How do we learn martial arts

How do we learn martial arts? We learn by practicing, by repeating? Every time we perform an action, we learn from the action outcome. The outcome is not just the end result of the action. It’s all the information that our brain receives and processes during the performance of the action and after the performance of the action.
This information also includes our intent. It is against this intent that the information gathered from our senses is compared, and the action is corrected to fit more and more closely to the intent. Based on that information our bodies and in particular our nervous system and our brain are physically reshaped. New neurons are created to help gather and process the information necessary for controlling the action, new muscle and connective tissue fibers are created to allow our bodies to perform the action. The more we repeat the action, the more our bodies get changed by it. Here Michael Merzenich explains how that happens. But if there is no intent present during the action performance, a crucial element of this learning mechanism is missing, and learning becomes difficult and sometimes impossible. This is why in internal martial arts there is so much insistence on performing actions with intent. Clear intent alone, as Bruce Frantzis explains i this video, even without any physical movement, causes the process of body mind reshaping to start taking place. With clear intent, the mind will act on the body. Without clear intent, the mind will react to the body. There is a huge difference here. The intent is like a blueprint that our body uses to reshape itself. In order to have a clear blueprint, we need to have a clear and powerful intent. To have a clear and powerful intent we need to have a clear mind. Thoughts and emotions not only distort the intent, but interfere with our senses and the way the information that comes from our senses is processed. Our thoughts and our emotions get jumbled together with our intent and all the information that comes from our senses, and that informational mess is used to reshape your body. Imagine what that does to you. If you practice angry, you will hardwire that anger into your body. That is bad for your health. It will not make you stronger or more powerful. It will just make you sick. This is where “Practice internal kung fu happy.” advice becomes very important.
Another reason why intent is so important in practicing internal kung fu, is that if you don’t have a clear picture of what you want to achieve, how will you ever be able to achieve it? This is where communication between you and your teacher, and your teacher’s ability to explain exactly what he wants you to practice becomes extremely important. What if the action you were performing was not what your teacher was trying to teach you, but what you thought your teacher was trying to teach you? What if the intent is wrong? Then you are on a wrong path, and the harder you practice the wronger things get. This is where advice: “Practice internal kung fu smart.” becomes very important.
When does this hardwiring development stop? It stops when we reach a particular “satisfactory” level of performance. This level is arbitrary and is determined by a conscience decision that we have now acquired a required skill. Most times it is determined by our teacher telling us that we have acquired a satisfactory level of skill. Some people even call it “perfect” level of skill. From that moment on, we repeat the same action in exactly the same way, automatically, and most of the time unconsciously. The action becomes “hardwired”. But this is wrong on so many levels.
There is no “perfect” level of skill. One of the Bagua teachers was once asked if he has ever performed his Bagua perfectly. And he said “O yes. And then the next day I did it better.” Every internal martial arts practice can be done better, with deeper understanding, with more awareness; smoother, easier, stronger, more connected, with smaller gaps… there is no end to it.
Hardwiring is actually desired in external martial arts. People believe that being hardwired means being fast and being responsive. What they don’t realize is that being hardwired means becoming unconscious, means becoming automated, robot like, and thus unable to respond to changed circumstances. It means learning dozens of specific blocks, each specifically “designed” to protect from a specific strike, not realizing that all the “different” blocks and strikes are just the same one block and one strike just performed with different body alignment and from a different angle on a common abstract movement curve. There are actually no blocks and strikes. They are all just generic moves that become blocks or strikes depending on circumstance. Or they can be both blocks and strikes at the same time. Or they can morph from being a block to being a strike and back. Here are 3 videos (video-1, video-2, video-3) by Erle Montaigue explaining the difference between the hardwired and abstract martial skills. In order to acquire these abstract movement skills, you need to practice in an abstract fashion. You need to practice mindfully. One thing that scientists have noticed is that kids are a lot better at learning new skills than adults are. The reason why children are so much better at learning than adults is because children don’t observe the world in the same way as adults. Adults use focused observation which can be compared to a flash light that only illuminates one spot and leaves everything else in the darkness. Everything else is filtered out by frontal lobe logical processing engine, which ignores everything that it cannot understand. Children and especially babies don’t have this filtering. They observe and absorb everything. Their awareness is full, dispersed and can be compared to a lantern, which shines its light equally everywhere around. The way babies learn is much faster and generates more complex and more abstract neural systems. Here is an article that explains how babies observe, learn and think. We can all learn like babies. All we need to do is to switch the frontal lobe off, and you can do it through meditation. This is where “Practice internal kung fu like chi kung.” becomes very important.

Starting knee strengthening and stabilization exercise set

The set of exercises I am presenting here is the starting knee strengthening and stabilization exercise set. This set should be mastered before you start practicing any internal martial arts moving exercises.

This exercise set strengthens your whole lower body, all the way from your ribs to your toes.

It teaches you how to connect your torso with your legs.
It teaches you how to move without hurting your knees.
It teaches you how to shift weight fully from leg to leg without swaying.
It teaches you how to ground yourself.
It teaches you how to have a full Yang and full Yin leg.

Instructions:

1. You should have your full weight on your supporting leg. The moving leg should bear no weight even when it touches the ground.
2. The supporting foot should be in full contact with the ground, with the weight equally distributed throughout the exercise. You should never lift your toes or your heel, or the sides of your foot during the exercise.
3. The supporting knee should be over the center of your foot and should not move from that position.
4. Your supporting leg should be vertical and your hip, your knee and your foot should be on the same vertical plane at all times.
5. Your torso should be vertical at all times. Do not lean forward or backward as you step.
6. Your torso should be facing forward at all times. The angle between the supporting leg and your torso should be 90 degrees.
7. When moving your other foot away, you need to lower your body from your coccyx. You are effectively performing a series of mini one leg squats.
8. Your core muscles should be engaged at all times, but only to the minimum required to keep the body in the correct position.
9. Your breathing should be smooth and long. Do not hold your breath.

This set of exercises is sometimes known as Taichi dance. Once you can perform this set, you can connect the movements by shifting the weight from your Yang leg to your Yin leg. During this process of weight shifting, you learn how transform Yin to Yang and Yang to Yin. You learn Taichi.

Here is the link to the video that shows how perform these exercises.

Example of internal martial arts exercise (hip rotation)

This is one of the internal martial arts warm up exercises. It should be performed before any form practice as part of the opening of energy gates (joints) set. I will show the full opening of energy gates set at some stage later. I have decided to show this exercise separately, because it is one of the best illustration of what “internal” means in internal martial arts.
Hip rotation exercise looks simple. Anyone who has ever been to a physical education class, or to any sport training has done this exercise as part of the warm up routine.
Every external martial arts has this exercise as part of its warm up routine as well. You were told that it loosens up the hips. This is all external martial arts gets from this exercise. You were told to put your hands on your hips and to swirl around. No other instructions were given.

In internal martial arts, this exercise has many levels:

1.It opens up hip and ankle joints
2.It stretches all ligaments, tendons and muscles from your floating ribs all the way to your toes
3.Teaches you how to open and close your qua
4.It teaches you how to shift your weight from foot to foot in a circular way not just linear way
5.It teaches you how to perform smallest and most important Bagua circle, the foot circle. This circle is the weight shifting circle, where the 70% weight point traces the circle witch has it center in the center of the foot, and diameter the distance between the ball of the foot and the center of the heel of the foot. This enables you to change direction of the force and its intensity by shifting the weight from one part of the foot to another. This is the core exercise for push hands.
6.It teaches you how to extend your awareness into your feet.
7.It teaches you how to connect the lower Dan Tien and your feet.
8.It stimulates bone growth in your legs by oscillating the pressure in the bone tissue through weight change through the leg bones all the way from the hip to the toes.
9.It works like chi pump. When the 70% of the weight is on the ball of the foot, this opens the upward chi channel, which allows the chi to ascend from your feet up your legs to the lower Dan Tien. When the 70% of the weight is on your heel, this opens up the downwards chi channel which lets the chi descent from your lower Dan Tien to your feet.


The instruction for performing this exercise are very precise:

1.Stand with feet shoulder with apart
2.Put your hands on your kidneys, with your fingers pointing down, and palms facing out.
3.Lock your knees, and then just open them tiny bit.
4.Your upper body should stay upright at all times
5.Keep your feet fully pressed on the ground. Do not lift your toes and heels. Do not rock your feet from side to side.
6.Perform circles slowly and smoothly.
7.When you shift your weight never shift your full weight forward or backwards. Always maintain ratio of 70 – 30.
8.Keep your feeling in in the space between your feet and the ground.

Here is the link to the video showing the exercise being performed.

Epigenetics proves that Taoist medical knowledge is correct

You have all heard that Taoist believe that our negative emotions are stored as negative energy in our organs, and they can affect our health by interfering with organ structure and functions. You also heard that Taoist meditation can clear these negative energies and restore our health. You need proof for this? I present you Epigenetics.


What is epigenetics? Epigenetics is a study of inheritable biological changes that occur in living organisms, without any structural DNA changes. What epigenetics has discovered is that DNA gene sequence only defines a possible biological development. What actual biological development will occur is determined by a series of genetic switches or modifiers, which can switch a particular gene or gene group on or off. By switching genes on and off, these genetic switches can change the gene expression, or the way biological system interprets the biological blueprint that is DNA. These genetic switches are propagated from the parent cell to the child cell throughout the life of the biological organism. They can also be passed from one biological organism generation to next generation. Epigenetics says that it is our life experience, which changes these genetic switches. This means that every experience that we go through in life, and particularly very positive or very negative experiences, can switch out gene switches on and off. This means that our experience changes our physical body’s genetic information. Because these changes are propagated from cell generation to the next cell generation, these genetic switches form a kind of genetic memory. So our experiences do not get stored only in our brains. They get stored in every cell of our body. This stored genetic memory can be passed to our descendents. In the same way the genetic memory of our ancestors was passed to us. When I was a kid, my grandmother used to say: “All the bad things that you do in life will bring bad things to your grandchildren. They will suffer for your sins.” I remember wandering why grandchildren and not children. Now epigenetics is telling us that the epigenetic changes induced by experience will have their full blown effect not in our life, but in the lives of our grandchildren. Well done grandma.
There was also a man called Jesus, who went around telling people how it would be a great idea to be good to each other. Good deeds, have positive effect on our epigenetic switches. Being good to others, is good for you. What happened to the guy? He got crucified, and his “followers” committed some of the worst atrocities in his name. Is this world getting worst because of the accumulated bad epigenetic crap (or karma) in all of us?

If that memory from our past and our ancestor past can affect our physical and mental health and constitution then this opens up some very interesting possibilities:

Shamanic (and any other ecstatic) healing processes maybe have underlining epigenetic roots. What if shamans have ability to see or feel the energies that we are only discovering and measuring now, and by doing that can actually see the epigenetic structure of the body and genetic memories? Castaneda was talking about it. Maybe some psychoactive substances don’t create weird altered reality. Maybe they actually switch off the filters which exist in our mind and which prevent us from seeing the world as it is. What if in the real reality, those genetic memories can be seen as images, on normally completely ignored and therefore invisible wave lengths? What if those are the demons that cause illnesses by possessing people? What if then shamans can see what kind of emotion needs to be invoked, and in what particular sequence, in order to reverse the epigenetic switching that caused the condition in the first place? In order to reprogram the gene switching in such a rapid way, it would require very strong emotional shocks. Maybe this is why shamanic séances are always violent and ecstatic in their nature.

Taoists believe that all our emotions and all the emotions from our “past lives” are stored in our bodies. What if they are actually talking about epigenetic memories? If this is so, then maybe the rejuvenation and healing exercises and meditation, work on genetic switches, by going through a similar reprogramming process to the one done by shamans? After all the Taoist meditation is said to be able to "melt the negative and destructive emotions stored in our bodies". It is said that Taoist meditation changes every cell of our body, cleanses it and purifies it. Maybe what it does is resets all the genetic switches back to default? Maybe our soul is just genetic experience under another name, a collection of genetic memories that permeates our whole body and spans generations?

And so while modern science is trying to understand how the whole epigenetic stuff works and what to do with it, thankfully we have the old science, Taoist science. It tells us exactly how the thing works and what to do with it.
Learn the link between organs and emotions, learn and start practicing medical chi kung and meditation, BE GOOD TO YOURSELF AND OTHERS and start changing yourself for the better.

Electric properties of water, chi and internal martial arts

Water molecules have very interesting property. They are natural dipoles a self organize in electromagnetic fields. Effectively you can have water magnets and water levitation. This levitation works because any body containing water put into strong magnetic field will begin to levitate because of water molecules aligning with the magnetic field. This is how water molecules rise in the air to form clouds, even though they are heavier than air. They are kept in the clouds because of the electro static field that keeps them apart and suspended between the ionosphere and the earth’s surface. They start falling down on the ground as drops of rain, when the electric field loses its energy through electric discharge (lightning) between the clouds and the earth surface or between the cloud and the ionosphere.

We are constantly submerged in a very strong electric field that exists between the earth and the ionosphere. Our bodies are full of electric activity, otherwise known as chi. Because of this every cell is effectively a dipole. Through chi kung you learn how to manipulate this electric field in your body and your surroundings. What if you were somehow able to re orientate all these little dipoles and align them with the electric field that exists between the earth’s surface and the ionosphere? And then reverse the polarity. Would you be able to lose some of your weight, by help of electric antigravity? Maybe this is how the “standing on eggs” trick works. Who knows. The electromagnetic field of the earth is not uniform. It changes from place to place and from time to time. There is evidence that it was once, not such a long time ago, a lot stronger then it is today. What if people at that time were able to use that very strong magnetic field to charge their bodies with a lot more energy than we are able to do today? Maybe the old tales about heroes who performed feats of wander like levitation were true. Maybe they just had more energy at their disposal, and knew how to manipulate it. Who knows. But it sure is fun to think about things like this.
For those interested in antigravity experiments that they can do at home, here is the link that lists them all.
Here is a page in diamagnetism that talks about experiments involving levitation of living organisms.
For those who want to read about research done in electromagnetic properties of chi system, here is another link.

Have fun.

Knees and how to protect them during internal martial arts training

If you want to do martial arts without injuring your knees, you first have to strengthen and stretch all the muscles, tendons and ligaments that collaborate in moving and stabilizing your legs. That means pretty much every muscle and connective tissue from the middle of your back to your toes. At the same time you need to open all the joints in your legs starting from hip and going all the way down to your toes. This means that you need to be able to have full rotation around all possible rotational axes in your ankle and your hip, without twisting your knee. If you cannot put the knee over your foot, then you have a problem with your ankle or your hip rotation. Do not try to horizontally rotate (twist) your knees. They are not made to twist. So what do you do if you can’t put your knee over your foot? You need to stretch your leg muscles starting with your foot, then your ankle and finishing with your psoas and hip muscles. They are the ones that are preventing the rotation of these joints, and this is why your knee can’t be positioned over your foot. Being able to position your knee over your foot is extremely important. You should not do any moving and particularly not any power walking (sudden change of direction while applying downwards twisting pressure) exercises before and you can correctly align your leg joints.
To do that you have to start with static strengthening exercises, not moving ones. Every moving exercise involves joint rotation. If your muscles are not strong enough to stabilize the joints during the rotation, your body will fall out of correct alignment and you will injure yourself. To start, look for knee rehabilitation exercises. Or Pilates exercises. They are done lying down or sitting down, and are designed to strengthen and stretch your muscles without injuring them. Once you bring your muscles up to a necessary level of strength, you can start doing standing strengthening, stretching and rotational exercises. Make sure that during practice your knee is always over your foot and never pointing inwards or outwards. Knee should also never go over the beginning of the toes.
To test if your knee stabilizers are strong enough, do this simple test.
Do the starting weight shifting exercise which is exactly the same in any internal martial arts, and is the opening movement of any internal martial arts form. Before you start take your trousers off or roll up your trouser legs. Take your shoes off. You need to be able to see your ankles and your knees. Find a full length mirror or some kind of reflective surface. You will need to be able to check your body alignment. Don’t trust your mental image of your alignment. It is probably wrong.
Stand with your legs shoulder with apart. Your feet should point straight forward with your second toes parallel to each other. Unlock your knees. This means just slightly bend them. They should not go over the middle of your foot. Can you do this? In order to do this you need to be able to also unlock and slightly rotate your hips and open up your pelvis. Do you feel any tension in your ankles knees or hips? Look down. Are your leg bones aligned with your foot? Your knees should not be pointing inward or outward. Now move your weight over your right foot. Make sure your torso is still pointing straight ahead. Your knee should be still aligned with your second toe and is not going over the middle of your foot. Also make sure that you are not sticking your right hip out and tilting your upper body to the left and forward to counter balance. Your torso should be vertical. Can you do this? Now, with your weight fully on your right leg, lift your left leg one inch off the floor. Make sure that all previous alignments are still maintained. Can you do this? Now move left foot one foot forward, so that the heel of your left foot is now aligned with the toes of your right foot. Relax your left foot and lower it down until it touches the ground. The weight should still be on your right foot. Check your alignments. They should all still be in place. Can you do this? Now lift your left foot one inch up in the air and move it back to be parallel with your right foot. Your weight should still be on your right foot. Now move the weight to the center. Repeat the same procedure with the opposite leg.
If during this exercise you lose your alignment, this means that your stabilizer muscles are not strong enough, or they are not firing correctly, or your tendons and muscles are too stiff and short to allow full rotation of your hip and ankle joints. If you can’t do this, you should not do anything else, because you will injure yourself. The injuries don’t have to be sudden rips and cracks. They can be repetitive strain injuries, like tendon micro tears, cartilage micro tears. Eventually they can cause bigger injuries or can lead to arthritis.
You can use the above exercise to strengthen your stabilizer muscles. It should be done slowly with your feeling scanning your lower body for any overly tensed muscles and in particular any dead, not activated muscles. During the whole exercise your core muscles have to be engaged at all times. Make sure your breathing is smooth and relaxed. Don’t hold your breath. Stay in every intermediate position for the duration of 3 breaths.
Good luck.

Chi massage ear, hand and foot points

Massage and why it is important in internal martial arts

When I was in Bali few years ago, I went to a small island of its east coast called Nusa Lembongan. It is a beautiful island and is definitely worth visiting if you are near there. When I was there I practiced my chi kung every morning, and as you can imagine, people got curious and started asking questions. It turned out that Bali has its own tradition of chi kung, which was imbedded into their religious practices as well as Silat martial practices. Every Balinese temple is also a school, where priests taught children the religion, but also energy arts, medical arts and lots more. One of the things that everyone leaned as part of their medical training was a chi massage. Particularly foot and hand massage. There are 3 parts of the body where all the acupuncture meridians meet, and which act as holographic images of the body: ears, feet and hands. By applying chi massage to your hands, feet and ears, you are stimulating every part of your body. For general health, you don’t even need to know which point on your palm, sole or ear is connected to what part of your body.

All you need to do is this:

1. Relax and switch your mind off. You need to be present when you are doing any type of massage in order to be able to feel what is going on in the body.

2. Rub your hands while feeling the point of contact between them. This will bring the chi into your palms

3. Just put your feeling into the point of your hand foot or ear that you are massaging. This will draw the chi from your hands into that particular point, which will in turn stimulate related part of your body.

4. If you find any point that is painful, just stay on it and keep massaging until the pain subsides.

5. Do this every day. You will soon notice the benefits.


Anyway, Balinese are mad into cock fighting. The cockerels they use are mean killing machines, strong and supple, agile and fast. The funny thing is that the cockerels spend most of their time locked under tiny bamboo baskets, maybe a meter in diameter. They get taken out of the baskets every day, but they are not let loose to run around. Instead, they are carried around under their owner’s arms to a nice shady place, where they are massaged for hours. I actually sat once and watched one of the massaging sessions. All the muscles, bones and connective tissues are meticulously pressed, twisted, pulled and stretched. While the owner is massaging his bird, he is constantly murmuring and whispering secret magic words, and I was told that they are very important part of the process. But even without powerful spells, the process of dynamic massage is a great way to strengthen and stretch the body.


Here Bruce Frantzis explains how to perform twisting leg massage. This massage is supposed separate muscles and tendons from the bones, stretch them, and train your muscles, tendons and nerves to be able to twist or wrap around the bones. Bagua insists on twisting. This is because muscles that are wrapped around the bones in a twisting spiral way, develop more attachments to the bone and can therefore bare more pressure and have more strength per amount of muscle that the straight muscles. I once watched this video about the strongest girl in the world. Shi was 10 year old Russian, and was able to lift huge weights with ease. She was subjected to an intense training by her parents, both sports trainers from Russia, from a very early age. A big part of the training every day was dynamic stretching and twisting. When scientists did MRI scan of her body, they found that all her leg and arm muscles were wrapping around the bones and had 3 times more attachments then normal muscles would. They believed that this was why she was able to deal with such heavy weights. In the old times, children learning martial arts in monasteries were subjected to very similar training regimes, and probably ended up with the same bone muscle structure.

Too busy to Kung Fu

Kung fu means hard work. It means that you have to practice hard and for a long time, in order to acquire martial arts skills. Kung Fu in internal Kung Fu means exactly the same. Except that the martial arts skills you are trying to develop are different. Just because you are training internal kung fu, does not mean that there is a short cut, which would allow you to become skilful fighter without putting in an effort.
In the old times, people started practicing internal martial arts when they were kids and they kept on practicing for the rest of their lives, many hours every day. The reason why you need to practice for a long time is because internal kung fu trains small internal muscles, tendons, ligaments and your whole nervous system.
In order to train internal muscles, you need to do low intensity, high repetition rate exercises. You need to use low intensity exercises, because you want to switch off your big external muscles in order to engage, or activate your internal muscles. If you try to put too much force into your practice, the body will try to protect itself by switching the big muscles on, and your exercise becomes ineffective. You have to do these exercises for a long time with high repetition rate, because it takes a long time to strengthen internal muscles. They are just difficult and awkward to isolate and train.
In order to train connective tissue, you need to do a lot of dynamic stretching and twisting. This will increase the thickness and strength of the connective tissue. But this can only be done slowly. If you try to rush this, you will injure yourself.
The main reason why you need to do low intensity, high repetition rate exercises is because you are not just training your internal muscles and your connective tissue, both of which take a long time to grow and stretch. You are also training your whole nervous system. You are training your nerves to increase the speed and clarity of message transfer. You are also training your brain to change the order in which it fires activation and deactivation signals to different muscles and connective tissue as well as the intensity of those signals. This in particular requires a very long time.

So Kung fu means hard work.

How can you find all that time to practice every day? It’s simple. You need to start living your kung fu. What does that mean? It means that you start doing everything as if it is a Kung fu practice. And if you understand the fundamental principles of internal kung fu, everything can be a Kung fu practice. Waking up and stretching in the morning becomes a kung fu practice. Getting out of bed becomes kung fu practice. Walking to the toilet, sitting down on a toilet seat and getting up, even actually going to the toilet becomes a kung fu practice. Getting your breakfast ready, eating your breakfast, it all becomes kung fu practice. You spend at least 12 hours every day doing things that involve standing, walking, sitting down, getting up, moving, lifting, pressing, pushing, holding, bending. All of this can be done in an “empty” way, or it can be done in a “full”, “mindful”, kung fu way. By doing this, your life becomes kung fu practice, chi kung practice, meditation practice. You start living your kung fu. If you add to that an hour of formal martial practice a day (I think this is a recommended daily amount of exercise in order to maintain a good health), then you easily end up having more than 5 hours of training a day.

I know that this sounds like karate kid “wax on wax off” practice. And it is. Don’t do your kung fu. Live your kung fu.

Hand chi massage set (opening chi kung set number 1)

This simple exercise set can be used to energize your hands and your whole body in the morning, or at the beginning of your training session. It is a chi kung hand massage set, which draws chi into your hands, and then distributes it through all the meridians which end in your fingers. It also stimulates all the acupressure points in your palms and fingers. It is very important that during the exercise you keep your feeling inside the place that is currently being massaged. This will draw chi into the part of your hand that is being massaged. Remember this is a chi massage. Don't try to force chi, and don't try to visualize anything. Just feel it.
This set will improve the circulation in your hands. It will also clean the chi channels in the hands.
This chi kung set also has a martial arts application. It develops hand and wrist strength. It stretches hand muscles and ligaments. It also develops pushing and splitting power. It also teaches you how to perform palm pushing strikes and chops from a very short distance (less than the length of your palm). The splitting force strikes output the full force at the beginning of the movement, so you really don't need any distance at all.

The reason why the arms need to extended but rounded, is because this is the furthest point in which you can output the full force while maintaining proper body alignment. It is the most difficult position from which you could attempt to output force. No one really expects you to be able to output force from that hand position anyway. Which is precisely why you should be able to output force form that exact position. It adds fun to fighting.


There are 3 instructional videos.

The first one shows the whole set and explains how the set should be performed.

The second one shows massage closeup.

The third one shows martial applications of this set.

Eckhart Tolle - The power of now

Enlightenment - what is that?

A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by. "Spare some change?" mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his old baseball cap. "I have nothing to give you," said the stranger. Then he asked: "What's that you are sitting on?" "Nothing," replied the beggar. "Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember." "Ever looked inside?"
asked the stranger. "No," said the beggar. "What's the point? There's nothing in there." "Have a look inside," insisted the stranger. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold.
I am that stranger who has nothing to give you and who is telling you to look inside. Not inside any box, as in the parable, but somewhere even closer: inside yourself.
"But I am not a beggar," I can hear you say.
Those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant joy of Being and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it, are beggars, even if they have great material wealth. They are looking outside for scraps of pleasure or fulfillment, for validation, security, or love, while they have a treasure within that not only includes all those things but is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer.
The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some super-human accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form. The inability to feel this connectedness gives rise to the illusion of separation, from yourself and from the world around you. You then perceive yourself, consciously or unconsciously, as an isolated fragment. Fear arises, and conflict within and without becomes the norm. I love the Buddha's simple definition of enlightenment as "the end of suffering." There is nothing superhuman in that, is there? Of course, as a definition, it is incomplete. It only tells you what enlightenment is not: no suffering. But what's left when there is no more suffering? The Buddha is silent on that, and his silence implies that you'll have to find out for yourself. He uses a negative definition so that the mind cannot make it into something to believe in or into a superhuman accomplishment, a goal that is impossible for you to attain. Despite this precaution, the majority of Buddhists still believe that enlightenment is for the Buddha, not for them, at least not in this lifetime…

This is the start of the best book on meditation that I have ever read. The book is called “The power of now” and was written by Eckhart Tolle. If want to know what meditation and enlightenment are all about, read this book. You can download this book for free here.

I am also including a link to a short video on silence and presence.

Standing meditation practice

In 1939, Wang Xiangzhai issued a public challenge through a Beijing newspaper. His objective: to test and prove the new martial arts training system of Yiquan, a system that placed standing meditation (zhan zhuang) at its core.
Expert fighters from across China, Japan and even Europe traveled to answer Wang’s challenge. None could beat him or his senior students. His standing meditation training produced superior results in a shorter time period, when compared to methods used in boxing, Judo, and other styles of Kung Fu.

Interested?

Here is a very good series of videos by a teacher called Mark S. Cohen explaining the posture and breathing during the standing meditation.

I particularly like the bit at the end of the last video when the teacher says: for healing you should do this for at least 40 minutes a day. For martial arts training you have to do this for at least an hour every day.

Kung fu does mean hard work after all.

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Here is also a video by Bruce Frantzis, talking about the different stages of taoist meditation.

Watch video


This is an introduction to an online course. You can subscribe to this course here:

Science confirms Taoist wisdom about compassion and morality

When Bruce Frantzis talks about Taoist morality, he says that in Taoism morality is based on being able to really experience the world around you, and therefore being able to experience what others are going through, which leads to empathy and morality. So to be moral, you need to be compassionate. And to be compassionate you need to be present, aware, you need to be awake.
Here Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, talks about reflective neurons, a type of neurons that enable us to exactly experience what others around us experience. They enable us to empathize, to be compassionate. But then he asks why we aren't more compassionate more of the time. And he concludes that this is because people are just not present, aware or awake most of the time. We are too self-centered, too enclosed within our own minds, to notice others, the world.

Watch video

Illustration of the difference between the external and internal martial arts

I was walking on the pier in Dun Laoghaire this morning. The clouds were low and the wind was strong and gusty. I noticed a raven flying overhead. It was flapping its wings madly, trying to counter the blows of the wind, totally unbalanced and looking really vulnerable. Then, just above the struggling raven, I saw a seagull. With its wings spread wide, it was gliding effortlessly on the same wind that was causing so much trouble for poor raven. The seagull looked completely relaxed. It did not fight the wind, it was using it. It did not try to go through the gusts; it glided and slid over them. The raven was like an external martial arts practitioner. It was strong and able to fight against a strong opposing force, but spending huge amount of energy to achieve this, and constantly on a verge of defeat. The seagull was like an internal martial arts practitioner. It didn’t fight the opposing force. It evaded the force, used it, and moved through it, all the time in a perfect balance and calm, using minimum effort to achieve maximum goals.

And then a really strong gust of wind blew my hat straight into the sea.

People who really helped me when I needed help

I sometimes believe that it was faith that I should start practicing internal kung fu, chi kung and Taoist meditation. They saved my sanity and my life. The faith or Tao, call it what you want, introduced me to some amazing people who helped me when I needed help, and brought me, and kept me on the internal kung fu path.

I was born breached, which means that instead of coming out head first, I came out leg first, sideways. The birth took place in a small town hospital, which was not equipped for cesarean section. Both me and my mother were in danger of dying. In the end they decided to pull me out by the leg and save the mother. Luckily I survived, but my hips and my pelvis were badly injured. This injury was never properly treated, and as a consequence, my whole pelvic area stayed twisted, which caused the spine to get twisted as well. What saved me during birth was the fact that I have hyper extendable joints. Of course, this can become a nightmare when you are child, as you joints will just not stop twisting by themselves. This led to both of my ankles and both of my elbows being dislocated multiple times. Eventually this also led to one of my ankles being badly damaged in a sports incident. Then I was conscripted into the army, where I ended up with a back injury, and shrapnel wound. I started practicing martial arts in my late twenties, in order to strengthen my body. I was always interested in martial arts, but never got around to practice it before, except for a short self defense training course I had in the army. I started training taekwondo, and was getting really god at it. Then I went into a sparing and ended up with a twisted knee. The injury forced me to stop training taekwondo, as I was not able to put any weight on my right leg.
On top of these physical injuries, I carried numerous psychological and emotional scars that I picked up while going through prisons, wars and just life. I was pretty much a physical and emotional wreck. But as i said I was lucky to meet some amazing people, who helped me get back into life and martial arts training.

Here they are. Call them if you need help.


Dr. Alan A.D. Peatfield, a very good Internal kung fu teacher and Medical chi kung teacher.
1 Birchfield Court
Dublin, 14
Ireland
Tel: +35 386 161 9094
Email: alan_peatfield@hotmail.com


McClorey Anne-Marie, a very good acupuncturist.
Address: 4 lower Mount st Merrion sq 2 Co. Dublin
City of Dublin
Phone: (087)6177958
Categories: Acupuncture,


Mr. Gerry Flynn, a very good osteopath
Osteopathic Practice
3 Merrion Court,
Ailesbury Road, Ballsbridge,
Dublin,
Dublin 4Ireland
01 2695525


Dene Hickey, a very good sports massage specialist.
Phone: 087 133 2405
Address 50 Georges st Upper, Dun Laoghaire (near Peoples park) opposite Alex’s lotto shop http://www.denehickey.com/sports-massage


Caroline Chambers is a very good Stott Certified Pilates Instructor and Chartered Physiotherapist
Telephone +353 1 260 5522
Address,line 1 240 Merrion Rd
City or Town Dublin

Left wing vs. Right wing Taoism

Traditionally, the right-wing or conservative Taoists in China tended to isolate themselves in the mountains, where they struggled to attain spiritual clarity and balance (that is, connection with the universal Tao) primarily by using moving and seated meditation techniques. The right-wingers attempted to achieve wisdom and peace through a highly regulated, moderate, and often celibate lifestyle that was fairly quiet. In this way, they gradually disengaged from the distractions of worldly life. They often lived in small, secluded mountain communities, either alone or in groups of three to five. Lone hermits or small groups sometimes resided inside a cave or mountain hermitage, perhaps not emerging for fifty years. Less often, they banded together in monasteries, which were not nearly as big as the hugely populated monasteries one can find in the history of Buddhism and Christianity.

In stark contrast, the wandering left-wing Taoists were known for being outrageous in their lifestyles and sexual behavior. There was nothing a leftist Taoist would not do. Taoists of the left frequently scorned or ignored social conventions and expectations outright. But while they often repudiated many specific aspects and values of society, they (and this is an important point) adhered to awareness in all they did, avoided casing harm, and attempted to balance all they came in contact with.

Taoist Lineage Holder Bruce Frantzis talks about these two philosophical approaches found within Taoism; the left wing extremely liberal approach epitomized by Chuang Tzu and the more conservative one embodied by Lao Tzu.
Bruce explains how many of Chuang Tzu's seemingly eccentric actions directly allowed him to manifest a fundamental doctrine of Taoism-spontaneity and its necessity towards letting go.

View the video

Today most people can’t go to monasteries. They have to live immersed in “life”. Being immersed in life teaches you the ever changing nature of life. And also teaches you that you are part of this life, not a separate entity. Which means that you cannot stay static and unchanging while everything else around you changes all the time. Which is the essence of Bagua.

Practice your kung fu happy

I was once advised to practice happy. I was told that internal martial arts practice consists of millions of tiny happy steps. The emphasis here being on happy. What that means is that you should not push yourself to your limits. And you should definitely not push yourself over your limits. Your body and your mind should always be happy during and after your practice. At the end of your practice, you should feel that you want to practice more. This will insure that you have a steady progress, without falling into pattern of one step forward two steps back, caused by injuries. What you want is to still be able to practice and improve your skills when you are ninety years old. Not to be crippled by the age of 30.

Bruce Frantzis bagua warm up

Here Bruce Frantzis talks about bagua warm up and correct posture. When he is explaining the sucking of the qua, he is actually describing the activation of the core muscles.

Bagua warm up

The meaning of the term “martial arts”

There are two interpretations of the expression “Martial arts”.

The first one:

The word 'martial' derives from the name of Mars, the Roman god of war. The term 'Martial Arts' literally means arts of war. This term comes from 15th century Europeans who were referring to their own fighting arts that are today known as Historical European martial arts. A practitioner of martial arts is referred to as a martial artist. In popular culture, the term "Martial Arts" often specifically refers to the combat systems that originated in Asian cultures. However, the term actually refers to any sort of codified combat systems, regardless of origin.

The second one:

If you are asking about the Asian ideology of the term "martial" - you have to look at the Chinese ideogram, or the character, which is pronounced "wu". In Okinawan dialect and Japanese, it is "bu", as in bushido and bujutsu. The term DOES NOT mean war. It consists of radicals that indicate the stopping of a conflict. Wu means Stop Fight, NOT war. Wushu translates to "stop fight art". The same characters read by an Okinawan or Japanese will say bujutsu. It is the same word. The whole "mars = god of war" thing is a western ideology and doesn't apply when you are referring to arts from China, Okinawa or Japan. So "martial" - "wu", "bu" means Stop Fight. Take the character to any Chinese person you know who can read , preferably an older person, and ask what is the break-down of the radicals and actual translation.
Both basically mean the same: the art of stopping the fight, by killing the opponent.


All the original martial arts were taught to solders, and involved use of weapons. If you look at all traditional martial styles, they are all one sided. They always block with the left hand and attack with the right. This comes directly from the times when fighters carried shields in their left hand and a weapon (a club, a sword, a battle axe or a spear) in their right hand. All techniques that were taught had as its only aim to kill the opponent. Any bare hand techniques that were taught, were taught in order to enable a disarmed fighter to disarm and kill the opponent, get the opponents weapon, and continue fighting using the weapon. So these techniques had as its aim killing the opponent as quickly as possible, using striking and kicking. Submissions and locks, were techniques never taught in traditional martial arts.

Today very few people are actually learning martial arts. This is because most teachers, who know the real martial arts, don’t want to teach real martial art, the arts of stopping the fight by killing the attacker. The other teachers can’t teach real martial arts, because they have never actually learned the real martial arts themselves. Their own teachers never taught them. So they teach what then know, which is described by one of my Bagua teachers as “The stuff you do when you are feeling merciful”. WU means to stop the fight. By letting your attacker get up after your attack, or worse stay standing, you are prolonging the fight. In real fight there are no points. As one of my Bagua teachers told us once: “Martial arts are brutal, cruel, crisp and cold”.

I heard someone once saying: "I am not going to fight you, i am going to hurt you." This pretty much sums it all up.

Finding and activating pelvis floor muscles

Pelvic floor muscles can be hard to feel when you are exercising or moving through daily life. "Engage the pelvic floor" or "Activate the pelvic floor muscles" are common instructions in Pilates as well as in Internal martial arts, but many students are unsure about how to get that to happen.

My favorite image for getting the pelvic floor muscles in on an exercise is to think of bringing the sit bones together and up. The sit bones are the bony parts that you feel under you when you sit up straight on a firm surface. This is what is erroneously described as squeezing your anus. Correct description is lifting your perineum. What you need to do is engage the pelvic floor muscles. This will lift your anus not squeeze it but the effect will be that your butt cheeks will be squeezed together effectively squeezing your anus. Your pelvis will also be rotated forward and upward. This will also lift and pull in your genitals. You know the iron balls trick, where one guy sits in a narrow horse stands, and someone kicks him between his legs with a lifting kick, with no effect. You do it by lifting the pelvic floor. This rotates and lifts the butt muscles, and moves your genitals out of the way.
Another good image for pelvic floor muscles is to think of drawing a fountain of energy up from the base of the pelvic bowl -- up through the middle of the body, and out the top of the head. This image helps connect the in and up action of the pelvic floor muscles with the other core muscles, and an increases awareness of the central channel and dan-tians.

Here a Bagua teacher talks about this from the Internal martial arts point of view:

Importance of Down

Why is Pilates good idea if you are thinking about learning internal martial arts

If you are thinking about learning internal martial arts, it could be a very good idea to start with a six months Pilates course first.
What are intended benefits of Pilates

Pilates strengthens the core, the deep stabilizer muscles, the whole body - bones, muscles and joints.
Pilates increases mobility of the joints, flexibility of the muscles
Pilates improves posture, coordination, balance, body awareness, sense of well being.
Pulates aids relaxation - mind over (muscle) matter, learning to listen to and be kind to your body, concentration

All the above goals are also goals of internal martial arts. The main difference is that Pilates is designed to teach you these things in safe way, methodically, and extremely efficiently. Pilates is a very good starting point for internal martial arts. It is based on the same principles, but it is designed to be practiced by people who are recovering from injuries, which means that, if practiced correctly, it is a safe way to build internal awareness, flexibility and strength.

Here are the 8 Pilates principles. See if you can spot the similarity between them and the internal martial arts principles:
The Eight Pilates Principles

1. Concentration- "The Pilates method of body conditioning is gaining mastery of your mind over the complete control of your body." - Joseph Pilates. Constant focus on every movement is required.

2. Breathing – lateral thoracic breath. In order for the body to receive enough oxygen to perform the exercise, we must breathe efficiently. In order to keep the lower abdominals close to the spine; the breathing needs to be directed laterally, into the lower ribcage. Moving on the exhalation will enable greater core stability at the hardest part of the exercise and prevents breath holding (Valsalva).

3. Centering- By engaging the core muscles either pelvic floor or Transverse Abdominis, the best stability is achieved. These muscles co contract which means when you engage one the other engages as well. The other 2 muscles that make up the core are the diaphragm (under the lungs which moves in and out as you breathe) and multifidus which is a series of back muscles the entire length of the spine – these also engage when you lift pelvic floor or draw in TA (tummy button to spine).

4. Control – maintaining the correct alignment of the body and performing the movements slowly with control creates strong, long lean muscles.

5. Precision- "Concentrate on the correct movements each time you exercise, lest you do them improperly and thus lose all the vital benefits of their value." - Pilates. Making sure you maintain the correct alignment and execution of the exercise means that the correct muscles will be recruited.

6. Flowing movements - Movements flow in time with the in and out parts of the breath, performed correctly, slowly, controlled so as not to strain. Lengthening occurs away from a strong centre stabilised by activating the core.

7. Isolation – controlling different muscles groups depending on the exercise teaches the brain to correct incorrect patterns of muscle recruitment, posture and movement.

8. Routine – practicing all of the above techniques regularly creates a routine; the brain will in time automatically remember the correct alignment, precise execution of the movements with specific muscles. The more practice we do the further we can advance in skill, strength, balance, flexibility and technique. Practise makes perfect!

Here is the description of the ideal Pilates body posture. This is what the Pilates is supposed to teach you to achieve. See if you can spot the similarities between Pilates posture and internal martial arts posture:
Alignment of your legs - Place your feet beneath sit bones and hip sockets, find the knobbly bones at the front of the pelvis and line your knees and ankles directly under them.

Weight even through the feet - Rock into front of foot then the back then come to the centre placing the weight evenly through the whole of the foot – imagining if you like a triangle between big toe, little toe and heel and placing the weight evenly through those three points.

Soft knees - Shake out the knees – we work with soft joints in Pilates – encouraging the muscles and around the joints to work and strengthen.

Neutral pelvis – hands on hips imagining if you like that the pelvis is a bucket of water – take the pelvis forward and back pouring the water to the front and the back – make the movements smaller between the two points until the bucket of water is level. To check that you have neutral place your fingertips on your pubic bone and make a triangle with the thumbs at the top – when you look down if you see a straight line this is your neutral pelvis – make micro adjustments to ensure you achieve your neutral pelvis.

Lengthen up through the spine – when we have our neutral pelvis our spine is in the correct position all the muscles tissues, vertebrae and disks are in their natural position, it is the safest position for our back and ensures we recruit our muscles correctly, poor posture on the other hand can lead to pressure, tension and pain as the muscles, tissues, vertebrae and disks may be compressed and pulled out of the natural position.

Locate and engage the core muscles to 30% – The core muscles consist of Transverse Abdominis or TA - deep internal postural abdominal muscle - a corset like muscle which if joined at the bottom of the ribs and the top of the pelvis supporting the lower back and stabilising the rib cage and pelvis, Pelvic Floor or PF a series of muscles in a hammock like shape in the pelvis, Multifidus - postural back muscles that run up alongside our spine and the diaphragm at the bottom of the rib cage which is involved in breathing.

The core muscles all work in conjunction with each other so when you engage one you are engaging them all but you may feel happier focusing on a TA engagement or a PF engagement or you may like to change the focus depending on the exercise. (See earlier information for more instructions about activating these muscles.)

Breathing - We practise lateral thoracic breathing in Pilates – breathing wide and deep into the ribcage whilst maintaining our 30% contraction of our core muscles. Interlace the fingers wide onto the ribcage and breathe in deeply through the nose feeling the ribs expand out to the sides and the front and back. Exhale a little bit more than you would do on a normal out breath this helps to exercise the muscles around the ribs a bit more, repeat a few times.

Shoulder Placement - Open the chest by rounding the shoulders gently so that the hands come to face the sides of the body. Then draw the shoulder blades gently down the back towards the pelvis - you should feel muscles firing up under your blades and around the sides of your upper rib cage.

Lengthen the neck – lengthen up through the back of your neck and the crown of your head to the ceiling as if you have a chord attached to the crown and you are being pulled upwards. When we lengthen through the neck the chin folds down a touch – to check you have the correct position bring your fist in sideways under your chin it should touch the chin and the chest – imagine you are holding a ripe peach under your chin as you work.

Always remember to keep the neck long during the exercises – the eyes will be looking forward at all times – if you are kneeling the eyes will be looking at the mat and if you are lying on the mat your forehead will be on the mat eyes looking directly down – if you lift the chin the neck shortens – this puts pressure into the base of the neck as the head is very heavy and the vertebrae of the neck are the smallest vertebrae of the spine. Always be conscious of protecting your neck with correct alignment.

This is what Pilates has to say about core muscles, the ones that connect the upper and lower part of the body. Incidentally, these are the most important muscles in internal martial arts as well.

The core is a set of deep postural muscles that provide strength and support to your body. The core muscles incorporate Pelvic Floor, Transverse Abdominis, the Diaphragm (involuntary muscle involved in breathing) and Multifidus (deep spinal muscles throughout your whole spine).

Pilates exercises teach you how to isolate the core muscles. Isolating these muscles produces much quicker strengthening of these muscles. It also allows you to develop a direct control over these muscles, which is very important in internal martial arts. If you want to be in a sung state, your core muscles have to be activated somewhere between 10% and 30% at all times, no matter what the rest of your body is doing. This is crucial for development of full body power as well.
There are two ways to do practice activation of core muscles: We can engage EITHER pelvic floor OR Transversus Abdominis to activate the ‘core’, or we can learn to engage both the pelvic floor and the TA together. Then we do specific exercises to strengthen it.


The core muscles work in conjunction with each other so when you engage one you are engaging them all but you may feel happier focusing on a TA engagement or a PF engagement or you may like to change the focus depending on the exercise.
Transverse Abdominis
Your Transverse Abdominis is another part of your core – it is the deepest layer of abdominal muscle – it is a bit like an internal corset – joining the ribs to the hips around the whole of your trunk.
Engaging TA
To engage all of your outer and inner abdominals; draw the tummy button back towards the spine to an 100% contraction, then release to 0%, draw it back in to 100% release to 50% then go to 25% - what we are looking for is that the outer layers of abdomnals have released and that just your deep TA remains engaged. Release to 0% then draw gently in too that 25% contraction - use an image to help you - imagine that your insides are a wet sponge - you want to gently take hold of your sponge but not squeeze it – ideally you will keep this 25% contraction of these deep muscles in all you do in your Pilates class and your daily life - use the sponge image to help you to make sure you are not holding yourself 'sucked in'

Exercise for building awareness of TA
Imagine on your 100% contraction that you are at notch 10 on a wide belt or 100% – release your belt down to notch 9 or 90% then 8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 or 10% then 0 – no contraction. Then go up through the levels again to help you get to know this muscle and the levels of contraction – it also is a simple exercise to do to gently strengthen this muscle
Your Pelvic Floor
Your Pelvic Floor is part of your ‘core’, it sits in the bottom of your pelvis a bit like the weave in the bottom of a wicker basket and holds everything in, it is obvious that when the pelvic floor is week that things like stress incontinence occurs – think of the weave in the basket coming a bit loose.


Engaging Pelvic Floor
To engage Pelvic Floor imaging the muscles that you would engage if you were trying to stop the flow if you were having a wee – draw these muscles in to 100% then go to 0% draw in to 100% then release to 50% then go down to 30% then go to 0% then draw back into 30% – the ideal contraction for this muscle – we are training this muscle to engage and support us at 30% continuously. Try this exercise with your hands on your bottom – try to do this exercise without feeling that you are squeezing your bottom super hard – we are trying to work Pelvic Floor on its own!!

Exercise for building awareness of Pelvic Floor – do this exercise standing, sitting or lying down!
Imagine that 100% is floor 10 of a building and you are at floor 10 in a lift – take your lift down to floor 9 or 90% the 8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 or 10% then 0 – no contraction. Then go up through the levels again to help you get to know this muscle and the levels of contraction – it also is a simple exercise to do to gently strengthen this muscle. Try this exercise with your hands on your bottom – try to do this exercise without feeling that you are squeezing your bottom – we are trying to work Pelvic Floor on its own!!

Practice kung fu mindfully

This same advice is sometimes worded as: “Practice internal kung fu mindfully” or “Don’t practice kung fu, practice chi kung, and you will end up acquiring a superb kung fu”.
What does it mean to practice kung fu mindfully? Practising kung fu mindfully means that at every moment, during every move you are absolutely aware of what is happening inside and outside of you. The awareness needs to be of the whole body, because it is the whole body that is performing the movement. Sometimes the awareness focus needs to fallow a particular path within your body, in order to lead the chi and blood to a particular part of the body. But even then we need to continue being aware of the whole body. It is as if you are holding a big magnifying glass in front of a picture. The part behind the magnifying glass is amplified and can be seen in greater detail. But the rest of the picture did not disappear. It is still there and we can still see it, just a little less sharply.
What does it mean to practice chi kung instead of kung fu? Chi kung was once considered the highest form of martial arts. The main aim of chi kung is not to manipulate chi. It is to create conditions in which the chi can resume doing what it was meant to be doing, which is to balance the world. This means removing physical, psychological, emotional, karmic blockages, which prevent chi from the universe to flow in and out of our body, and which prevent chi within our body to flow freely and balance itself. In martial arts, chi manipulation is frequently used to concentrate chi in certain parts of our body. This is used to gain power, resistance to blows and so on. This practice is commonly known as iron shirt or iron palm or iron that or other, in short iron body. These practices are extremely dangerous if done incorrectly. The main mistake is misunderstanding of the sentence: “Mind leads, chi follows mind, blood follows chi”. The problem here is in the word “mind”, because it is not mind that leads. It is awareness that leads. If you want to direct your chi to a particular part of your body, you place the magnifying glass of your awareness over that part of your body. You don’t imagine that chi is moving to that part of your body, you don’t want to move chi to that part of your body, you don’t force your focus and your attention to that part of your body, and you don’t force or push chi to that part of your body. All of this will lead to fire chi burning its way to that part of your body, or even worse to your head. The more force you put into “pushing the chi” the more fire you generate. And fire burns and destroys. What you need to use is not your mind but your awareness, your internal feeling. This is often represented as your heart, in order to emphasise that it is not your mind. It is also sometimes described as putting your mind into your lower dantien and then looking at the world from there. But that is misleading. This awareness does not originate from the heart, or from dantien. It does not have a singular origin in the body. But it permeates the whole body. And can be extended outside of your body. It is definitely not controlled by the brain and the mind. But it can reach and control the brain and the mind. Even if done correctly, iron body practices can be extremely dangerous, if the body’s chi is not returned to a balanced state after the practice. The only way you can achieve this balance is through special chi balancing exercises. And they are effective only if your chi channels are open and clear. So what one needs to practice first are opening and closing chi kung exercises. Opening chi channels, removing chi blockages is inseparable from opening joints and stretching muscles and tendons and facia. Chi is electrical, plasma phenomenon. Electricity moves through most conductive materials. The most conductive materials in our bodies are facia, tendons and ligaments, otherwise known as connective tissue. Chi channels closely follow the internal topography of connective tissue, as it developed from the original embryonic cells. You can’t open your chi channels, unless your joints are opened and mobile, your connective tissue is smooth, stretched and elastic, your muscles are supple, stretched and strong. Then practice full body awareness, emptying of your mind, emotional and psychological cleansing. Then practice chi manipulation. Doing your kung fu practice as if you are practicing chi kung will heal and strengthen your body. It will give you ability to absorb, store, generate and transform energy, necessary for fighting. It will also enable you to be aware of your whole body and your surroundings, which in a fight situation is extremely important. Once you connect your hand with your opponent, you want to be able to still feel your feet, your other hand, as well as your opponent’s movements. Doing your kung fu practice as if you are practicing chi kung will also enable you to precisely control every part of your body, because you will be able to put your mind into every muscle and tendon and control each one of them separately. This will enable you to assemble and disassemble your body depending on the circumstances, so that you can avoid or absorb force, or issue it in any direction from any position.

Practice kung fu with an empty mind

Someone else told me that internal martial arts should be performed with an empty mind. Not with no mind, as that would mean unconsciousness. The empty mind is mind empty of thoughts and emotions. It is in a state of heightened alertness, it is not planning for the future and it is not analysing the past. It is focused on now. This allows you to be hundred percent in a present moment, ready for anything that comes your way. Practising in this way will develop maximum awareness, and responsiveness.

Practice natural movements

I was also told that internal martial arts should be done as if you are not doing martial arts at all. To achieve this, one should make sure that all movements are performed in a natural and relaxed way. Practising in this way will develop maximum speed, mobility and strength. Also, when under stress, natural movements are the easiest and quickest to invoke and perform.

Why you should train in a lazy way

I was once told that in order to get the essence of internal martial arts, one should be lazy and should always try to achieve as much as possible with as little effort as possible. Practising in this way will develop your whole body power.

Practicing relaxed and what is Sung

Don't do internal martial arts completely relaxed. That is slumping and will put your body out of alignment. This will lead to injury. You need to do it in sung state, which means using just enough muscle and tendon power to keep body in a REQUIRED position. This implies that ALL your muscles, big and small, external and internal are strong enough, so that if engaged together, they only need to be engaged up to the sung level. If you are physically week, then sung level of muscle activation is probably way above your normal strength and tension level, and does not feel like being relaxed. But you need to achieve this muscle tone level if you want to be stable.

Here are Erle Montaigue lessons on sung.

Part 1
Part 2

Warm up exercises that you should not attempt at home

Here is an example of a very dangerous set of exercises.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOEV26N2VOE&feature=feedf

It was described as a warm up set, and indeed it is taught as a warm up set, in this form or a similar form, in many styles of internal martial arts. Warm up exercises are meant to prepare your body for more vigorous and more difficult exercises that fallow. They are supposed to warm up muscles and tendons and lightly stretch them and twist them. But the above set of exercises, the way it is performed, relies on the body being exceptionally strong and flexible. If a beginner or an intermediate tries to copy this exercise set the way it is presented, he will definitely injure himself.  Before you can do this set, you need to do a lot of joint opening exercises, a lot of muscle and tendon strengthening exercises and a lot of preparatory twisting exercises. Then you can start with this set, but do all the twists and stands at only 10 percent of what is shown in this video. And maybe, if you are lucky and don’t injure yourself, you might be able to do it like this in about 10 to 20 years time.

To old to kung fu

I am writing this blog because I want to help people not to make the same mistakes that me and many other martial artists have made, and which almost ended our martial arts careers. If I can help one person not to go through horror of thinking that he will never train again, then this will all be worth it.
I would like to make people who are training martial arts aware of this simple fact: If you are from an urban background, and you are in your twenties, then you are too old, too week, to deformed, too stuck in bad habits to be able to fallow the traditional training regimes without injuring yourself beyond repair. This doesn't mean that you can't practice and learn martial arts. This just means that you have to be very very careful how you do it, and you need to do a lot of preparatory work before you learn a single form. If you want to have a long martial arts career that is.

Few days ago I saw a video in which a Chines bagua teacher is telling his class that they are all too old to train martial arts. The camera went around the room, and you could see that the average age of a student was early twenties. The teacher then proceeded to explain what he had meant:

The reason for starting young, is that as a kid, you can still stand and move in a natural way. You are not deformed by years of bad habits. This is when the fundamental practices are taught to reinforce this naturalness and openness. You are too old, so I would suggest you help yourself and give each other a massage before you start training, to align your bones and your joints... And then make sure that your body alignment is absolutely correct at all times, or you will injure yourself...and so on and so forth.

Here is the link to the video that I am talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/user/hejinghan#p/u/1/fZXJ5tBHWbI

If you are not a kid, you need to start by straightening your muscles and undoing the damage caused by years of doing things unnaturally. You need to relearn how to stand, how to walk, how to move, how to breathe. You need to open joints, strengthen and stretch muscles and tendons, rebuild cartilage and ligaments, open chi channels. Traditional martial arts training regimes were originally designed to be taught to manual laborers, peasants and solders. These were people who were already supper fit, strong and supple. They were able to sit in a Wing Tsun fighting stance without injuring their knees, because their glut and thigh muscles we strong enough to support them. But people starting to train martial arts today are not those kind of people. They don't work in fields all day. They sit in offices working with computers all day. They can't open their qua without ripping their psoas muscles apart. Their sacral joints are completely stuck. They can't generate power from their stomach, because they don't know how to breathe from their stomachs. They will instead try to generate power from their lower back and injure their spine. Or worse they will try to twist their body to the side, without being able to open and close their qua, and will either rip their knee ligaments or worse their spinal discs. Very few people learning martial arts were first taught how to stabilize their knees, in order to keep them over their second toe at all times, before they were taught how to do stances or walk, or kick. Maybe they were told that they should do so, but were never told how to do it.  As a consequence, many martial artists end up with bad knee injuries.

As the Chinese teacher had said, you need to undo the damage first. You need to bring you self to a level where your muscles (all your muscles), your ligaments and your bones are strong enough, and your joints are open enough. And then you start with martial arts training. From my experience in various martial arts, this is not done, and dangers of doing things wrong are not emphasized enough. This is why so many people have to stop training when they are in their thirties. They get knee and back injuries that basically make them crippled and unable to continue training.

In order to open the joints, stretch and strengthen muscles, tendons and ligaments, all martial arts have developed at least some basic opening and stretching exercises. The reversing of bad habits needs to be done gradually, slowly, all the time listening to your body and changing the direction, kind and intensity of the practice as appropriate. But a lot of times the muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones are so stuck, that no amount of stretching and relaxation can do any good. And trying to push the body to stretch and open will definitely lead to injury which will then bring you straight to physio table or if you are unlucky to operating table. So sometimes it will be necessary to look for help outside the martial arts circles. And believe me, it's better to look for help before you get injured then after you get injured. Maybe acupuncture or deep tissue massage, or osteopath session, will be needed to correct, open or realign parts of your body. All the above body works are designed to speed up the process of rebuilding, realigning and opening of the body. And if you can afford them, use them. Also deep tissue massage and other forms of muscle and tendon hand manipulation can be learned by everyone. Internal martial arts practice should always incorporate massage as a way to speed up martial practice progress. So if you have a chance to learn any massage technique, do so. It will only enhance your martial arts practice.

In order to strengthen and repair your body, you also need to take care of your nutrition. Eat good balanced food. Don't drink (too much), don't take drugs (too much). Make sure you have enough protein, minerals and vitamins in your diet. Bad nutrition means bad bones, ligaments and muscles. It means lack of energy, it means slow recovery after injuries and heavy training sessions, it means stiff joints and muscles. It means poor senses, reaction times and awareness. Make sure you take plenty of omega 3 acids and glucosamine. These food supplements will help the process of rebuilding the damaged cartilage and bones.

As part of this blog, I will post videos and descriptions of core exercise sets that can help people:

• build core body strength,
• open their joints
• strengthen their ligaments and tendons
• stabilize and at the same time open their hips, knees and ankles
• open their chi channels before their training so that they can energize their bodies
• close their chi channels after their training so that the chi they have generated does not escape and stay stored in the body

It will take time to make all the films and exercise descriptions. So be patient. Hopefully I will be able to post at least one set a week, but life is unpredictable.