martial arts

The whole body is a fist

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There is a phrase in Tai Chi that the whole body is a fist. I think it actually comes from Chen style, but applies to all styles of Tai Chi. Now, you can interpret that in different ways, but I think all of them are valid.

Let’s look at a couple.

Photo by NEOSiAM 2024+ on Pexels.com

Firstly, it’s saying that it doesn’t matter what part of the body you hit with, so if you’re using Jin channeled from the ground into the target, the path it takes could go through the shoulder, or elbow, or head, for example, just as easily as it can to the fist. Tai Chi in application tends to be at close range, sometimes body to body, so limiting yourself to boxing range doesn’t make much sense.

Another way to look at it (and I think this is potentially more useful) is to think of the action of opening and closing the body as being similar to opening and closing a fist. While the concept of opening and closing the body is hard to grok, everybody is familiar with the idea of opening and closing the fist. In Tai Chi (and other ‘internal’ arts) that opening and closing is done with the whole body. While some internal arts (particularly Xin Yi) go for a open/close/ followed by a hard stop then repeat type of action, Tai Chi is particular amongst the internals in that is opens and closes in a smooth, continuous motion in a fluid series of motions. There’s never a hard stop in the form. You could say that this is defining feature of Tai Chi.

Practical training

So, let’s get to practical training. The ins and outs of how you open and close the body are to do with the 6 harmonies and silk reeling. I created a short video series years ago now, that looked at this. Watching the video is a lot easier than me trying to explain it all in text.

But here’s a training idea: do your Tai Chi form, and try and feel where the open and close movements are in the form. Even just doing the form with the mental attitude of ‘listening’ for where the body naturally opens and where is naturally closes is a practice in and of itself, that can reap rewards.

Further listening

There was an excellent podcast interview from the Gung Fu Crew that I listened to recently by Derek Notman of Island Physical Culture on the subject of Xin Yi Liuhequan.

Derek frequently refers to this idea of ‘the whole body is a fist’ in the podcast and how that applies to Xin Yi. I think that it’s a good listen for Tai Chi practitioners because the idea of opening and closing the body and the 6 harmonies all come from Xin Yi – one of the oldest documented Chinese martial arts. That’s where Tai Chi gets them from.

Derek also talks a few times about another interesting idea, which is that Chinese martial arts aren’t there to teach you to fight, they’re training systems. He suggests going to learn boxing, MMA, or whatever it is that appeals to you first, to get it out of your system before you approach Chinese martial arts. Now, that’s going to be a controversial idea for a lot of my readers, but it’s also a very interesting idea that I don’t think is without merit. Have a listen and see what you think.

The head over foot guy, and Tai Chi

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I’m always on the look out for interesting bio mechanical things and that search recently lead me to a character called David Weck, who is known as the ‘Head over Foot Guy’. Of course, that’s not his only idea about biomechanics- he’s got loads of them – but this video is a good introduction to his Head over Foot idea:

(It’s unfortunate that there’s a picture of the controversial social media influencer Andrew Tate in the header image for that video, because he doesn’t feature in the video. I guess they’re just using him as an example of a good walker, but while he may be a good walker, I don’t like him or his opinions, nor do I think he’s a good example for kids to follow).

The ‘head over foot’ idea can be explained very easily – if you’re going to stand on one leg, then your head has to be directly over your foot if you want your balance to be good. You can try this now, by standing on one leg and playing with where your head balances over your foot. I think he’s right – if you move your head anywhere else but over your foot then your balance starts to go.

Weck then takes this into the idea of walking, so instead of the usual description of walking that you read, which is that it’s a series of controlled falls, if you alternately put your head over your foot as you walk then you end up with a more athletic, balanced and confident walking style with a bit of swagger. You can start off over exaggerating the swagger, then work on reigning it in and making it smaller until it’s hardly noticeable.

I like it – it takes a bit of getting used to, but the alternative of trying to keep your spine neutral and upright (as we are encouraged to do in Tai Chi) ends up with a very forced, stiff, walking pattern. The alternative walking pattern of placing your foot over your head creates a kind of infinity symbol movement around the solar plexus with an alternating pattern of one side of the body shortening and the other side extending.

The idea of being upright is talked about a lot in the Tai Chi classics. For example, the Tai Chi classics say “Stand like a perfectly balanced scale” (from the Treatise) and

“The upright body must be stable and comfortable
to be able to sustain an attack from any of the eight directions.” (from the ‘mental elucidation of the 13 postures’.)

But that doesn’t mean that you should look like a robot when you do it. Your body is a fluid collection of hard unbending bones connected by soft joints that allow for movement. It is designed to move in spirals, and the ‘head over foot’ idea promotes this spiral movement.

A lot, in fact, almost all, of the time in Tai Chi your weight is either on one foot or the other, or you are actually standing on one leg with the other leg kicking. So, I find that thinking about whether your head is over your foot as you do the Tai Chi form is actually a good idea. If it is then your balance will be better.

Think about the classic Tai Chi walk. We do this exercise called the Hero Stroll, which looks like this:

It’s worth doing this and thinking about the concept of keeping your head over your foot as you do it, then applying that to your Tai Chi form. Hopefully you’ll find your Tai Chi becomes more balanced, especially in the kicking movements. I find that this is where a lot of beginners have problems – they can’t balance on one leg. Well, here’s the solution!

What are ‘traditional’ martial arts?

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I always find the labels ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ misleading because something that’s current and popular, like Brazilian Jiujitsu, is actually quite old in comparison to some of the martial arts we would call traditional, like Aikido or Taekwondo. But even recently created martial arts are built on older traditions, so where do we start dating a martial art from? From the day it was named, or from the arts the proceeded it? If it’s the later then all martial arts are the same age and have existed (potentially) forever.

Another way of differentiating between traditional and modern is using the self defence vs sporting dichotomy, however so many martial arts exist in a grey area between the two – take Muay Thai for example, that I don’t think that’s a good way to do it either.

Here’s something I saw written by Alexander Ewlad on the Martial Arts Studies Facebook group in a comment:

“For me, one of the best, i.e. concise and precisely written and kind of encompassing scholarly starts on traditional martial arts was and is the following by Moenig & Kim (orig. 2018; republished as a book chapter 2021):

“[T]he expression ‘traditional martial arts’, which has become very fashionable, is one of the most misrepresented and misused terms in the general discourse. ‘Traditional’ projects an image of a long history and of continuity throughout history, without change. In reality, most modern Asian martial arts are only a few hundred years old or are an evolutionary product of the twentieth century. On the other hand, some western combat sports, such as boxing and wrestling, actually have traditions as long as, or longer than, most modern, popular Asian martial arts, and nobody would ever classify them as ‘traditional martial arts’. The term ‘traditional’ seems wholly reserved as a reference to Asian martial arts. However, to the contrary, many present-day East Asian martial arts developed only recently, and are not ‘traditional’ by most definitions. Most traditional martial art proponents do not consider sports as having any philosophical aspects, as being mostly irrelevant, and as ‘merely’ a physical activity without any spiritual merits. Surveying the available literature on martial arts reveals that leaders and practitioners of traditional martial arts have often monopolized the discussion about philosophy, educational values, and realism in martial arts training; labelling the sports aspect inferior regarding educational benefits in addition to being unrealistic for real combat“ (Moenig & Kim in: Hong & Li, 2022: 43).
Original reference
Book reprint/republishing

You might also like to listen to the lecture, Inventing Traditional Martial Arts a lecture by Prof. Peter Lorge from one of the Martial Arts Studies conferences.

The 2024 Martial Arts Studies conference will happen in June in Cardiff, UK.

Don’t get triggered

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One of the things that martial arts training should give you, over the years, is better self control. At least in theory. You see some higher ranked people and it’s clear that it doesn’t always work out that way, but that’s the plan, at least in theory.

I’m a bit fan of Japanese martial arts expert Ellis Amdur who wrote the excellent book Hidden in Plain Sight about Aikido. That’s not the only book he’s written of course, and I really should try to read some of his others, but he’s done a lot of work in the fields of mental health and dealing with conflict resolution in a professional capacity. He made a recent short video, on the use of the word “triggered”, his point is that how we define or label something becomes your reality. If you define yourself as triggered by something, then you are saying that you have no control over the situation. You are, in effect, helpless. But if you redefine how something makes you feel, using a different word then you can define yourself as having agency, and that is the kind of training that martial arts can give you. I kind of agree, but not entirely*.

As Viktor E. Frankl said, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” I think martial arts training should be a way to get used to stressful situations so you can more easily inhabit that space.

Of course, you need to be engaging in practices that take you out of your comfort zone to get these benefits. Most of the time being outside your comfort zone is not where you want to be but with repeated exposure to the discomfort of being pinned, attacked, thrown, etc, you can start to take these things less heavily, and you can learn to play within the spaces that appear once you stop panicking.

*I’d counter argue the point that Ellis is making – just because you say you are triggered by something that doesn’t necessarily imply action. Ellis equates the word trigger to imply a gun, and once a gun has been shot it can’t be un-fired. Well, maybe, but “triggered” could also just mean the state of readiness you are in to fire a gun – you still have that moment to take your finger off the trigger.

There’s a risk of being lost in semantics here, so let’s not lose sight of the whole thing – the point is, finding that moment of freedom and growth between stimulus and response and learning to live in it. Now that is one of the real benefits of martial arts.

Why Tai Chi never had its Patrick Swayze moment

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So, it turns out that they’re remaking the classic 1989 film Road House because, well, I guess some Hollywood executive has decided that it will make money. I can’t think of another reason why you’d want to remake one of the best-loved and enduring “fighty” films from the ’80s. The new version starts Jake Gyllenhaal as Dalton, and MMA superstar Conor McGregor as his nemesis, Knox. It’s combining more modern things like MMA into the mix, but it looks like it’s essentially the same plot. Trailer:

The original Road House is probably not classified as a martial arts film, because it mixed so many different film styles together, and didn’t really feature any famous “martial artists” in the cast, but Road House always felt like a classic martial arts film to me, just with more Western style fighting in the fight scenes.

It started Patrick Swayze as the bouncer of the aforementioned Road House, who has to deal with an onslaught of progressively worse ‘bad guys’ who are trying to bust up his bar, until he faces the final bad guy in a fight that remains forever legendary for its brutal throat ripping out scene, at least it’s legendary in my mind. It also had some great Blues music played ‘live‘ in the Road House, by the Jeff Healey Band.

Swayze was most famous for his role as a sexy dancing Butlins-entertainer in another classic ’80s film, Dirty Dancing. Casting him as a tough guy who could convincingly take out bad guys armed with knives and the like with his bare hands was a risky casting move, but he pulls it off with style and grace, perhaps proving once again that dancing is the best base for martial artists to emerge from (Bruce Lee was a Cha Cha dancer).

But what I liked most about Road House was the Tai Chi. When Dalton wanted to kick back and get away from the pressures of life he rocked up to the local lake shore and did some Tai Chi, (without his shirt on, obviously*.)

Ok, it wasn’t great, but at least it looked like Tai Chi. The implication was that Dalton was so good at fighting, and secretly enjoyed it so much, that he had to work hard to keep calming himself down otherwise his killing power would bubble up and overwhelm him, taking his humanity with it – kind of like the Hulk. He talks all the way through the film about not liking fighting, and how he does everything to avoid it. Eventually the bad guys push him too far and he unleashes the beast, resulting in the classic throat ripping scene.

I’ve always wondered why Tai Chi never had its Patrick Swayze moment. Wing Chun has been riding on the coat tails of Bruce Lee for half a century now, yet nobody really associates Tai Chi with Patrick Swayze, or this film. Perhaps if he’d gone on to make more Tai Chi or martial arts related films then things would have been different. Instead we got Ghost with Demi Moore and sexy pottery because his most associated activity!

Perhaps I’m being too hasty – when I started a Tai Chi class recently 4 women turned up asking if what they were going to learn was “like Patrick Swayze in Road House”? To be honest, I got the impression that they were more into shirtless Patrick than Tai Chi 🙂

But anyway, let me leave you with this compilation of the best lines from Road House.

Just remember: “I want you to be a nice…until it’s time to not be nice.”

“*” there was clearly a homoerotic subtext to the original Road House. While Swayze pratices shirtless Tai Chi he is gazed at by multiple men. Check out this exhaustive breakdown of Road House for more on that. Perhaps that’s another reason why Road House didn’t end up being a Tai Chi-promoting juggernaut?

Tai Chi Applications: Needle at Sea Bottom, Fan through back, White Snake Spits out Tongue + Torso-Flung punch

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My friend Sifu Donald Kerr of Spinning Dragon Tao has been producing some great videos recently featuring my teacher, Sifu Rand, demonstrating Tai Chi applications from our version of the Yang form. If you’re interested, I’ve written an article about the full lineage of that form before, but a quick summary is that it’s the Yang form from before Yang Cheng-Fu’s modifications, but with some input from Sun Lu Tang, so it’s a bit of a hybrid.

Needle at Bottom of the Sea, Shoulder through the arm and White Snake Spits Out Tongue.

I thought I’d do some posts as new videos become available comparing the videos to the historical books on the style that contain photographs.

There are a couple of historical books available that catalogue the long form in quite some detail. The first is the 1938 book by Gu Ru Zhang, then there’s the 1952 book by his student Long Zi Xiang, both of which have been kindly translated by Paul Brennan.

I’m using the 1952 book by Long Zi Xiang here, as the photos are of a higher quality. The English versions of the move names will always be slightly different, depending on the translator. Brennan translates these moves I’m looking at today, in order, as Needle under the sea (海底針), Shoulder through the arm (肩通臂) and White Snake shoots out its tongue (白蛇吐信).

In our school we use the names Needle at Sea Bottom, Fan through back and we don’t have a name for what Long is calling White Snake… it’s just part of Fan through back.

The application Long describes for Needle at Sea Bottom is, “If the opponent punches to my chest, I grab his wrist and press down, making his power drop downward.” It’s a pretty short explanation, but it does seem to match the modern day demonstration quite well:

For Shoulder through the arm, Long says, “If an opponent strikes from in front of me, I use my right hand to prop up his fist so that he cannot lower it, at the same time using my left hand to obstruct his waist and send him outward, causing him to topple over.”

Again, that’s a pretty good explanation of what happens in that video.

Long has one more application for the part of the form we don’t name - White Snake… – which is a simple block and strike to a different opponent, “If an opponent punches to my waist, I then press down with my right hand while my body moves back so that his punch lands on nothing, and then I use my right [left] fist to strike to his face.“

We seem more interested in the next move, which is “Torso-Flung Punch” (撇身捶) according to Brennan’s translation. We call this move “Chop opponent with fist“, and it’s the natural conclusion to the previous moves, so I’ll add it on here:

The explanation for the application is: “If an opponent attacks me with a [left] punch and [right] kick at the same time, I then withdraw my right leg, causing his kick to land on nothing, my right hand pressing down his fist. Then my left palm pushes down on his arm, and my right hand turns over from inside with a strike to his face.” Which ties in very well with the video showing the application by Sifu Rand:

Martial Arts Studies Conference 2024

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So, I’m going to the Martial Arts Studies Conference, June 4-6, 2024! It’s in Cardiff and there’s a video explaining exactly where:

My friend, Professor Paul Bowman, waffles on in that video about how to find a building that’s simply opposite the train station…. but I think all the vital info is in there on its price and location, except what the conference contains. I suppose that’s because the list of speakers is still being finalised, but I can tell you from my last visit to one of these that they are really interesting and the range of topics is always challenging, thought provoking and fascinating, and the speakers are absorbing and entertaining to the max. Last time I went I had such a good time, and met a lot of new faces, many of which are still friends to this day.

Are you going? If you are and you want to meet up then let me know. I’m available for Tai Chi push hands, BJJ rolling (in a gi please! There’s a possible open mat situation at a BJJ academy next door), weddings, funerals and evening festivities involving alcohol (hey, it’s my birthday at the same time!), just hit me up.

Paul and I, philosophising in his philosophers’ garden about the
intricacies of the guard.

Happy New Year (of the Dragon)

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It’s 2024, if you’ve ever commented, read or shared a post of mine, then a big thank you for contributing to the story of The Tai Chi Notebook. I feel privileged that I get such good comments here, and quite often they inspire new blog posts, so we all play a part. Let’s see where it goes in 2024.

I’ve already done one post of a training idea for the New Year, however, for New Year’s resolutions I thought I might introduce you to the more professional side of my writing – here’s an article I’ve written for the iMore website on iPhone apps that will help you stick to your New Year’s resolutions. Since most of us have smart phones these days I think it’s widely applicable to my readers here (I’m sure Android versions of most of the apps also exist). I hope you enjoy it! I’m certainly going to be using some of those apps this year.

Photo by Eva Bronzini on Pexels.com

2024 will be the Year of the Wood Dragon, (which starts on 10th February). Japan Times says “In a dragon year, people are said to be able to harness the creature’s intelligence, leadership and abilities to pursue their dreams with creativity, passion, courage and confidence.”

So, here’s a bit of Xing Yi Dragon I recorded in 5 spare minutes I had between opening presents and eating another round of Christmas dinner/left overs/chocolates – it’s out of focus, but not out of mind 🙂

In a way Dragon is the most Xing Yi animal of them all. I’ve done lots of posts about Dragons before, so check some of them out here:

  • The Azure Dragon and Shuai Jiao
  • Dragon Dance and street theatre
  • The importance of Dragon to Xing Yi

Making up your own forms – it’s not as easy as you think

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I had an interesting comment on my last post that made me think about the whole idea of making up your own forms (or Tao Lu) – in Tai Chi, Xing Yi, or whatever.

I’ve tried to do this over the course of several years and I’ve come to a few conclusions about it, which I’ll elaborate on here. Firstly, it’s hard. Making up new forms is not as easy as you think. But secondly, it depends what martial art you are making up a form in.

Author, performing Xini Yi Chicken (Ji) posture

If your martial art has forms that are constructed like lego bricks that can be slotted together in any order and still seem to work then it’s pretty simple to concoct a new form. Xing Yi is a good example of a martial art that has this quality. I was always told never to call Xing Yi tao lu by the English name “forms” because the correct term was lian huan which means “linking sequence” for this very reason.

The idea, (in our Xing Yi at any rate), is that all the links you learn are just examples, and you need to be constantly moving towards being able to spontaneously vary them as required, and then ultimately spontaneously create them. This idea has become heretical in the modern Xing Yi world to a large extent because modern Xing Yi has lost a lot of this spontaneous feel it used to (I admit that’s a subjective point) have, and things have become set in stone – forms that were once supposed to be fluid and flexible have become fixed and rigid. Forms of famous masters from the past now tend to be fixed forever. When words like “orthodox” start appearing to describe something you know it’s already dead, or on the way to dying.

But of course, anybody can make up a form, but is it any good? That’s a different matter. And it usually depends on the person doing it, not the moves themselves. With Xing Yi animals you can also ask the question – can I see the character of the animal being used coming out through the moves?

With Tai Chi I find it a lot harder to make up a form. Tai Chi’s approach to a form is quite different to Xing Yi, or other Kung Fu styles. The Tai Chi form tends to be a highly crafted piece of work that has been honed to perfection over many years. It is fixed because you need to be able to forget about the moves and concentrate more on what’s inside. It helps to do that if you don’t have to worry about what’s coming next because you’ve done it so many times that you can let go of that part of your brain and let it be aware of other things.

Tai Chi forms tend to start and finish in the same place for this reason. Usually, anyway. While long forms don’t tend to be balanced on left and right, a lot of the more modern, shorter forms make more of an effort to balance left and right movements.

If you understand Tai Chi and how to ‘pull’ or direct the limbs from the dantien movement then, sure you can make up your own Tai Chi forms, however, there is almost zero history of doing this in Tai Chi circles and it’s not really encouraged. I think this is because Tai Chi has push hands, which can be used as a kind of free-form expression of Tai Chi, completely away from the form and in contact with a partner to give you something to respond to, which is the whole strategy of Tai Chi Chuan, at least according to the Tai Chi Classics it is. To ‘give up yourself and follow the other’ you have to be spontaneous. There’s no other choice!

So, to conclude. I think that’s it’s in its application where the spirit of improvisation and spontaneity can be found in Tai Chi, not in the forms. I don’t think Tai Chi is particularly concerned with creating endless variations of forms and patterns like Xing Yi is, at all. Xing Yi, having a weapons starting point, doesn’t use this hands-on feeling and sensitivity to get started with spontaneity. Instead, it likes to create patterns, then vary them endlessly. Of course, you work with a partner when required, but it’s a different approach. Which is all quite natural, as these are two different martial arts, created by entirely different groups of people in a different locations and time periods.

You might like our Heretics history of Tai Chi and Xing Yi for more on that.


Tai Chi on the minute, every minute

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A friend shared a post recently about an interesting way of exercising called On the Minute, Every Minute. All you need to do is a number of reps of an exercise on the minute, every minute. The suggested start point in the article is 15 push ups, then 20 squats, then 20 plank jacks. That would take 3 minutes, so you just keep going 6 more times, up to 18 minutes. I quite like the idea because it’s simple, and simple is doable.

Photo by Hebert Santos on Pexels.com

Then I started to think how you could apply the same OTMEM method to Tai Chi… Here’s one suggestion: One move every minute then hold until the next minute comes around. I think a short form has around 50-60 moves, so would take roughly an hour to complete like this. It depends what you count as a move. That’s basically an hour of stance training, which would be quite challenging. One for New Year’s Day perhaps? I’m going to give it a go, so let me know in the comments if you are going to join me.

And of course, if you want to push it further you could always up it to every two minutes!