Out of the Vortex


First of this is just too funny! Write your own political commentary, I'm laughing too hard (hat tip to Ben Judkins). 
Russian Troll Farm Secretly Funds American Self-Defense Programs--Operation Black Fist

Speaking of the vortex. Facebook is a terrible place to have in depth conversations because they just get lost. Here are some high end comments from two conversations that I happen to let fly. Enjoy.

Thread 1

The biggest problem I see in Tai Chi is people confusing structure, integration, and rooting. They are three different things.

It's like a crowbar. There are different shapes and designs that's structure. Integration is alchemy, the quality of the steel has to be there or it will break. Rooting is like the pivot point which has to be well positions and still in order for the crowbar to work. Mix up any of these issues and your crowbar don't work.

They combine but they do not mix.

Only the integration part is internal Martial Arts. Structure and root are common to all martial arts.

A crowbar made of something other than steel will not work. But you can make it out of wood, or plastic, or rubber and it can be used as a hammer.

You must separate them to develop them. Otherwise you are changing shape when you should be making steel. And you can't use a crowbar that is still in the forging process.

Put another way. Play, operate conditioning, cognitive learning, and training are all important. Structure, integration, and rooting need to be conditioned by different types of stimuli. If you mix the stimuli they won't develop in any reasonable amount of time. They are also principles, so they should be pulled out and tried in every sort of martial game. If your working definition of structure doesn't work in boxing, in the dark, on the ground, infighting, etc... it is not right. When I teach dancers and martial artists together, the dancers (not knowing they are causing humiliation) say that martial artists need to work on their structure. That stuff just makes me roll on the ground laughing.

Looking over the comments I should have defined integration: The process by which the whole body maintains unit force in motion. There are external ways to do this and internal ways to do it. The internal way uses a specific order of perception action which causes jing (the body free of intent) to consolidate.

Thread 2

Oh so you are using dantian to mean center of coordination. That is the first definition I heard some 30 years ago. Fair enough. It is. But that isn't what dantian means, or why that term is used. It is a term from neidan instructions. For fighting skill you need speed. The lower dantian can be used for shaking fast, but those punches are slowish and telegraphed. Seems most likely that it was used for improvised or quick choreographed fight scenes because you can see the punches coming. In stage combat shaking the punch like Chen Xiaowang does creates the illusion that it hit (when it intentionally missed) and draws the audience's eyes. For fighting the upper dantian is most important because all fast movement follows the head.

 Here is how neidan works in martial arts. The order of perception action has to be shen first, jing last. Qi is the buffer between the two. The confusion you have is you keep describing Qi as a phenomenon of the inside of the body. Qi mixes with jing when the intent goes inside. But the principle of neidan/jindan is that jing consolidates and releases Qi so that Qi can be a surrounding buffer between jing and shen. Where shen is the spatial imagination that moves the body in all locomotor animals. Obviously if you put your intent in the body it will mess up your order of perception action (that's why people trip when they think about their feet while running). What you are (mistakenly) calling Six Harmonies is the perfect expression of yinyang harmony within the body-in-motion. You keep saying Qi draws inward, but in is Jing which draws inward, the qi effect is only temporary until Jing and Qi distill. Pure jing (which is a redundant statement in Chinese) moves like a rabbit hopping or a tiger pouncing: as the head leads the yin side of the body contracts muscularly while expanding. While that may seem like a contradiction, the principle has been demonstrate in the lab with cats.

Google "perception-action kinesiology" you'll find lots of papers demonstrating that the spatial mind leads the body. If you look at studies of stroke victims there is a significant incidence of people who lose just one aspect of spatial perception. For example a person can lose peri-perceptual space but not lose body control, inner sensation, or distance orientation. This demonstrates that they are different aspects of mind which we normally experience together but can be differentiated.

The terms flow and circulation did exist in Chinese medicine before the 20th Century, but they did not mean what they mean today. They were metaphors for the imagination and intuition, not concrete concepts. The Chinese adopted the YMCA-Hospital-Commercial definitions of flow and circulation in the process of ending footbinding (1890-1910), which was practiced by the majority of women. It is understandable that both famous masters and regular folk would be confused about this. But unfortunately, and perhaps by design, it makes the basic concepts of internal martial arts obscure and more difficult to discuss. 

Qi is brought in through various “points” on the body like the prostate or the nose/mouth. Then Qi is either transformed into jing, mixed with jing, or released out through the skin and nose-mouth. If it is mixed with jing you are doing external martial arts--And the fruition will be ground reaction force like boxing. Consolidated jing creates wholebody wholemass continuous motion like a rabbit jumping or a tiger pouncing. 

Note to self: Stop wasting time on Facebook and finish your next book! Working title:

The Creation of Tai Chi and Baguazhang; Internal Martial Arts Before the 20th Century.