New and Old Training Methodologies

I am still looking to find Training Methodologies that go beyond Standing, Holding Postures, Doing the Form Repetitively, Push Hands Practice as I know it, etc. all of which do not seem to yield for me the Basic Skills that I would like to acquire.

All Martial Artists use the opponent’s power against them, use their reflexes and timing to dial down strength and speed requirements but Tai Chi is supposed to do something different which is to be able to merely use the surface energetics to trigger those myo-facial, sympathetic and parasympathetic responses or to cause the adrenaline dump shunting off any possible prefrontal cortex activity in the opponent. There is a clear neuro-physiological explanation for the majority of this which often ascribed to etheric effects or hidden behind a cultural barrier.

A runner does not achieve faster times only by visualization and running the course in slow motion, a basketball player or skater or swimmer or diver does not achieve Olympic levels by simply going through their event practice and likewise the Tai Chi player will never achieve mastery by just doing form. There are specific exercises, stretching, conditioning, training and optimization of action, muscle groups, theory and more that are either part of closed door teachings or have recently been scientifically developed.

The idea that Tai Chi players can achieve Forms, Push Hands and Awareness at the Mastery Level by the standard curricula we commonly see just seems wrong. To hide behind pedigree, lineage, secrecy, flowery New Age language, Cultural or Ancient double speak as an alternative to a clear transmission of the structural mechanics just seems wrong when dedicated, earnest students are practicing 3 to 4 hours a day for 10 to 15 years with very modest results and then to say will it take 3 lifetimes and the like is again just not adequate. I know it’s not the same but still in music, dance, visual arts, sports or even in MMA there are standards and accountability for achievement and efficacy of training methods. Bottom Line.

Well Bottom Line I want:

Ø Reflexive control of the partner without “doing techniques” on them

Ø Ability to stay in Taiji against very strong, uncooperative individuals who are not doing Taiji

Ø Ability to yield from any part of the body

Ø Ability to issue from any part of the body

Ø Extremely fast reflexive action (which BTW does not seem to be an emergent property of doing form slowly ;-)

Ø Ability to issue a Classic Taiji Push which from their perspective has no clear Point of Contact and the Partner flies a good distance without having been struck or jarred – Just Sucked in by the Undertow and Accelerated Away

Ø Ability to get a Radar Lock on the partner and see and understand everything in 3D

Ø Ability to Improvise freely with a Partner in Tui Shou / San Shou practice

Ø Ability to catch pushes and strikes like catching a child on a swing and returning the volley

Ø Ability to see inside your own body and Conscious of how it feels

Ø Ability to become Conscious of the process of becoming Conscious

Ø Natural Emergent high level Real Fighting Skills (It seems that in order to achieve these you Must not try to achieve these!)

Ø Beautiful and Graceful Forms practice

I am convinced that there are core curricula preserved from Traditional Methods that I am missing and I am more sure that there are emerging New Training Methodologies that are even better. We have to ask ourselves not what the Ancient Masters did but what would the Ancient Masters have done if they were living in this Age. I am pretty sure it would be a combination of New and Old Training Methodologies.

 

 

 

The Return Home

 

 

You, who are on the Road of Martial Arts have had had an Experience. Sometimes it seems that people will try to steal your experience, will tell you how to tell your story when they weren’t there. This inexorably leads to a combative kind of verbal exchange whenever we try to explore our ideas, assumptions and Ideologies and sort them out for the Better.

 

To those who think this is headed toward Gestalt therapy or something I will steer you back on course. This is basic Humanity. We have all been somewhere and it cost something and we gained something and we lost something and it mattered. It was important. It’s up to those on that Path to take care of each other. We brought such a high standard to it and some of it was met and some of it was not, that is a burden for some and a bitter pill for others. The very fact that is mattered so much is what fuels the endless bickering and perceived disagreements when we discuss our points of view.

 

Nobody is trying to make some rules that bind us here; nobody has taken anything from any of us. Everyone is telling their story and describing the area of the Mountain that they are currently engaged with and that makes us the same, not separate. The world in general requires many competing and Mutually Exclusive theories to describe it and why would the complex world of Taiji be any different? To me the subtext of these little skirmishes is a chance for various folks to step up and describe their field of study with the passion that a tale like this needs to be told.

 

We are all fellow travelers on a Mythic Quest to obtain the Golden Fleece and to make the rarest of all mythic quests - The Return Home.

 

What Do You Want From Tai Chi?

It is my belief that in Tai Chi one may declare their specialty and excel in that area to the exclusion of others and still be doing Tai Chi or even achieve Mastery. 

I will declare my major in these areas:

       Aesthetics – the ability to move with graceful and fluid body dynamics that display artistic and emotional content in a Tai Chi Context

       Internal awareness – the ability to feel the inner clock work of the body from the springs to the counter weights to the gears to the wave action and how it feels to feel that.

       Energy – the ability to absorb, transform and retransmit energy from the universe, the earth or a partner

Sensitivity – the ability to monitor action from the gross momentum, force and dynamic to the rarified electrical, magnetic and thought intention associated with movement in myself and in others

Neurodynamics – the process of becoming conscious of formerly autonomic reflexes in my body and the skill of attaching to another person’s movement, timing and reflexes through that system

Martial application – the ability to use the skills mentioned in cooperative play and it’s fine with me if I remain ineffectual in martial situations against a truculent and uncooperative partner or attacker. Actually fighting is not really something I am training for even if it is for some a determinant of doing Real Tai Chi.

Internal energy – the ability to immerse oneself in inner space and also to share that space with a partner and to gain feelings, information and to conduct movement from that space.

Peace of mind – real relaxation that comes from the muscles, tendons, the Myo-Facial Web and the overall state of being; being able to simply wave my hand through the air with no anger, no self-judgment, no tension and an open heart

Health – soundness of body including stamina, strength and longevity.

Wisdom – the acquisition of knowledge from the forms, movements and one’s own body placed into higher service.

These things will not happen by themselves. You must identify and study them individually and it begins with asking - What do you want from Tai Chi?

 

The Magic

While I don’t dispute that Taiji contains higher level energy that may be classified as paranormal I am most interested currently in exploring the mechanical structures in the body that create the dynamic systems that allow for these energies to manifest.

There are 3 states that interest me from a Taiji perspective; the cognitive state, the fight or flight state and the relaxation response state.

In learning new things we often have to use the Cognitive Mind to listen, observe, read about and think about concepts. By understanding the concepts they become software in the Fight or Flight Body; by doing them slowly and consciously they become firmware in the Relaxation State Body and as that type of movement becomes written to body shape they become hardware in the Physical Body.

Body mechanics require more data than the cognitive mind can keep track of. For this reason many aspects of movement are routed to automatic pilot relying on whatever resident program takes over there. I have found that by slowly and mindfully exploring these sub-routines one at a time it is possible to reprogram and upgrade them. Through the repetition of Forms practice I can write them into Firmware and over time doing these movements with conscious feeling produces changes in the Kung Fu body as they create Hardware. I can now be conscious of experiencing the feeling of these processes in the body without having used up my bandwidth trying to run everything. I can feel more. This makes me way more conscious of the deep body mind and I can see the blocks and trouble spots and start to iron them all out.

Perhaps there are those who develop Skills on the more external Kung Fu level of the applications and by making them reflexive and replacing startle reflexes with these more Martially useful techniques they allow them to become available at the level of the Relaxation Response. I am saying specifically that there may be a Pathway from External training to Internal Training.

It has been said that there are many roads to the mountain top but they are different mountains. Maybe the different mountains are somehow connected. Or is it just that the general knowledge of mountain climbing gained in climbing the external mountain allows a more efficient ascent of the Internal Mountain? The one thing for sure is that the progression through these stages is pretty universal and it is at the very highest levels of the mountain that we find the real art – The Magic.

The Three Levels

1) The Thought Engine learns and knows techniques, can be tricky and plan and can evade and attack. It is how we learn in general and many people never progress past this operational state. The Brain Mind has a limited bandwidth and interfaces with muscle memory to augment its efficiency.

2) The Sympathetic Engine is fast and has a higher bandwidth to handle the amounts of information that Haptic Control requires. It comes from the factory with a default "Fight or Flight" kind of twitchy jumpy energetic operational mode which can be reprogrammed with more Martially useful techniques. The high level External Artist who has become fluid and relaxed in their automatic movements uses this engine but it still controls contraction type muscular activity. There is a certain type of Fajin that is generated by this engine.

3) The Parasympathetic Engine is instantaneous and has more neural capacity than either of the other 2 engines and has the bandwidth in the required range to monitor movement. It interfaces with the Relaxation Response, Expansion Coordination and has the Myo Facial Fiber Optic Web under its control. It is this Engine that produces the more Super-Luminary Fajin and the body shapes and structure naturally fill in to support with sound postures. This causes some to think this is simply a higher level structural Newtonian technique because it generally requires a good posture and mechanical connection to the opponent.

Some people want to use Chinese terminology and argue the meaning of Fajin, Fali, Hua and Na but my Chinese friends tell me that the ancient texts are written in a style of Chinese that is so abstruse even for a native speaker who has studied internal arts that you are better off relying on the excellent translations that catch the essence of the text. Many of these translators were not Chinese but they were scholars of Ancient Chinese and Martial Arts. To claim that the concepts hidden behind the traditional terms are reserved for the culturally Chinese is silly. That being said these concepts may be spoken of in the language of Neuro-Science and Neuro-Physiology without reinventing or watering down the concepts. If a thing is true it may be spoken of (Except the Dao!)

Rather than the highly idiosyncratic terms that everyone seems to have private definitions of I choose a more modern language that comes from Neuro-Science that has allowed continual progression we see in Sports and Performing Arts. I concern myself initially with The Three Levels.