Hi Newbie question

Great, great post! Asking questions in our training is so much more useful than supplying answers! And these are very good questions. I reckon if everyone asked questions like these, progress would be inevitable.

 

The power of our sub-conscious. When I was in my early teens, I could not grasp the body-feeling of how to breathe while swimming freestyle stroke. I became very obsessed with the problem and then one night I dreamt the process and felt how my body would feel it ... I had no problem with the breathing from that point on because my body had "unlocked" the secret.

The same thing happened to me when learning a wall vault in basic training ... I dreamt the movement-flow and how the entire body was supposed to feel.

Dreaming is just an extension of our intuitive toolset.

P.S. Thankyou Unfetteredmind

 

But is'nt that the problem-the internal arts are held up as the hoily Grail of Ma's-when somebody with "a little expirence" comes to try and is told it's all about "flow and feel" he has nothing to mesure it against so etheir they go about bad mouthing the art or sticks with it with the hope it will click with them some time down the line
With other arts eg judo jujitsu karate ect-you can see fairly quickly if you are getting good instruction,its tangible, you see the punch or the throw,but with this????? you have nothing to compare it with, I think that is a major problem, there seems to be a hell of alot of trust involved

 

This is exactly the problem. However, I urge you to trust what you feel in your teacher, not what they say. When I first put my hands on my teacher and felt him yield, I knew that I was feeling someone move in a way I had never experienced before. It was surprising and a little unsettling and my body rather than my mind was confused. It is easy to talk a good game in Taiji but a teacher should literally embody the principles and be able to clearly demonstrate with their own body what they are saying. Of course this just demonstrates that a teacher knows to some degree what they are talking about not that they are good at teaching it, but it's a start.

 

Well IMO, all movement is "internal" when it involves awareness of and through the entire fascia connecting the musculo-skeletal system of the body.
Everyone already does it, some more crudely, some more refined in the meaning that they have become aware of the feeling through the body-mind perception. When you "get it" you can't help but become a better "mover".
It doesn't of itself make a person a better fighter, but if a person is searching the goal to become a better fighter, it becomes a valuable movement paradigm through which they can focus the problem of becoming a better fighter.
Feeling the link where each body-part is at any point in time is an intergration of the whole-body unit. Being aware of this also allows us to "isolate" a body-part to perform in independent harmony with the rest of our body and to be aware of the space that extends surrounding our body, remembering that the 'threat' is objectified and exists in close proximity to us ... so of course you want to "feel" and act with the flow.

No different to the requirements of Karate, Judo, Xing I, Aikido, Silat or any other movement art I presume.

 

Whatever you do on this board, do not listen to this fool. For that matter a fact you cannot even listen to me, but whatever you do, do not listen to this fool.

100% Qi-free, she's hijacked tai chi because she's insular. Nowhere in any authentic tai chi literature does it negate the reality of Qi; but this one westerner has figured it out, that everything is b.s.

If you want to study tai chi, then be prepared to practice a soft style martial art over many years to burgeon your qi.

If you want to get into combats right off the bat, then go to a kung fu school and learn some 5 animal style or something like this.

p.s. based on the website, the school seems to have credible writing, by the way of inference, on internal practices.
p.s.2. if you don't believe in the burgeoning of the metaphysical, then tai chi is probably not for you.

 

The statue exists already within a marble block. It's up to the individual to chizel away the surrounding marble to reveal the refinement within.
I think Michaelangelo said that ... maybe.
Of course, this understanding translates to the physical as well as to the metaphysical.
Jnanasakti your anger is badly applied, consequently your post is out of balance.
Everyone has a valid story, an experience to share, all experience has some value (including yours), as counterpoint from which we grow away from or closer to. We agree to come on to this forum to share as honestly as we can and to learn for ourselves.

 

I think this is excellently put and I think this is why I think the word "internal" is effectively obsolete. Skillful martial movement utilises the whole body - it has to - so there are no internal styles. Consequently, I think that any division into so-called internal and external styles causes unnecessary hostility. I've seen great Eskrima, great Silat etc. which was as skillful, as sensitive, as connected and as powerful as the very best Taiji or Bagua I'd seen. I've seen Karate that demonstrated better unbroken, reeling silk movement than most of the Taiji I've seen...

It is funny you know that some people find my words so provocative and it is only some people. Those people seem to me to be intent on maintaining the division (and hostility and snobbery) between different martial approaches at all costs and intent on maintaining a false dichotomy between movement that is allegedly fed by "qi" and movement that is not (where does the mythic "qi" go in a person who does not set out to cultivate it, I wonder?) It is like they cannot bring themselves to believe that someone following a completely different (and entirely practical and physical) martial path could still beat their teacher. They could be a Karateka, a Muai Thai fighter, a Silat fighter, a Western Boxer, anyone.

To me, Tai Chi is about reflexes and power, physics, tactics and a little psychology. Yes, of course it is a bit more complicated than that - specific movement qualities have to be developed, so we take those movement qualities, say "let's develop this movement quality" and we develop it. There's no "burgeoning of the metaphysical" in that, just the development of physical skills, but I think Tai Chi is a big enough art to accomodate me.

We use a very different rationale which is practical, logical and modular, with no tolerance of pretension or doublespeak. We let people know our position to deter timewasters because in the so-called "internal" community there are a lot of timewasters. If we accomodated all of them, week in, week out, we'd never get anything done. They just want to talk about "energy" and hold on to harbored pretensions they don't understand themselves. We just get on with the development of fighting skills which is what it is all about.

 

I also agree with this but really, how many people move with "awareness of and through the entire fascia connecting the musculo-skeletal system of the body"?
And JK, I can't agree that the term "internal" is obsolete as for me it helps differentiate between training approaches. Try not to think of things so much in terms of either or. You seem to be saying that because all arts have some internal component that there is no reason to make a distinction. For me, the terms internal and external can be used quite reasonably to describe the emphasis that different styles put on certain aspects of training. For example, many meditative and martial arts train the breath in some depth. I think that it is perfectly acceptable to say these methods emphasise the use of breath. This is not invalidated by the fact that we all breathe. The same is true of movement, just because we all move in a particular way some of the time doesn't mean we shouldn't use that way of moving to characterise a style that trains it very extensively. Take athletics, a sprinter and a marathon runner are both runners right? Yet we call one a sprinter and one a marathon runner because the distinction allows us to understand more about their goals and methods. I don't notice anyone in the world of athletics saying the term sprinter is obsolete because at the end of the day we are all doing the same thing - running. I consider what I do to be internal partly because the emphasis is on developing the internal senses rather than external ones. These are the sense we have of joint position, muscle-state, pain, pressure and temperature.

 

I think we all feel it to a greater or lesser degree. We might not be able to verbalise it and I think we often are not mindful of it, but I think the body monitors itself ... a body-mind intelligence, not a logical mind awareness/intelligence. Some people appear to have it honed to a very fine degree when they connect the two.

This body-mind intelligence in its crudest (and most visible) form is our intinctive reaction to an external stimulation. IMO we can shape, expand and refine it ... through certain practices. Yes, I agree, "internal" and "external" are still distinctions that have specific context in this regard.
However I also believe that once a Karateka or a Judoka starts to think along these lines, they have "crossed over" from the external mind-set to the internal. Good silat is always internal ... heheh.

 

Just wanted to add something regarding internal/external. I would say that the internal distinction goes further/deeper than just feeling and manipulating your soft tissue. I'm not too sure how to explain this, but I'm sure people who do yiquan will be familiar with this example.

In yiquan, you look for specific feeling while practicing various zhang zhuang postures. This feeling is connected to aligning your structure for maximum support/stretch/elasticity in your tendons/muscles, however on top of this, visualizations are used to develop a feeling of resistance/buoyancy which further allows one to add more support from tendons/muscles.

The difference between just standing with good alignment and standing with good alignment + the support of the "feeling" is very significant. Without the "feeling", one has to endure the pain of standing with your arms in front of you, maybe you can do 30 mins, but after that your arms will be knackered, on top of that its extremely boring and potentially frustrating. With the "feeling", as long as the feeling is maintained you can pretty much stand for an indefinite amount of time, secondly the greater the feeling the more comfortable you feel, which in turn reinforces the structure and gives the practice more effect, on top of this the mind is also deeply involved in order to maintain and manipulate the "feeling" in various directions. Thus, in the practice of yiquan the mind/intention is of paramount importance, I guess this is probably why yiquan is called yiquan.

To a practitioner who is familiar with both yiquan and qigong, the "feeling" developed in yiquan is very similar to qi, but employed in a different way. Plus in the yiquan framework qi is not generally used. I'm sure most will already be familiar with this article: http://www.yiquan.org.uk/art-zz.html , I think it explains things quite clearly.

To someone who is not familiar with using feeling/qi, the distinction between internal/external seems unnecessary, but, using feeling/qi is a very different training process from MA's classified as external, and IMO justifies the distinction between internal/external. Is it better or worse? Does it really matter? Its not a style vs style thing, its what you as an individual do that makes the difference.

IMO, if you do one of the internal arts, you have to employ the mind in your practice to develop feeling, qi, or whatever you wish to call it. Without it, there really is no difference between internal/external, good effective movement is just that, regardless of the art. But, if you wish to change how your mind employs the body for movement i.e. in yiquan methodology - use the stabilizer muscles, which are wholly different from the phasic in characteristic and action, then you have to use internal practices such as qigong or yiquan zhang zhuang. Sure, perhaps some people get this naturally without employing the aforementioned practices, but for the majority of people this is not gonna happen or might only happen by accident after 10-20 years of practice, not to say that there is no benefit without. The way I see it is, if there is no internal practices there is no internal art, regardless of what category your MA falls in to.

 

I think being mindful of this body-mind intelligence is key, as is developing and refining it and connecting it with the thinking-mind intelligence. However I also consider the emotional mind intelligence to be vital and connecting this with the other two minds leads to greater integration of the person. The 3 intelligences can be in conflict and developing each of them under the influence of a deeper aspect of mind (beyond these 3 intelligences) can bring them into greater harmony and make each of them more effective.

 

Great post. I agree that the use of mind-intention is paramount in internal arts and this is very different to simple awareness. It is possible to train the awareness by moving slowly and "watching" the movements with a quiet mind. My teacher calls this body active, mind passive. However use of the Yi (whilst still using awareness) leads to movement that can be described as mind active, body passive. Here the body follows the mind rather than the mind following the body.
I also agree that the stabiliser muscles are key in the storing and release of power.

 

Thats a nice way of putting it. One thing I noticed with yiquan, is that after some time of practice, specifically within the moving practices, when you employ the mind/feeling, your whole body starts to react and move with the visualization without you concicoulsy trying to move it, I guess its just stimulation of the stabilizer muscles, but I remember being very surprised when it first happened, something like "what the hell, why am I moving around?". Like you say "the body follows the mind rather than the mind following the body".

I guess this can be likened to playing a musical instrument, in the sense that when you are really playing and know your instrument through and through, then the music is directly passing from your mind through the instrument, without having to think of what to do. Much like learning a new language, when it clicks your all of a sudden fluent and no longer stuttering and thinking of how and what. I think this "thinking"(i.e. thinking of what to do next) bit and its removal is quite important, "thought" is too slow to be effective. I think its why Wang Xiangzhai said that modern taiji is like chess, i.e. too much thinking, and also why he emphasized intuition a lot.

Its interesting as well, the more I practice yiquan now, the more it seems to transfer in to my taiji form. Specifically, the body becomes much softer and when you move its as if you are gliding on and through some insubstantial yet substantial matter. I'm quite interested to know whether if with enough practice the whole form can be directed by the mind alone, I;m sure its doable but I think I have much more work to do yet.

 

It makes perfect sense! Thise is why it's useful to install the conceptual tool of "dis appointing expectations" as early as possible - recognising that most of what we think we know is actually an appointed expectation of what a thing is, or will be like. When we get to it, it often turns out t be nothig like that, and in many cases if we'd only been truly looking, in instead of looking at our expectation, we'd have seen it years ago!

The thing about building a reality is spot on - this is sometimes called "the belief experience" whereby whatever you believe, the world seems to conform to that belief... so much so, that whatever belief we have doesn't seem like a belief - it seems self evident...

 

One way of looking at "Wu De" is honesty in your training - honest approach to training, and then courage in answering.

Just actually asking honest questions can open up a lot of doors - not least the actualy courage to question, itself, which sonm gathers momentum, and takes us some very interesting places!

 

Well, trust yourself then.

 

Yeah, but one person is all it takes.

 

Well, it is if it's tied to mis-understanding. "Internal method" refers to exploration of intuitive knowledge. In fact, far from obsolete, never was it more relevant.

As ever, an idea in and of itself is never complex or simple - only the understanding, the awareness of the implications is deep or shallow.

Intuitive knowledge can never be taken out of taiji.

 

On the other hand, Wang Xiang Zhai said that the terms internal and external martial arts were meaningless as far as he was concerned. I think, anyone who thinks that the profound concept of internal method training just meant "things inside the skin" is missing the point.