The I Ching, Change, Awareness

The I Ching (Yijing) is a very old and very interesting book. In an earlier entry I talked about Yin and Yang. And that is precisely what the I Ching is about. Yin and Yang are two variables. The I Ching is a book of relationships between those variables. The name I Ching means Book of Changes. According to legend a prehistoric emperor name Fu Xi created Eight Diagrams or trigrams, three lined figures that depicted Yin as a broken line and Yang as an unbroken line. (Yes these are the Eight Diagrams referred to in Baguazhang the martial art. In Chinese the words for Eight Diagrams is Ba Gua.

Change is an important theme in all the internal martial arts. We accept and realize that we cannot be strong all the time. We have periods of strength an periods of weakness, we have times of good fortune and times of ill fortune. Cleaving to one side or the other is not an option. Not because we aren't good enough or strong enough but because the universe isn't built around standing still. Everything is in motion. Tides ebb and tides flow. No bad situation is hopeless and no good situation will last forever. The real art lies in recognizing this fact and using it to our advantage. When things are good, enjoy them... but put aside something for when times are bad.

As I tell my students when they train the applications "Never stand there and congratulate yourself with an 'Ooh I got them!' Because your attacker will take advantage of it. Always move forward, keep attacking until the threat is neutralized." This applies not only to martial arts but to life itself. Am I saying I have it down? Not at all. I get depressed, I get sad... I spend too much money sometimes. But the key is that the more I practice changing myself with the changes that occur, the less those things happen. And that's the key here really.

Awareness makes us better able to cope with change. Remember you cannot control the situation most of the time but you can control your reaction to it.

Force Training, Brocade Legs and Flowery Fists

Force training is the basic prerequisite of any martial art. Without sufficient strength and power your hits and kicks and grapples are what the Chinese colorfully refer to as "Brocade legs and flowery fists." As an example of this I got the pleasure of refereeing some MMA friends of mine as they challenged each other to a friendly match. One is technically very skilled, having made a deep study of Brazilian Jujitsu and Muay Thai. He looks good. He also smokes and practices three times per week and then just works on his moves and some grappling. The second one has relatively little training but runs daily and does some strength training through a combination of free weights and body weight exercises.

During the match, our second erstwhile hero takes a few hits in the first round but bloodies up number one's nose. The second round is when it ends. Number Two charges, grounds and pounds Number One. This is an elegant demonstration of how important conditioning is.

In Tai Chi we use Chi Kung for conditioning. We use it to develop strength, stamina, and incredible force in our strikes. I prefer this route because my strength derives from my mind which is limitless... not from my muscles which have limits.

I'm not saying that these arts are better or worse than one another, what I am saying is that no matter what you practice an internal art like Tai Chi or an external art like BJJ or Karate you need to develop force first and foremost.

If you are a karateka, you need to run, swim, lift weights, do push ups, and hit Makiwara to develop the right kind of force. If you do MMA, then run, skip rope, shadowbox, grapple, and do extensive bag work.

Generally when someone comes to my class and they have some martial arts experience I will invite them to hit my hand. If they can hurt my hand then they have some force behind them and we can proceed from there. If they can't then we have to start from ground zero training them to have the power to make a technique work.

Force training is hard. It takes time and effort but it pays off in the end. Your techniques and movements will have meaning and not be empty.

Exercising the inside and Chi

The famous Tai Chi Master TT Liang once said that the part of Tai Chi you see, the forms, the steps, the movements is only 10 % of the art. The other 90% is internal happening inside the mind and body of the student.

When we practice out Tai Chi it is very important that our teachers have given us the most basic skill of moving energy. Now some folks out there will say Tai Chi and internal force is about body mechanics, not energy. Well I make no bones about it: Those people are dead wrong. Energy is as real as my hands, as real as this computer I'm typing on and its effect is powerful. However don't take my word for it, learn some Chi Kung. Try out the exercises and see what happens.

In the West we tend to focus on BMI, heart rate, dietary advice from hard scientific study. I know I spent much of my life studying and following those things. What were the results? I ballooned to over 300 lbs despite exercising and doing what the nutritionists say is reasonable. I practiced Tai Chi as an external art. I had learned to imitate the actual art but I never learned the essence of it.

I had the good fortune to learn about energy or chi and how to work with it and how to regulate my life in such a way that I am losing weight gradually and safely. I'm healthier, stronger, and more fit than I have ever been in my life. My students are also feeling the benefits. Because now we exercise the inside and the outside.

I can do no better than to post here my favorite quote concerning chi by the great American martial arts writer Mr. Robert W. Smith: "On the subject of chi, however, I have no open mind. I am as biased as a scream from the dentist's chair. I believe it exists. The only reason one has for doubting it is that he has never experienced it."

There you have it, the challenge is here. Try genuine Chi Kung and find out for yourself.

A moment of bliss

I had a late night last night. And when I got home I was quite tired from the evening's events. I wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep for a long time. However... something inside me, I suppose the deeply ingrained habit of training daily went off. I had done nothing that day except research, work, and then go out with friends. I had to remedy this situation. I didn't think I could do an entire Tai Chi set, nor did I think I could do stance training for a meaningful period of time so I chose one of my favorite Chi Kung Patterns, Lifting the Sky and performed it followed by some spontaneous Chi Movement and then some standing meditation. At the end I felt great. My mind was calm, not frazzled and my body felt that usual deep bliss I experience from longer practice. All that benefit in about seven or eight minutes.

I include this experience to encourage all of my readers to take a little time and practice whatever they can. It is definitely worth it.

What are Yin and Yang?

Yin and Yang... if you study Tai Chi or any other Chinese martial art you are going to encounter the concepts of Yin and Yang. A lot has been said or written about these concepts some of it good, some of it complete hokum. At the most basic level Yin and Yang are simply variables for expressing complementary and opposite relationships. Most people are familiar with what in the West is called the Yin-Yang symbol but is more properly known as the Tai Chi Tu or Supreme Ultimate symbol. Yes this Tai Chi is the same one as the martial art name. Meaning that Tai Chi Chuan is based upon the concepts of Yin and Yang.

Yin is a variable representing one half of a relationship. Yang is the other half. Some people say that the black half of the diagram or yin represents the bad or negative aspects and the white half or Yang side represents the good or positive aspects. Well that is one point of view and a viable one depending upon what you are talking about. However to assume you know what Yin and Yang are by saying Yang is good and Yin is bad makes about as much sense as walking into an Algebra class and saying X is good and Y is bad.

Traditionally Heaven is Yang and Earth is Yin. The sky, sun, moon, and stars are both considered Yang when compared with the Earth which is Yin. This time we are measuring light. The more light an object gives off, the more Yang it is. The less light it gives off the more Yin it is.

Now if we decide to say that movement is what we are measuring then stable things become Yang and mutable things become Yin. In this case Earth would be Yang and Heaven would be Yin.

Yin and Yang balance and complete one another. In other words once you recognize one, then you automatically recognize its opposite. All well and good, but what does this have to do with Tai Chi.

Quite a lot actually. In Tai Chi we start with Chi Kung exercises that help us to become strong and fit for applying Tai Chi. Chi Kung deals with breathing, energy, and the internal organs and systems of the body. It could be considered Yin. Without the Yin training the Yang cannot be effective. The structure of the Tai Chi diagram indicates movement. Meaning that when Yin reaches its extreme then Yang is born and vice versa. Our task in Tai Chi is to become cognizant of this constant ebb and flow and to take advantage of its movement.

In daily life when someone becomes angry at you, you have two options. One is to stand up and defend yourself in righteous indignation. This is considered double heaviness in Tai Chi terms. We have opposed the angry person's force with our own force. The second option is to listen to what the person has to say and be receptive to the argument. Accept that they have a grievance without judging it and then respond logically without resorting to meeting the attack head on. In other words you have applied Yin to overcome the angry person's Yang.

In martial arts terms this means that if you attack me I will accept the attack flow around it with the utmost softness, using only the minimum force to circle around you and find the places where you are Yin. If you are not mindful I will apply an attack to those unguarded places.

So you see, Yin and Yang mean a good deal more than just good or bad, desirable or undesirable. They are philosophical concepts that underpin a profound and useful understanding of the world. This understanding makes a major component of modern life possible. Computers actually work with Yin and Yang all the time. Binary computer code uses 0's and 1's or on and off to make all the marvelous things from the internet to I phones possible.

Knowing this, then perhaps an understanding of Yin and Yang is more useful than we can imagine.

Strength in softness...

In addition to Tai Chi, I also teach the martial arts of Ba Gua Zhang (Eight Diagram Palm) and Xing Yi Quan (Mind Shape Fist.) Sometimes people look at me and say "That's a lot, how could you have learned all that?"

The answer lies in the fact that I studied Sun Style Tai Chi. Sun Style was created in the early 20th century by Grandmaster Sun Lu Tang. His style of Tai Chi is a result of blending Hao style Tai Chi with Xing Yi and Ba Gua, he was a master of both styles and quite adept at them. Master Sun was a genius and as geniuses often do, he found something startling. He found that these three arts, what the Chinese often call the Nei Jia or Internal Schools, all share the same principles.

This is a very interesting idea because Ba Gua and Xing Yi often look nothing like each other and not at all like Tai Chi but the principles of rooting, relaxation (song in Chinese), and the use of yi or mind to lead the chi run throughout them. Armed with this knowledge Grandmaster Sun took his knowledge and created his own Tai Chi form using the best techniques of the three styles that he knew.

This is the key difference in the way a really good teacher teaches martial arts and the way a mediocre teacher imparts his knowledge is this. The good teacher focuses on the principles that allow you to understand why the forms are as they are. The mediocre teacher focuses on the forms and their shape, never the why and how the forms work as they are supposed to work.

Many of my students are advanced martial artists with many years of training under their belts. However, when they get to my class and I invite them to show me how their techniques work I am always able to get free or to simulate hitting them very quickly. The answer lies in softness and relaxation. In internal kung fu we never want to match force against force. We want to skillfully blend with an attack and then use our own force sensibly and directly to end the altercation as quickly as possible.

Herein lies the heart of the matter. In Kung Fu, as in life, if we meet an obstacle and seek to batter ourselves against it and resist then we may succeed in getting through it or we may not. If we do wonderful, if we do not we become frustrated and depressed. The key here is softness... to relax and flow around the obstruction and then with seemingly little effort uproot it wherever it is weakest.

Always remember that when you interact with a person, a place, or a thing you cannot control that thing. However you can control your response to it and that means that even a small change on your part changes the relationship. We will discuss this more next time when I talk about the move "Too Lazy to Tie Coat."

Missing Practice

There comes a time in everyone's life that you will be forced to miss practicing your Tai Chi, or Kung Fu, or Musical Scales, or what have you. This will happen no matter how dedicated you are to the practice. And now I'm going to share my little piece of wisdom on the subject. It's ok. Forgive yourself and carry on practicing at the next opportunity.

However, the other side to this is that you cannot lean on this crutch too often. Practice is necessary for any progress to come. As my friend and colleague Dennis Stanfill, who was once a professional musician, said to me of music: "Playing is the reward you get for practicing." If you want to be good at anything, or in the case of Tai Chi get the tremendous benefits available, then you must practice everyday. Make your practice an anchor.

In 2001 my mom passed away after a fairly short battle with a particularly aggressive type of cancer. It had been a very hard six months indeed. Curiously enough after all the emotional turmoil, after all the heartache and general weirdness that comes with a realization... I came home and practiced my Tai Chi. I thought it was strange at first that my first impulse was to practice kung fu after an event like that but as I relate this it dawns on me. Things like Tai Chi or playing the scales, or tending your garden things you have made a daily habit of provide a normalizing factor. These are repeated actions that calm us during times of stress. The key to remember is that practice isn't punishment. Practice is the heart of the matter.

Tai Chi is an art to be practiced, not simply learned and stored away like an academic subject. That said, have a wonderful time practicing. It will improve your life immeasurably.