Taiji Class Notes #10

Hey everyone, glad you could make it back for another look at Saturday morning Push Hands Class at YMAA Boston.

There are three things I want to discuss today that came up during or just after class.

Small scale Dan Tian (丹田) movements and changing my intentions in centering.

I got the chance again to work on the smaller scale movements in the Dan Tian (丹田) that I talked about in earlier posts and I met with some modest success. The trick for me is to be very deliberate in my approach. I have to continually remind myself to shrink the scale of what I am doing. When I forget I have a tendency to go back to the gross movements I usually perform. Of course the goal will be to get this concept into muscle memory so I can pay more attention to the opponent.

The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him.
— Miyamoto Musashi (The Book of Five Rings)

Ya’ gatta luv Musashi. (Pardon the Somerville accent.)

Another thing I changed was the method of my attack. Last week Jim O’leary made the comment that the group was spending too much time “on the arms” and “moving with no purpose”. Those comments really brought me up short since I repeat that theme myself regularly in class and in my own analysis of what I am doing. I took it to heart and started making my aim to reach the opponent’s torso and sever their root the imperative in everything I did. What Jim said reminded my of something I had read in Musashi’s the Book of Five Rings. (I quote it above.) Everything I did was fueled by that idea. I found it particularly effective when I was working with Dan Salive. I also worked with Ariana, but I couldn’t bring the same results off, she is very adroit at neutralization. So while I could get to her torso, my attacks weren’t as good as I would like. In comments about what Jim said people seemed of the opinion that if you were connecting to the opponent’s Dan Tian (丹田) through their arms and either sealing or attacking their root then there was no problem. I agree with that thought to a certain extent, it is quite possible to seal the limb and or connect through the arms for viable techniques, however if you observe our centering with dispassion and look at what people tend to do, there is a lot of extra coiling going on. We have to be careful as a group not to fall into complacency; the people who meet with me on Saturdays have been doing so for quite some time. We are all used to each other’s ways of doing things. It is possible that this familiarity has led to patterns in our training of which we are unaware. I, as the instructor, need to be cognizant of this possibility.

I’m going to look at this carefully in myself and the class over the next few weeks to get a handle on what is going on, more on this as things develop.

“What energies are involved in a yang coil?”

Axie asked question about a topic she was working on in her own class; “What energies are involved in a yang coil?” My response was that a yang coil consists of the energies Peng, Lu and An.

If you imagine the face of a clock you can picture what I said fairly easily. (If you already get this part skip ahead a bit.) Assuming that you are coiling with your right hand the portion of the clock’s face from 6 to 12 would be peng energy, from 12 to 3 or 4 would be Lu and from 4 until 6 would be An. Then if you can extend your imagination to see the circle described by the clock’s face moving forward through space you get a coil instead of something static. Body structure and movement while performing the coil support the idea of those energies being in play at points I described. I tried to think where Ghi would fit in but Ghi requires two coordinated forces to generate it and I couldn’t find a way to fit them into a coil performed with only a single arm.

I was ready at that point to move the class on, but Mark had a very interesting idea to add into the discussion. He reminded us of the following statement:

“Taiji comes from Wuji 無極 and is the the mother of Yin 陰 and Yang 陽. “

I’m paraphrasing him here but he said that a better way to think of the coil is simply as Yin or Yang movement. Once you start to bring the Eight Energies into the discussion you have moved further away than perhaps necessary to define what is going on in a coil. This hit me like a thunderbolt because it mirrored some thinking that I had been doing off and on over the last few years. I thought his view point was a much more elegant take on the topic. Once you start manifesting yin or yang you start limiting your options, since the Eight Energies an alloy of Yin/Yang energy you run the risk of getting locked into a paradigm when you define everything in terms of the Eight Energies.

I think you should explain the concepts at both levels, first in terms of the energies then secondly in the broader Yin/Yang terminology. It is very necessary to grasp both the Eight Energies and Yin/Yang interplay. You have to remember after all that taiji is neither yin nor yang. Yin and Yang are always paired and relative to each other. Taiji is a singular thing/force/intent whose purpose is to restore the Wuji state. So Taiji is the mother of yin and yang but is not yin or yang. Early in my study of Taijiquan I often equated taiji to “that which seeks to achieve balance” in any given event or situation. As you probably are thinking there is a flaw in that if “balance” is achieved then yin and yang are still discriminated. When Wuji is achieved yin and yang and indeed taiji itself are no longer relevant terms. Wuji is a state of boundless potential, there is no other, only Wuji.

I realize that this is getting a bit ethereal but it is necessary to pay attention to the philosophy that Taijiqaun is built on. Contemplating these things will, at the very least, force you to open your thinking. Taijiquan is after all an out growth of Taoism. You can take Taoism as a philosophy or as a religion in either case it is an attempt to describe everything and a method of coping with the vagaries of life. It requires a flexible and open mind to approach understanding it. A more flexible mind is vital to survival in a martial setting and in today’s world. Rigidity in thought is a dangerous habit.

Like Emerson said; “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this discussion the other day, Mark in particular.

I wanted to close this piece by talking about a really cool thing that happened to me when I left class. I was limping my way over to where my car was parked behind the office building. I was at the beginning of my post work out, got my ass kicked, stiffening up for the ride home time when I saw a motion out of the corner of my eye. My impression was of a brown blur that moved amazingly quickly from above me to a point a few feet away on the ground in the neighbor’s backyard. I looked quickly to my right and saw one of New England’s ubiquitous gray squirrels scamper away through the shrubs and up a fence. It wasn’t until I got in my car and started backing up that I saw the source of the motion that attracted my attention; a bird. Initially I thought it was a pigeon, sometimes you see brown and white pigeons in the area. I rolled down the window to take a closer look because something about the bird seemed wrong for a pigeon. Once I saw past the color and took in the taller slimmer body and the sharply hooked beak I thought it might be a hawk. Then I looked into the eyes of this raptor and wow did it look pissed off at me. I think when I clomped my way over to my car I startled the squirrel into flight and ruined this bird’s lunch plans. We stared at each other for a few moments before I broke eye contact and drove away. (I don’t think I could out stare a hawk.)
I’m a city boy, I was raised in Somerville MA and I still live there. It is the second most densely populated city in the country, Brooklyn NY is the first. I briefly left to move to the wilderness of North Andover and have since returned. Calling my life and upbringing “urban” is not a stretch at all. I can’t recognize a constellation in the night sky or tell north from south by where the sun is at any given moment. Encountering a falcon outside of a zoo is a real event for me. I was thrilled to see it. I am even more excited now that I’ve read up a little bit and found out how they nest in cities on skyscrapers. I also learned that they have successfully moved off the endangered species list thanks to the ban on the pesticide DDT and the efforts of a lot of concerned individuals who put time and money into helping the species re-establish itself.

Really cool stuff.

See you next time, don’t be shy about commenting.

Jeff Pratt
Taiji instructor
YMAA

Try out staring this guy!