on concept). The pushing force from the contact point, via the arm-triangle will be transmitted to the body of the client. To facilitate such transmission of power or energy, the torso of the client shall be relaxed like into a dead weight, so that the healer will be required to move slightly the dead-weight of his client’s body. The 90 degree triangular shall maintain tight at all time. The power base of the triangle is the shoulder (supported by the pelvic joints and soles). In tai chi lingo, it is called dropping our elbows and loosening our shoulders (沈肩墜肘) It is also another manifestation of tai chi chi-kung concept: points-stretched-body-relaxed. When the healer push continues, at the limiting point of being moved (or maximum stored energy), the client simply turns and spirals on incoming force to the side. The client gently pushes back (in due training the client now turns into healer). The whole process can start again. The above is sequence of single hand pushing hands used as massage healing. In advanced pushing hands, an important requirement is needed: not losing the touch （不掉不顶).

Needless to say, a student needs an instructor, healer or teacher in learning pushing hands.

Tai chi single hand pushing hands

Why PNF stretching does not seem to work?

According to wiki, an active PNF stretch involves a shortening contraction of the opposing muscle to place the target muscle on stretch. This is followed by an isometric contraction of the target muscle. PNF can be used to supplement daily stretching and is employed to make quick gains in range of motion to help athletes improve performance. Aside from being safe and time efficient, the dramatic gains in range of motion seen in a short period of time may also promote compliance with the exercise and rehabilitation program.

Does it look complicated? It does. But if we use tai chi chi-kung lingo to explain it, it is simple.

Chi-kung PNF stretch means chi-connect the opposite muscles around a joint, then do isometric contraction of the targeted muscles.

PNF stretching has been praised for its high effectiveness based on medical and anatomical studies, yet its successful applications scored low. The comparatively more successful environment is clinical setting with experienced physiotherapists working with certain patients. It is unfortunate that this good practice has failed to deliver good results as promised.

Why is it so?

The reason behind can be understood through a study of chi kung. Chi-kung PNF stretching requires a certain degree of chi generation power, chi connecting power and the skill of selective isometric contraction on the part of the student. To do good clinical PNF stretching, the same chi generation and chi connectedness are required. With a doctor, the patient can do isometric contraction easier than in the case for chi kung. Yet, the patient has not been chi or chi-kung trained. Therefore it is all left to the doctor to feel the muscle tension (a proxy for chi connectedness) of his patient. And the reason why PNF stretching works better in clinical cases is that people with weaker physique, as most experienced chi kung instructors can tell you, can generate chi faster.

In conclusion, if you want to reap the benefit of PNF stretching, and that you are not a clinical case, I suggest you learn some tai chi chi-kung and practise as per method above.

PS: Please also refer to my previous post on PNF stretching concerning a more detailed discussion on techniques.

Tai chi and spirituality

Legendary Taoist Zhang Sanfeng (張三丰) was honored to be the founder of tai chi. Master Zhang was also a Taoist internal alchemist whose most famous text is Rootless Tree (無根樹), a philosophical essay with practical advice for middle-aged folks seeking longevity and enlightenment. Towards the end of Qing Dynasty and the early Republic era when the society in turmoil, tai chi leaned more towards its martial art aspect. Nowadays the pendulum has swung back to its root: for body building, health and spirituality.

In master Zhang's time, tai chi was closely associated with Taoist internal alchemy, called Neidan in Chinese. The highest training objective of Neidan (to which tai chi formed an indispensable supporting role) is spiritual enlightenment. At one with Tao. A direct spiritual experience without a deity. Nowadays among Chinese communities in Greater China (mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong) partly due to the influence of martial artists, tai chi has become a de-facto system of body building, health and longevity. So much so many Chinese students will be skeptical towards their tai chi instructor if he preaches about Tao Te Ching or Neidan (most if not all the time he won't).

It is interesting to note that those who look upon tai chi as relating to spirituality are Christians and Muslims and New Ages spiritualists, most in the West. Without a strong traditional system in practical spirituality, some of these people learn and practise tai chi to supplement their spirituality. They treasure the spiritual possibility of tai chi more than an average Chinese.

The question remains: Why tai chi in particular? Why not some other systems?

The first major reason is that tai chi is easy to learn, interesting to learn, effective and without metaphysical pre-requisite. Besides, no mythical mantra is taught. An unbiased spiritual tool for all spirituality. The second major reason is that it is a safer practice, the possible negative side-effect of chi deviation (chi kung or kundalini syndromes) is most unlikely to affect tai chi practitioners. With these two good reasons, no wonder more and more spiritual seekers are learning tai chi.

Tai chi and Sufi dance - Opening ceremony of 2013 Turkish Culture Year in China

   

Towards a theory of compassion training

I have always been impressed by the analysis of the human psyche in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (in addition to his seminal work The Wealth of Nations), the following quotation strikes my heart and intellect each time I read it. In this article, I explore a question: Can our compassion be trained? Before that let's us read Adam Smith again first:

"Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquility, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance."

(This is my second time quotation of this passage in this blog, the firs one is at The anatomy of human compassion)

Recently I read in the internet about an academic research on meditation's ability to shape or cultivate human compassion. The testing situation, unknown to the subjects (half of them gone through a period of meditation training), involved a subject sitting in a waiting room and there came in a person with crutches. The question was: Will our subject give his seat to the person with crutches? The results showed that a significantly larger number of those who had undergone prior meditation training gave away their seats. The researcher concluded that meditation training did work towards more compassion.

Assuming that the piece of research demonstrated extrapolatable results, my question is why. Let us look at what the highest level of meditation practitioners do. In Tibetan Buddhism, according to his Holiness the Dalai Lama, the fastest way to become a high-level compassionate monk is through the practice of Deity Yoga, i.e. deep meditation with the visualization of one's chosen Deity. The slower way is through studying of Sutras, observing discipline, and changing one's mind rationally. In the fast route, after achieving the deepest level of mediation, every day, the monk still has to do deep meditation approaching the the meditative state of new death experience, an essential maintenance process.

Another clue. Writings from various deep meditation are abound with an experience of a deep meditation's psychology being fused up with other people, and so much so sometimes fused up with the entire universal existence. At one with Tao, as Taoist texts said. (Whether or not this is a higher level of reality is a metaphysical question and is beyond the scope of what I am interested here).

What does this kind of experience, of Tibetan monks and other deep meditators, mean in terms of training effectiveness, for compassion training? It means that, based on Adam Smith's analysis, far away people not related to us become blood-related to us, our neighbors become our sons and daughters, and love thy neighbors as thyself becomes possible, as a psychological reality, it has becomes the most natural thing to do, without stress and without "inner civil war".

In short, our neighbors become ourselves. Being religious people, these deep meditators come to believe they have found (or indeed they have) a higher level of reality. Yet it still has to be based on or come to terms with our genetically determined psychology. In other words, meditation cannot (and do not need to) change our psychological make-up that has evolved through evolution. It only need to, and indeed it can, "fool" it. From another perspective, we can choose to become compassionate, not by our logical thinking, not by forcing ourselves to be so, but by training, compassion training of the deep meditation kind. Religious people choose the deepest end of a total personality overhaul. For more humble mortals, which include the majority of us, our aim can be more modest. Some meditation training is all we need. We can train ourselves to become just a little bit more compassionate, for the benefit of those around us. And our modern world certainly needs more compassion from its dwellers who can make their own conscious choice.

PS:  The cultivation of supernatural powers of Taoism and Buddhism is also related to this psychological (and metaphysical) concept of At one with Tao, the analysis of such cultivation I shall leave for some other day.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama