Author: Tai Chi Notebook

The three word formulae for effortless power: “Grab. My. Wrist.”

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If they say this, run!

I just saw another one of those ‘secret to internal power’-type videos online. In fact, I tell I lie. I didn’t actually watch it. You see, I just couldn’t bring myself to click play because the video thumbnail was a guy being uprooted while holding the wrist of another guy who was looking all ‘effortless’. That was enough to put me off.

The formulae for effortless power is actually very easy, I joked to myself, it’s three words “grab my wrist”. That’s it! To be honest, it’s pretty darn easy to manipulate anybody who does you the favour of grabbing your wrist and isn’t being too resistive. Of course, what doesn’t work is when they go all limp. To prove your incredible internal power you need to move people around, so a bit of resistance (but not too much: “hey, just relax!”) is required and then all you have to do is just punt them in the general direction you want to go – up, down, forward or backward – any hey presto they follow.

I’m not saying there’s no value in doing things from a wrist grab – it provides a low level of resistance to work with, sure. But I’m tired of seeing people use it as demonstration of anything ‘good’. If you want to show me your incredible internal power in use then do it against somebody throwing some genuine shots at your head or body. It would also be nice if, as a martial arts teacher, you didn’t look severely overweight. But hey, I know you can’t have everything.

I’ll leave you with this little gem from Napolean Dynamite. Rex Kwan Do. “Grab my arm. NO! MY other arm.”. Ah, we’ve all been there. 🙂

Stand like a balanced scale

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On being upright

Harmonious movement.

This Alexander Technique article on staying upright brought back some thoughts I have on Tai Chi, and being upright, that I thought I’d share.

Being balanced is a big deal in Tai Chi. I mean, if you’re going to move that slowly through a set of movements, you might as well make sure you are on balance while you do it, right? But what exactly is ‘balanced’ in a Tai Chi sense? The Tai Chi classics famously advise: “Stand like a perfectly balanced scale and move like a turning wheel” whilst also “Don’t lean in any direction; suddenly appear, suddenly disappear.” Of course, what is meant by those words is open to interpretation.

Being ‘upright’ is a bit of a contentious subject in Tai Chi as some styles advocate an active ‘lean’ in their forward postures, yet because there’s a staight line between foot and head they see it as still being balanced.

In terms of fighting, it’s hard to do a jab without a bit of a lean, so unless you want to start off your sparring career by fighting like a robot with your chin up, ready to be knocked out, I’d advise going with the protection that a slightly-leaning fighter’s stance offers:

Bruce Lee showing his lead straight.

Bruce Lee showing his straight jab

…. that is, until you are really comfortable with it. Then you can make it your own. For instance, take a look at the stance of current interim Featherweight UFC champion Connor McGreggor.

Beautiful counter punching from McGreggor.

See how ‘upright’ he is? It enables him to move fluidly and counterpunch very effectively. He knows when to lean, and when not to. In fact, I’d say he’s perfectly embodying the words “Stand like a perfectly balanced scale and move like a turning wheel” and “Don’t lean in any direction; suddenly appear, suddenly disappear.”

Was this what the authors meant when they wrote the Tai Chi classics? Who knows. They were written in another time and another place, by gentlemen who may have had no connection with what would be known as ‘prize fighters’ in their day. They might, even, have looked down on them as mere pugilists, existing on a lower strata of society. It’s impossible to say, but if you look at what remains inside the family lineages of Tai Chi – the Yangs, the Chens – then it seems to have no connection to two men duelling with gloves on. Only some branches of the Wu style seems to have branched off in this direction. But this is another topic, for another time.

Either way you look at it, a head that’s directed upwards (and by which I mean, suspended as if by a thread from your crown, not by looking upwards) offers you the most options in terms of mobility because the body is free to move. You are aligned with gravity.

Watch Systema expert Vladimir Vasiliev move and you can see the same thing.

He ducks his head when he needs to, but notice how ‘upright’ he is most of the time?

To go back to that article I kicked off with for a second:

“We tend to be overly forward oriented just because of the fact that most of what we do all day is in front of us. Then there is the tendency to be future focused on all the things that have to get done instead of being present with what you are doing as you are doing it. With these two things in mind, you can easily understand how you can lose a sense of the back of yourself as you get pulled forward.”

I notice this. I work at a computer all day, and occasionally notice that my head is always being pulled forwards into the work I do (writing). It takes a bit of mental effort to bring myself back into the present and my posture back to being directed ‘up’ as I sit, not slouching or drawn forward.

When you sit in a meditation posture long enough you start to notice your habitual tendency to lean forward. It’s subtle. When you sit ‘back’ into your hips and align your head over your hips you really notice how you can rest in your structure with less effort. The whole body can relax into the present moment.

I notice it in my Tai Chi, too. It takes strong awareness to be able to stay ‘upright’ doing the form. My habit is to slump. My challenge is to stay upright.

On knowing your lineage

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Because only geeks care

Excellent article on lineage in martial arts: http://martialartsstudies.blogspot.com/2015/09/on-knowing-your-lineage.html

in my experience of TCMAs, it always seemed to me that the vast majority of practitioners had only a very vague and shaky relationship with the notion that their styles had either a history or a lineage. Rather, most practitioners seemed most inclined invoke vague allochronistic ideas, about ‘Nature’, ‘Taoism’ or ‘the East’. Those who did believe that they knew their history, those inclined to talk about it, discuss it, dispute it, had one thing in common. They were all (in my experience), universally, and ‘to a man’, men.

Chen and Yang style Tai Chi, compared, side by side

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Yang and Chen style compared on video

This great video is worth coming back to again and again. Obviously, there has been some manipulation – the sequence of each player is paused or slowed down at key moments so that they stay in sync, but it shows how Chen style and Yang style, which initially look quite different, are in fact, variations of the same form.

Chinese martial artists “disgust” with MMA

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Very interesting post over at internalmma blog about a particular view that I’ve also come across from Chinese Martial Artists. The idea that MMA is somehow disgusting.

“I know that there is a stigma amongst the Chinese who train in their martial arts that ground fighting is what dogs do, and you don’t want to be a dog (I have had Chinese friends tell me personally that they think MMA fighters are beasts/animals and not even human).”

Usually there’s also a whole load of “gay” jokes thrown in as well. Let’s be honest, there is something a little bit homoerotic about two shirtless sweaty men wrestling each other in positions usually associated with sex, but it only appears that way to an outsider who doesn’t understand the game. Grab a roll with a BJJ blue belt and you’ll be too busy worrying about staying alive to give a second though to any of that. Even rolling with a female, if you’re a straight male, (or vice versa) isn’t awkward at all, once you get used to it, which can happen in a matter of minutes – it’s all about the art, and you simply don’t think about anything else.

Anyway, Check out the full blog:

As old as I want to be 

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Saw a great quote about Tai Chi today that I’d like to paraphrase.

Taijiquan, at least originally, was created as a discipline for self-perfection, long life, happiness and found its ‘application’ as a martial art – it contained teachings from previous Taoist practices.

I think that’s pretty good because it acknowledges that tai chi was never just a martial art, which explains the wacky applications you see doing the rounds, and also acknowledges that it isn’t ancient itself, but contains practices within it that might be.

Oh, Joko!

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I’ll admit to being a big fan of Charlotte Joko Beck’s 1993 book Nothing Special. Her first book is good too, but the second really hits the spot for me. It’s about Zen living, but is very light on the ‘Zen’ and very heavy on the ‘living’. What I like is her approach to practice, because I think it relates to Tai Chi practice.

There are so many similarities between the two. Aside from the fact that they’re both meditative in nature, if you want to get anywhere in Tai Chi you need to practice pretty much every day, even when you don’t feel like it, in much the same was as you have to sit and meditate every day to get anywhere in Zen, even when you don’t feel like it. Not that there is anywhere to get in Zen, since you are already right here. In fact, from a Zen point of view it would be better to say that you have to meditate every day just to get back to where you are already, and nowhere else.

Some of my favourite quotes from her work (which I’m not getting just right, but hey, they are close enough):

“When nothing is special, then everything can be.”

“On the withered tree the flower blooms.”

“Stop thinking, stop dreaming and there is nothing that you cannot know”.

Anyway, I’d recommend Nothing Special, the book, and watching the following YouTube documentary about her work.

Charlotte Joko Beck – Ordinary Living-documentary:

Peng, Lu, Ji, An: Grasping the bird’s tail

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Teaching using Trigrams

PakuaPostHeaven
Yesterday I taught the ‘Grasp Bird’s Tail’ sequence in the form. I don’t know why, but I drifted into talking about trigrams as I was teaching it. Trigrams are the series of three broken or unbroken lines that make up the Bagua and are usually associated with the ancient book of Chinese wisdom, the I-Ching, or “classic of changes”, which contains 64 hexagrams (two trigrams on top of each other).

This diversion into ancient philosophy is somewhat unusual for me, but not unheard of, as I usually don’t like to get sidetracked into theoretical discussions too much when I teach. I think theory has its place, but I’ve seen too many Tai Chi teachers who seem to need a whiteboard and marker pen to teach you how to throw a punch. The thing is, the trigrams aren’t purely theoretical to me, and they do have relevance to teaching and practical application, as I will explain.

The four fundamental forces used in Tai Chi are Pung, Lu, Ji and An, (usually translated as Ward off, Rollback, Press and Push) and are most clearly expressed in Yang style-derived Tai Chi forms in the section known as Grasp Bird’s Tail. Each of the energies has a trigram related to it for a specific reason.

Peng is three unbroken, or yang, lines: “heaven”
Lu is three broken, or yin, lines: “earth”
Ji is one solid, yang, line surrounded by two yin lines: “water”
An is “fire”, a yin line surrounded by Yang lines.”fire”

Heaven, earth, water and fire – four fundamental elemental forces.

Because of their symbolic makeup, the trigrams can help you understand what’s ‘inside’ the postures, and what makes them different to each other – what makes a Peng a Peng, for instance, and not a Lu? And how is that different again to a Ji? And how is An different again?

It’s about the feel of each movement.

For example: Peng is represented by three yang lines – this is maximum yang at its fullness. In this posture you should feel internally inflated – a positive, outward expression of energy at its maximum. That doesn’t mean it is “hard” – it is actually more like a large rubber ball – a springy kind of energy on contact.

Lu is represented by three yin lines. This is the most empty a posture can be, but again, it’s not lacking or depleted, it’s just empty. There’s still a structure, like the way a vase is empty in the middle. You are guiding force past you, without adding in your own force, but also without losing your own stability.

Then you get Ji and An, which mix both yin and yang lines. Ji is a solid yang line between two broken yin lines – the needle in the cotton. This is how the energy should be expressed in Ji – soft, but with a hard centre. Push is the opposite – it appears to be hard, but is open and empty inside, giving the push a warmer fire-like feel.

Again, we are talking about how each posture feels here, so words will always be inadequate, which is why the trigrams can be a useful visual symbol to represent the feeling of each energy and help you distinguish them.

The use of trigrams is not limited to Grasp Bird’s Tail. (There are another four in use in Tai Chi, which are further mixtures of yin and yang balances, but I often feel like the theory is being shoehorned slightly into Tai Chi to accomodate them into a nice neat number 8, as there’s no real reason to go as far as 8, and you could also go further.).

Once you can understand the feeling of the four energies in Grasp Bird’s Tail you can see how it applies in other areas of the form. For example – what energy do you want to express at the very end of Brush Knee Twist Step? Is it a Ji or an An with the projecting hand?

Well, the interesting thing is, you could do it either way, so long as you know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

Addendum: One of the joys of symbols is that you can interpret them in different ways. If what I’ve written goes directly against what your teacher has told you, then that’s fine – you can interpret these things in different ways. This is just the way I do it.

More Taiji fakery

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Oh, why do they do this?

Who is ready for some more depressing news about martial arts and China? I bet you are. Anyway, here’s the latest in a long line of Taiji magic tricks that don’t fool anybody:

“We’re challenging these Thais to a match in the spring, I need to show these fighters to my master in Henan,” explained Chen Jia. “It’s going to be televised all over China.”

This is the story of how a Taiji group organised a challenge match against a group of pro Thai boxers. Original article here:

http://fightland.vice.com/blog/taiji-vs-muay-thai-the-fight-i-put-a-stop-to

If you know anything about Thai Boxers then you know that this would be the equivalent of a group of school children challenging a Special Forces unit to a gun battle. The author, realising this, tries to stop it going ahead, thinks he has, but at the end of the article it says the fight went ahead anyway, and the Taiji guys won 3-2, with no further explanation. Winning 3 to 2 sounds amazingly good for the Taiji guys, especially considering who they were fighting.

But then another article appeared recently with a further explanation:

http://thelastmasters.com/taiji-vs-muay-thai/

“So I got the links and watched the fights. Sadly, this “match-up” was exactly what everyone says fights in China are like. The fights were rigged – Chinese fighters wore black pants to hide shinguards, referee saved Chinese fighters from anything more than a 3-punch combo, Thai guys were paid to take a fall.”

I’m not surprised at all, this is the way everything seems to be done in China. It’s such a continual disappointment, and another reason why the Chinese Martial Arts are in such a poor state.

“A girl atop Huashan outside of Xi’an told me once that “fakery is a part of our Chinese culture,” and she said it with a measure of pride. The trickster has always been a hero in Chinese culture, and held above the great warriors who must eventually sacrifice themselves for either cause or country, while the schemer survives. That tradition, combined with a half-century of non-stop brutal lies and another three decades of desperate money mongering, has reached its most bloated moment.

I don’t think the moment can last forever, and I believe a cleansing of the martial arts will hasten the end of a century of lying.”

I’m not so optimistic, I think it will just continue like this forever until there is a change of government in China and an explosion of democracy. Until then we’re going to get stuff like this on Chinese TV. I wonder if the Chinese people know it’s fake, or not? Sigh.