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.

The uncarved block

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Simple is effective

Know honour,
Yet keep humility!
Be the valley of the universe!
Being the valley of the universe,
Ever true and resourceful,
Return to the state of the uncarved block.

Tao Te Ching, chapter 28

Sometimes we just make it all too complicated, and we forget the wisdom of the uncarved block. This video is taken at a Dennis Jones seminar, showing how to apply martial arts to real self defence. Basically, he’s most concerned with positioning himself (movement) and then delivering all his power to the desired target in one go.

I like the way he’s taken his art (Karate) and looked at what the kata is telling you about movement, and not taking the moves as literally the only way you have to do it.

The mother of all movement

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How one thing leads to another

16

Teaching today’s lesson we strayed into the martial applications of one move the student was having a hard time getting just right. It was a transition move between two recognisable postures, a kind of spiral action of both hands around a circle. In reality of course, there are no fixed postures, and no transitions between them, but when teaching beginners you have to start somewhere, so we did.

To help him get the idea of the way the hands move I showed him an application – “punch me”, I said. I deflected his punch with my left, reached through to the back of his head with my right and spiraled my hands to bend him over, ready for a knee to the temple or to be flipped right over. After we’d worked on this for a bit and he’d ‘got it’, I had to then explain that there was no one application for each move. When you break it down, the move in the form doesn’t work exactly like that application I showed (you have to reach in deeper to get your hand around the back of their head than the way you do it in the form, for example), but you can easily see how it’s the same thing really.

Each move in the form is the mother, and the applications are the children – each one subtly different. I can come up with a lot of applications for each move. For this one I had a strike, a choke, a throw, etc, all with slightly different emphasis. It’s endless, really.

After you’ve delved around in a few applications you need to come back to the mother movement, the one that gives birth to them all.

The road less traveled

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What I’m actually teaching is…

The road less traveled

The road less traveled

“He stood about 20 yards away from me, and I closed my eyes and I could feel the power of his chi coming out of him, pushing me over”

So said my latest Tai Chi student, as we were talking about what styles of Tai Chi he had done before. I just sighed and said “Sorry, but I don’t do any of that. Derren Brown can do it very well though…” and carried on with the lesson, never returning to the subject of Chi again. He didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he seemed to quite enjoy the focus on correct movement – it seemed rather new to him…

I only teach on a one-to-one basis these days. It’s much easier format than teaching a whole class of people, all at different levels, and you can really drill down into what needs to be worked on right now with the student for them to improve. Most of the people I teach are complete beginners, which is fine, but occasionally I’ll get somebody who has had some previous Tai Chi experience, as was the case here. In general, this is more fun, since I can usually ramp up the amount of detail in what I’m teaching. However, it can throw up a few curve balls, like the above.

I often wonder what will happen when I refuse to go down the road of “chi tricks” with new students in conversation or teaching. Will they decide I’m not the enlightened Chi Master they were searching for, and leave disappointed? Will they think I don’t have the ‘real thing’ (whatever that is)?

In the end I’ve decided not to worry about it. I just teach what I know I can do, and leave it at that. It’s up to them if they want to say. They usually do.

Towards the end of the lesson (which went really well, actually) I remember saying “what you’re trying to do here is to learn to use your body’s natural power, through the movements of Tai Chi. The co-ordinated, natural power of the body in motion, which we call ‘sung jin’ or ‘relaxed force’. You don’t need to get too attached to the movements themselves – they’re just examples – it’s what they’re trying to teach you that’s important.”

I think that sums it up nicely.

The Tai Chi magician

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Woo! Everywhere is Woo!

Tai Chi, like all other traditional martial arts, contains some aspect of performance, show or magic trick. See my previous post about meeting Scott Phillips for more on this idea, but in short, public demonstrations for entertainment have always been a part of the traditional Chinese martial arts. Martial arts street ‘buskers’ doing gymnastic performances, kung fu schools doing en masse demonstrations of their skills, the Shaolin Monks touring the world with their concrete-breaking, skull-cracking performances, etc… The list goes on.

In Tai Chi the publicly-expected demonstration of skill has turned into something more subtle and suitably ‘Taoist’ than merely breaking concrete blocks, or wooden boards. It seems to come down to a ‘master’ figure demonstrating how far he can push a student back with a very light touch, and while it may not be explicitly stated, the assumption is that the master is demonstrating his Chi Power. Sometimes touch is not even necessary and it is done through thin air by the master merely waving his hands at the student. The bigger the reaction of the student then the better the master, or so the unspoken rule seems to go.

Yes, there can be some functional use to this sort of pushing demonstration as a teaching aid. From the students point of view they get to feel what it’s like when somebody with skill puts hands on them and pushes them backwards. Ideally, from a Tai Chi perspective, it should feel different to a muscular, forceful push. It’s not much use as a self-defence technique, but it’s good for demonstrating the type of force you want to be developing in Tai Chi – using the force of the ground via the legs, controlled by the waist and channeled into the hands. It’s a smooth type of effortless power, rather than using the shoulders or back to do a muscular ‘stiff’ sort of push. The difference is subtle and getting hands-on with your teacher is essential if you’re ever going to learn what it is, because you need to feel what it is not, too.

The problem arrises when when the student’s reactions become hyped up in public. In an effort to not let their teacher lose face they can start to over-react to the push. They start to stiffen their arms, and straighten their legs, resulting in a curious type of ‘hop’. It’s not like an agreement was explicitly made before the demonstration that the student should have a big reaction, it’s more that he starts to subconsciously over-egg his response so he doesn’t make his teacher look bad. Anybody who has taught a group of people Tai Chi will be familiar with this phenomenon. Whenever my students tried to ‘fall over’ for me in a demonstration I always reprimanded them and tried to get them to stop ‘helping’ me do the demonstration, and just act like a normal attacker.

On the other side of the coin, you could decide to view these kind of demonstrations as a simple magic trick. A magician (the teacher) is showing a magic trick, and you all know it’s not real, so just enjoy it for the spectacle it is.

At The Fajin Project Facebook group a chap called Stuart Shaw, seems to have no patience for the Tai Chi magician. He’s done some brilliant breakdowns of how various ‘masters’ of Tai Chi do their tricks (he calles them “Woo Woo”). You might have to join the group to view the videos, but I’ll try and link to them below. Why watch it? Well, if your Tai Chi teacher does this stuff to you, then it’s worth being aware of what’s really going on:

>> Woo Fajin Analysis — Adam Mizner Jalapeños <<

>> Analysis of Woo-Fajin << Michael Phillips

>> Analysis of Woo-Fajin – Seated Push Trick << Chee Soo

>> Woo Fajin Analysis – Huang Shyan vs. Liao Kuangcheng <<

The old master and the young apprentice

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’twas ever thus

The Karate Kid – master and apprentice.

I love this clip of Master Helio Gracie teaching a private lessons, and it follows on nicely from my previous post about martial arts as theatre.

Here we have Master Helio Gracie, a thousanth degree red belt, probably in his 80’s, teaching a private lesson to a fresh new white belt kid. (The pupil shown here later went on to become a world champion in his own right.)

It’s a dynamic as old as time – the old master and the young apprentice. The whole thing is a performance of sorts, and they both play their roles perfectly – the wise, generous old man knows all the tricks, and teaches the young, enthusiastic beginner who makes all the stupid mistakes, time after time. And again, it’s being filmed, so it’s impossible to ignore the fact they both know the camera is there and they have their roles to play.

Enjoy the show.

Martial arts as theatre, theatre as martial arts – meeting Scott P. Phillips

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A new theory on the origins of Tai Chi

pulteney-bridge-bath

One of the benefits of posting on the Rum Soaked Fist internal martial arts discussion forum for so long now, and also working in the beautiful city of Bath, is that I’ve met up with various US Chinese internal martial artists on their travels through this fair isle. Bath is lovely and deservedly on the tourist trail for travellers from across the pond. They come to Bath and we meet up and talk through our favourite subject – martial arts – usually over lunch, then potter off to a local park to exchange techniques. It works out perfectly because they get to see some touristy culture as well as geek-out about their favourite subject – martial arts – with me. I’ve also been across to the US on a few occasions too, and managed to fit in meet ups with various people I’ve known from RSF. Meetups are usually fun and interesting because people always have different perspectives from my own, and I like that. I enjoy seeing the world from a different point of view. How else are you going to expand your horizons if you don’t meet new people?

Last year I met up with the notable Tai Chi practitioner Scott Meredith, or “Tabby Cat” as he’s known on his semi-famous Tai Chi/Astral Animal blog. We had a great time. Scott’s forte is fixed-step push hands from the Cheng Man Ching lineage via his teacher Ben Lo. Scott showed me some of his method and I shared a bit of my XingYi in return. He mentions meeting me in a post here. Scott is a great guy and very skilled at his style of push hands, and I’d really recommend hooking up with him if you get the chance. This week I met up with another Scott, who’s also a big personality on the Tai Chi scene – namely Scott P. Phillips of North Star Martial Arts in Boulder, Colorado. Scott was over here in the UK for the first ever Martial Arts Studies conference at Cardiff University, run by my good friend and erstwhile martial arts student Dr. Paul Bowman. Scott has practiced many different martial arts, including Chen style Tai Chi and XinYi Liu He Quan with George Xu (I really liked the look of his Xin Yi)and has recently become involved in teaching seminars with the Li Shi organisation on Taoist movement.

Scott Phillips performing Ba Ga Zhang.

Scott Phillips performing Ba Ga Zhang.

My experience with martial artists is that each person has their ‘thing’ – whatever that may be – that is their individual take on the whole martial arts shaboodle; its point. Why you should practice it. Or a particular method. With Scott I’d say that thing is ‘martial arts as theatre’. He’s theatrical in nature, and boy, does he love to perform! Over a local stout (which turned out to be delicious, despite the waitress describing it as ‘like Guinness, but not as good’) we discussed many martial subject – too many in fact – and while I can’t say that all of the mud he flung at my wall stuck (he blasted me with probably two decades worth of research material into martial arts, theatre and traditional dance over the course of a single hour!) the one idea of his that really struck home for me was the under-appreciated role of traditional Chinese theatre and folk religion ritual in forming today’s martial arts. Scott’s argument is that Chinese Opera needs much more credit for its role in creating and shaping Chinese martial arts styles than we give it. Much more. For an example of what he’s talking about watch this old video he made on the role of established characters in Chinese Opera, and their relation to the typical warm ups you find in a Tai Chi or Kung Fu class:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyms4lomW50

But his theory goes much deeper than this, way beyond mere warm-ups and further down the rabbit hole. You really need to see him jump up out of his seat and perform his guided walkthrough of the opening of the Chen Tai Chi form to ‘grok’ what he’s talking about. With spunk and vigour he relates each posture to a part of the story of Chang Seng Feng (Zhang Sanfeng), the legendary founder of Tai Chi. He’ll show you how some of the hand positions from Tai Chi have well-established operatic meanings – for example, the hands with the wrists crossed – a position found near the start of the Chen form – means “awaking from a dream”. His theory is that the Tai Chi form tells the story of Chang Seng Feng, and as you move through it you are performing the ritual of his canonisation. The Chen form (and hence, its derivatives like Yang, Sun and Wu) therefore is a canonisation ritual immortalised in a set of martial arts movements. Let’s take Crane Spreads Wings as an example. As the story of the form unfolds Chang Seng Feng journeys to the capital, and sees a fight between a snake and a crane on the way, which inspires him to create Tai Chi Chuan. In the form, this is the point where you do White Crane Spreads Wings, and so on and on it goes, with each posture representing another part in the story.

Zhan Sanfeng, shown in a posture that’s rather similar to Buddah’s Warrior Attendant Pounds Mortar from the Chen Tai Chi form.

This theory explains the long established, yet sometimes baffling, connection between Tai Chi and Chang Seng Feng. It sounds ridiculous, but when you see him perform it (and I really mean to use the word “perform” here, with facial gestures, and dramatic pauses to boot), it’s a strangely compelling argument. Or maybe it was the stout talking, but I don’t think so – there’s definitely something to the unappreciated role of theatre and ritual in all martial arts.

Take Tai Chi Chuan, for example. People often need to be told that it’s a martial art, because it doesn’t look like one. How did we get to this place where we have a martial art that doesn’t even look like a martial art? People always point to the more fighty and vigorous Chen style (there are fast punches and kicks that make it look like a proper martial art) compared to slow, graceful pace of Yang style, yet it’s pretty obvious from watching the opening of the form that most of the movements are floaty and obscure and don’t even look martial in nature at all. Take postures like Buddha’s Warrior Attendant Pounds Mortar, where you stamp your foot and strike your own palm with your fist, then make a circular, rotational motion with the hands and belly as an example. The stamp looks martial, and makes a nice noise, but what are you doing? As a martial arts technique it looks utterly unpractical. Sure I’ve seen people demonstrate a supposed martial application for the movement, but it never looks convincing. If your aim is to learn to fight, then there must be a quicker way than this… But, what if the move is really just the acting out of part of a ritual – the metaphorical mixing of two elements in a mortar and pestle? That explanation suddenly sounds a lot more feasible than this being a deadly martial arts technique!

Even the traditional start to all Tai Chi forms – the raising and lowering of the hands had a meaning related to theatre – it signalled the start of a performance in Chinese Opera.

The idea that all Chinese martial arts are based, in part at least, on theatre and ritual, also opens up new explanations for why we do things the way we do them. For example, why do we practice long solo forms, unless they are designed to be seen and performed? Why have (even secretive) Chinese martial artists always done public demonstrations of their skills? What’s all that breaking of boards and bricks really about? Why are there so many videos of ‘Chi tricks’ out there showing Tai Chi masters moving their students using nothing but the power of their Chi? Perhaps, we’re all just performers, who have forgotten we’re part of a very,very old play? What if it’s all just a variation of a magic trick? You’re not supposed to get upset that all these chi masters are not teaching real-world self defence – it’s just a magic trick after all, and you’re supposed to just enjoy it as theatre, and nothing more. And everybody knows, you’re not supposed to ask the magician how he does it, as that would spoil the magic!

It’s a fascinating idea, and an awakening from a dream, of sorts.

As I said, you need to see and hear Scott explain things himself to really do his theories justice. At best I’m probably misrepresenting them horrendously, but all I’ve got to go on are my memories from one meeting, slightly clouded by excellent stout. Scott tells me that a professionally made video of his guided Chen Tai Chi walkthrough (complete with Chinese subtitles) is on the way. Plus, Three Pines Press is expected to publish an extended academic essay about his theory with pictures in December, in a book called Daoism and the Military.

Look out for both. And do get out there and meet people – you’ll always learn something.

#RealXingYi

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Exciting new website

realxingyi

I want to give a ‘shout out’ here to my friend Paul and his amazing new venture, the XingYi Academy website, and Facebook page.

In his own words:

“There is not much there now but that will change very soon, regular blog updates and later a full members area with loads of content and instructional videos.

Just a few of the things we have planned:

I am already embarking on a project with one of my students who is fluent in Chinese to make a translation of Yue Fei’s Theses and interpret them from a martial context to show their relevance to Xing Yi practice. This will be added to the members area when we’re done and we hope to also publish our translation academically and in a simplified form as a paperback.

I’ve just bought an antique Chinese spearhead and hope to restore it and show some xing yi spear with a real spear with a real historical spear head. (I’ve also got a live spear head and hope to put up some video of test cutting with a live spear too). We might even film some Xing Yi Archery at some point ;)

We’re big on full contact fighting and we’ll definitely be showing how Xing Yi can be used for real, hence our tag line “Real Xing Yi”.

I’m hoping we’re going to raise the bar and set a new standard for Xing Yi online, in terms of depth and amount of content (we seem to have sheds of stuff and from experience I’ve not found any other school with the sheer amount of material I’ve managed to learn or discover especially in 12 animals xing yi), but also in terms of quality of the media, we’re looking to really up the game and make everything to the highest standard we can. As we grow we’ll even go over the older material and update it and increase the quality when we have new camera equipment or space to film in etc.

And at the end of the day we’re just going to put all our stuff out there, whether people are beginners, experienced, whether they like what we do or not I guarantee we’ll be presenting things that will be new to a lot of people and I’m sure all Xing Yi practitioners will find something to take away. And we’ll happily engage in debate and discussion, we hope to be able to provide members forum and some kind of Q&A/two way feedback discussion with members and with me and the other XYA guys once we get going down the line.

We hope to have a mailing list up and running by the end of next week, maybe even by Monday but for now if anyone would like to take a look please do so. Support and feedback is much appreciated.”