Chen.quest.ion

I admit to being a bit weak in the sciences, and mathematics.  Oh, it’s quite possible I’d score higher than the “average person” (whoever that is) on a quiz or test of some kind.  But up against someone who’s put more effort into these areas, I’d make a poor showing.

I was reminded of this because I’ve been enjoying and benefitting from some of the great posts at the Taiji @ Stagmont blog (see blogroll link).  Even while alluding to taijiquan properties and powers that might seem almost science-fictional, he reminds us of scientific principles that help make great taiji possible.  I want to brush up on this stuff, so I found a great little primer on Physics at http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/GBSSCI/PHYS/CLASS/BBoard.html and http://www.physicsclassroom.com/Default2.html.  I guess if I’m spending all this time looking into taiji theory, I can also try to get more educated about the forces, and rules-of-engagement thereof, that make everything happen.  Including tai chi!

I want to get back to some nuts-and-bolts writing about tai chi, Chen Style, Hong Practical Method.  But I want to tread carefully, discussing things that I am in the process of figuring out and getting better at (or so I hope!) without the pitfalls of regurgitating articles I’ve read; being tedious or pontificating; pilfering the intellectual property of dedicated taichi teachers and masters; or giving the impression that I’ve been initiated into a lineage when in fact, I’m just a teacherless hobbyist with a self-guided, CMA/TCM-flavored approach to self-improvement.  Maybe it will be more than that someday but for now, all I have is a computer keyboard; decades of experimental movement training; and some Tai Chi Inspiration.

I recently remembered a great short little article I found years ago by a woman named Elenor Snow who’s trained in both Chen and Yang.  If I wanted to tell someone why they should look into taiji (especially Chen style), I couldn’t find better words than this.  Maybe I will someday, but until then, I bow with respect to these wise words on The Value of Relaxation.   http://www.snowtao.com/article.htm

Did some more studying and thinking last night, then sat down and just wrote this out on a piece of paper.  It’s a little disjointed, but I’m going to leave it as is.  Let me just add two things that everyone knows: Taiji “intention” is reliant upon FOCUS; and DESIRE can be a very powerful force.  Perhaps we’re capable of much “more-than-we-think”.

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When a lightning bolt – or a military jet plane – cleaves the air and leaves a vacuum in its wake, that state of affairs lasts no longer than an eyeblink.  “Nature abhors a vacuum.”  Existance exists, and doesn’t fancy having Nothing around.  The surround will rush in to fill the vacuum.  We’ve all heard a thunderclap, and a sonic boom.  They shake houses.  And it’s just some air rushing in to fill a gap!  The difference between Something and Nothing is profound… and powerful. 

Taiji Intention can be seen as 100% attention upon something.  Let’s say It is – not just your opponent – but something more precise, like something happening to your opponent.  You’re not thinking about doing it.  Your mind has focused down to the “IT” itself.  It is right in front of you.  YOU no longer exist.  Only IT exists.  The flower does not know it is turning towards the sun.  It does not know anything.  But IT-MUST-TURN-TOWARDS-THE-SUN.  You are the flower, your opponent is the sun. 

The difference between the “is” of Now and the “is not” of one second from now, is tremendous.  If you can be the Empty of the unfilled Potential, you can be the Real of the fulfilled Intention. 

The Intention is the Thing itself; nothing less.  It is outside of you.  NOW – join it!

Good morning.  Spent some time lying in bed before getting up, thinking about these two. Now, even before the caffeine, will try to formulate…

What is important about empty and still? What use are they? Why should we…?

What can one do, when one is empty, and still?

Anything.

The empty hand is ready, as all others are not.  The empty mind contains only possibility, nothing more.  This is the extreme of Yin which is  supremely - ready – to change.

In taijiquan, everything is initiated by the opponent.  He is the bringer; the doer.  What is my job, if I wish to restore harmony?

To empty myself.

Hard words, in this Material World!  But: wherein lies Freedom? What is Peace?

Worth finding out!    

Peng is one of those elusive Taiji qualities that moderns such as myself would like to quantify.  There’s intellectual curiousity for one thing, but mostly [I] would just like things to be easier and come faster.  Doesn’t mean it’s possible to have that; but one tries.

One of the better things I read about Peng said that it’s not something you feel; it’s something your opponent feels.  A certain intention, internal arrangement, and movement(s) is the cause of that effect to one’s opponent.

This seems typical of taiji, where small, swift, and sudden changes are calculated to have a big result upon the other party.  It’s the pebble that starts an avalanche.

This post basically continues the theme of my prior “Through the Looking Glass”.  I’ve been considering some other everyday-life manifestations of “apparent power” in TJQ:

One is walking up a staircase; not really paying much attention.  At the top you step on a step that’s not there.

You’re going through a doorway.  This door is always ajar and you expect it to swing open effortlessly before you.  Surprise, it’s shut tight, and you walk right into it with momentum.

Your modern house has a glass door that, unfortunately, was just cleaned and is spotless.  In strolling outside, you run right into an invisible wall.

Here’s one I really like: you go into the local pub for a libation.  You remove your heavy overcoat and hang it on the coat stand.  Except: a loutish prankster pulls the coat rack away at the last moment.  No big deal, right?  Hardly; you’re off balance.  One never forgets the sensation of being thrown unexpectedly out of balance/central equalibrium.  Even in minor instances, it’s a bit of a sickening feeling.  And if a second prankster chose that moment to give me a push or a thump, I’d be staggered or even toppled, quite likely.

Taijiquan delights in springing these little surprises on the aggressive.  The element of the unexpected is fundamental.  A Karate master doesn’t care if you see his punch or kick coming. He intends that it’ll be the last thing you see for awhile! 

I watched an interesting TV show once about British special forces soldiers called the Mountain Leaders.  In an English variant of the Shaolin Temple, these guys spent their training time in the least favorable of terrain and weather conditions, practicing how to move, survive, fight and win no matter what came at them.  Their motto is “Train hard to fight easy”.  Taiji doesn’t favor brutal training methods (merely arduous) but has even less taste for brutal fights.  One doesn’t wish to cause the other guy agony or injury (though these are options) if it’s easier to just make him miss that last step; or walk into that glass door.  After that little 4-ounce shock it’s a lot easier to bring them down to earth.

Okay, I can’t resist this!  Late in ‘06 through the magic of Google searches I stumbled upon a taiji teacher named Bob Klein.  He had posted many articles for public viewing and I immediately judged them to be excellent, really first-rate.  Tonight I was looking one over and it’s perfect for where my head’s at right now, I want to share it if anyone’s interested and I will need to read it and think about it in days to come.

http://movementsofmagic.org/blogs/bobklein/archive/2006/12/22/THE-SECRET-OF-CONSCIOUSNESS.aspx

I’ve been digger deeper into Cheng Man-Ching’s 13 Treatises and can no longer resist some exploratory writing on the theme of Intention.  This is just me theorizing and hypothesizing.  (If I think I know something, I simply state it.  Poetry is just a fun way to reach out from the known into the unknown.)   One thinks of Martial Arts intention in terms of desire and of doing.  Here I’m trying to explore the wellspring…

Intention is knowing.What’s to be done

Came across some of my old taiji notes the other day.  It was an interesting experience.  For one thing, I found all of the notes from early 2006 which preceded my finally putting a workable, 24-Form routine together.  Since then, I’ve been practicing much more and hardly making notes at all.  So there was something of a watershed event in mid-2006 between “figuring things out” and “doing things”.

In the years prior, I filled page after page, notebook after notebook; made charts and wall posters; photocopied pages from books, cut and pasted the photos, filled the spaces between with notes upon notes.  Being a smart lad I eventually realized that there was no end to this process, that one could scribble forever, possibly writing out useful information, but definitely putting off actual practice.  Then again, taiji warns frequently against erroneous practice.  So there’s a real Catch-22 situation lurking if you don’t have a good teacher to guide you. Now I did do plenty of standing and moving practice in those years.  But it was of a fragmentary nature.  Every aspect had to be learned through trial and error, and putting tiny pieces together to make larger pieces, came with difficulty.

Anyway taiji lends itself to this kind of endless analysis.  I imagine there are many note-makers out there in the taiji world.  I’ve thrown away a lot of my writings over the years, either because I felt I had impressed the info upon my brain sufficiently; or because upon later reading, the flaws and outright embarassments were all too plain.

Some earlier writings I deliberately harvested and saved because – I liked them, felt they had worth, didn’t want to forget them in future years.  They could still hit the wastebasket if time teaches me a different opinion; I’m not overly sentimental.  Here’s a sampling:

Yang always pursues Yin; Yin always flees Yang.

Turning away is the fundamental movement of taijiquan.

Yin is prime.  Yang is secondary.

Minimal motion is the fundamental principle of taijiquan.

Wuji is prime.  Taiji is secondary.

One side of the waist moves toward emptiness.  Everything else is moved by this. 

Sink weight to one side, thus – a vortex.

The back moves the front.  The lower moves the upper.

These are some of my pithier notes (one reason I like them).  The world will never see my pages upon pages of writing about the forms, approaches to the forms and routines, comparisons of styles, common movements in different forms; invented abbreviations (e.g., TTL = torso turn left; DT = dantian).  That’s as it should be.  I’m not a taiji teacher; some would question whether I’m a taiji student.  One thing’s for sure.  Taijiquan is an endlessly fascinating intellectual puzzle.  But assuming we have a reasonably good laundry list of things to train and things to practice, best to get on with it.  Otherwise all that will be left one day is a handful of notes about wonderful things, instead of the wonderful things that inspired us in days gone by.  T’ai chi ch’uan offers a way to keep wonderful things in our lives through all our days.

After debating for a while, here I am again posting a link to one of my alltime favorite tai chi articles.  This is an interview with Master Koh Ah Tee (Xu Shu Song).  I know almost nothing about him, but a couple of years ago I was looking into the concept of “the body as taiji ball” and found Master KAT discussing that very topic!  I’m not sure how much use he has for Chen style taiji; for sure, it’s not his style.  That doesn’t bother me at all, since I (hopefully) have plenty of use for his powerful ideas about taijiquan.

“If you can’t use taijiquan for fighting then you can’t call it taijiquan.  When an opponent’s fist is coming towards you, you must feel happy.  Taijiquan as a martial art must be the opposite of what other martial arts are.  This means that you don’t want to know what your opponent is going to do to you, and you don’t want to have any idea of your own response.”  (Italics mine.)

Interested?  If you’ve never read this before, it’s at http://www.zhong-ding.com/kat2.htm

Taiji takes a very special attitude towards the opponent, the one in front of us, who is in opposition to us.  Taiji looks to yin-yang theory for its approach to this situation, and yin-yang relationships permeate every aspect of the encounter.  (Ideally, that is!)  Koh Ah Tee speaks to these matters very clearly.

Right now I’m taking my lunch break at work and I thought I’d make a mention of what I was doing just a few minutes ago. 

I believe, from all my inquiries into such things, that “song kua” and/or “loosening the hip-joints” is of prime importance for any real success that I’ll have pursuing taijiquan.  Now my work involves a lot of standing at work tables and doing stuff; reaching for this and that, turning to and fro; picking things up from various heights and putting them elsewhere.  Under time-pressure and some days feeling better than others, there’s a constant temptation to take short-cuts by using poor body mechanics.  I fight back by always trying to use good body mechanics… which quite often overlap with taiji methods.

I’ll try to make this brief.  Sometimes it’s helpful to use what I call “heavy feet”.  If I’m standing in place and there’s little need to step here and there, I imagine my feet cemented to the floor; or in cement shoes anyway.  I bend my knees just a little.  I imagine my torso to be bouyant.  The overall effect is I’m like a water plant rooted at the bottom of a lake.  Then as I make all the various movements to perform my tasks, I’m very aware of my pelvis floating atop my legs; connected at the hip joints.  It feels good and the best part is, I use kua movements as much as possible instead of bending at the waist, twisting my torso out of CL alignment, etc.

Doesn’t sound like much when I write it down here.  But I believe that constant incorporation of taiji movements into everyday activities can be very beneficial.  I could go on at length about this subject, but I’ll finish here by simply mentioning one more piece of advice: always use Horse Stance while brushing your teeth.  (I don’t imagine I’m the only person who’s doing these kinds of things!)   

Postscript: It sounded a little odd when I wrote about “making my torso bouyant” and I just figured out why.  It’s frustrating sometimes but I cannot always keep my head-top lifted at work.  Oh, I can work on doing this as aften as possible, but I’m paid to look at my work and that direction is often downward.  So in this simple kua exercise I’m trying to set up the best most relaxed taiji body I can even while my head’s not really in the right place.  I can still work on good Open and Close, weight transfer, and moving from the Centre.  That’s plenty to practice in the middle of a busy day, even if one of the most important postural points cannot be consistently employed (in this case, because I want to remain consistently employed).