Archive for the 'Tai Chi Chuan' Category

TCC Musings - recent post to the TCCList

Monday, January 14th, 2008

* We do Taiji slowly in order to be tranquil. Tranquility leads to
contemplation. Contemplation leads to clarity. Clarity leads to
comprehension. Comprehension enables us to dissolve all doubts.

* The best part of Taijiquan is not the external form, but the
internal cultivation. You need to practice the external in order to
find the internal.

* There’s no right or wrong in one’s practice, only different levels
of understanding. There’s no perfection in one’s practice, only
different levels of refinement. There’s no graduation in the art of
Taijiquan, only different levels of progress.

* Taijiquan should not be a set of habitual movements, rather, moves
consciously. Mindless repetition of physical practice is only a
mechanical exercise.

* The mechanics of Taijiquan can be taught, but the of Taijiquan can
only be comprehended.

* You cannot enjoy the beauty of Taijiquan if you just practice but
don’t understand it. Thirty-percent of understanding comes from your
teacher, but seventy-percent from your diligent practice.

* It is our body that calls us to practice, for it wants to be in
balance; Instead, it is our mind that cries out: “Wait—not today!”

* Don’t find excuses not to practice, instead find every opportunity
to practice.

* You have to open your mind first, then your body. You have to relax
your mind first, then your body.

* Cultivate your body in order to accumulate skills. Cultivate your
mind in order to accumulate wisdom.

* It is good to have faith in our practice, but a strong faith needs
to be built upon our deep understanding of the art.

* When you are puzzled, your teacher is the answer. When you have
comprehended, everything is your teacher.

* Indeed, some people feel more relaxed in a couch than at Taiji
lessons, however, they cannot take the couch along with them.

* The success of many ancient Taiji masters was not from reading but
training hard.

* In the old days, students were told to practice first, understand
later. Nowadays, students want to understand first, practice later.

* To study with a famous master does not guarantee that you will be
a successful disciple; you have to make success of your own practice.

* A master is to teach us to be a student of Taiji, not his.

* A master’s virtue should be more important than his powerful skill.
Skill dies with the master, but his virtue gets passed down.

* A master’s personal interpretations often became a lineage’s secret
transmission, and with a theory behind them.

* All masters believe in their own interpretations, there’s no point
to compare their differences.

* Tension is like hard knots hidden in our muscles, in our minds, and
deep within our hearts. We practice Taijiquan in order to discover
those hidden knots and dissolve them.

* A relaxed body is a body that does not hold onto things. A relaxed
mind is a mind that does not hold onto things.

* If you want to be relaxed, practice Taiji. If you want others to be
relaxed, practice Taiji (on them).

* There are four levels of relaxation:
Level one: relaxing the shoulders and arms
Level two: relaxing the waist and lower back
Level three: relaxing the knees and feet
Level four: relaxing the mind.

* It is easy to see “what,” easy to show “how,” but takes true
understanding to explain “why.”

* Taiji does not eliminate stress; it only helps you to manage it.

* You have to master yourself in order to master Taiji, and Taiji is
about mastering yourself.

* Don’t try to surpass another’s ability; instead, surpass your own.

* Taijiquen practice is a slow fix; sometimes it is so slow that the
need to fix the problem is no longer important.

* It is not how many rounds of the routine you’ve done, it is how
deeply you’ve worked on it.

* Don’t just do the movements—feel them.

* Don’t let the unconscious body steer your mind, instead, Let your
conscious mind steer your body.

* You are not doing movements wrong, you are just doing them
unconsciously.

* The common fears of learning Taijiquan:
fear of falling behind
fear of being ignored
fear of being incapable
fear of losing face
fear of physical pain
fear of learning the “wrong way”
fear of showing the “wrong way”
fear of giving commitment
fear of false fantasy

* One bad thing about Taiji is that it is difficult to understand.
One good thing about Taiji is that once you understand it, there’s
more to learn.

* The rich contents of Taijiquan are hidden within the transitional
movements.

* Any posture in stillness can be considered a Wuji stance—Not
moving but ready for any action.

* Qi sinks to the dantien is only the midway. Qi sinks to the feet
is the final destination.

* The highest level of Taijiquan has no need of form and
movement—It is a state of non-intent.

Mario’s Post on TCCList

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

Richard Man wrote:

Well, we know Mario have his stuff together.

well sir…..
flattery, will get u, everywhere..
ok, cause i’m in a great mood i will give a lesson..
now if after the lesson…. anybody is so moved to send me a buck or two, great!!!

ok, richard, actually this was the bull fight, photo…. that i wanted to send you….. but for reason that i wont get into now…i send you the other…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41153000/jpg/_41153257_bullfights_300.jpg

so look at this photo very carefully cause it’s a good one…
cause this particular photo is naturalization and LKJ, at it’s very finest!
why you say?
easy, the bull is not cooperating. :o )))
capisci?
good!:o)

study the photo again..
see that the bull, not only missed!
but he has also fallen over himself!!!
and no one touched him!!!!

as you know…I always have said… the LKJ, has value/ place in tai chi…
it has to do, with timing, distance and committed attack, from your partner / foe!
 ( all in a three demential way* but, we wont get into this subject ..)

So, now you can better see… LKJ, really  has nothing to do with those silly, videos that,  we have (unfortunately ) been accustomed seeing…

now for why,  naturalizing/ yielding, is circular (question) should be clearer to you. yes? No?
i’ll say it  again………. if you back up in a straight line,
the bull will follow you and eventually get you..
but if you maintain your central equilibrium and turn..
you can make the opponent miss!!!

I will ask differently:

don’t worry about it..
i’ll answer this too…..

all attacks and i mean all attacks are square!
no matter how they are done… circular spirally or what ever…
this square thing ( for our purpose ) means…
that, that there is a straight line/ support.. from the ground and your jaw…. via, my fist!
as Lee, said to worry what posture jin.. it matter not it’s all the same..

but don’t fear, if still confused..
i’ll say it in a way, now.. that everybody to get it!!
 i just wanted to rant… ( i have heard,  that David L, when he sees a great post….
he puts it on his web site!!
well he has never seen a post this good! so im bound to make the cut!:O))

ok, now for the easy example…
take a ping pong, ball..
fill ur sink with water, then place the ball, it floats on the water…
now, with ur index finger (any finger will do :o ))
simply, try and sink the ball…
you will notice that, if ur not exactly on it’s center, the ball will slip/ roll, from you finger and bounce up!:o))
(the ball, is yielding in a circular fashion)
if you  can sink the ball, by push it down on it’s center… straight!!!
you are then issuing in a straight line! :o ))

that’s it…. can’t write anymore!!!!

reminder ..i accept cash…:o))

class dismissed

M.

‘Internal Training’ by Richard Dunn

Wednesday, November 21st, 2007

Referring to the you tube video clips put up here (energetics list dl) by me a while back.

 

These clips were made about 4 years ago on the request of members of the TCClist after the work being demonstrated was described and discussed and people asked to see clips and examples. Even though they had been discussed most people still took them out of context.

 

What they are not!!!

 

They are not fighting techniques, apart from very superficially which I will try to explain later.

 

They are not magic, or any form of supernatural behaviour, they are quite normal when you understand even if not accepting the purpose.

 

They are not Master worship or forms of ultra co-operative submission.

 

It is not what most people interpret as Lin Kong Jin or some form of comic book energy ray.

 

All of these I have seen put up in the arguments that have been associated with these clips.

 

The reality is very much more boring.

 

What they are:-

 

They are training techniques.

 

What is being trained are energetic Jins.

 

Back to the basics of it which I hope a lot will at least accept if they are from the internal side of the arts. The person is made up of

3 distinct elements, body-mind-spirit(energy). Normal behaviour is that all three are used in unison in all human behaviour. But the percentage of use varies considerably if specific behaviour is looked at.

 

For example reading a book. Little physical work mostly just turning the page and operating the eyeballs, little spiritual work apart from the energetic activation of an emotional reaction, the work is almost entirely mental. Do we question that work?

 

Another example digging a hole. Very little intellectual or mental involvement apart from getting the hole in the right place size and depth, very little spiritual / energetic involvement, the process is almost entirely physical. Do we question that work?

 

There are similarly almost entirely spiritual / energetic activities which in the west are largely limited to religious activities such as prayer, but song and music (listening and making) are largely spiritual / energetic activities as well. Do we question that work?

 

In the martial arts we train the body, can anyone argue with the benefits of this? We also train the mind, some people do argue about the benefits of this. But we can also train our energetic being, most people argue about this! Below is a brief blurb as to what I mean by this :-

 

You have a physical being, the one that you see in the mirror everyday, it is a biological organic machine that can break down and will wear out, being organic it is also subject to other biological machines hijacking it for their own purposes (fungi, bacteria and viruses).

 

You are also a reasoning and calculating being, this is the person doing the observing of you in the mirror. It is a biological organic computer that as with the modern electronic version can be subject to overload, information loss, or when the program gets corrupted, crashing.

 

Within these two physical personas is the energetic persona that makes it all work, and also provides the emotional aspects to your life. From the spark of life given to you at conception this energy is the means by which everything works your energetic being. In Chinese it is referred to as Chi (Qi), in Japanese Ki and in India Prana. The old pre-christian Anglo Saxon name was Megin (corrupted to the modern word magic). The Norse word was Galdra. It can manifest itself in many different ways that western science is only just beginning to understand.

 

Each organ and bodily function has its own energy dedicated to its correct function, dictated by your genetic programming and controlled by your unconscious mind. This energy causes the growth, sustaining, and ultimately the decline of our physical and mental being. The purist form of this energy is given to us at conception and is referred to in some cultures as soul or spirit, it is the last energy to leave the machine when the lights finally go out. All the other energy we use and retain throughout our lives comes from the food we consume and the air that we breath, and the quality of this fuel is important for the quality of the resulting energy.

 

As human beings we fight shy of physical interfaces, we like to keep thing at arms length and at a mental interface. Things have to get very imbalanced to create a strong physical interface. As with all things that imbalance can be yin or yang in nature, in this case making love or making war (fighting). They are in reality just opposite sides of the same coin and are both intrinsically imbalanced in nature.

 

So there has to be strong motivation or intent for physical contact, so the interface in my terms is highly energetic, lots of readable noise. So we end up with a classic trilogy, physical contact and interaction, metal contact and interaction and energetic contact and interaction (the only visible or consciously perceivable aspect of this latter one is emotional).

 

The concept of the external martial arts is creation, make what you create stronger, faster or more intense than your interface partner / opponent and you create your ascendancy by overpowering. A dominant / subordinate relationship.

 

The concept of the internal arts and specifically tai-chi is *non

action* or pursuit of the Tao. You do not contribute to the interface, apart from to balance any misbalance. So it could be said that tai-chi is not a martial art (shock horror) it is more an un- martial art. If you do tai-chi there should never be any physical confrontation. But if it should happen then you switch from balancing to re-enforcement, it is then a process of USE, and the more there is to use the easier the situation is to deal with. So we have three realities that are available to use :- physical - re-enforce what your opponent is doing in order to destabilise and use, mental - ditto, energetic - ditto. As a Tai-Chi-er physically and mentally we easily understand the problem and the need for no confrontation hence the need for soft contact. We understand the need for intent (yi) to control and direct our actions. The problem is our energetic awareness is at a far more primitive level, basically at genetic programming or instinct level, so we have lost our awareness of it as our intellect and frontal lobe gets in the way of exploiting or understanding this, which is why most animal of comparable size and weight or even far less are fully capable of knocking 10 bells out of us. They read us naturally and easily, that is why *listening* is the key. You can listen with your skin as well as your ears as a wave is a vibration which doesn’t have to just be airborne noise it can be structurally borne vibration and finally it can be like a radio wave across space, you just have to be tuned in and capable of hearing.

 

That is what energetic training is, the process of making you capable of hearing and giving you that conscious awareness. Once you can listen you can also talk and that is largely a process of control. If you stop a fist and apply energetic control it becomes frozen in time and space, for how long is only dictated by shock, realisation and recovery,. But a split second is long enough to kill!! Energetic control is taking away their will or intent and applying your own, looked at in scientific terms and technically - out of phase cancels - in phase re-enforces. So you can also use the wave to do work and re- enforce the physical, a classic example is fajin. BUT it is not Chen fajin which is largely physical in nature, Yang fajin is energetic in nature, it is using the strike to transmit a wave front that has a diminishing size and increasing frequency until at the point of contact it explodes, in energetic terms, literally. This is what pulverises and damages internally as that wave front can also be aimed by your intent beyond the point of contact.

 

So there are parts of this training work that are martial in nature such as the fajin training. BUT the work you are looking at in those clips is sensitivity training, firstly to discover the feel of your energy, secondly discover how it can link into another human and be controlled by them, thirdly how to override that control and reply.

 

This work is never used in isolation it is only trained in isolation, it is used in conjunction as an extra skill or if necessary weapon. A simple example is that on contact if you are in control of your energy enough to create the link you can destabilise your opponent by lifting their root with your intent. This makes it far easier to throw / push them.

 

These skills are far from unique and are much used, they are just not much talked about, mainly due to the negative reaction mostly seen when these things are discussed by the inexperienced and ignorant.

There are also charlatans and performers. I state, we within our group are not, but it is your choice if you accept that. We run open classes and have never turned away a constructive even if sceptical student. Disruptive students are not accepted

 

There are groups that train this work stateside and probably all over the world, those people are whom I want to be primarily attract to this group, but anyone with an open minded interest is welcome.

Probably the most well known is Chu Gin Soon and his son Vincent based in Boston.

Anyway have fun, I and others are here to respond to anything sensible.

Richard (posted by dl)

Look here as well..

Saturday, June 30th, 2007

 

David L.

Resources

Wednesday, June 20th, 2007

Hi

Pam brought to my attention:

http://www.bandhayoga.com/index.html

Which I shared on the bodysmith list, to which 2 members respondes with:

http://www.positivehealth.com/permit/Articles/Bodywork/koch65.htm
http://www.massageandbodywork.com/Articles/DecJan2004/Psoas.html
Enjoy.. David L.

Nei-Gung & Vitality

Sunday, June 17th, 2007

Having started teaching a new nei-gung class recently at the local wellness center, I had an occasion to revisit basic bits of information that relate to vitality and health; some of what were odd words in chinglish books years back are now rather clear concepts.

 

So, let me share of few of these.

Nei-Gung, or, ‘Working Within’ are training modes that change some of the fundamentals of ‘how the body works’ and optimize low level life processes. This is accomplished through modifications of structure and bearing, breathing, blood circulation & tissue scavenging through serum circulation. The end result is vastly increased vitality and health.

Vitality (in Chinese Jing) can be mapped directly to sufficient sugar, oxygen and other nutrients delivered to each and every cell in the body and waste products removed from each and every cell in the body.

To reach this goal nei-gung will:

  1. Modify carriage and bearing in such a away as to lower the carrying tensions in all the muscles in the body to a minimum, passing static structure support to the bones and ligaments & releasing the abdominals from posture keeping. This allowes unimpeded diaphragm breathing. This has a secondary benefit of lowering blood pressure by lowering the flow resistance.
  2. Re-Engage diaphragm (belly) breathing regaining ~60% of lung displacement and so tripling the oxygen intake.
  3. Lowering blood pressure and enhancing peripheral blood circulation by triggering vagus nerve stimulation, with all that this implies.
  4. Increasing scavenging of tissues through whole body movement which drives serum flow, this also increases the efficiency of the cardiovascular system overall efficiency through increased venal blood flow.

Other benefits include lowering physical and emotional stress levels, assisting in regaining full ROM in the joints, and stretching connective tissue. The nice part about these training modes is that they are simple and are rather easy to learn.

Having trained in Tai Chi Chuan for about 30 years now and having taught it for about 25 years, I am surprised as to how much simpler nei-gung is to share. Instead of a few years for basic proficiency, such as Tai Chi Chuan requires, one can start getting results in a matter of weeks.

David L.

 

 

Next PH get together

Wednesday, December 20th, 2006

2nd. Sat. each month - rotating schedule.

Dec. 8th at the RabBoar Studio, Jan 12th at Richard J.

For those of you that need explicit statements, we’ll be having a lulu of internal ‘stuff’, a whole day shebang on 1/12/08; if you have a yen for a smorgasbord of internal practice flavors make sure that you show up for the January 12th. Meet.

We’ll be packing a lot of goodies into one day, from quite diverse sources. The format will be seminar like with hour long sessions and a 2 hour PH thang, and a 2 hour hang out, eat & schmooze break in the middle. Don’t let the low price mislead you, it’s going to be FUN.

osteopena

Sunday, December 10th, 2006

From one of my students.

Just wanted to let you know some good news I received today - after 4 years of being diagnosed with osteopena (beginnings of osteoporosis) my latest bone scan revealed all was NORMAL.  If I wasn’t already a believer of Tai Chi, this would have confirmed its benefits.

late in life changes

Thursday, November 16th, 2006

Well, I guess I was right about the systemic enzymes. 

The co-incidence of discovering the bang, the kali sticks and starting to use systemic enzymes seems to be doing the trick as far as re-positioning my left shoulder and extending jin into my left arm and hand. 

My current understanding is that rectification of long standing deformation of the body takes a large catabolic (digestive) process so as to remove those tissue portions that shaped themselves for support and function of the deformation. If the process has to happen late in life, then the lack of proteolytic enzymes will slow or block the process. 

So, systemic enzymes, lots of vitamin C, and good basic are a good working combination. 

Cow Walk 102

Saturday, November 11th, 2006

I have been using this one for new students for over a year, and it’s proven very successful.

1. Start with narrow stance (fist apart at the instep, 15′ toe-out)

2. Sit vertically.

3. Shift weight 100% to one hip (A).

4. Rotate out the other qua (B) to 45′

5. Slide (B) leg out to full extension w/o stepping, release from qua down until toes are on floor, no bobbing.

6. Slide (B) knee out, start a weight shift onto (B), facing the diredction of (B) toes, until leaning (nutated) and (A) heel is just about to lift off ground.

7. Sit up straight (counter nutate), all weight still on (B) hip, belly button -45′.

8. (== mod. 2) Open both loaded (B) and empty (A) qua, so that (B) toes are -45′ belly button is front, and (A) toes are +45′

9. (== mi 5) Slide (A) leg out to full extension w/o stepping, release from qua down until toes are on floor, no bobbing.

10. == mi 6

11. == mi 7

repeat as needed, it’s amazing what it does for leg, qua & yao development.

mi == mirror image

Enjoy

Oh .. 102 implies that there are further ‘levels’ and there are.

David L.


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