HEALING AND MARTIAL ARTS BLOG

Tai-chi-Chuan teaches you how to avoid attack on the street and to make it difficult for a sparring partner to defeat you in class.  Even if you are not strong or are not used to fighting, there are ways you can thwart the attacker’s efforts.

A mugger is looking for an easy attack on someone who won’t or can’t fight back.  He mugs for a living and doesn’t want to get hurt “on the job”, just like anyone else.  The mugger must assess the physical abilities of his victim as well as the victim’s state of awareness. 

There are three qualities you can develop to lessen the chances of becoming a victim.  The first is the alignment of the body.  If your body is not aligned properly you are probably not involved in any physical activity that requires coordination.  The mugger can sense this.  Any training, such as Tai-chi, Zookinesis, Yoga or Pilates can teach you the proper alignment of the body.  Even the use of such physical therapy aids as the foam roller will improve your posture.  This will also improve your overall health.

The second quality is the fluidity of the body.  If your body is stiff and tight, you probably can’t move very well and certainly can’t run after the attacker.  A person who walks fluidly and is well connected to the ground may offer the mugger trouble.  If your body seems bouncy and alive you may have the energy to run after him.  The training methods mentioned above as well as such activities as trampoline work will bring that fluidity to the body.  Trampoline, Zookinesis and the animal forms of the martial arts are especially good at adding that bounciness to the body.

The third quality a mugger looks out for is awareness.  If you are aware of what is going on around you, you can prepare for an attack.  Strong awareness also shows that you have had some training, as the awareness of most people is very dead.   All of the above training helps with awareness, especially the Push Hands exercise of Tai-chi, sparring in general and the Zookinesis exercises.

In a classroom situation there are ways to thwart the sparring partner as well.  Most fighters concentrate on the opponent’s fists and feet and sometimes elbows and knees as well.  But they don’t concentrate on the space between the sparring partners.  Proper Tai-chi training teaches you to move into the open spaces so that the opponent is jammed.  You should be more interested in the spaces between you than in the strikes of the partner.  Let his strikes trigger you to move into the open spaces where you can easily deliver your own strikes. 

This requires that you don’t keep moving forward and back as with most styles of fighting.  You stay in and don’t allow the partner space to move or even time to relax and catch his breath.

Another way to quickly tire out the partner is to make his attention move rapidly.  Most people have very weak attentions.  While a properly trained martial artist has a “field of attention” so that he can deal with many things going on at a time, most fighters have a “single-pointed attention” which can only be in one place at one time.  That person’s attention has to jump from one place to another and it gets tired.  

So you should strike to different parts of the body.  You can punch the legs as well as the head and body.  You can integrate kicking with the punching rather than using punching for a while and then switching to kicking.  Add a little bit of grappling as well, just for a second or two, here and there and then go right back to punching and kicking.  If your partner cannot predict what you will do next, his attention is uncertain and wears out quickly.

Keep the body fluid.  Allow your hips, lower ribs and elbows to rotate in small circles and allow the head to reflect this movement.  This will allow you to respond quickly and will make it difficult for your partner to aim.  It will require his attention to follow your movements and most people cannot do that for long.

These are but a few simple ways that proper Tai-chi training can teach you to be uninviting to attackers and to make it difficult for an attacker to defeat you.

One of my students was in such agony from a punch to his shoulder that he had to sit down, shaking his head from side to side.  Yet I only gave him a light tap.  The reason that he felt the light tap as a powerful blow gives an important clue to Tai-chi as a martial art and as a healing art. 

I struck him at the moment he was about to punch me.  At that instant his attention condensed into his punching arm.  By striking the area where his attention was condensed, I shattered the attention.  Only a light tap was necessary to disrupt the attention because his attention was so condensed.

The instant shattering of a condensed attention is so disruptive that people usually interpret the experience as physical pain.  Yet when my student actually thought about whether his shoulder really hurt or not, he realized that, not only didn’t it really hurt much, but it didn’t hurt at all.  There was no real physical pain.  It was all psychological pain interpreted as physical pain.

In our culture, we are taught to condense our attention into a single point in the head. This is because our eyes are on our head and we are so visually oriented.  When our attention is locked into one part of the body or into a habit of thinking or acting, the attention is not really functional. 

One of the main reasons Tai-chi trains you to be fluid in your movements is to develop a fluid attention as well – one that can move, vary in its qualities and dynamics.  This is essential in fighting but also in living one’s everyday life.  The more rigid you are, the less functional you are and the more easily your attention can be worn out or broken.

When practicing a Tai-chi form, allow your attention to sink down into the ground, as if you are a lotus plant, floating in a pond with your roots deep into the mud below.  As you breathe in, your attention flows up through your stem (up the body) and into the lotus flower, which is within the chest at the sternum (breastbone) level.  Continuing to breathe in, the lotus flower opens and so the front of your body flows up and then opens out to the sides, like an opening flower.

The opening flower then lifts your head which is the center petals of the lotus.  Breathing out, the front of the body sinks, the sides of the chest drops to the center and your attention returns to your roots.

 This process will bring fluidity to your attention so that it can never be frozen again.  Frozen attention makes you vulnerable and ineffective.  As the reality of life tugs at your attention and your attention resists the tugs, life seems like a struggle.  You feel as if you are at your “wit’s end” because the requirements of the dynamic mobility of your attention is greater than its actual abilities. 

Once attention is freed from its rigidity it instantly has all the energy it needs.  It becomes more balanced and easier to move – just like the needle of a compass.  The needle is so balanced that it can spin around easily.  But if you move its fulcrum even a tiny bit, the needle will fall over and not move at all. 

Breathing as if you are a lotus flower is a very valuable form of meditation even while standing still (as long as you allow your body to sink down and expand upward as described above).  As we get older there is a tendency for our attention to condense (yin condition).  The lotus flower meditation helps to prevent this aging process. 

Remember that what you may interpret as frustration, anger and even physical pain, may just be the result of a rigid attention which not up to the task of functioning properly in our complex modern world.  My student could barely stand up at first because of the “pain” he was experiencing until he realized that it wasn’t pain at all but rather, the shock of a suddenly opened attention.

During our “Push Hands” party this Saturday, many issues came up.  A new student wondered about the “magic” of the use of chi (internal energy).  Several asked why we breathe in when we strike in the martial aspect of Tai-chi while other martial arts styles breathe out when they strike.  This brought to mind what my chi-gung teachers taught me when I mentioned that some chi-gung teachers teach you to move the chi in the “microcosmic” and “macrocosmic” orbit in the body. 

They asked me if I thought I was God.  They explained that the body itself knows how to channel the chi properly and the only thing I could do was mess up that flow.  They said that what they were teaching me was to stop messing up the flow of chi and then the chi would flow just fine.  They explained their view that in the West we love to push and shove things around to fix them.  This was true of even Chinese teachers in modern times. 

But what good does it do to shove your chi in what you are told is the “correct” movement when you are still filled with habits of pushing chi around in improper ways.  You would just be creating a conflict between your different habits of shoving, some supposedly good and some bad.  Just stop shoving the chi around, they suggested.

The student who wondered about the “magic” of chi wanted to be able to knock someone down at a distance by holding up his hand.  There are several ways to approach this issue.  The main point is, why do you want to be able to knock someone down?  What are the inadequacies in yourself that cause you to want to be able to knock other people down? 

The second point is that these teachings require very detailed, long term study.  The mechanics of chi are very exacting and specific.  The relationship between chi and the physical body takes years of study and practice to understand, feel and master. 

When the term “magic” is used, it generally means, “How can I do this without any effort on my part?”  It is a sign of laziness.  You just want to be able to use a magic word, for example, and not put in the years of study. So a real student would need to examine his tendency toward laziness.  Magic is only magic when you don’t understand the mechanisms behind the result.

I met a couple of teachers who claimed that they could knock someone over at a distance.  They even demonstrated it on their own students.  But onlookers insisted that he do the same with them.  The teachers did not want to demonstrate their skills on anyone but their own students.  After much insistence these teachers did try to demonstrate this “chi at a distance” on others but failed. 

The point is that this chi at a distance is a training exercise.  The student must be very sensitive to the teacher’s chi.  When the student feels this chi, he allows his body to move according to the characteristics of the chi he feels.  The chi doesn’t knock him over but the student cooperates via his reaction to the chi.

There is great magic in chi training.  It is NOT the magic of seeing great things and not knowing how they happened.  It is the magic of being able to see simple things and KNOW how they happened. 

When an experienced teacher practices his form the onlooker will see the slightest movements with barely any effort.  A beginner at learning a tai-chi form will use exaggerated movements and seem to use a lot of effort and tension.  Most onlookers will think the beginner’s tai-chi is spectacular because it is big and “loud”.  The experienced teacher barely looks as though he is doing anything and is not very exciting. 

Magic in this case would consist of being able to see the incredible control of internal movement (within the body) resulting in such slight external movement (movement of the body in space) of the experienced teacher.  Magic is the ability to see the great in the insignificant.  It is the ability to let go of all the habits of tension, mental patterns and chi blockage to arrive at the simple, natural state of being. Magic, in the real sense, should not be a compensation for feelings of inadequacy that appeal to your laziness. 

Another discussion later in the day centered around this question:  Should you lead the student on by promising great magic (in the sense that the student understands it) in the hope that he will eventually get and appreciate the real training?  There was a story told by the Buddha.  A man came home to find his house burning with his three little girls inside.  He called out to them, “Come here at once.  I have wonderful presents for you.”  When they came out they were upset that there were no presents.  But the father just wanted to save his children.

For my part, I cannot play games like that.  I have to tell the students the bare truth.  My feeling is, “What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”  The result is that I have few students but they are wonderful students.  It may take them a long time to “get” things but they understand that I am not playing games with them.  I don’t give them any room to hide in fantasies.  There is nothing wrong with fantasies but I prefer to leave that to Hollywood. 

Another point that was brought up dealt with acupuncture points.  I was taught that every point on and within the body is an acupuncture point.  Every cell and even every part of every cell is a center for the transformation of energy.  The acupuncture points that you see on the charts are just useful points for healing purposes.  If you work a specific point it will have a specific result.  But this doesn’t mean that only those spots marked on the charts are acupuncture points. 

I believe that in any good Oriental healing school this point is brought out.  But the students often fail to appreciate or even to hear it.  Many such students think that chi only runs through the meridians and not everywhere throughout the whole body.  My teachers emphasized that chi must flow through every organ and cell of the body. 

I showed a chart I had made to bring out what I felt was an essential point to understand the principles of tai-chi and of chi-gung.  If you truly understand the chart, a lot of the tai-chi principles will make more sense.

The chart basically explained that there are two substances in the world and two forces (according to these principles).  The two substances are matter and consciousness.  These substances are part of everything in the universe.  This means that consciousness flows through all matter and is not just a by-product of chemical reactions of the human brain.

Consciousness expresses itself differently depending on what it is flowing through.  Yet the consciousness within a plant is the same “stuff” as our own.

The two forces in the universe are the yin force, pulling towards the center (gravity) and the yang force, flowing outward from the center.   Both forces work on both substances.  When we speak of the yang force in terms of matter, we use the term, “chi”.  When we speak of the yang force in terms of consciousness, we use the term, “creativity”. 

In its most fundamental state, matter and consciousness are one and the same.  But the two forces “play” at creating an apparent separation between the two (the yang force separates matter and consciousness).  The variation of influence of the yin and yang forces on the two substances at any particular moment is one meaning of the yin/yang symbol.

This is the same as an artist who steps away from his canvas to get a better overall view of his painting.  When matter and consciousness appear to be separate, we have a stronger feeling of self or individuality.  When they merge, when the force of gravity takes over, the two blend together.  Your consciousness (which I call attention) and the world around you merge and you loose track of time and even of yourself. 

When you relax, the force of gravity allows your body to sink to its center (the tan-tien).  Since the earth is so large and exerts such a large gravitational force, our center then sinks to the center of the earth.  This is called, “sung”.  It is translated as “sinking” but more specifically it is the sinking of every point in the body into its center (tan-tien) and also the sinking of the center of the body to the center of the earth.   It is yielding to the gravity of both the body itself and of the earth. 

In this way when you yield to gravity you seem to merge, not only with the earth but with your body and with all the natural surroundings.  I learned these principles while learning Zookinesis and that made learning tai-chi much easier to understand.

So now let’s get to the issue of breathing in and out.  When you breathe in, this corresponds to drawing energy upward from the earth and expanding.  Breathing in is yang and expansive.  Breathing out corresponds to yielding to gravity and sinking into the earth.  When you expand, energy flows outward which results in the punch or kick or push.  When you sink you absorb the opponent’s force and ground it or circle it around back to him. 

At the moment of impact your fist “feels” the alignment of the opponent’s body.  This creates a trained effect in your body to line up all your joints in such a way that the upward, expansive force is directly aimed at the opponent and the opponent’s resistance is absorbed by your body.  This re-alignment of the joints takes just a fraction of a second and takes a lot of training to accomplish.  But it allows us to use the ground as our “floor”, to expand upward from the ground. 

In hard style martial arts, their own body tension is used as the ground from which the punch issues.  So their body tension fights against the strike and only a fraction of their potential force is released.  The only tension used in tai-chi fighting is in our movements and just enough so that the arm (or leg or elbow etc.) doesn’t collapse when we strike.  We want an exponential explosion of force shooting into the opponent.  This can only be done when the body is as relaxed as possible.  Hard styles breathe out and then hold their breath when they strike to achieve the maximum tension of the body.  That’s why they’re called “hard styles”.

These are the types of issues we go over at the push hands parties at the Long Island School of Tai-chi-Chuan.  We show how Taoist principles apply to our Tai-chi practice.

In an internal martial arts system, the smaller your movement, the more powerful it is.  The goal is to send your energy into the other person.  If you can do that without using up that force in your own movements or in tensing up your body, you can send almost all of your force out.  In external martial arts systems, the body tenses up to provide solidity.  There can be no small subtle movements within the body and so the body moves in a stick-like fashion resulting in large movements.

In an internal system such as Tai-chi-Chuan and Phantom Kung-fu each muscle is under your control and is kept relaxed.  You can move several muscles and joints just a tiny bit each to result in the strike so that the overall movement of the whole body is very little. 

Power comes out in a spiral pattern from the ground up through each joint.  This spiral pattern magnifies the force.  At the moment of impact the body tenses just enough to prevent the arm from collapsing and to allow the force to flow through the arm.  The internal martial artist is aware enough not to tense up even the slightest bit more than is necessary.

It is the degree of his or her awareness, to be able to make such subtle adjustments in just a fraction of a second that results in power.   If the martial arts student can make his concentration fine enough to make these tiny adjustments, he can be powerful.  And so there is a general saying that the smaller you can make your attention, the more powerful you are. 

As an example, if you think that a punch is the thrusting of the arm forward or turning the whole body to thrust the arm forward, then you are only aware of the arm as a whole or only the movement of the whole body.  If you think of a strike as a quarter turn of the spine and a slight upward quarter turn of the hip, your movement will be much faster, more connected to the body and to the ground and more powerful.  As far as your attention is concerned, you will be striking from the ground up and from the inside of the body out, which is the proper mechanics for sparring.  External stylists generally keep their attention on the outside of the body, keeping their bodies rigid.

When you can bring your attention to a point you become very powerful.  When you can work with many of these points at once then you can really start to learn.  Internal stylists also learn to bring their attention into the joints and muscles of the sparring partner so that he feels completely connected to the partner.  In this way he can feel what the partner is going to do before he actually does it.

The martial arts practices have their greatest benefit in everyday life.  If you can take this training into dealing with other people, with business strategies, with goals in life and with your health then your life can become powerful.  A few examples will explain.  It is very easy to get caught up in the emotional patterns of other people.  This is because most people cannot bring their attention into the subtle changes of feeling inside their bodies.  If your attention were everywhere inside of your body and at the same time was inside of the other person, you could tell how the other person’s emotional patterns were affecting you.  You could see the mechanism of how your own feelings and reactions change due to the other person.  You could then take control of that mechanism so that you do not copy their emotional patterns or even react blindly against those patterns.  You can remain centered and examine how you can be most effective.

In the martial arts, each partner tries to control the behavior of the other, confusing them or freezing their attention.  In everyday life, most peoples’ emotional and mental patterns are so chaotic that they constantly damage the people around them.  It is important to be so aware that you are immune to that damage. 

On the other hand, your own behavior patterns from the past, may have taken control of your present behavior.  When you react to a situation it may not be in the most effective way or even the least bit logical.  If your attention is so pinpointed that you can feel how your own patterns are affecting you, then you can get beyond them.  They only have control if you can’t see them, if you feel you ARE them. 

That is the most powerful effect of developing the fineness of attention.  We have come to believe that our identity is the patterns of behavior and reactions that have programmed us.  Most people have really lost the awareness of themselves.  When you reach your original creative, connected self there is great calm and joy.  But most people are trying to follow the “breadcrumbs” home, meandering through the thick forest in search of themselves. 

The finer your attention, the more you can see the mechanisms that control your behavior, the more you can see what is not you and the quicker you can discover the source of your creativity, of what makes you a unique individual. 

At that point you can see that while we are all unique individuals, we are also completely connected to each other and to nature.  At that point we can finally love fully and let go of anger and resentment that may have been seething inside us for many years – about issues long since gone.

I have also found that in business, you are able to get to the heart of any negotiation and better understand the issues that bother the other person.  Very often in business negotiations the other person is not saying exactly what they want.  They’re trying to be coy.  It is important to sort out the issues so that you immediately understand where the other person stands.  This makes for more effective negotiations for both sides.  If your attention is strong and can follow many lines of discussion at the same time, it is easier to sort out the underlying themes and get to the heart of the issue.

Training the attention in this way is not easy.  The Tai-chi forms and Push Hands exercises and the Zookinesis exercises teach the attention to seep into every crevice of the body, to follow many patterns of energy and movement at the same time and to constantly re-adjust the body and mind to changing external conditions.  It is said that it takes five years of Push Hands training to be able to consider yourself to be a beginner.  This is because the condition of our attention in modern times is so poor.  Our attention can be considered to be in critical condition – almost dead.  To bring it back to even normal health takes a lot of work.  But the result of that work is not only a more effective life but great health and joy. 

There are two reactions to practicing Push Hands among my students.  The first is laughter.  They laugh at how dead their attention is compared to how healthy they know it can become.  The second is shaking their heads and saying that they can’t believe how stupid their bodies are.  They know what they should be doing, but the attention is so rigid and so programmed with useless patterns that it is a great struggle to free the attention.  It is as if their attention is entangled in a net. 

And yet, as a teacher, I see that they are making great progress in every lesson.  It is just such a long journey back home!

You can go through the rest of your life knowing and being yourself and enjoying the thrill of living or trying to follow the breadcrumbs through the forest as if you are lost.

The power in Tai-chi-Chuan sparring comes from relaxation with a minimum use of muscle tension. This contrasts with “hard” or “external” styles. The power of the punch, for example, originates in the foot as it presses into the ground. Each joint expands sequentially from there so the force emanates upward. The force moves through the leg and hips and then directly to the elbow and fist, bypassing the upper body. The upper body sits loosely on the lower body. To the extent that the upper body tenses, this detracts from the force that moves out into the opponent’s body and increases the amount of force that stays in the puncher’s body.

At the moment of impact, the body must not tense up any more than is minimally necessary to maintain the firmness of the body’s structure (including the punching arm). Any tension beyond that point decreases the amount of force moving into the opponent. Your fist is not completely tensed up as you strike.

In the fraction of a second it takes to impact, your body must perceive the balance and alignment of the opponent so that your body can re-align itself to take the opponent’s situation into consideration. Your body aligns itself to deliver the most effective punch according to the alignment of the opponent. Your muscles and joints must re-align, all at the same time, instantly. And of course, your body must have the knowledge of how to sense the opponent and re-adjust. If your body were stiff, you would sense nothing and not be able to re-adjust.

Your force must move out equally into the floor, through the foot, as into the opponent. In external styles. the tension of the body is used as the “floor”. You punch out from your own tension. In Tai-chi-Chuan, the actual floor is used as the floor. This releases the body to be flexible and responsive.

As the front part of your body expands to deliver the punch, your back must relax and sink into the floor. Your front cannot expand if your back doesn’t relax. And if you expand your back and front at the same time, you just lift yourself out of your root (your connection to the ground). There need to be an equal amount of you sinking as expanding.

In this way, your center remains still, and the stillness of the center is necessary for power. It is like jacking up a car to change a tire. If you place the base of the jack on marbles or on slippery mud, it will slip and the car will fall down. If your center moves about, the structure of the body cannot remain aligned to deliver the maximum power.

Even the arm itself remains relaxed until it makes contact. Only then does it tense and only enough to prevent the collapse of the arm. The arm does not create the power. The body creates the power. Any attempt to add more power by using the arm muscles to punch actually cuts off the body’s power.

So relaxation is a vital ingredient to developing power in sparring. And in life, relaxation allows the body to remain strong and not be worn out. Your training in sparring helps you to deal with life in a more realistic way. You no longer feel you are battling your way through life.