Be a Friend with Your Own House

There are many reasons why people don’t make it very far in their Tai Chi. Some people seem to never really develop or stay as a perpetual beginner for always. Some people don’t have a very deep interest and consider it mostly a physical exercise and practice it just like any other exercise. Others might listen too much their teacher and thereby do all too little thinking by themselves. And some others might just lack the interest to take their art further to higher levels.

Whatever their reasons, I don’t believe that you can truly understand Tai Chi if you are not a good friend to your own body. You really need to learn how to live in your own House. Your body is the place where you grow and develop as a person, and your personal growth is, by my own and others experience, the very key to development and understanding of the Art of T’ai Chi Ch’uan.

T’ai Chi is all about self-knowledge. I remember that when I was much younger, about 17 to 20 years old, I sometimes played with a senior and top student of our teacher. When we played push hands and my hand was on top of his, he said: “Now look, when you touch my hand I don’t feel your hand. I feel my own hand. Tai Chi is about self-knowledge. The better I know myself, the more I have that I can translate into knowledge about my opponent.”

I immediately understood what he meant and his words responded deep inside of me. It was more than twenty years ago, but I remember exactly what he said and how. Back then, I had had some visits to a physical therapist for some trouble with my own body. There was no big trouble, but I have always had a quite high degree of muscular tone, so my reasons to visit her was mostly about stiffness resulting in problems with knees and neck. I lived for a couple of years in a quite small town where I got into touch with this therapist. The interesting thing about this physical therapist was that she had studied for Jacques Dropsy, someone who taught Tai Chi amongst other things and had developed a system for teaching body awareness. He believed that most of the problems we have with our physical body are on at least some level about self-knowledge and lack of body awareness. We don’t know how to live in our own house.

I remember the rather odd exercises this physical therapist had for me. She did exercises with a big medical ball that I would sit on as she pressed me down on it using my shoulders. She also had a smaller ball that she would press against the sides of my body as I lied down on a mattress facing down. This and other things she offered was about learning how to feel my own body better. All of this therapy resulted in a more relaxed body and that all of the problems I’ve had eventually were gone. I had already studied Tai Chi for about six or seven years, but it was not enough for me to deal with the problems I had.

There are not many, but still quite a few books, about body knowledge and how to develop it through similar exercises that I went through. Jacques Dropsy have published a couple of books, but they seem to be not available in English, though his method, B-BAT is practiced and well known in many places. The Feldenkrais Method might be the most well known for English speaking countries, though I haven’t read much of this work or practiced it. Another fascinating book that I have read is a classic from 1977, The body Has It’s Reasons. (If you have other suggestions on literature, please write them in the comments).

I won’t preach much about the benefits about exercises and training concerning body awareness. You will better understand the needs of your own body which can mean a better health. But there are general benefits to it, like being a happier person that have more control over one’s own life. The point of developing a better self-knowledge is always about how to become a better friend with yourself and to your own body.

The theory that is shared by many practitioners and teachers of similar schools is that things like bad memories and pain is stored inside of the body, maybe as a part of the muscle memory, and can cause different problems for the individual. Therefore, for some people a deeper therapy is necessary, especially for learning how to forgive yourself and those responsible for shaping who you are. And ultimately, after dealing with the issues that is stuck inside of your body, you can learn how to better live together with yourself inside your own house, i.e. become a better friend to your own body. You really need this kind of friendship in order to progress far in any bodily, physical art. Otherwise, your body won’t learn what you want or need to learn. And then you can not use your own body efficiently to reflect your own knowledge about your Art. Because it all, whatever you learn and is taught, starts and end as a knowledge within your own body.

For this cause, T’ai Chi Ch’uan is obviously one important tool of many available, and for myself Tai Chi is the very best and most important tool you can have, one that you can use to learn how to understand yourself better, to develop self-knowledge and body awareness. But sometimes it’s also good to learn other methods that can reflect what the nature of Tai Chi really is, but from other perspectives. Even if you don’t stick with any other of the alternative methods, anything you can learn as Yoga or dance, will deepen your own understanding of your own house and thus deepen your own understanding of everything about yourself, and in the end, also about your T’ai Chi Ch’uan.

Keeping The Center – Zhongding

There’s a concept in T’ai Chi that is most often translated into “Central Equilibrium”. The name of the principle is Zhongding and in T’ai Chi this is also one of the five directions, or the center from where all of the other directions derive. If you stand straight up and down, and turn on the spot around your own centreline, to face the left or the right, you have established four new directions. So you don’t only move from this place, but it’s the place from where you organise the directions, your distance to everything around you, and all of the space around you.

Vertical alignment – horizontal wheel

But why this name? Isn’t “zhong”, or middle enough? Why adding “equilibrium” to “center”. To have this thing called Central Equilibrium you must know how to keep the center intact. The absolute center is your own vertical centerline, the vertical middle of your body, from the top of your head down to the bottom of your base. You must always consider this centreline. The Tai Chi classics says: “Stand still like a balanced scale, move freely like a turning wheel.” All your movements, forward, to the side, pushing or striking, involves keeping your vertical centreline while making use of the horizontal, spinning wheel. 

In the beginning when you start to practice Tai Chi, you need to learn how to move and walk vertically straight, to learn how to feel your own center and how to keep it always. And you should try to feel how to keep your vertical alignment while spinning around your body around it, like a “freely spinning wheel”. Later when you understand the very basic of keeping the centreline intact, you can start moving more freely with a more free shape. You will understand that if your body is balanced, you can keep the centerline even when leaning or moving the spine to store and release jin.

Practically, from a martial perspective, you must always know how to keep the integrity of the center, and also know how to immediately return to this center if you lose it. Keeping the center is one key. Knowing how to return to it is another key.

Keeping the center so you don’t need to return to it

Think about playing Badminton or imagine running around a Tennis court. For every ball you hit and return, you must consider the center of the court and return to it. If you need to run to the edge of the court to meet the ball, then as fast as the racket meets the ball, you must consider going back to the center of the court. From the center, it’s easier and faster to move around and in different directions. If you get too far out to the corners, it will take a longer time and it will be harder to position you again. 

Something similar goes for T’ai Chi as well. If you play pushing hands or fight, it’s the same: You must always consider your own center, your own physical center and internal center, and understand how the movements derives from there. However, in T’ai Chi, you should never leave your own center. You must learn to always keep it so you can be free and move in any direction at any point and whenever you wish.  

But if you are forced to compromise the integrity of your balance. or of your center, you must consider taking it back as soon as possible. If you reach too far out with your limbs, or lean too much with your body, so you lose the control of the centreline, you must still be aware of it and take charge of your own middle as soon as possible. Then again, you can have mobility in all the five directions. As soon as you are forced to leave the center, you need to consider to return to it. Preserving control of the balance and of the centreline no matter what, you can always have mobility whenever you need, and in whatever direction you need.

Please also read: On Integrity

And Now: To Something Completely Different… (Some personal reflections on the future)

Tags

Tai Chi, Taijiquan

Nowadays I don’t write very often on this blog. And I write very seldom on it with just a few days in between. From working with other blogs and different homepages, I have learned that if you want to develop a blog consistency is the key. You should write on a regular basis and keep the same quality on everything you put in. People need to know what to expect if they are going to return frequently.

But developing a well visited blog with tons of frequent visitors has never been my goal with this blog.  I just use it like a diary or a note-book. I put down my thoughts here to collect them. Sometimes when I start writing a blog post, it turns into something completely different. Just like this post. I planned to write about Daoism in daily life. I’ll return to it later, don’t worry.

Besides sporadically keep up writing down more random thoughts on this blog, I also plan one or a few books about Tai Chi. So I use this blog to sum up my ideas and test them to myself and expose them for readers. It’s interesting to see what has interested the readers these few years, how they have searched for the information and found this blog and what they like. This blog is very personal. It’s all about my own view and my personal thoughts. And if I really write a book or two about Tai Chi, they will also not become commercial mainstream books. But they, or at least the first book I plan, will be very, very personal and be about Tai Chi solely from my own personal perspective and experience.

The best teacher I’ve had said to me that I shouldn’t take Tai Chi too seriously, that I was young and had a lot of time to explore and develop the art. Very wise words to someone who live with this art 24/7 and thinks about it every day and how to develop it further… Still, at least for some periods, I have been struggling to keep practicing. Today, I know that I will carry with me this art as long as I live and I will continue practicing. Yet, I feel stronger than ever before that there is indeed a fight, but that it’s a fight that goes deeper. How can I preserve and develop my knowledge into tools that I can give to others? I don’t know. I’ve learned a lot that I can’t fully handle yet. I have started to practice more active, found some old friends that I can practice with. If I am ever going to start a new group again I don’t know. First, I want to explore further how to better share some certain parts of my knowledge, how to develop those tools for what I want to do. Maybe writing that book I plan will be a good start. I don’t know. The future is constantly changing. So we’ll see what the future have to offer…

…I will expect nothing else except for the best…

Internal vs external: About the term Neijiaquan

Tags

Neidan, neijia, neijiaquan, Sun Lutang, Sun Taiji

I wrote something about the term Neijiaquan in a Facebook group, The Kwoon because there was a question about this distinction. I’ve thought about writing something about it for years and have collected many sources. I was planning for something longer, than this. But I want to share it before someone copy it and claim the words to be their. I’ll just add a little bit info to sort out what I am talking about. I’ll revise, edit and add more later. So please come back if you are interested in more of this.

Neijiaquan is a term that is used as a collective name for the three arts Taijiquan (T’ai Chi Ch’uan), Baguazhang (Pa Kwa Chang) and Xingyiquan (Hsing Yi Ch’uan). Some other related arts as Yiquan and Liuhe Bafa are mostly also included in this name. Many people believe that the term was invented by Sun Style creator Sun Lutang who studied all of these arts and made his own versions of all of these three arts. People like Tim Cartmell says so and apparently he should have been told so by Sun Jianyun, the daughter of Sun Lutang. But this is not true. 

First, the members of the “Wudang arts association” already used “neijiaquan” about TCC, BGZ and XYQ before Sun Lutang entered the organization. Second, The term Neijiaquan is first found in 14th century literature, specifically “The Gentry of Ningbo” or Ningbo Fu Shi, dating 1368. It was used to give a name to the Daoist arts of Zhang San Feng. So the connection of “nei” is the same of neidan. Sun Lutang and friends used Neija to connect their arts to Wudang and Taoism as their arts and their philosophy are based on Daoist philosophy. 

Here’s a classic quote from Black Belt Mag, 1964:

 

Here below is an excerpt from one of Sun Lutang’s own books. It’s very clear that he didn’t invent or that he was the first to use it in a more modern manner. You can read all of the book here:

https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2015/05/02/further-writings-of-sun-lutang/

“Those who discuss martial arts nowadays always divide them into internal and external. Some say that Shaolin styles are external and Wudang styles are internal, or that Daoist styles are internal and Buddhist styles are external. Actually all of these judgments are superficial. When styles are categorized as either Shaolin or Wudang, there is really no distinction being made between internal or external. Shaolin is a temple. Wudang is a mountain. When boxing arts are named after places, there is no indication at all of whether they are good or bad. When all is said and done, to label something Shaolin instead of Wudang is just as good as otherwise.
Regarding the Shaolin Temple boxing arts, there are a great many styles and the names of their contents are extensive, having been handed down through many generations and repeated over and over again in detail. This is not the case for the Wudang arts, which have been practiced by so few that the highest members of its society do not even know for sure which province the Wudang arts started in, and no, I am not exaggerating the matter. Was not Zhang Songxi of Zhejiang a disciple of the Wudang arts? Then why is it to this day that the people of Zhejiang have never heard of him? It is only in recent decades that people have begun to somewhat understand the value of the Wudang arts. The reason for this situation with Shaolin and Wudang is that one school is on display while the other is obscure. How then can they so easily be put into classifications of internal and external?
Some say that if boxing arts are not divided into internal and external, their techniques could not be discerned as being hard or soft. It is not understood that one [internal] trains to go from softness to hardness and the other [external] trains to go from hardness to softness, and that although hardness and softness are distinct, the achievement in either direction is the same. When martial arts make use of harmony in order to function, it is from a condition of harmoniousness that fighting prowess is developed.
I have practiced boxing arts for several decades. In the beginning, I too accepted common views. Every day I accumulated energy into my elixir field until my lower abdomen became as hard as a rock. When I roused the energy in my abdomen, I could throw an opponent some eight or ten feet away. Whether walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, at any time it was thus. I thought that by accumulating energy through sinking it down, I would likely attain the art’s internal power, and that those who were unable to sink energy to their lower abdomens were all of the external school.
One day, I sent Song Shirong of Shanxi a letter requesting a visit to him since I would be visiting Shanxi. After exchanging conventional greetings, I asked about the distinction between internal and external.
Song said: “Breathing is divided into internal and external, but in boxing arts there’s no distinction between internal and external. If you are good at nurturing energy, then it’s internal. If you’re not good at nurturing energy, then it’s external. Consider the phrase [Mengzi, chapter 2a] “good at nurturing one’s noble energy”. Surely it reveals the deeper meaning of the internal school. When practicing boxing arts, seek stillness through movement. In meditation arts, seek movement through stillness. Truly there is stillness within movement and movement within stillness, because basically they represent a single essence that cannot be branched off into two. Building on this point, when stillness is at its peak, there is movement, and when movement is at its peak, there is stillness, because movement and stillness are so connected that they generate each other. If movement and stillness were used to make distinction between internal and external, how would this not be a case of miscalculating by an inch and being off by a thousand miles?”