Commentary: Horse Stance

I've always wondered why the "horse stance" is called the "horse stance."

For some reason, I've always had the assumption that all the fanciful names assigned in Chinese to kung fu techniques were related to some concept or illuminating visualization. I figured that terms like "drunken monkey" or "sparrow brushing water" or "eagle palm" were supposed to act as clues enabling students to better understand the nature of the movements tied to the respectively named technique, and to help them imagine what it is that they were supposed to try and emulate in order to better perform each technique.

Silly me.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Art and Jason both made comments to me that with the "horse stance" you're supposed to imagine you're riding a horse...as in riding a horse just like the Mongolian horsemen did when they first domesticated horses and began riding horses several thousand years ago (well, maybe not quite several thousand...but at least more than 1).

So what does this mean? It means riding horses. Bareback. No saddle. No stirrup. Quite likely no reins. You know, old school.

A spoke with a colleague of mine, who is a rather avid horseman and a native of a horse-raising family from Texas. He pointed out to me that the Mongolians manner of horseback riding was not unique--the Native Americans were known for riding in the same manner. And they, just as much as the Mongolians, were (and are) renowned as among the finest horse cultures in the world.

My friend said that the Mongols and Native Americans rode in a way that allowed them to maintain the ever-crucial functions of their upper bodies--so that they could throw spears, shoot arrows, throw ropes, pass food and water, etc. This required that they ride in a manner that created a stable platform for their activities and which also freed their arms and hands. As a result, this meant riding using the knees to squeeze the horse's flanks, both to maintain a firm seat and to turn the horse.

When he said this, it illuminated a lot of what Art and Jason stressed to me. With the horse stance, you need to "sit" into the posture, create a "cup" at the intersection of your lower abdomen and legs, tuck the tailbone in, keep the chin level, and keep the knees pressure inward towards the center--in short, you need to do all the things a horseman would do if he were mounted bareback on a horse and trying to effectively wield a weapon.

Something else that was most illuminating was an episode of Discovery Atlas--a weekly 2-hour show on Discovery Channel showcasing the cultures of individual countries. This particular episode focused on China, and included a segment on Mongolian horsemen. The segment showed a Mongolian fair with people riding horses bareback doing one-handed handstands at a canter (!!!), jumping on-and-off galloping horses (!!!), and children as young as 3 years old racing horses at full gallop with no saddles or reins (!!!)...It appears that the Mongolians have preserved their horse-skills very well...

What was enlightening is that you could see the horse stance in action--functionally--in the people riding. Knees in, tailbone tucked, chin level, cupped abdomen, butt sitting in. You could see how it worked.

And it was at that point that I could see why the horse stance is apparently such a fundamental component to the martial arts. It provides a stable base for upper-body hand techniques and promotes a sensitivity for good posture needed for performing subsequent stances and movements.

I suppose other stances perform the same function of providing stability and physical awareness. But I suspect that the earliest practitioners of the martial arts who created so much of it probably relied on the most obvious and omnipresent examples of stability and functionality that they could see during their time and age--and that was the horse stance. That, and it was probably also the most readily understood stance for much of ancient human history, in that it was likely all (or most) people of the past had seen horse-riders and could therefore visualize and emulate the horse-riders' stance.

In which case, the "horse stance" isn't something poetic or figurative, but rather a very literal appellation derived from history.

Funny that. A Chinese martial arts terms that is not a figurative expression. Imagine that.