day 267: qi-gong, TCM, & xiao kai men

concepts:

• chan zieh jin
• center
• yangqao/yinqao
• yangwei/yinwei
• renmai/dumai
• qongmai
• daimai
  

lessons:

• bagua qi-gong
• bagua xiao kai men
  

this post is a little late, largely because i've been swamped with work. so again, things are going to be a little terse.

i should also make an addendum to the last post (day 266). one of the things i forgot to mention that in discussing absorbing/projecting using the fingers in our conversation on chen tai chi, Sifu had noted that this leads to the deployment of chan zieh jin (spiraling energy) in the movements, since the act of focusing on the little finger and ring finger to absorb energy and focusing on the middle finger and index finger to project energy naturally creates a twisting action as you alternate receiving/retracting and directing/extending your body and limbs.

i asked Sifu how this differs from the chan zieh jin in bagua, since the styles look so different. he said that with chen tai chi the silk reeling energy is employed more in terms of structure, in that the practitioner applies it through their own body against an opponent. bagua, in contrast, is more systemic, in that chan zieh jin is taken not just in terms of spiraling energy in the body but also spiraling energy in the system of free bodies (i use the phrase "free body" in terms of the engineering/physics concept) created by your body and the other opponents' bodies around you, where the goal is to apply concepts of spirals to engage opponents, find or create openings in their gates, and exploit them. he noted that this is why he uses the concept of "vortices" in teaching bagua applications. he stressed the differences are relative, in that both chen tai chi and bagua do similar things with silk reeling energy, but that chen tai chi is more structural chan zieh jin and bagua is more systemic.

bagua qi-gong

Sifu had us review all 3 levels of bagua qi-gong. when we finished, he gathered us together for a brief discussion as to some of the purposes behind qi-gong. he said that qi-gong is about learning how to cultivate and utilize qi (or chi). typically, this is taken as a medical function, since it is seen as constructive to individual health. he also said, however, that there are martial purposes behind this.

picking up from his comments from last week, he said that in martial arts it is crucial to maintain your center. this helps you to remain upright and creates a platform to counter opponent actions and to launch attacks against them. he demonstrated how a focus on your own center can make a person dramatically harder to destabilize, utilizing various applications against Feng and Phunsak to show how the effectiveness varied depending on whether they were focusing on their centers or not.

the issue, however, is to be able to maintain this focus on the center while in the chaos of a fight, particularly when the opponent is doing everything possible to break your center. he said this is where qi-gong comes in, since it teaches you to keep your mind on your center (he noted that in qi-gong, you're expected to constantly think about your center), and hence provides training on how to maintain and utilize your center. over time, via qi-gong training, you can go from having to consciously concentrate on your center to having it be something subconscious and automatic, so that it's not as susceptible to external disruptions.

he went on to note that eventually, as you become better, you learn about the multiple centers in the body and learn how to manipulate them. these other centers are also vulnerable to disruption. he demonstrated the same applications as last week (i.e., the ones for "wind blowing on the water") where simply waving a hand over certain parts of the body dramatically alters the effectiveness of the technique, and said that the reason such actions work is that they're disturbing the other centers in your body and thereby destabilizing your structure. he noted that it's possible to explain this using Western concepts (i.e., disruptions to the autonomic response systems of the body, distractions to mental focus, misdirection, etc.), but that we can also understand it in Eastern concepts, particularly since it fits with the use of qi-gong to help train our bodies to deal with such issues.

bagua xiao kai men

we finished the day with xiao kai men. Sifu introduced us the following concepts in relation to the form:

• yangwei--the part of the body that opens/extends in a given movement
• yinwei--the part of the body that closes/retracts in a given movement
• yangqao--the outer line of the leg running from the hip to the outside of the foot
• yinqao--the inner line of the leg running from the crotch to the inside of the foot
• qongmai--the line that runs vertically along the ribs
• daimai--the line that runs horizontally along the waist
• renmei--the line that runs vertically along the front of the body from the groin through the bellybutton and sternum to the top of the head
• dumai--the line that runs vertically along the back of the body from the top of the head down the spine to the groin
  

Sifu said it's useful to think of these while doing the form, since it helps to direct our intent (yi) and hence guides proper application of energy (he also interchanged the phrase "force vectors"). he noted that these are terms seen in TCM, and are described as meridians, but that they have martial aspects in that they indicate the more effective trajectories to project power.

Sifu had us do xiao kai men focusing on these lines, doing the form in a line, then in an X pattern, then in random directions, and then along a circle. i've never done xiao kai men like this before, since i joined him after he had taught this last time, and so this was all new to me. this was constructive, since i'd always felt i'd missed out on some of the deeper aspects of xiao kai men.

by this time it was getting late, and the rain had started to come down hard. Sifu ended class with that, and said he'd see us next week.