In this episode I talk to two Wudang Tai Chi teachers from Brighton, UK: Nick Walser and Ian Kendall. Both students of the late Dan Docherty, they have continued to practice the tai chi that Dan taught them and developed a new training system called 5 Snake.
5 Snake is a unique and powerful method for finding flow, resilience, and calm through partnered close- quarter practice, and they’re here to tell you all about it.
Find out more at 5 Snake and on Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.
One of the things I often notice about my rolling partners in BJJ is that when they’re passing guard, they’re too easy to pick apart and attack because they let their spine bend by allowing their head to drop. As soon as this happens, I can attack their limbs easily because they’re suddenly not as strong. The spine is an integral part of the structure of our body, and when it’s not properly aligned, we’re weaker.
When we’re rolling in BJJ, and I’m in teacher mode, I’ll stop and point out when their head is down, and it’s often a kind of revelation to them. What I mean by “when their head is down” is that their head (and neck) is not in alignment with the rest of their spine. Once your head is aligned with your spine, you’re much stronger physically, without even trying. You’re also much more resistant to attacks from your partner. The game in BJJ then becomes about how you can break their spinal alignment while they try to keep theirs and break yours.
This takes you beyond the realm of just techniques and into the realm of principles. My BJJ book is certainly full of techniques, but I also tried to include a lot of text, especially in the intro pages for each section, about principles and strategy, too.
Having a background in tai chi, I think I’m more aware of spinal position than people who don’t have some sort of bodywork background before they start BJJ. In the 10 essentials by Yang Cheng-Fu as recorded by Chen Wei-Ming, it says, “An intangible and lively energy lifts the crown of the head. This refers to holding the head in vertical alignment in relationship to the body, with the spirit threaded to the top of the head. One must not use strength: using strength will stiffen the neck and inhibit the flow of qi and blood. One must have the conscious intent (yi) of an intangible, lively, and natural phenomenon. If not, then the vital energy (jingshen) will not be able to rise.”
Now there’s a lot of Chinese jargon in there that we can probably do without, and the way it’s written is not incredibly helpful. In BJJ, I usually just say “keep your head up” because that covers a multitude of sins, but what I’m really talking about is keeping your head in alignment with your spine.
If I’m teaching tai chi and I tell a student to keep their spine “vertical,” or lift “the crown of the head,” as it says in Yang Cheng-Fu’s recorded sayings, they almost immediately stiffen up straight like a soldier, holding their shoulders rigid and looking really uncomfortable. That’s not what you want in tai chi.
I think this stiffness is what Yang Cheng-Fu meant when he said in the next sentence of Chen Wei-Ming’s work: “One must not use strength: using strength will stiffen the neck and inhibit the flow of qi and blood.” A good tai chi spine is not a fixed position; it’s an alignment, and that means it’s an ever-changing position that adapts to your movement.
The general movement of your body in tai chi is always down. You are always relaxing and sinking down. That doesn’t mean you give up and slump on the floor like jelly; it means you just stop trying to hold yourself up all the time. You don’t really ‘do’ anything.
Relax the shoulders and just stand still for a bit in a wu chi posture. If you relax and allow it to happen, your head will naturally find the right spot where it sits in balance on top of your spine. The key is to stop trying to make it happen and let it happen. It wants to be there; you’ve just got to get yourself out of the way and allow it to happen. As it says in chapter 2 of the Tao Te Ching, “The sage acts by doing nothing.”
You’ll know when it feels right, and you can transfer that feeling to other situations: driving, working on a computer, and even, doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Good news, the softback edition of my co-authored book with Seymour Yang, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: The Ultimate Illustrated Guidebook will be available to buy from Meerkatsu.com in a couple of weeks!
With over 260 pages and 970 hand-draw illustrations this is the perfect book for somebody wanting to start BJJ, or just for the martial artists who wants to enjoy a beautifully illustrated book that focuses heavily on technique, but also provides you with concepts, history, strategy advice and more!
The softback will be £10 cheaper than the previous hardback edition, but still feels luxurious thanks to its high-quality printing.
Just watched a great clip of 1980s Wushu in China – featuring Sun Jianyun, Sun Lu Tang’s daughter performing Bagua. But there’s also some clips of Tai Chi and some kids doing Northern Shaolin (at least I think it’s Northern Shaolin). Well worth a watch. The martial arts are on their way to being the heavily performance-based WuShu we have today, but are not quite there yet, with martial technique still a priority.
A frog in a well, looking up at the sky
Something I read today was, “training material in my personal practice only includes the methods which have always consistently produced observable benefits and skills. Anything which hasn’t done so in a trial period of regular practice is eliminated and abandoned. I don’t have time for anything which doesn’t give a good return on the investment of time and effort to practice.”
That’s an interesting point of view, and seems logical and rational. It seems very in-line with modern efficiency-based exercise or martial arts thinking. I just don’t think it’s a realistic approach to studying the internal arts or qigong in any depth.
I remember talking to Simon Cox who trained for years at Wudang mountain in one of my podcasts and (I’m going by my failing memory here) he said something like his teacher asking them to do meditation for a few years, with barely minimal instructions, then just leaving them to it. Forget “a good return on investment”, you were just expected to do it, without any hope of a result.
I’ve often heard people say things like, “A year is not a long time in qigong practice”.
And from my own experience, I can say with confidence that you do need to practice without “observable benefits and skills” for a long, long time.
Most people simply stop, and therefore never get anywhere. They stay scratching the surface, thinking that they are deep into their practice.
Once again, I’m reminded about Zhuāng Zǐ’s Frog in a Well story.
But what do you think? Let me know in the comments below.
I’ll be teaching at a BJJ camp in North Wales this November — come roll with me in the scenic land of sheep, hills, and armbars! It’s basically a wellness retreat… if your idea of wellness includes being choked by strangers. Book your spot before someone heel-hooks it out from under you!
My old mate Simon Thakur from Ancestral Movement, and star of episode 37 of my podcast, has released a free class as an example of what you get if you sign up for online classes with him.
It’s pretty good! I particularity enjoyed the ‘Wu chi’ standing at the start where he emphasises relaxing and releasing tension. Later on he gets into Feng’s HunYuan Qigong, but he’s using it more as a framework to teach his Ancestral Movement concepts. Fascinating stuff.
Try it now!
Episode 40 of the Tai Chi Notebook Podcast is out on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and elsewhere.
I’m joined by my friend Benjamin Palmer. Ben has been running a Xing Yi Quan training group in deepest darkest Somerset for a good few years now, but Ben has also been training Mishima Kempo, an eclectic Japanese martial art and is thinking of starting a class in that soon.
We share the same Xing Yi teacher, Damon Smith who has been a previous guest on my show.
I visited Ben’s Xing Yi class a couple of weeks ago to teach his group some grappling and afterwards we sat down for a chat, and a nice cup of tea, so here we are in Ben’s kitchen!
Links:
Mishima Kempo
FoxFist
Xing Yi UK
Investigative journalist and anthropologist Scott Carney has produced what could best be described as a takedown of notable breathing and cold exposure expert Wim Hoff.
I’ve never been interested in Hoff’s breathing methods myself, I felt they weren’t going down the same track as the Qigong and Chinese Martial Arts I practiced, so I never tried them. But really, I’m just not a fan of: 1) cold and 2) holding my breath, so it never appealed to me.
And it turns out it’s a really dangerous thing to do in water. People have died doing it.
Carney’s description reads:
“He was once the most popular breathwork instructor in the world. He galvanized the ice bathing movement. But all good things come to an end. And Wim Hof’s end has been a long time coming.
Wim Hof doesn’t want you to see this.”
Xing yi is a martial art I’ve got a lot of time for. The first thing I noticed about it was its approach to stepping and how different it was to other Chinese martial arts like tai chi, for example. In fact, the only other martial art I can think of that uses a similar type of stepping is yi quan, which is a derivative of xing yi, and perhaps Sun Style Tai Chi, which is obviously influenced by xing yi because it was the main martial art of the founder, Sun Lu Tang.*
When approaching xing yi for the first time, most people seem to be more interested in what’s going on in the body because it is an internal art. I think that, in a way, the label ‘internal’ is something of a blessing and a curse for xing yi because it leads to a lot of intellectualising about it, which is sometimes unnecessary. Before you need to start worrying about things like the internal workings of the body, I think you should be focusing on the footwork of xing yi, because that’s the key to getting the right feel for the art.
It’s not like all Chinese martial arts don’t use stepping, (of course they do), but there’s something really nice and practical about the way xing yi uses stepping and striking in harmony*. If you look at a random xing yi link (its name for forms) then no step is wasted – something is happening on every step.
But it goes a bit deeper than than – the timing of what is happening is the thing to look for. The strikes combine with the stepping to put your mass into each strike, so rather than hitting people with just the weight of an arm, you’re hitting them with your whole body weight behind the arm.
I made a video about the timing of xing yi steps and strikes before and I’ve talked about xing yi stepping basics before, but a viewer of one of my YouTube channels, contacted me recently asking to know more about it, so I thought I’d make another video.
So, here it is – I’m demonstrating some standard ‘jab, cross, hook’ strikes on some pads first. There’s nothing special about this, then I look at how it would change if you were going to adopt the xing yi footwork. I show this with the weight staying on the back leg first, then I show how you’d do it with a palm strike and the weight on the front leg – in the way you do it with Bear (Xiong Xing). And then I show some xing yi movements in a linking form, where the steps and the striking are using the same timing. This is a mix of elements and animals.
Is there anything ‘internal’ in this? No, it’s just the mechanics of stepping and striking done together in the general way xing yi uses them. However, my controversial opinion (sorry, I’m trying not to get into arguments these days) is that you need to get this down first before you start with the more subtle internal stuff.**
* Yes, I’m sure there are other Chinese martial arts that use this sort of stepping sometimes – talking in generalities helps make a point, but it is rarely accurate.
** Xing yi is a big art, what I’m talking about is a feature of Hebei Xing Yi – other styles may vary and not use the same sort of footwork. I’m not attacking the way you do XY or the way your Sifu taught you.
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