martial arts

Tai chi and keeping the spine aligned with the head

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“An intangible and lively energy lifts the crown of the head.”

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.

The softback edition of my book is on the way!

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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.

Observable benefits and skills

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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.

Ep 40: Kempo and Xing Yi Quan with Benjamin Palmer

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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

The 1974 White House Rose Garden WuShu demo, with President Nixon, Dr. Kissinger

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I’ve actually only just noticed a comment on my Contacts page from January by Robert Lepper:

“I suggest you do an article about the 1974 historic visit to the United States by the elite Chinese National Wushu Team. There was a famous visit to the White House Rose Garden with President Nixon, Dr. Kissinger and other dignitaries. In October 2024 the team celebrated their 50th year celebration of the U.S. performances in Beijing and Qingdao City. After the U.S. demonstrations in 1974 they demonstrated in Great Britain (1975) and many other countries. These martial artists were the best of the best. It was the opening of China and Chinese martial arts to the world. Jet Li at age 11 was on this famous team.

There are many pictures available and a news video (poor quality) of the demonstration in the White House Rose Garden.”


Well, this actually seems like a good idea, especially since it was Jet Li who was demonstrating. I had a quick look online, and yes, there is a video of the event, showing a young Jet Li demonstrating a 2-man wushu form in front of President Nixon:


From what I can see, this looks like a version of the ‘Shaolin 2-man form’ that I learned years ago. Certainly some of the still postures – like the one in the video thumbnail cover – are postures I recognise.

Here’s a longer video of the event:


Nixon first visited Beijing in 1972, in an effort to start establishing relations with the People’s Republic of China, after years of diplomacy that favoured the Republic of China, based in Taiwan. The visit was a huge symbolic gesture. This 1974 visit looks like a return visit, with the PRC trying to push the image of Chinese Wushu to the West.

It’s interesting to think of how Wushu is being used here as a demonstration of China’s soft power, and there’s no sign of any Taijiquan. This was not long after release of Enter the Dragon, when Bruce Lee had introduced kung fu to the international stage for the first time. Li would later become famous as a kung fu movie star in his own right, starring in films such as Shaolin Temple, the single most influential feature film in Shaolin history, and the film that many people suspected to have caused the re-population of the Shaolin temple with monks and the creation of a major tourist centre in China. I’d recommend Matthew Polly’s book American Shaolin.


It’s such an interesting historical footnote to see both a young Jet Li and President Nixon interacting together, back in 1974.


Self defence and swimming on dry land

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The age-old debate on sport vs self defence training opens up again, and this time, I’m in it!


“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If you had somebody who has only ever trained sport jiu-jitsu and they’ve done the most sporty of the sport jiu-jitsu – they’re only ever training berimbolos, crab rides and rolling back takes – that’s their whole game, but they’re training against resistance, and they compete, especially if they compete, they are 100 times better at self defence than a guy who just practices self defence techniques in isolation.” – Stephan Kesting

That’s a quote from the first part of this clip that has been making its way around the Internets from Stephan Kesting, one of the shining lights in the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu community.

He goes on to say more, but the above quote is the essence of what he’s saying. 

I completely agree with him, but not only that, I’m actually in the clip – I’m the guy with the glasses at the bottom of the screen.

This clip was part of the longer podcast we recorded I recorded along with my writing partner Seymour Yang (Meerkatsu) with Stephan about our new BJJ book, which is currently being shipped out to people that brought the pre-order.

Incidentally, the book is not on sale anymore, that pre-order was a limited run, hard back, collectors edition. We’ll probably release a softback version in the future on a similar limited print run idea, but we haven’t decided for sure yet.

But back to the clip. 

Obviously, because this is the Internet and people can’t read or listen to something without immediately copying and pasting their own opinions about what they think he said, or wrote. So, this clip caused a bit of a ruckus online, attracting comments such as:

“This is hilarious BJJ is not good for fighting at all in sport (MMA) or self defense.. but ok keep believing that “

“I don’t know not all fights end up on the ground right away. And no one’s is gonna wait for you to sit down and start fighting. My complaint with some of the sports jiujitsu has to be Takedowns, it’s like they forgot to do takedowns.”

Now on their own there is some merit to the points being made, however they don’t refer to what was actually being said by Stephan. Let me reframe his statement in the way that Bruce Lee used back in the 1970s with his article called “Liberate Yourself from Classical Karate”:

Stephan is saying that the spontaneity and natural reactions that ‘live’ training will develop is worth 100 times what you’ll learn by practicing ONLY dead forms.

That’s the point, not the applicability of BJJ to self defence or whether all fights end up on the ground. And obviously it’s not an either/or choice, and there’s a lot of grey area in regards to marital arts triaining, but that’s the crux of the matter

Bruce framed the argument around the idea of live, spontaneous training vs repeating dead forms. There are a lot of great quotes in the article by Bruce Lee, but here’s a couple I particularly like:

“It is conceivable that a long time ago a certain martial artist discovered some partial truth. During his lifetime, the man resisted the temptation to organize this partial truth, although this is a common tendency in a man’s search for security and certainty in life. After his death, his students took “his” hypotheses, “his” postulates, “his” method and turned them into law. “

“Prolonged repetitious drilling will certainly yield mechanical precision and security of that kind comes from any routine. However, it is exactly this kind of “selective” security or “crutch” which limits or blocks the total growth of a martial artist. In fact, quite a few practitioners develop such a liking for and dependence on their “crutch” that they can no longer walk without it. Thus, any special technique, however cleverly designed, is actually a hindrance.”

To me the argument that Stephan is making and the argument that Bruce is making are different aspects of the same thing. It’s the ‘learning to swim by never getting in the pool’ analogy all over again. You simply can’t learn to swim without getting wet, no matter how great your theory of swimming may be.

We would all laugh in the face of a theoretical swimmer who only ever practices on dry land and yet we tend to revere the opinions of the theoretical martial artist far too strongly, especially if they have a cool uniform and a black belt with lots of stripes on it.

Personally, I find that the less I practice sparring in a week the stronger the need for coming up with solutions for theoretical situations becomes in my mind. The more actual resistive sparring I engage in, the less my mind craves these sorts of questions. Instead, I’ve actually got something useful to be thinking about, like how I would do a technique from that last round better, or how I would escape a particular situation that actually happened, next time.

Just imagine if you haven’t done any actual sparring for years. There are plenty of ‘martial artists’ like this. Their heads must be full of theoretical knowledge, most of which probably wouldn’t survive an encounter with reality. And all of which can be silenced with just a few seconds of actual sparring practice.

How we made Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: The Ultimate Illustrated Guidebook

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I wanted to share the process and journey of how Seymour Yang and I made our new Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu book.

First of all it’s worth noting we are both black belt instructors with many years of teaching experience. The book is aimed at beginners to developing white and blue belts and covers everything we felt was useful and relevant in today’s Jiu-jitsu club environment.

After much time planning and researching we then set about creating the contents. Every illustration is based on a photograph or video still that we took of our students or training partners. These stills Seymour used as references to hand draw the line art images. I then wrote the text.


That was just the beginning. The hardest stage was making sure the book was as accurate and tight as possible as a work of reference. For this we spent a long time proofing, editing and redesigning it. We then tested sample after sample from independent book printing companies to find the best one (we did not want to go the Amazon print on demand route)

I’m proud to say the book is finally available for our followers to buy (as a pre-order) and so far it’s proving very popular.

We decided to make it a pre-order as we just didn’t know quite how many to print in advance. A two week window was decided and after the pre-order window closes (June 11) we can then tell the print house how many to make.

If you want to know even more about how we made it then check out this informal 2 hour (2 hour!) video where we chat about making the book (it will be released in a more thoroughly edited audio-only version as an episode of my Tai Chi Notebook podcast shortly):

All your questions about my new book answered

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My co-author, Seymour Yang, and I have written a brand new BJJ book: Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, The Ultimate Illustrated Guidebook, which will go on sale very soon.

If you want to see a free preview chapter, sign up to the Meerkatsu newsletter by visiting the website (Meerkatsu.com) and filling in the details in the pop up box.

The next newsletter will be released tomorrow (Wednesday 21st May).

Q: When will the pre-order go live?

A: Next week, exact date tbc very soon

Q: Where can I buy the pre-order?

A: Through the website, Meerkatsu.com

Q: How much will it cost?

A: Not confirmed yet but we will try to make it as affordable as possible for a premium independently published hardback book.

Q: How long will the pre-order last?

A: The pre-order window will last two weeks, then we send to printers to make the book (about two weeks), then we ship it out to you.

Q: What if I miss the pre-order?

A: We will print a few more books as spares and have them in stock but once they sell out, that’s it, they’re gone.

Q: Do you ship international?

A: Yes we do, see the drop-down list of destination countries in checkout.

Q: Shipping is gonna kill me, right?

A: See the shipping fee at checkout, it should cost no more than when ordering a kimono (it is calculated by weight).

Q: Will the book be available on Amazon?

A: Not in hardback form. This format will be exclusive to my store and when it sells out it sells out. But we may launch a softback version at some point later on. And this may or may not go on Amazon. We will see.

Q: Will you do an e-book version?

A: Maybe, we’ve not decided yet. We want this to be a tangible physical beautiful object you hold in your hands and cherish for years.

Want a free chapter from my new book, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu – The Ultimate Illustrated Guidebook?

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As some of you will be aware I’ve been working on a book about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for the last year, and well, that book – Brazilian Jiu-jitsu: The Ultimate Illustrated Guidebook – is finally finished, and will be available for pre-order very soon.

It’s a collaborative project with renowned illustrator and author Seymour Yang who goes by the brand name Meerkatsu, and is famous for his BJJ-themed illustrations, which are used in all sorts of BJJ clothing products like rash guards and gis.

The book is a hefty hardback one-stop resource for everything a beginner, and even a more experienced person, needs to know about Brazilian jiu-jitsu. It contains over 260 pages containing over 970 hand-drawn illustrations that show each technique in detail. It covers all our favorite standup techniques, positions, different guards, guard passing, sweeps, submissions and escapes.

Get your free chapter!

Head over to meerkatsu.com, enter your email address into the popup box to sign up for the Meerkatsu newsletter and you’ll receive details on how to get your FREE chapter very soon.

Tai Chi fighting applications

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This video has been doing the rounds online, showing some tai chi (taijiquan) fighting applications.


I don’t think there’s much to say about it, but it does perhaps prove useful for answering that question you get a lot: “can tai chi be used for fighting?”.

Let’s just try to say a few things about it though:

Firstly, he’s clearly just taking a tai chi posture (‘Play Guitar’) that looks very like that an ‘on guard’ position and using it in the same way a boxer does to parry and block punches. The hand he has by his chin he’s using in just the same way a boxer does their back hand to parry a jab. Is there anything wrong with that? Maybe not. You could use the posture like that, but is that its purpose?

Is that what that posture is designed to be used for? At this point, who knows. Usually you see ‘play guitar’ used as an arm locking posture, or combined with a foot sweep into a shuai jiao-style throw.

On the positive side, he’s actually getting the guy to throw the attacks properly, which is nice to see. Maybe they could be a smidgen closer together, so the punch would actually land, but compared to most applications you see from non-committal attacks, it’s not bad.

No, it’s not sparring, but not everything has to be. I don’t think it would look quite as much like ‘tai chi’ if it was sparring.

Finally, is there much ‘tai chi’ going on here? I’d be looking for smoothly flowing into sticking, yielding, and neutralising. He follows up a couple of times, but I don’t see much in the way of controlling the opponent here. The opponent is more often than not just blocked, and not controlled.

The bar for tai chi applications is pretty low. There are too many videos of people bouncing away at the slightest touch to muddy the water, so I think we have to say that this is at least a step in the right direction.