How to Trust your Own Muscle Memory & Body Knowledge – Stop Fighting Your ‘Better’ Self.

Tags

Mind, mindset

I have written about things as internalising knowledge from practice, how to let it become a property of the body. In this Tai Chi blog, I have tried to explain that you work with your nervous system differently when you do something you really know, something spontaneous and effortless, as after having studied and learned to speak a new language fluently. So you might see this post on “body language” as a companion to this post and read that one first.

The next question, when you understand that there are different ways to use your nervous system and how to access that muscle memory, is much harder and more complicated to answer: How do you learn to spontaneously access that special mode whenever you need it? That place in yourself where everything comes together by itself and you don’t need to think about what to do and how?

To access that mode, or body state, when you practice free push hands with friends, might be easier than if someone challenged you to a fight. How do you do it suddenly and purely by will in everyday life? How do you switch from a normal “daily mode” to a “Tai Chi mode”?

First, before answering that question, I would like to add that one of the biggest assets, as well as one of the biggest problems, in Tai Chi Chuan, is the obsession of details. But the details we deal with are specific details on movement and body mechanics. This obsession and attention to details is really the only way to “get” what Tai Chi body mechanics is and how it should be done, as well as how to internalise this. But at some point, you really need to let go of that learning stage and instead understand how to trust your own body. You can’t really do this until it has become a property of the body.

But here is the problem: We always want to control what we do and have the feeling that we control the situation and what we do. No? You don’t see this as a problem? Well, let me try to explain why this is counter-productive to what we want o achieve.

If you want to be able to always access you greatest skill and knowledge, and really let your Tai Chi work by itself, you really, really, need to learn how to let go of that inherent wish to always control yourself and what you do. Yes, letting your Tai Chi do the work, to be able get into that Tai Chi mode whenever you want to access it, is about standing back, letting go.

Stop making yourself trip is not easy

Yes, for sure, it’s something much easier said than done. Let me illustrate exactly what I mean by offering you a passage of the Taoist classic Zhuangzi:

“When you’re betting for tiles in an archery contest, you shoot with skill.

When you’re betting for fancy belt buckles, you worry about your aim.

And when you’re betting for real gold, you’re a nervous wreck.

Your skill is the same in all three cases – but because one prize means more to you than another,
you let outside considerations weigh on your mind.

He who looks too hard at the outside gets clumsy on the inside.”

― Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu

Read a couple of the lines again:

“you let outside considerations weigh on your mind“
“He who looks too hard at the outside gets clumsy on the inside“

Worrying about what you do, about the results, or how you do something, will be detrimental to what you want to achieve. Putting your mind outside of yourself, thinking about what could happen in a certain situation, might be the last thing you want to do.

Recently, I heard a gun expert saying that “you need to let go of technique and rely on your muscle memory”. I believe this is the same regarding many, many things in life. Just look at yourself when you are riding a bicycle. You can go on for hours without caring about how you move your feet and shift your weight.

But as soon as you try to intellectualise and to understand what you are doing when you are riding a bike, you will switch back to the learning stage of using your body, you will move clumsy and might even cause yourself to stumble or fall. What have you done? Well, you have switched from using your nervous system from the “knowing” stage, to the “learning stage”.

So what does this mean for your Tai Chi in practical practice? Yes, when you practice push hands, practice to use an application, or a real self defence or fighting method, or when you practice to punch at something using Tai Chi mechanics, first, you need to learn the details of the body mechanics and learn to use them.

But, if you want to be able to do something spontaneous in practice or in real life, you need to learn how to forget to focus on the details and the mechanics and just do it.

Actually, if you haven’t practice this, or thought about this difference, then learning to understand this stage will probably feel totally counter-intuitive to what you are used to do in everyday life.

It will probably feel as pulling the floor away beneath you, because you need to enter that place in yourself where you will have nothing of what you have been practicing in the earlier stages to rely on. Here you are not allowed to think about what you are doing, not plan what you want to do. And you are not allowed to think about what you are doing while doing it.

Yes, it’s hard. The great, legendary acting teacher, Konstantin Stanislavsky, had sort of an exercise to illustrate how hard it is. He told his students to stand in a corner and not think about a polar bear for 15 seconds. Can you make it?

Good use of Tai Chi is like great film acting. Acting without acting. Doing things spontaneously without thinking about it. Whatever you do in Tai Chi, practicing form, playing push hands, defending yourself from a throw or punching someone in the face, it must still be just as you did the most natural thing you could do. Just as lifting a glass of water. Or as if you stretched out for the remote control and switched the TV off. Things you do all of the time n your daily life without thinking about it.

So you really need to learn how to make this transition – from the learning stage – to the doing stage.

To be able to trust your own knowledge, to trust everything you already have put inside your body, and into muscle memory, is not easy. Especially not when someone stands in front of you planning to knock you down. That is just one of those moments when “letting go” and relax feels completely counter-intuitive.

Practicing how to “Let go”

But still, just like learning how to ride a bike, you need to learn how to let go of that control and trust your body, and trust yourself in your already gained, inherent knowledge.

I believe that it’s essential to practice, and often practice this “letting go”.

Here are a few examples on exercises, or how you can practice to let go:

• When you practice push hands and play free push hands, try to sometimes practice without looking – using your sensation only. You can look if you lose contact, but when you have gained contact again, immediately close your eyes again, just try to feel where your opponent is going, how he is moving and try to “feel” where his balance is.
  
• When you practice applications and defensive methods – Let your partner use a few basic attacking methods. He should flow and change between them without you knowing what comes next. Don’t think about what to do an dhow to defend yourself. Just act spontaneously and let your body decide.
  
• When you practice punching and similar on some kind of tool, forget all about the mechanics, only rely on your feeling. (You need to learn mechanics and methods before you can practice on how to forget them)

Now, how can we come to that point so we can switch to the real doing mode directly and spontaneously? I will tell you this – in a real situation, and if you already have practiced Tai Chi for a few years, it will probably be there by itself. You might be amazed about how much you can do. Because things will go so fast so you won’t have a chance to even think about what to do.

But still we shouldn’t take this for granted and believe that we always can act spontaneously. We should practice to better understand how to actually do this switch automatically.

When simple thing you can do in everyday one is trying to feel how your body feels when it does something correct. Regardless exactly what you do, try to feel what you do when you “just do” something. Learn how it feels to do things without “thinking”. Don’t try putting it into words, just get the feel and be aware of the feeling.

Finding your own trigger – to release your muscle memory

Later, when you have done this, you should try connect this “feeling” to a “trigger”. Focus on one thing when you do everything correct while practicing your Tai Chi. Try to do everything correct and then when you know that everything is in place, focus on one single thing that you have already implemented or add. You can focus on breathing, how it feels when you sink internally, or on how to gently, softly stare with your eyes.

There are many things you can use as a trigger. But the main point is that you should teach yourself to do this one thing, and when you do this thing, everything else should follow. So, instead of trying to do everything correct, you should be able to remember this one thing and focus on that. And the rest should follow – the sinking, breathing, relaxing, the aligning of yourself – everything should be put in place when you focus on that single thing.

So you should practice to connect everything else to one single thing. So when you know how to do this, you should be able to do this one single thing and at the same time let go of the control of everything else. This trigger will act as a controller by itself.

The state of no-heart/mind might help

Maybe the mind-set of Wu Xin, or emptying your heart-mind, is the best mind-state you could possibly learn to understand. It’s good and can be helpful if you can connect a certain mind-state to the trigger. The mind-state itself could act as this trigger.

But there can also be a certain feeling, or a “tone”, permeating your whole body, at the same time you do the trigger. I don’t know how to express myself more clearly on this point. And I don’t want to go deeper than this. It’s a very personal thing, something I believe you need to actually experience in order to understand.

If you don’t understand this, try to do the doing and feeling, and figure it out by yourself.

Anyway, when you connect this mind-state to the correct mechanics, when you do everything correct, you should practice in an active and conscious manner to forget all of the mechanics and details of what you are doing and only do.

So this trigger should help you to make everything else fall into place automatically. All of this together means that there is actually a method that you can use to program yourself with, to more easily switch from the “Thinking, intellectualising and worrying” state of mind – to instantly be in the empty state of mind. You can learn methodologically how to use one “trigger” to release your own whole body knowledge and muscle memory.

Sounds confusing and deep? Yeah, this is probably the deepest I’ve been on this blog so far. But it makes sense, don’t you think so? Well, you need to practice and put it into use.

The thing is, you really need to practice and experience this by yourself. I doubt ythat you will really understand it completely before you actually can do it. But I hope this text can serve as at least some kind of pointer, so you can understand in what direction you could aim your own practice.

And don’t worry, the next time I publish something here I am trying to go back to that “shallow” stuff, about punching dead objects, something I promised to follow up. Maybe. We’ll see where my inspiration drags me next time.

Understanding Balance and Gravity

Tags

Balance, Centreline, Gravity, Rooting

In Tai Chi Chuan, it is of utmost importance to maintain balance naturally and relaxed while working with the gravity and without fighting it.

“Sinking” has to do with this.
And Central Equilibrium has something to do with it as well.

You need to sink down your strength, all the way down the legs to the sole of your feet, while maintaining the integrity of the centreline. I like to describe this as letting the gravity stack your body from down and up.

You see, the common person will hold up the body by using tensions in the upper body. Tensions in places as in the chest and in the neck. To keep balance, he or she, will keep this tension in the upper body while shifting around the balance in small points underneath the feet. Thus their upper body has strength, their feet have weakness. Their balance is forced and unstable.

The strength of their upper body is made up by tensions. The balance in their feet is forced.
This is the “common” way people stand, walk and move around, in daily life, on a daily basis. Every day, all of the time.

In Tai Chi, however, you will gain another type of balance. You will do this by actively and consciously releasing the tension in the upper body and the legs, while letting your legs and feet take care of the weight of the whole body, and while letting your whole feet stay flat on the ground.

This is not the same as rooting. Letting the strength sink down while relaxing the legs and feet is only the beginning of understanding rooting, the basic prerequisite to develop real roots.

But to understand real balance, don’t forget to get a good sense of the vertical alignment, and learn how it feels to maintain the vertical centreline.

While keeping alignment, gravity is important. Don’t try to rise up, stretch or feel tall. The body will take care of this and let you stand erect by itself if you just allow it to. In the Tai Chi classics, it is said that you should feel like “the head is attached to a string above”. But this is also something, a feeling, you can achieve just by letting gravity work through you body without forcing the alignment.

So you really need to trust your body to take care of the gravity by itself. Again: This will result in the gravity stacking your body aligned by itself, from the feet and up.

Through your practice to relax and to drop down your strength down to the feet, you will gain a natural stability and gradually develop rooting. And later, when you have developed this, and if people try to push you, they will feel like they were pushing against a sturdy wall or against a mountain.

Unlike them, you won’t keep your balance by holding it up using tensions kept in the chest. Instead, even if they push against your chest, it’s your feet that they are trying to push. And your legs. Because your balance, and the strength of your balance, will be arranged from the sole of the foot, aligned and connected, up through the leg.

You won’t need to force any of this stability, the ability to become unmovable. The natural alignment through working with the gravity and not against it will be enough.

As a bonus, here is a New Years gift to you: A good illustration of how to work with alignment and gravity. Working with your own body through the stillness in standing, as well in movement while working through the postures of your form is not very different from the skill you see here. I hope you will be inspired.

Please find more inspiration for your Tai Chi through this blog by this video with another balancing act:

A Matter of Balance… (video)

‘Body Mechanics’ as Body ‘Language’

Tags

Body language, Body Mechanics, language, Shenfa

Learning and using taught body mechanics, is similar to using and expressing yourself verbally in another language. Yes, I mean that a specific type of body mechanics is a body language, a language as in speaking another language. And I don’t mean this as an analogy or in any symbolistic kind of manner. I won’t even address how you can use your body to express meaning or art.

No, I am not talking about body language as an artistic expression. Not at all. Here, at least, I will only talk about a similarity of learning and becoming comfortable with a new kind of way of using your body to express yourself, something meant in a most practical manner. Yes, it’s something highly practical you must do and something which demands you to do a physical change compared with what you are used to do.

It doesn’t really matter if you perform a dance, if you act on stage, if you do some kind of physical theatre as mime, or if you do your Tai Chi. They are all different “taught” expressions of body language and mechanics. There is a great similarity with using a new, taught, body language and using a foreign spoken language. Why? Okay, let me explain further what I mean.

Starting to speak a new language feels unnatural

Your common way of speaking and expressing yourself in your own language is the most natural thing you can do. You don’t need to “think” about how to pronounce the different sounds in your own language. They are just there, naturally. However this is not the case if you want to learn to speak in another language. To learn how to use a good pronunciation, something sounding authentic to that other language, takes a lot of practice.

However, some languages might be simple to learn, other harder. Yes, this is also true. So let’s say that we want to learn a much different and very difficult language. Now, to understand pronunciation and to be able to pronounce words and your sounds differently, or to even learn new sounds, you need to actually learn how to use your the muscles in your mouth differently compared to how you are used to speak.

You need to learn how to use the tongue, throat, lips, differently, in order to shape the sounds correctly. Vowels and consonants, they might all be shaped differently even if they sound similar. For some languages, you need to shift your “whole language” to another place in your mouth, deeper towards the throat or moving it forward to the front of your mouth. Some other languages use the whole mouth more “full”, or you might need to explicitly shift individual sounds to different places.

This is of course a very general description, but it might give you an idea of the way I am thinking about spoken languages and pronunciation. The trouble though, regardless of what language you are dealing with, is that when you actually speak, you really need to be very conscious about how you use everything in your mouth and how you use your throat when you speak. You need to be aware about how you speak. Why? First – most people are not at all conscious about how they physically shape different sounds. And that is, in my own opinion, the biggest reason to why they (bryter starkt) in their own language, and why they cannot learn a good pronunciation in another language.

The consequence of this level of awareness is that you really need to learn how to use your nervous system differently and train in order remember the new way to use certain muscles. You see, if you are not both conscious and aware about how you shape your mouth and tongue, and “where” in your mouth you put the different sounds, you will slip back into to your own natural habits of using your mouth and throat in your own language.

Just let me give you a quick example: In my native language, or “J” sound is neutral without the English “D” starting of the sound. Instead of “Djuice”, we say “Juice”, without the “d” as in “You”. The tongue lies pretty much flat and only touches the upper palate gently.

The English “J” is not problematic for us, however, the Chinese “J” can be. Here you need to put the tip on the tongue directly behind the upper front teeth and try to squeeze the air out through the sides. I also need to push out my whole chin, which I don’t need when I do my common “J”. It’s a bit difficult to explain. But even if those different “J:s” sound similar, they actually engage different muscles and parts of you mouth and head quite differently.

(Yes, English is not my mother tongue. I primarily chose to start this blog in English to practice my English language skills. Hopefully you will not spot as many grammar mistakes lately as in earlier posts. )

So what all of this means, is that you can’t be lazy while practicing the sounds of another language, if you want to learn how to speak it well. You must really make an effort to do everything right until the new way to pronounce the different sounds will become a new natural habit.

This is actually not a simple task, as it takes a lot of physical and mental effort. It’s not easy to use different muscles in a way they are not used to. While speaking, you need to be mentally aware about how you use them.

Your own mother tongue, however, is your lazy way of dealing with language, how you speak normally. So if you are lazy when you try to learn how to speak in another language, you will slip back into your lazy, common habits.

This is just how your own brain, body and nervous system, work. It takes awareness, effort and a conscious effort for a long time, before you can become confident in a new way to use your body, even if you just work with your mouth. And the same goes for learning how to play an instrument as the piano or the violin as well. Your hands and fingers will be tired a long time practicing a new instrument before you learn how to relax into what you do. But if you get lazy and don’t pay attention to the fine details, you will break the sound you try to learn how to make, and make noise instead of music.

Studying body movement as a new body language

That’s the way you learn to use your body differently. And it’s the same with Tai Chi. However, learning a new “Body Art”, or an Art of Body movement, as Tai Chi Chuan, and also other body movement arts as dances and some types of physical theatre, is a bit different than learning how to speak another language or playing the violin. The simple reason is that your whole body, and not just an individual part of it, is integrated with the expression of the art.

To learn and to express Tai Chi, your whole body, all the way down from the toes, and up to the fingertips, all of your body parts need to be consciously moved, and integrated together as a whole, with awareness – both while standing and while in movement. But this is not all there is to it. There’s something else that complicates Tai Chi further.

In action, Tai Chi really acts as a language. When you use your Tai Chi while interacting with another person, as in working with partner exercises, applications, push hands and even real fighting, your “language skills” need to be brought one step further. Just like you need to speak and pronounce words with awareness and consciously learning how to speak another language, the Tai Chi practitioner need to consciously keep focus and awareness of the whole body while practicing. Yes, the whole body, from down to up, and from inside and out.

This is the only way how to learn the body language of Tai Chi. You need to not only learn how to move your whole body will doing a form. You need to learn how to express the “shenfa” or the whole body mechanics while “communicating” or interacting with another person. Just as you need to keep the awareness of your pronunciation when you speak, while at the same time trying to understand what the other person say, you as a Tai Chi practitioner need to keep your whole body awareness and consciousness, and learn how to move the different body parts correctly, integrated as a whole, while someone else at the same time, tries to push you, pull you, take you down or launch a punch at you.

This is the only way to learn how to really use Tai Chi. You must make this work. And while trying to make this work, if you are lazy or tired, you will slip away from your Tai Chi. You might find yourself using your hands individually, not connected with the rest of the body, and you might use external “dumb” force. You will forget all about “jin” and slip into your old, comfortable way of using “li”.

Using Li, or clumsy force, and to use your body parts individually, this is your body’s “mother tongue”, the way a common person uses his or her body on an everyday basis. This is what you will slip back into if you don’t make a real effort to consciously use your Tai Chi while being pressured. After all, using “li” is the most natural thing for your body to do. Not Jin.

This means that your body mechanics, you whole body movement and to engage the whole body in the correct way should be of utmost importance in all of your tai chi practice. Not only for your solo practice as stances, forms and drills, but also every time when you practice an application, different techniques and every type of push hands, simple drills or free push hands.

And you must always, always pay attention to the fine details and always coordinate the whole body in the correct way. You need to practice and continue to practice with awareness and focus, minding the fine details, until your new way to move your whole body become natural and feels effortless.

Tai Chi is not “Natural” for your body when you start practicing it. As a beginner, you will become tired, have a hard time to coordinate the body parts the correct way. You will feel clumsy, unbalanced and sometimes uncomfortable. And later, maybe after years of practice, you will still slip into old habits if you don’t focus properly and mind the subtle details.

Why we need to accept that we are all different

But also, compare my thoughts with people having secondary languages, regardless from where they come or what language they have learned. The very most of people speaking in a foreign language do it with an accent. You can hear if someone comes from India, Spain, France, England, by the way they pronounce another language. They might have less or more accent. Now, compare this with a body language. We humans have more or less the same body language, and we use our bodies more or less in the same way, regardless country or from where on Earth we were born.

But if we assume that learning a new expression of our bodies by using it differently and in another way that we were used to, is similar to learning another language, well, then we could also assume that different people will be better to speak this new body language more or less “clearly.” And also, they will “speak” the new body language with a stronger or lesser accent. By this I mean that some people will understand the details of their new body language better than others, and some people will have it harder or more easy to “speak fluently”.

So we might presume that when we speak about body method, or “shenfa“, in Tai Chi, we mean an ideal. Most people assume that the body method is some type of level that is achievable by everyone in the same degree. And that is just a matter of time and practice in order to achieve this ideal

I am not so sure that a Tai Chi “body method” is as something easy and uncomplicated as that it is something that fits all. Or that everyone has the same possibilities to learn a Tai Chi body method and come as close as possible to a certain ideal.

Also remember that your own teacher is probably not “perfect” in this sense, even if many people consider him or her a “master”. We all have our own shortcomings. None of us is perfect. Personally, I don’t believe that there is anyone we could point out having a “perfect Tai Chi Shenfa”. And I am not sure that “perfection” is something to strive. We can only gradually become better and learn how to speak our new language more fluently. Here, the beginner and the advanced, long time practitioner, have that same task in their practices. They must always strive to “speak” their learned body language more fluently. And today, we can all only strive to become better than we were Yesterday.

Repetition only is not enough

When you study Tai Chi, just practicing to remember movements is not enough. Repetition of movement is not enough. Mindlessly going through exercises as a form just because you’ve heard that you should practice daily is not enough. If you want to progress, you always need to “use xin“, you need to work consciously with every principle, method and detail in your art. You really need to feel your whole body through your awareness when you practice, and feel everything you do with your body, through every slight change that occurs when you move.

Practicing to make Tai Chi natural for your body takes a lot of effort, conscious effort. In the beginning, it’s something new and hard to learn, just like it’s hard for anyone to learn how to pronounce another spoken language or to play the violin. But again, Tai Chi is different. To learn Tai Chi won’t be hard only for your mouth or fingers, but for your whole body. This is something you “speak” using your whole body. After all, Tai Chi Chuan is a “whole body” language.

Understanding Your Enemy

Tags

China, Fighting, Politics

In Tai Chi, our way to approach an opponent is to always look for weaknesses, gaps, and holes. We don’t attack our enemy’s or opponent’s strengths directly. Instead – we attack his weaknesses. Also, if our opponent is strong, we try to weaken him. We can do this by unbalancing, trying to direct him in a position to compromise his structure etc.

The methods are many. But first, to understand the weaknesses and how to find weaknesses, and how to compromise an opponent’s structure, we must first understand his strengths.

Let me repeat this to let it properly sink: First, in order to find an opponent’s weaknesses, we need to understand his strengths.

If we don’t understand the strengths of the opponent, we won’t find his weaknesses. We won’t find the gaps, the holes, and we will find no way to discover ways to turn the enemy weak. First, to understand an enemy – understand his strength.

Many times, the weaknesses are all too obvious. If, and now let me emphasise “if”, we understand the difference between an unskilled fighter from a skilled fighter, we will certainly have an advantage. But then again, to really understand what unskilled means, we need to understand skill.

The problem with Tai Chi people is that most people have no idea what fighting skill is. They have no idea about the strength of skilled people. Then why would they even think about fighting or believe that they could use their Tai Chi in a real fight?

I am not going to say that no Tai Chi practitioner can fight. Some, even if they are very unexperienced, could do it in a more common situation. Some Tai Chi practitioners are actually very good at spotting an unbalanced body and uncontrolled movements. But being an unskilled fighter meeting another unskilled fighter is still different from meeting someone who is skilled. In reality, it’s a very big difference.

Remember that Tai Chi in earlier days was something that bodyguards and security personnel studied. They knew very well what fighting was, and they often had a lot of experience, as they lived in a society where you always need to be prepared to defend yourself with any mean possible.

Today the situation is very different. Most people studying martial arts are unexperienced and live in safe environments. And that is why the Dunning-Kruger Effect is the worst disease in the whole Martial Arts community. If you want to be sure to really be able to use your Tai Chi, and to understand who you should not try to fight with, you really need to understand what real fighting skill is and about how good fighters act and how they think.

There are many ways to explore and discover what this means. You could try learning some things in different schools, or from good practitioners of typical fighting styles as boxing, Thai Boxing, Muay Thai, MMA and similar. And by all means, do some sparring, regular sparring. This doesn’t mean that you need to replace your Tai Chi with methods from any other style. But again, and to return to where I begun: you really need to understand the skills and strengths of different kinds of opponents. You really need to do this if you want even to have a chance to apply your pure Tai Chi methods against any practitioner of those fighting styles.

I would even go to the extent to say that if you are not willing to spar against, and to learn about, and to understand, good fighters and their methods, you should give up hope to use your Tai Chi against any trained fighter. Well, you could still try if you want. That’s another way to learn I guess. But at least, try to not live with the fantasy idea that just because you study Tai Chi you will eventually be able to magically defeat any kind of opponent you meet.

The same truth is valid in Life, in politics, and in war

Understanding the strengths to be able to find the weaknesses, the gaps and holes: this is not only something that Tai Chi people should consider. This is a truth in many areas, but also something disregarded by most. We are taught to head out with all our strengths against another person’s strengths. We are taught to empower, not to understand.

In personal life, I can understand that this is the mind-set of many. But I don’t understand why people tend to do this in more serious situations. It is often said that you need to keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. This is true. This is the way to understand an enemy. Keep him close. But few people seem to put this in practice.

“Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer” is true when you make business with people. You need to understand who you are dealing with. Sometimes it’s better to do a little bit of business with scoundrels than pushing them away. Then you will understand better how they work and how you can prepare yourself from not getting cheated in the future. Some of the best business lessons can be learned from the real scoundrels.

What baffles me the most is about the politics in this World. The countries of the West always rely on their imperial strength and don’t make any efforts to really understand other countries in other parts of the World. For instance, the media of the West is directly responsible for the negative view of Muslim countries and the Muslim World, something that creates deep conflicts between people and the population even in the West.

Anti-propaganda is something very dangerous for the own country that prepares to engage in conflict. Let’s turn to China, the birthplace of Tai Chi Chuan. The USA has no interest in learning about or to teach anyone about the real China. Instead, they spend billions of dollars just to spread disinformation and anti-China propaganda. The China that many people believe in is a highly negative caricature, a monstrous thing that has very little to do with reality and purposely shaped in the minds of the people by Western media.

If the USA really thought about China as their enemy, why not try to understand China for what it really is? Why spread so many disingenuous lies? Why not let the World know about all of the good things China does in its own country and the World? If you want to understand the real weaknesses of a country, the things that are bad, and the things that still have a long way before it can be improved, you must first understand and acknowledge the strengths.

Again: if you don’t see and acknowledge the strengths of an enemy, you have no chance to understand its weaknesses.

Soon all of the politicians and the leaders of the World will believe in a China that doesn’t exist. How they would even think about engaging in a real conflict with an enemy that is something completely different from what they believe? But they won’t even know that all of their knowledge is based on a caricature they created themselves.

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Sorry for the political rambling. If you click “Continue reading” below, I have posted a few videos about how the Western Media portrays China. If you have any interest about how media works, or what they try to make you believe in, I suggest that you have a watch. And I would like to hear about your thoughts about all of this in the comments below.

I have tons of more things to say, but I will try to keep this blog away from politics. Anyone who is interested can find the real truth of different narratives. The problem right now is that the accepted and politically correct way to approach China is with prejudice and racism. Many people want to hate, few wants to understand.

Don’t worry, I will stay away from politics from now on. And very soon I will return with something much more practical about The Art of Tai Chi Chuan.

And if you don’t already read this is a single post page, don’t forget to click: “Continue reading” to watch the videos.

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Tai Chi Chuan – The Snake and Crane Art of Kung Fu

Tags

Crane, Personal Development, Shenfa, Snake, Snake & Crane

Even if you have only studied Tai Chi Chuan for less than a month, I still don’t think that it’s possible for you to have escaped hearing about the legendary creation myth where the filthy, mystical, Daoist priest Zhang Sanfeng invents the art of Tai Chi Chuan after witnessing a bird protecting its nest form a snake.

In the legend, “Dirty Zhang” watched the bird and the snake attacking and evading each other, so none hurt the other. And this was from where he got the “idea” to create Tai Chi Chuan. This is obviously just a story and a fairytale. In that myth, the bird was originally a small bird, but somehow, in Tai Chi Chuan, the picture of a crane has taken over its place. Together with the snake, they now both represent the Art of Tai Chi Chuan.

But still, even if it’s just a myth, the symbols of the snake and the crane have more meaning than just being sort of totems for the art. They represent the spirit iof the art, the vigour, the grace and the liveliness of the martial art, as well as the focus on evading and counter-attacking. But how to fully use the Crane and Snake practically in Tai Chi and adapt the essence of the animals in combat is something almost lost, or at least very seldom taught.

I have been lucky to have a couple of teachers speaking about these things and teaching it. I have also heard about others who teach things quite similar to what I myself have been taught. But I have never seen this written down in any book or on any Tai Chi webpage. So I have not looked at any other source before writing this post. Instead I have tried to verbalise myself what I was taught and tried to sum down the important points to be able to share them with you.

I believe that the very most of you will feel that these things represent something that is a bit different from what you have been taught, and some of it might seem strange. But I still hope that you will find these theories and my way of explaining the art of Tai Chi in this way, both useful and helpful. What is described here is foremost from a Yang Style Tai Chi perspective, but I believe that the methods could be adapted to most of the traditional tai chi styles and schools.

What is the Snake and the Crane in Tai Chi Chuan?

In Tai Chi, a few form movements are named after the Snake and Crane as “Crane shows its wing” and “snake creeps down.” Both the Crane’s Beak hand formation and Snake style palms can be seen in Tai Chi forms. This is the simplest version story, but it does not convey any of the real depth that is found in the snake-crane theory.

However, some teachers say that every movement in Tai Chi Chuan is represented by either the Snake or the Crane. In fighting, the Snake represents small, coiling movements – or small frame movements. And the Crane represents large, generous, sweeping, round movements – or Large frame movements.

The Snake and Crane together represent a Yin-Yang pair with two opposites that balance and complement each other. The snake is the Yin animal in Tai Chi. It is so fast that you cannot even see the start of its attack. And when you react, it’s already too late. The Tai Chi snake uses coiling movements to wrap its body around the opponent’s arms, and it attacks from every possible angle and from close range. The power is short, crisp and very hard to counter.

The Crane, on the other hand, is a proud, elegant bird and is the Yang animal in Tai Chi. It stands tall and it has a great power in its large wide wings. It is said that if cranes when they fly comes too close to houses, they can even strike through tiles on roofs and break apart bricks from chimneys. In Tai Chi, such methods as powerful striking and throws using large, bold movements, can resemble the use of the crane’s wings. However, the Crane has a second weapon as it can also use its beak to strike with.

Balancing snake and crane – By using them together

Two of my teachers taught that both small and large movements should be used together when you fight. Or in other words, you should use the Snake and Crane together when you fight, which is explicitly what one of them taught. In practical combat methods, this means that you can either defend with a snake or crane type of movement and then counter-attack with the other.

The snake and crane should work together seamless in action. When the movement from the snake and crane blend together, the opponent cannot tell where one stops and the other starts. Together, they form a whole. One starts and transforms into the other.

But there is also another aspect of the use: It is never you who decide what animal that should be used. You cannot compare the use of these animals in Tai Chi with a Hong Kong movie where a fighter test first one animal against his opponent and than another one if the first doesn’t work. And you can not approach any real Tai Chi fighting method with figuring out intellectually what technique or attack that should be used or what could work.

Instead, you need to respond spontaneously to the opponent. The snake or the crane, what will come out to respond will do so by itself not depending of what you “think”, but depending on what your opponent does. This also means that you will have to learn your snake and crane well before really knowing how they want to respond. But more about this later.

Snake and Crane in Tai Chi solo practice

For very good reasons, it is said that you should learn Large Frame first and Small frame later and I have explained my own view here. However, you don’t really have to learn both large and small movements methods very well before you approach the movements from a snake and crane perspective. In fact, playing with the animals can be a good way to attain a certain distance from the common style orthodoxy, and achieve more freedom to your own body method or Tai Chi shenfa.

My own Yang Tai Chi forms, how I perform them, are neither Large Frame nor Small frame. Instead, they are both at the same time. They have both large frame movements and small frame movements. And also, the repetitions of movements and sequences in the form, are performed in different ways when the same movements show up again later. Some of them are at first done in a large manner, in the spirit of the crane. But when they show up again as repetitions, they are done small and coiling with the essence of the snake.

In this way, when the long forms combine both large and small movements, they become a better representation of how to use and flow between tai chi movements in a real fight. The different Large and Small frame formats can and should be taught separately at first. But in my own humble opinion, and in my own experience, Large and Small frame movements should eventually be combined together in the same form. But again, this is only my own humble view, and your miles might vary.

Personalisation and creating attributes

One aspect that can make your own practice more fun and less abstract, is to personalise your animals. What type of snake is your favourite? What personality should your Crane have?

There are many types of snakes, smaller and larger. They also have different types of distinct “fighting strategies”. Some snakes bite their victims, some will hug their pray to death and yet others will swallow them alive. And there is the spitting cobra which spits its venom from distance. So the snake gives you the opportunity to try out larger and smaller coiling movements together with straight and angular attacks that penetrates the opponent’s guard. And then you use these different ways to use your snake to test out different fighting strategies that suites both your own and your snakes different personalities.

If you google up different types of cranes, you will find that there are several species of different sizes and appearances. You might also sense that there are some different kinds of personalities as well amongst different groups and species. If the snake is aggressive and direct, the crane might be arrogant and nonchalant. It could have a mental distance to the opponent or not really acknowledge that the opponent is there. But when it attacks, it attacks with very heavy, relaxed natural power that is very hard for the opponent to block.

So what kind of snake and crane do you favour? Think about it and try to find out. You are free to experiment how much you want with your animals while practicing and explore the possibilities. Go ahead and have fun.

You should try to invent two distinct characters and personalities. Give them as much traits and be as specific as you can. Hopefully, even their personalities can compliment each other and overall have clear, distinct yin-yang characteristics. And then, when you are clear about your animals and who they are, you can bring them to life into your form and drills practice. And try to bring it all into your free push hands play as well to see how it feels.

The real value of Snake and Crane practice

You might think that this is just a game, maybe a play that has no real value. For more traditional or standard type of long-time practitioners and teachers, this type of mind-set and practice might seem too far away from their common daily practice. But if it feels too far off, then you should understand that you are not forced to embrace the crane and snake in any way. Or if you experiment with these ideas, you might practice this way with your animals in mind for a while, for a shorter or longer period, and leave them later.

The real benefit or value with this type of loose ideas, and creative personalised practice, is that it will help you to approach the art from another angle than you are used to. Tai Chi Chuan is very much about experimenting and personalisation. Many teachers and writers of Tai Chi literature say that you need to make your art your own. But still, most students don’t know how to do this. They keep on repeating and doing the same movements as their teachers, often with little idea about that they could do things different and they don’t understand how.

But here, this type of Snake and Crane ideas will offer you a way to explore Tai Chi by your own, in your own way, and in a way that you teacher can not control or interfere with. How you do it, or how much you play with it is all up to you yourself. And what you do with this and how you develop it further, comes from your own personality.

Creating characters is fine, but develop your own integrity first

My teacher, who took the Snake and Crane play far and to a whole different level, said that when you have created your own Snake and Crane, you need to understand the integrity of these personalities and keep their integrities intact. When you experiment with them in your practice, you need to bring the integrity of each animal into the play.

After my teacher had spoken about these things in a lecture, I asked him: “Must you not have your own integrity first, or build your own integrity, before you create the integrity of your own animals?”

And he replied: “Of course. Otherwise you’ll end up with nothing. Your own integrity is the most important thing of all.”

The consequence of all of this, is that you need to not only understand yourself well, but it would also be wise to develop a “Tai Chi integrity” before experimenting with the Snake and Crane, or at least have your own identity and integrity in mind when you develop your animals and their personalities. It is better to have practiced for some time so that you at least understand some basic Tai Chi body methods, or shenfa, before you start personalising your animals. I don’t want you to risk ending up with confusion or with a split personality (well, I am joking now, but as I know people with mental health issues who has tried Tai Chi practice, I still think it, in a few occasions, could be a fair warning).

What this means is, that even if you play around with this creative method I have proposed here, then in the beginning of your Tai Chi journey, you would probably not understand very well what you are doing. The simple reason is that because you haven’t built up your foundation yet. It will take a while, probably many years of practice, until you could get the benefit from the snake and crane in your own practice.

Of course, you can start experimenting whenever you wish, but again, if you don’t have built a good foundation in your art, the snake and crane method would probably make little sense. But it could still be a fun type of practice to switch to when you feel too bored just repeating your form all of the time.

Maybe this is why this snake and crane method is so seldom taught. Most practitioners will stop developing their Tai Chi at a rudimentary level, maybe mostly just because their teachers themselves haven’t learned any more advanced method. But when you think about it, how many have heard about such a thing as “small frame”, regardless if it’s about Yang, Wu or Chen style? Most people believe that Tai Chi is just a form, together with maybe a couple of Weapons forms, and some basic push hands drills. A good teacher who are willing to teach a more complete, larger Tai Chi system, is always hard to find.

But when you understand Tai Chi well, both in its large and small frame methods, this method of dividing and organising movements into snake and crane movements will become much more logical, and also make more sense from a practical point if view. It will become a way for you to attach different movements together, and from the Snake and Crane practice, it will be easier for you to learn how to flow seamless between movements when you apply your Tai Chi to free push hands, applications practice, or to more combat oriented methods.

So we could say that the Snake and Crane, regardless if you want to use this method in combat or in practical fighting practice, the study as proposed here will offer you a way to connect the dots between theory and fixed patterns of practice, to a more creative, personal way of dealing with the Art of Tai Chi Chuan. Also, if you have a lot of experience from free push hands and fighting in different ranges, you should be able to understand this type of practice faster and the benefits thereof better.

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Summary of Snake and Crane qualities

So let us break down the snake and crane into qualities, methods and techniques, and compare them. This is not an exact science and what will fit in where also depends on your own personal interpretation of the Snake and Crane. And this is a fascinating and fun part with this game. You need to make up the rules by yourself and see how different methods fit your own personalised animals.

Snake aspects

• Closing in
• Attacking from close distance
• Duanjin (Short jin)
• Cold jin
• Small coiling
• Small qinna
• Close-range takedowns
• Straight attacks
• Attacking the nearest door
• Attacking the front door
• Straight footwork
• Ji
• Lü
• Cai
• Zhou

Crane aspects

• Assuming distance
• Attacking from medium/long distance
• Changjin (Long jin)
• Shocking jin
• Large circles
• Joint breaking
• Throws
• Circular attacks
• Attacking a distant door
• Attacking the side door
• Side stepping
• Peng
• An
• Lie
• Kou

Bonus video: Snake vs Hen – A hen defends herself and her chickens from a snake’s attacks: