RISE TO THE HEAVENS AND PENETRATE THE EARTH

(Continuing from “AT THE CREST” previously…)

Time to lower hands.  Whatever was intended when you raised them up, has either been accomplished — or not.

You can’t just stand there with your arms outstretched before you.  Well — actually, you can.  We’re told that any posture of the taiji form can be used as zhan zhuang (or “the motionless zhuang gong”, as one of my Chen books calls it).  I’ve been doing it to write these posts.  And if you’re practicing on your own, it might be better to pause at some point and say “Now what?” rather than just proceed to the next move solely because you know what the next move is.  Placing more bricks, but skimping on the mortar.

Teacher says that, after initial Raise Hands, you lower them, pressing downward, as if pressing yourself up on an invisible tabletop.  The bent legs straighten.  Here’s my current spin on the process:

Arms outstretched; the hands palm-out; everything relaxed and firm; the breath exhaled.

Slight pause internally, begin inhale.  The breath draws in the hands, beginning at the little fingers, and the two palms rotate  towards facing-in, in the lu jing manner.  The elbows sink, as the hands are inhaled towards the upper chest.

As a general rule I try to employ this method: wrists lead arms away from the body; elbows lead arms back towards the body.

What about the shoulders and hands?  Well, those are subtle problems.  Especially the hands.  I would say, in trying to answer that question, that I wish to consider the shoulders and hands as foci of energy, rather than as objects.  With the curved/angle/line of the forearm/elbow/upper arm (in other words, the flexing arm bow) shuttling in-between.

What shape indeed, is the arm?  Do we have a benchmark, a standard, a persistent form, a shape of stillness in motion?  For Yang taiji, the answer seems to be that the arm/qi is an unstrung bow.  The mind supplies the bowstring; draws it; releases it.  But these things do not behave as wood and fiber, but as water and waves.

Anyway, as my hands press down/are lowered down, qi and my legs are sunk into the earth, as a fence post is sunk into the soil, as a needle is sunk into cloth.  The second metaphor is perhaps more useful, since what we’re doing resembles building and construction less than it resembles sewing, weaving.

Or maybe just call it: growing.  A plant penetrates the earth as it rises towards heaven… seeking energy in both directions, while braching out to the sides as well.  It does this ever so slowly, wasting nothing, building only upon what was successfully accomplished beforehand.  No shortcuts, no overlooked steps.  To us the plant seems not to move.  But internally, its processes and its plan proceed, and change is unceasing in the micro-scale.  Impatient and inattentive, a human observer notices (at best) the macro-change that has already occurred.  When did the plant grow?

 

AT THE CREST

(Continuing from “EBB AND FLOW” previously…)

Now my arms are outstretched before me.  Elbows still somewhat sunk, of course.

I like to turn my palms outward at this point.  Why?

  a) Because that’s what Erle Montaigue said to do.

  b) Because it feels more martial/practical.

And it doesn’t particularly conflict with the way Teacher uses his hands.  I think of this posture as “parting the bamboo”.

My arms now form a ring in front of my shoulders.  If I’m sitting in a chair, my hands are now directly over my knees.  This is my front-space.  It’s also the ma-ai, to borrow an aikido term.

As my arms rose up, it seems appropriate for my legs to sink down.  Not much — let’s say that ideally my knees will bend slightly as if in accordance with the volume of condensing qi that I am now “holding” in front of my torso.

 

EBB AND FLOW

As a small piece of driftwood is floated up, moved a short distance, and then gently deposited once again on terra firma — so did my foot move away from its partner.  But these aren’t chunks of wood… my feet are qi points that support my whole body.

With stepping into initial taiji stance, downward goes rooting energy.  As my feet follow a perpendicular path straight into the earth, my hands seek an oblique-to-parallel path away from the earth.

As I’m trying to practice it, the hands are both led and lifted.  The yi leads them upward and outward into emptiness.  At the same time, the arms’ movement is opening, which is seen as fullness.

The feeling should be somewhat like standing knee-deep in the ocean, facing ashore.  As a gentle wave comes in, it lifts my hands and arms upward and outward, to shoulder height.

But in this case, it’s more like I was standing in that water, and I reached out to something in front of me — a beach ball, a beach girl, whatever — and the separating of my arms from my sides, summoned the waters to flow into the gap.

What’s up with all this — ?

Arms are rather spindly things to control space with… even for the large-bodied among us.  Rather than try to compensate for this problem by using greater speed and force, here we bring in some “reinforcements”, as opposed to the two scouts having to go it alone.

 

DO WE KNOW WHY?

Still on the theme of initial “Raise Hands” or Commencement here.  After my last post it occurred to me that in the end a key question is: however I do it, do I know WHY it’s done that way.

It might seem like a beginner doesn’t need to know why, especially if you have a good teacher who will make sure you learn something useful, and maybe he or she will explain things more once you’ve mastered the basics.  In other words, learn the lesson, get corrections, be able to demonstrate something meaningful, and then if interested try to get a deeper perspective.

In other words, it could be said that I tend to approach these things ass-backward.

However, theory has its place and I hold to the notion that in taiji, theory learning and movement learning should go hand-in-hand.  I have a taiji buddy who doesn’t trouble himself at all about the theories, he just wants better health and better movement skills along with some of the tranquility that the Tao offers.

Then there’s me, who — oh, forget it.  The blog tells the story.         

So now that I’ve brought up this “Mantis arms” thing I intend to use it to explore some ideas… whether or not I actually end up trying to make this a part of my taiji routine.

Fact is, if the people in my class do standard Raise Hands I’d be wise to work on that method and get the most of it, for now at least.  My theory background tells me there are many benefits encapsulated within this movement.  I’ve wanted to blog about the Opening Moves of the form for a long time now, so perhaps I’ll do several more posts as I practice and play around with taijiquan’s equivalent of the old fist-fighter’s challenge: “Put ‘em up!“.

 

All those in favor, raise your hands….

I worked for ages (well, years anyway) on Chen style “commencement of taiji”.  I improved; though when I finally saw myself in brief video sequence, my Begin Taiji looked passable, nothing more.

Perhaps I should have worked harder on finding a teacher or at least a seminar…             :-/

Now with Yang style I’m at least taking some classes, along with my usual obsessive research and experimentation.  Initial “Raise Hands” is once again on my mind quite a bit.  In my class, we do it the contemporary standard way popularized by Yang Chengfu.  What I sometimes think of as “sleepwalker’s arms”.

I am actually more attracted to the alternate method, from the Old 6 Routines I believe, where the palms raise palm-up rather than hanging palm-down; and they rise up the torso before extending outward.  When my next class starts I may see if my teacher has any objection to this.  He’s a taiji fanatic and quite easy-going… a very nice combination.

I just found what looks to me like a good demo of martial applications of the sleepwalker’s-arm raise.  If any viewers have any strong reactions to this video clip one way or another, I’d be most interested in your comments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VByfAJoh-Wg&mode=related&search=

 

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TWO PERCEPTIONS

Just a quick post which may or may not be of interest.

Earlier this year I broke down and bought Yang Zhenduo’s Yang Style Taijiquan book, even though from what I had seen, I didn’t like his form all that much.  But it’s certainly one of the better books around, I would say.  Tons of photos and text; and as titular head of the Yang family taiji, he clearly has a great deal to teach us.  Besides his accomplished and stately form, I see an intelligent and kindly man hard at work here.

But I wasn’t that crazy about his form.  But I discovered the applications section (”How to Use Taijiquan”, nice!) at the back and every time I look into it I feel like I learned something.  And this morning it inspired me to go back and look at YZD’s postures with a fresh eye, because I liked what I saw in the fighting-forms section, I said, this fellow’s got kungfu.  Why should I play the snob and tell myself that his taiji looks a little “longfisty”?  I should be lucky to have 4 taels of what he’s got.

And besides I do want to learn 108 forms and that means learning a lot about Yang forms.  So I’m taking a good look at his forms, including the bits that I think, “maybe not taiji enough to be ideal”.  And then I had my brainstorm and I wrote the following note to myself:  “Reversal.  YZD’s form is Shaolin.  Now can you do it?”

Postscript: I can’t escape the feeling that this post probably won’t make sense to most people.  So I’d better try the old fallback method of plain speaking:  It was the clear connexion between Chen Style taiji and Shaolin kung fu, that grabbed my interest and encouraged me to try to learn what taiji was all about.  All quarrels about hard-vs.-soft, internal-vs.-external, is-Chen-really-taiji, are beside the point.  A path is a path and the one we set foot upon is not always the one we think it is.  But it is a path.

What’s my point?  All these Chinese martial arts belong to the same broad family; it’s probable that this could be said about all Asian martial arts without stretching the parameters too broadly.  Yang resembles Chen resembles Longfist; depending on what elements you are familiar with, and/or choose to pay attention to, the resemblance is more, or less.  Some days my son resembles me; some days, my wife.  In truth, he is his own person.  I serve him best when I respect that person.

 

LEAVING AND RETURNING (part 2)

Back in January I wrote a post called “A Handful of Notes” which quoted some of my old (a few years old, anyhow) conclusions about the nature of taiji martial art.  Here’s three of them:

Yang always pursues Yin; Yin always flees Yang.

Turning away is the fundamental movement of taijiquan.

Minimal motion is the fundamental principle of taijiquan.

I’ve talked plenty in the past about the eternal Yin-Yang chase.  And I think I was smart about that minimal-motion precept; it’s kind of guiding me these days as I seek good taiji form.  Minimal motion, yes, but not necessarily simplified motion.  Miniaturized, internalized, concentrated.  Why?  I would say it helps foster the qi-driven process.  Also: think about the physical structure of the human brain: it’s convoluted to stay small on the outside, mucho deep on the inside.

So… Ward-off left, without going into the technicalities of the jins and energy work.

Starting from our square-on posture of “Lower the Hands” in Commencement:

> We turn away from the source of the incursion (attack)

> The left side of our position is vacated

> We orient obliquely to the incursion, rather than directly (angled fighting stance)

> Our attention shifts to the right corner, and stays there

> Weight shifts first to right leg, then left leg

> The legs close, then open

> We form a small globular space with the hands

> The arms close, then open

> We form a large globular space with the arms

The space-shape we’ve created with our body was created by the mind which moved the body through several constructive steps.  Where there appears to be empty space, we visualize qi/energy which has some substance, albeit that of a fluid.  Thus it can ebb and flow, compress and expand, etc.  Whereas initially we just stood there like a wall (or perhaps a door) we are now a ball which is resilient and ready to bounce back.  We didn’t wait for the opponent to compress us, we did it first in preparation for the impending contact.

Talking about bouncing back, this move isn’t a big bounce, more like the smallest that will do the job.  In fact we want to stick to the opponent at this point, to set up bigger bounces under better circumstances.  The ball-with-a-mind has made contact, but it wasn’t quite the contact that the hitter had planned.  We neither stood fast nor ran away, but are doing some confusing combination of the two.  Confusing to the assailant, who hit something that wasn’t his target.

Well, I’ve said most of what I wanted to say, but I’d still like to put a little finer point on this overview of first wardoff.  Guess I’ll practice the move for awhile and see if I can summon a worthwhile part 3.

 

LEAVING AND RETURNING

I have been working on Ward-off left side.  I want to move on.  So I’ll try to record some useful notes without going on forever.  Last night before falling asleep I was observing myself breathing in the darkness.  (There wasn’t much else to observe.)  It ocurred to me, after a while of forestalling death by continuing to open and close my lungs, that the lungs’ operation is the perfect exposition of yin-yang principle, for a martial artist / health seeker.

I noticed that when the lungs are closed-in and emptied, there is an irresistable result of needing to fill them again.  And once opened-up filled, extremity is again reached, and the volume must once again shrink before expanding yet again.

The lungs, functioning, never expand to their true limit or collapse to their true minimum.  Thus there is always a bit of yin retained in the yang state; and vice versa.

When the lungs are full, if we could look inside them, we would see nothing.  Yet something is most definitely there, doing its work.  So it is with qi.  And, there is arriving air and there is departing air.  Probably this would equate to yang qi and yin qi, but I don’t know enough to speculate any further on those matters.

Scientifically, we would say that the lungs move the air, by effecting rearranging  the volume (or space) that admits a contiguous fluid (air).  But looked at from a more naturalistic viewpoint, we can just as easily say that it is the air that moves the lungs, that makes them expand and contract, that fills and empties, as waves fill and empty a tide pool.  I won’t try to explain this further, I’ll just get tangled up, but we have to remember that the Classics tell us that mind moves qi, and qi moves everything else.

So there is an active agent, performing actual work, rearranging reality, under direction.  That agent we would call the Qi.  (Unless we don’t wish to subscribe to the qi paradigm.  But I have decided to subscribe.  There’s plenty that could be said about this on a philosophical level, but at this point taijiquan says don’t let’s talk, let’s just make use of this useful concept.)

Now a quick word about a rubber ball hitting a cement wall.  The ball hits, deforms, compresses (storing energy), reaches a limit or mean; expands (releasing energy) and pushes off.  The ball and the wall handle the situation based 100% upon their intrinsic properties, which can all be described and calculated (assuming a sufficient sophistication of mathemetics).

The ball and the wall are both pretty simple entities.  Basically uniform in composition; and completely lacking in volition.

The ball resisted the wall in the sense that it survived, undamaged.  But it was redirected, it suffered a reversal.  We can admire the clever ways of the ball but it didn’t exactly defeat the strength of the wall.  The ball was forced to run away.  But then again, the wall can’t harrass the ball.  We can admire the strength of the wall but we see what lack of adaptability brings.  The wall survived the ball, but would it survive a sledge hammer for instance. 

As for us, we can try to run away from trouble but if trouble wants to follow us, we’d best have a survival method that includes quashing the trouble source.  Some martial arts explore the ways of the wall, what could a cement wall do if it was more mobile.  Taiji quan investigated the ball instead, what could the ball accomplish if it had a mind.

This is getting long.  Time for a break and then I’ll see if I can’t actually talk about taiji forms.

 

CHANGING THINGS

Interesting.  In my last post I didn’t address one approach to the problem that could be construed as an option.  That is, just look for an easier way to do it.

I bring this up for reason, which is not that I’m looking for easier way particularly.  Though if there’s a smarter way, that could be good to examine.    :)    No, it’s just that I kept trying the posture, it kept feeling a bit difficult, and finally I thought, well, maybe it is a bit difficult.     :)    And of course, we’re not supposed to “pose” in this posture; it’s just a significant moment in an ever-changing picture.  But doing a snapshot of taiji form as a zhanzhuang posture is an accepted practice.  And so, I try it.

And since I’m here alone with just my books, my computer, my mirror, and my toolkit (myself, that is) I looked into the Yang Zhenduo book Yang Style Taijiquan.  I don’t like his postures as much.  But he is a leading light of the Yang Family and very close to the source, as one might say.

So back to my earlier point about looking for an easier way.  In any one-legged balancing situation, there are a couple of basic ways to make it easier to establish balance.  You can put your hands out further, that’s always an option for maintaining or regaining balance.  And you can change the timing of your leg raise, making it more user-friendly as it were.

And studying the way Master Yang, Zhenduo outlines this move, my impression is, that’s what he’s done.  Hands held further out; timing of step altered slightly.

I’m going to keep on trying to do it the way that Yang Chengfu supposedly did it, as detailed in Fu Zhongwen’s book.  To me it is better-looking taiji.  So there, I’ve touched briefly upon the issue of how famous routines evolve - or devolve.  I believe this ground has been well-plowed before in terms of arguments in taiji forums and elsewhere.  The only other thing I can think to add right now is that taiji with the arms and legs extending more than they need to, is somewhat suspect in my eyes.  Taijiquan does not seek out the opponent; it waits in readiness.  So why over-extend.  There could be benefits in TCM-related physical culture; in esthetics (”beautiful form!”); and also in making it easier to balance during transitions.  But FWIW, I’m seeking to keep things (my limbs, basically) a little closer to home unless there seems to be a compelling reason to stretch out.

 

AM I EMPTY?

This is a phrase that came to me while I was at work Saturday morning.  I was thinking about my Yang style routine, that is what I’m trying to put together.  Struggling to decipher and memorize the more complicated forms, and also struggling to inject some taiji-intentional-martial-meaning into the very simplest forms.  It’s really too much to be doing all at once.  But that’s what I’m stuck with right now.  It will all sort itself out as the months and years go by.  Taiji martial art is so multi-layered that I think everyone goes through their own version of this mishmash, this unravelling (and ravelling), this phantasmagoria of psycho-physical development and expression.

Psycho-physical is a term I think I made up.  It may help me in trying to understand Intentional movement.  We’ll see.

So in the beginning I’m just standing with legs apart.  Mountain Rises to its Peak.  At some point I want to achieve Wuji, at some point I want to begin Taiji.  These shouldn’t really be goals or wishes, if I’m doing things correctly then the event (advent?) of Wuji and Taiji just happens, of itself.  But I doubt I’m that good yet so I seek some levers, some buttons to push, some intentions.

This is what I decided: the Mountain will ask a question.  “Am I empty?”  If the answer is yes, then can proceed to raise hands; Two Birds will Take Flight.  I mean, the birds could roost on a mountainside, but they can’t rest on emptiness.  Therefore, time to take wing.

In a sense, if I can even ask the question Am I Empty, then I probably ain’t really empty.  But at some point stillness has to turn into Something; or Something More.  So if I’m empty enough to not be babbling stuff like this inside my head, just have a steady Hum, Om, the gauge reads Empty, time to Change.

But how can a mountain be construed as Empty?  Oh, that’s easy I think.  The mountain is solid, right?  Stone solid.  It can’t move, it can’t do anything.  It’s empty of possibility, in this metaphysical sense.  That has to change.  Even the mountain shall crumble into dust.  It already was dust, just very solidly packed dust.  I can’t explain this further, thank heaven, but when I feel the mountain (myself) as a void, then the answer to the question is “yes” and my mind can take flight, riding on the backs of two airborne birds.