Mastering Internal Gongfu: Are You Ready? Commitment

The title of this series is: Mastering Internal Gongfu: Are you Ready? When I was asked this question twenty years ago, I responded with an emphatic “Yes!” As the years went by and I discovered the amount of work involved in mastering this art, I slowly came to realize that, no, I was not ready. Sure, I was willing to give it a try but I was not appropriately prepared to acquire new skills.

This realization then shined a light on the question asked by many internal gongfu practitioners, “Why does it take so long to get it?” To this, the typical response is, “If getting it were that easy, then everyone would be a master.” Well, we need a better answer than that! This series of posts is an attempt to provide a more thoughtful response to this question.

In the previous article in this series, I explored talent. In this post, I explore how Commitment and other closely related topics help or hinder my training.

For this component I debated whether to focus on Commitment or Motivation since the two are so intimately entwined; motivation inspires commitment, the results of which can further inspire motivation. As I pondered on this, I turned to the research on these topics and discovered there are actually different kinds of commitment and motivation.

As I read and interpreted these articles through the experience of my internal gongfu practice, I knew I had to present both. So first, I’ll present the topic and my description, so you’ll know why I found this topic relevant, and then I’ll present how these are applicable in the context of an internal gongfu practice.

COMMITMENT
I discovered that there are (at least) two ways to look at commitment: rational commitment and emotional commitment.

Rational Commitment
Rational commitment is a cognitive decision. I intentionally decide to commit time to deliberate practice (training). I intentionally use my cognitive tools to monitor and regulate my practice. Here I include Deliberate Practice and Time Commitment as elements of a rational commitment.

Deliberate Practice
Deliberate practice involves formalized exercises intended to improve skill. It is here that we find the various exercises, methods, and qigongs that are used in whatever art form you practice. These exercises have been rationally and intentionally designed to help you improve your skill. Sometimes these exercises can be boring, painful, frustrating, effortful, tedious and in a word, not for the faint-hearted. But they are exactly what is required to achieve the level of performance you are aiming to achieve.

Time Commitment
The exercises of Deliberate Practice must be practiced, often repeatedly, for a certain amount of time each day. Let’s revisit a model I used in Activity Patterns to get a sense of the percentage of time each day that I devote to practice.

Begin by looking at a typical 24-hour day. To facilitate calculations, disregard the eight-hour block of time devoted to sleep and only consider the remaining sixteen hours of waking experience.

Hours training per day	Hours other	Percentage of time committed to formal, deliberate practice (training)
1 hour	15 hours	6% of my day is committed to training
2 hours	14 hours	12.5% of my day is committed to training
3 hours	13 hours	18.5% of my day is committed to training
4 hours	12 hours	25% of my day is committed to training

(According to research, four hours is about the maximum time that even seasoned experts can sustain a focused, deliberate practice on a daily basis.)

Emotional Commitment
Emotional commitment occurs when the goals of practice support or enhance my goals in life, my self-image, and how I feel about myself. The amount of emotional commitment I direct toward practice is determined by the degree to which the goals of practice support or enhance my goals in life, my self-image, and how I feel about myself.

Unlike time commitment, emotional commitment is more difficult to quantify. Given that, I might suggest the following:

• 100% Emotional Commitment might look like an entire lifestyle built around practice.
• 50% Emotional Commitment might look like a hobbyist or a devoted enthusiast.

MOTIVATION
I discovered that there are several theories of motivation. The two that I mention here are the ones that resonate the most with my experience.

Intrinsic Motivation
A practitioner who is intrinsically motivated derives a sense of enjoyment from practice. The practice itself is personally important and highly valued.

Extrinsic Motivation
A practitioner who is extrinsically motivated engages in practice for the purpose of obtaining a reward or satisfying a demand. The reward or demand is more valued than the practice itself.

SELF-REGULATION
If rational commitment pertains to what I do, and emotional commitment and motivation pertains to why I do it, then self-regulation pertains to how I do it.

Self-regulation refers to the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes that the practitioner devises and strategically uses to monitor the effectiveness of the learning process. These processes include both internal and external feedback loops. Self-regulation shares nuanced similarities with self-control, self-management, self-directed behavior, and self-discipline.

_______

Application to Internal Gongfu
Now let me share how and why all this resonated with my learning experience.

When I was a kid, I marveled at the abilities portrayed on the TV show Kung Fu. When I got to college, I was single with no other commitments than school. College coursework and Tai-chi class together supported my image of myself. I had an intrinsic motivation. I practiced my forms two to three hours a day. I had both a rational and an emotional commitment. My self-regulation consisted of comparing my perception of my instructor’s form to my perception of my own form.

By the time I got to practicing Wujifa zhan zhuang, my entire life situation - priorities and values - had changed. I was married. I had a nine-to-five desk job, a mortgage, and a nearly full-time second job. Even though I could rationalize how stance practice would help me develop the abilities that I did not (and had longed to) develop in my previous practice, the most time commitment I could make was one hour a day. Zhan zhuang was so immeasurably different from any learning situation I had previously experienced, I did not know how to self-regulate and consequently I made many blunders along the way. My previous intrinsic motivation had waned and I was left with an extrinsic motivation – I practiced not for the enjoyment of it but for the want of the reward.

In Closing
To achieve expert-performance requires making a huge commitment of time and physical and emotional energy. Due to the unique nature of the practice, it may be that new self-regulation strategies will need to be developed. There may be a period of trial and error to figure out what is functional and what is not.

In hindsight, my earlier Tai-chi practice may have approached an overall 80% commitment but my Wujifa practice was probably more like an overall 20% commitment. If I were committed to my Wujifa training in the same way as I was committed to my earlier Tai-chi training, this would have helped my progress. However, with a diminished commitment and motivation, this no doubt hindered my progress.

Maybe the best time to make a commitment to practice is either as a child or young adult unencumbered by commitments of adulthood, career, and family. Maybe the next best time to make a commitment to practice is in retirement, unencumbered by commitments of career and family. Maybe the worse time to make a commitment to practice is during those years of career and family building like I tried to do.

With this puzzle now complete, this series will continue with considering how this puzzle can be interpreted in an Internal Gongfu Progress Matrix and finally we’ll look at the role of the Source and Level of Instruction.

References, Additional Reading

The role of emotions, motivation, and learning behavior in underachievement and results of an intervention. Stefanie Obergriesser* and Heidrun Stoeger. High Ability Studies. 2015, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp 167–190.

Relationships among cognition, emotion, and motivation: implications for intervention and neuroplasticity in psychopathology. Laura D. Crocker, et. al., Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. June 2013, Volume 7, Article 261, pp 1-19.

Evolving Concepts of Emotion and Motivation. Kent C. Berridge. Frontiers in Psychology. September 2018, Volume 9, Article 1647, pp 1-20.

Coach-Created Motivational Climate and Athletes’ Adaptation to Psychological Stress: Temporal Motivation-Emotion Interplay. Montse C. Ruiz, et. al. Frontiers in Psychology. March 2019, Volume 10, Article 617, pp 1-11.

When quantity is not enough: Disentangling the roles of practice time, self-regulation and deliberate practice in musical achievement. Arielle Bonneville-Roussy and Thérèse Bouffard. Psychology of Music. Vol. 43(5), 2015, pp 686–704.

Using Wise Interventions to Motivate Deliberate Practice. Lauren Eskreis-Winkler, et. al. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol. 111, No. 5, 2016, pp 728–744.

Creativity and talent. Chapter 28. (pp. 371–380). Winner, Ellen. In Well-being: Positive development across the life course. M. H. Bornstein, L. Davidson, C. L. Keyes, & K. A. Moore (Eds.). Mahwah, N.J. : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003.

Comparing students’ self-discipline and self-regulation measures and their prediction of academic achievement. Barry J. Zimmerman, Anastasia Kitsantas. Contemporary Educational Psychology. Vol 39, Iss 2, 2014. pp 145–155.


Previous post in this series: Mastering Internal Gongfu: Are You Ready? Talent

Next post in this series: Mastering Internal Gongfu: Are You Ready? The Progress Matrix

Mastering Internal Gongfu: Are You Ready? Talent

The title of this series is: Mastering Internal Gongfu: Are you Ready? When I was asked this question twenty years ago, I responded with an emphatic “Yes!” As the years went by and I discovered the amount of work involved in mastering this art, I slowly came to realize that, no, I was not ready. Sure, I was willing to give it a try but I was not appropriately prepared to acquire new skills.

This realization then shined a light on the question asked by many internal gongfu practitioners, “Why does it take so long to get it?” To this, the typical response is, “If getting it were that easy, then everyone would be a master.” Well, we need a better answer than that! This series of posts is an attempt to provide a more thoughtful response to this question.

In the previous article in this series, I explored the Ability to Change. In this post, I explore how talent (or the lack thereof) helps or hinders my training.

What is Talent?
The word “talent” is rooted in 19th century evolutionary theory and was considered to be an innate ability to excel in a particular domain. This is how I used to think of talent. In more recent years, talent has acquired the added meaning of a learned and practiced skill. This expanded meaning has created a nature-nurture debate with some interesting insights for internal gongfu practice.

Talent: Innate or Acquired or Some of Each?
Scholars who study talent and expert-performance in domains as diverse as academics, music, athletics, and games provide a range of definitions from an innate ability to a learned and practiced skill. This model depicts where the various perspectives could be placed on a continuum from Innate Talent to Acquired Talent.

(from Talent — Innate or acquired? Theoretical considerations and their implications for talent management.  

Human Resource Management Review. Volume 23, Issue 4, December 2013, Pages 305-321)

After doing research for this article and comparing this research to my personal observations and experience, I would say that those who achieve expert-performance in the domain of internal gongfu have both an innate talent and a commitment to deliberate practice (intentionally repeating a structured activity for the purpose of improving performance). I propose my description of innate talent later in this post.

Key Points about Developing Expert Performance
I found it interesting that research in these various domains could be equally applicable to the domain of internal gongfu. Here are nine key points from the Expert Performance perspective that I believe are relevant to an internal gongfu practice.

• Those who reach the highest levels began training in early childhood and then spent most of their lives training.
• Early achievement is not the sole determiner of expert performance later in life.
• Those intent on improving their performance through deliberate practice can also achieve expert-performance.
• Even if two different individuals have access to the same training, there will be differences in performance of the acquired skill.
• The key problem is identifying and tailoring the training tasks that will lead to the desired performance goal.
• Simply following the assigned task is not enough. Attention is needed to identify and resolve habituated responses.
• Duration of practice cannot predict whether expert performance can be achieved.
• The “Ten Year Rule” is an observation that expert performance tends to emerge after ten years of deliberate practice. Even those considered “talented” only achieve expert-performance after ten years of training. For most people though, it takes much longer.
• Many people don’t achieve expert-performance due to a lack of sustained commitment to deliberate practice for the necessary ten years or more. Obviously, motivation is a fundamental attribute.

Talent Levels
Although the following graph is speaking to the number of individuals participating in different levels of competition, I think it is a visual way to represent the community of internal gongfu practitioners; the higher the level of skill, the fewer the practitioners at that level.

The various levels defined here invite a response to the perennial internal gongfu question: How are the various “levels” defined? What performance characteristics mark one practitioner's skill as more developed or refined than another's? Can practitioners be grouped by their talent level?

(from The Road to Excellence, Chapter 1, The Acquisition of Expert Performance)

The Problem with Defining Talent for Internal Gongfu
The study of talent and expert performance in the domain of internal gongfu would face a number of challenges:

• There are relatively few individuals worldwide who have achieved the highest levels.
• The various styles each have their own definition of expert-performance.
• The qualities that constitute expert performance are unnoticeable to the untrained spectator.
• Differing words and phrases are used to describe the same movement characteristic.
• The recognition of talent is more or less restricted to those who have achieved some degree of skill.

Unlike the studied domains of academics, music, athletics, and games where spectators and experts alike are able to distinguish the talented from the talentless, in the domain of internal gongfu we are presented with a classic Catch 22; the circumstance denies a solution.

How then do we recognize talent in internal gongfu? What qualities are possessed by practitioners who progress quickly and achieve expert-performance and what qualities are possessed by those who do not?

Application to Internal Gongfu
From my experience and observations, I would propose that in the context of internal gongfu “innate talent” is a natural ability to perceive kinesthetic sensations and the experience of these sensations evokes an emotion of joy or pleasure. When applied to an internal gongfu practice, this “innate talent” is the foundational skill and the associated emotion of that experience enhances motivation.

Depending on your theoretical position as to why this natural ability remained in some and was partially diminished or totally disabled in others, from the perspective of someone who does not have this ability, it seems fair to frame this ability as an “innate talent”.

Deliberate practice (zhan zhuang and other qigongs) provides a context in which this innate talent can be applied. Deliberate practice mobilizes this innate talent for a specific purpose.

Someone who experiences deliberate practice as a pleasurable and fun activity will want to “practice” as much as possible for the pure enjoyment of it. Someone with a similar innate talent but who does not experience deliberate practice as fun or pleasurable may not be motivated by the fun of it but by some other motivation. Both of these practitioners are likely to achieve expert-performance.

On the other hand, for practitioners like myself who do not have this innate talent, the initial focus of practice (which may span a decade or more) is to develop this “innate” talent. In this case, deliberate practice may or may not be fun and may be perceived simply as a requirement to achieve expert-performance.

Without the experience of the joy of practicing, motivation is likely rooted in other personal factors. Whether these personal factors are strong enough and enduring enough to carry the practitioner (myself included) through years or decades of practice to expert-performance, is an open question.

In Closing
Before writing this article, I had never considered the ideas I explored here. I had thought that practicing zhan zhuang and other qigongs would allow me to demonstrate expert-performance within a few short years. I never considered the possibility that I did not have the innate talent to achieve this goal in this timeframe.

Looking back, I’d have to say that my previous lack of this perspective neither helped nor hindered my practice. That said, I do think that I was misleading myself by thinking that I was “almost there” when in fact I wasn’t. To use an analogy, I thought that I was ready to learn how to drive a car when in fact, I first had to build the car.

It was only through my experience and observation of some school brothers that achieved results within a few years and some, like myself who did not, that I began to wonder how people with the same training had such different rates of progress. It had to be something innate to the individual.

And so from a semi-theoretical point of view, I’d say that those without this innate talent will discover that this hinders their practice and those with this innate talent will discover that this supports their practice.

This series will continue with each article filling in one of the puzzle pieces until the entire puzzle is complete. We’ll wrap up by considering how this puzzle can be interpreted in an Internal Gongfu Progress Matrix and finally we’ll look at the role of the Source and Level of Instruction.

References, Additional Reading
The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Römer. Psychological Review, Vol 100, No. 3, 1993, pp. 363-406.

Giftedness Viewed from the Expert-Performance Perspective. K. Anders Ericsson, Kiruthiga Nandagopal, Roy W. Roring. Journal for the Education of the Gifted. Vol. 28, No. 3/4, 2005, pp. 287–311.

Talent — Innate or acquired? Theoretical considerations and their implications for talent management. M. Christina Meyers a,⁎, Marianne van Woerkom a, Nicky Dries b. Human Resource Management Review, Volume 23, Issue 4, December 2013, Pages 305-321

The Road to Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports, and Games. Edited by K. Anders Ericsson. Psychology Press, Taylor and Francis Group. New York and London. 1996, 2014

Routledge Handbook of Talent Identification and Development in Sport. Edited by Joseph Baker, Stephen Cobley, Jörg Schorer, Nick Wattie. London; New York, NY: Routledge, 2017.


Previous post in this series: Mastering Internal Gongfu: Are You Ready? Ability to Change

Next post in this series: Mastering Internal Gongfu: Are You Ready? Commitment

Mastering Internal Gongfu: Are You Ready? Ability to Change

The title of this series is: Mastering Internal Gongfu: Are you Ready? When I was asked this question twenty years ago, I responded with an emphatic “Yes!” As the years went by and I discovered the amount of work involved in mastering this art, I slowly came to realize that, no, I was not ready. Sure, I was willing to give it a try but I was not appropriately prepared to acquire new skills.

This realization then shined a light on the question asked by many internal gongfu practitioners, “Why does it take so long to get it?” To this, the typical response is, “If getting it were that easy, then everyone would be a master.” Well, we need a better answer than that! This series of posts is an attempt to provide a more thoughtful response to this question.

In the previous article in this series, I explored a few key concepts of Body Structure-Character that are pertinent to an internal gongfu practice. In this post, I explore how my ability (or lack of ability) to change helps or hinders my training.

Ability to change. The apparent obviousness of its meaning hides textures of nuance. And it was in this nuanced meaning of “change” that I confused my everyday experience of change with the kind of change required for internal gongfu. This component is an attempt to clarify this issue.

Ability
In the Introduction to this series I talked about readiness as being a function of preparedness or conditioning; I am not ready unless I am prepared. Similarly, ability, which is the competence, skill, proficiency or power to do something, can range from being a function of natural talent to being a function of an acquired skill. I either have an ability to do something or I do not. And if I am not able to do something (and I want to be able to do it) then I must seek out training where I can develop that ability.

Change or Adapt?
Sometimes I make a decision to intentionally change some aspect of my life for example, get married, start a new job, move to a new location, etc. Other times, life thrusts change upon me, for example, the death of a loved one, an unexpected diagnosis, a fortuitous chance encounter, etc. In both cases, I adapt to conditions after the event.

However, the process of adapting to life changing events is something quite different from the process of internal gongfu where I intentionally direct change within my own body. Another way to think about it is that changes that lead to adapting occur at the macro level whereas the changes required for internal gongfu occur at the micro level.

Ability to Change
In the context of internal gongfu, ability to change means a competence, skill, proficiency or power to change myself; to change my structure-character, to change my cognitive bias, to change my activity patterns. It also means that I am the one initiating or creating change - usually inside my own body.

Before I began Wujifa zhan zhuang practice, my only experience with “change” was the macro-level kinds of adapting mentioned above. My experience with this kind of change formed my perception about my ability to change. I harbored a self-confidence that my previous experiences would serve me equally well in this new and unique endeavor. I did not foresee that my ability to adapt was not the ability-to-change skill that I needed for internal gongfu.

Therefore, I did not begin Wujifa practice prepared with the conceptual understanding and kinesthetic sensory skills needed to make the micro-level changes needed. In a word, I lacked ability. Thus, the first several years of my practice was an orientation to the kind of training that I would need to do to develop the ability to change! I needed to first develop a recognition of or a feel for the parameters of that which I needed to change. I had to develop the skills to do the job before I could begin doing the job.

Change vs Stability
Complicating the development of my ability to change was my compartmentalized view of my life and my body as previously discussed in the Introduction to this series. To review, in my internal gongfu compartment I was willing to learn (that is, change in accordance with my previous experience) but I wanted stability in the other compartments of my life. Furthermore, as I got deeper into practice, I was willing to change my structure but wanted my character to remain stable. I wanted change and I wanted stability at the same time. The net result was that I was stuck and seemingly not able to change.

Application to Internal Gongfu
Let me relay a phenomenon that I experienced in my early zhan zhuang training and that I observed in fellow practitioners. When my structure was adjusted to get more weight in my legs, my structure-character was unable to instantly adapt to this change. This inability was due to the lack of leg strength and/or the emotional resistance to letting go as the torso was rebalanced. As a result, my structure automatically and quite without my conscious intent, readjusted its pattern to keep my weight out of my legs. My conscious attitude was, “Yes, I want to change.” but my body said, “No, no, no! Not so fast there, buddy!”

This is but one of many possible examples. I chose this example because it seems to be a common experience among beginners and it illustrates the actual readiness to change. The natural or learned ability to change is not the sole determiner of change. The body’s own conditioning or preparedness is also a determining factor.

In Closing
The ability to change is dependent upon a complex entwining of mind and body, structure and character, intent and sensory perception.

When I started Wujifa zhan zhuang training I really didn’t understand how this training was any different than anything else I’d done up to that point. In hindsight I now understand that the internal gongfu change process is focused on changing my body at a depth of sensory perception that I had never before experienced and the skill to do this was totally unrelated to my ability to adapt. I simply did not begin this endeavor with the requisite skills needed to make progress.

Because I lacked the ability-to-change skill, and because I wanted change and stability at the same time, and because my body was not ready to change, this hindered my practice. As I slowly developed my ability to change and slowly worked through these issues, this supported my practice.

Ultimately, the entirety of my internal gongfu practice comes down to this central question; To what degree is it possible for me to change anything and possibly everything about my entire life at both the micro and macro level for the sake of making progress in this art?

This series will continue with each article filling in one of the puzzle pieces until the entire puzzle is complete. We’ll wrap up by considering how this puzzle can be interpreted in an Internal Gongfu Progress Matrix and finally we’ll look at the role of the Source and Level of Instruction.


Previous post in this series: Mastering Internal Gongfu: Are You Ready? Body Structure-Character

Next post in this series: Mastering Internal Gongfu: Are You Ready? Talent

Mastering Internal Gongfu: Are You Ready? Body Structure-Character

The title of this series is: Mastering Internal Gongfu: Are you Ready? When I was asked this question twenty years ago, I responded with an emphatic “Yes!” As the years went by and I discovered the amount of work involved in mastering this art, I slowly came to realize that, no, I was not ready. Sure, I was willing to give it a try but I was not appropriately prepared to acquire new skills.

This realization then shined a light on the question asked by many internal gongfu practitioners, “Why does it take so long to get it?” To this, the typical response is, “If getting it were that easy, then everyone would be a master.” Well, we need a better answer than that! This series of posts is an attempt to provide a more thoughtful response to this question.

In the previous article in this series, I explored a mental process known as Cognitive Bias and how this can be a detriment to learning internal gongfu even though it can be a benefit in everyday life. In this post, I explore how my body structure-character influences my training.

Body-Mind or Structure-Character?
When I started this journey in the mid-1980s the term “body-mind” was still a relatively new concept but one that was already associated with some martial arts. Thirty years later, there are now many articles and books as well as certificate and degree programs pertaining to somatic-psychology and associated therapies.

My understanding these days is that everyone has a naturally occurring body-mind connection and this connection is expressed as a unique structure-character. The following five illustrations exemplify the variability of body structure-character.

(Special thanks to Dr. Anodea Judith for her permission to use these images which appear in her book, Eastern Body, Western Mind 1996, 2010.)


In terms of an internal gongfu practice, I use my invisible body-mind pathway to intentionally make changes to my visible structure-character. Let's look at this in a little more detail.

Application to Internal Gongfu Training
Due to this variation in practitioners’ structure-character, there is no “one size fits all” when it comes to teaching and training. For example, instructing each of the above five practitioners to “relax” or “open” or "belly breathe", will result in five different interpretations and five different expressions based on the pattern of the body structure-character.

In my case, even though I understood the instruction (from my frame of reference; cognitive bias), my body responded according to the parameters of its structure-character; not able to exactly reproduce the instruction my teacher was demonstrating. It was as if my body structure-character was misinterpreting and erroneously expressing the instruction.

I've also noticed that it is difficult for me to feel into areas that are tense and/or limp. I experience these tense/limp areas as being numb; I can feel around a particular area but not into that area. Practicing various exercises or qigongs has helped me develop feeling into these numb areas. I've noticed that as I develop more feeling into my body, this has resulted in unexpected character changes.

Curiously, this is not a one-way street. I have also experienced how changes in character can improve the ability to feel into previously numb areas which also changes physical structure. To the extent that each can contribute to changing the other, each can also contribute to blocking a change in the other.

For example, I used to think that progress meant only changing my structure and that my character had nothing to do with it. (I had even compartmentalized my own body!) The net result of my “change this compartment but don’t change that compartment” was an internal tug-of-war; a lot of effort and very little progress.

Later, when I allowed for even the remotest possibility that maybe little changes to my character might help my training, this shift in attitude allowed me to begin playing with aspects of my character. Slowly I began to notice how my structure responded.

Looking at the above illustrations, you might be able to see how each has different work to do to develop a more balanced, centered, relaxed, open, and connected structure-character. The challenges that each of us face in practice will be as unique as the body structure-character that we bring to our practice.

In Closing
I don’t know if there is an adult body structure-character that is predisposed to “getting it” or not, but from my observations each of the practitioners (illustrations) represented above, through developing a sensitivity to kinesthetic feeling, can transform into yet another body structure-character representing those who “got it”; a more balanced, centered, relaxed, open, and connected structure-character.

When I had compartmentalized my body and denied the existence of a connection between structure and character, this hindered my practice. As I began to discover and develop the connection between structure and character, this supported my practice.

Developing the ability to notice the subtlety of the connection between structure and character was very difficult for me. But as I later discovered, having a sensitivity to this level of connection is not only helpful for making progress in this art, it is also a kind of signpost of making progress in this art.

This series will continue with each article filling in one of the puzzle pieces until the entire puzzle is complete. We’ll wrap up by considering how this puzzle can be interpreted in an Internal Gongfu Progress Matrix and finally we’ll look at the role of the Source and Level of Instruction.


Previous post in this series: Mastering Internal Gongfu: Are You Ready? Cognitive Bias

Next post in this series: Mastering Internal Gongfu: Are You Ready? Ability to Change

Mastering Internal Gongfu: Are You Ready? Cognitive Bias

The title of this series is: Mastering Internal Gongfu: Are you Ready? When I was asked this question twenty years ago, I responded with an emphatic “Yes!” As the years went by and I discovered the amount of work involved in mastering this art, I slowly came to realize that, no, I was not ready. Sure, I was willing to give it a try but I was not appropriately prepared to acquire new skills.

This realization then shined a light on the question asked by many internal gongfu practitioners, “Why does it take so long to get it?” To this, the typical response is, “If getting it were that easy, then everyone would be a master.” Well, we need a better answer than that! This series of posts is an attempt to provide a more thoughtful response to this question.

In the previous article in this series, I explored how my day-to-day patterns of movement or "Activity Patterns" could either support or hinder my formal training. In this post, I explore the mental process elicited when facing an uncertainty (an unfamiliar problem) and how this mental process helps or hinders my training.

What is Cognitive Bias?
Simply stated, cognitive bias is the mental process of using a previous experience rather than rational thinking to solve a new and unfamiliar problem. (If you’d like to read the articles I used to arrive at this summation, see the “Further Reading” section at the end of this post.) Moving on, how does this mental process show up in daily life?

First, when I’m faced with uncertainty, that is, when I’m trying to solve a new and unfamiliar problem, if I’m not reasoning my way through the problem in the present moment, then I’m most likely referencing a previous experience; I’m using a cognitive bias.

Second, I have the ability to detect whether I’m present and reasoning or whether I’m using past experiences to help figure out a present problem. How do I do that? Reasoning is slow and effortful and cognitive bias is fast and relatively effortless; intuitive.

The earliest identified cognitive biases are: Representativeness, Anchoring, and Confirmation.

• Representativeness - “the likelihood of an event is evaluated by the degree to which it is representative of the major characteristics of the process or population from which it originated.” (1972) 
• Anchoring Bias - “Anchoring occurs not only when the starting point is given to the subject, but also when the subject bases his estimate on the result of some incomplete computation.” (1974)
• Confirmation Bias - “seeking or interpreting evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs, expectations, or a hypothesis in hand” (1998)

Application to Internal Gongfu
Cognitive bias can reference any of a variety of previous experiences. For this article I've chosen to limit this previous experience to the context of martial arts, specifically, my previous martial art experience. Here are my interpretations of how each of these cognitive biases, these types of deviations from reasoning showed up later in my Wujifa zhan zhuang practice.

Anchoring Bias
My starting point in my internal gongfu journey was learning a dancer’s interpretation of Tai-chi Chuan for one year and then learning the Zheng Manqing/William C.C. Chen/Bob Klein interpretation of Tai-chi Chuan for four years. This five year “starting point” experience formed my anchor bias.

Confirmation Bias
My initial five-year experience became not only an anchoring bias but this experience also established my beliefs and expectations through which I would interpret all future experiences. I “intuitively” interpreted all my new zhan zhuang experiences according to my existing beliefs and expectations.

Representativeness
When I began practicing zhan zhuang, I evaluated the likelihood of my success in this practice according to how I perceived zhan zhuang as being a representative of the major characteristics of my previous forms and push hands experiences.

How Does Cognitive Bias Inhibit Progress?

While this mental process is obviously beneficial in many situations, when it comes to learning internal gongfu, it can be detrimental. For example, the “it” that I want to “get” bears no similarity to any known phenomenon. The words used to describe “it” by those who have achieved “it” are misinterpreted by those who do not have “it”. Using previous experience to try to “figure it out” is a losing proposition.

Cognitive bias distracts my attention from experiencing the present moment as it is. By filtering my present kinesthetic experience through one or more previous experiences, I am unable to fully engage with my practice in the present moment. Cognitive bias inhibits me exploring this new experience, with all its uncertainty, as being completely different and unique unto itself.

What is the uncertainty? It is questions like these: What is the movement principle? How did he do that? What do I have to practice to develop that? How do I know if I’m making progress or not? Cognitive bias seeks to remove uncertainty and provide an answer to these questions even if the answer is wrong or misleading.

In Closing
Cognitive bias is part of our human condition; it’s how we’re “wired” for survival, for energetic efficiency. To the extent that my cognitive biases show up in daily life, my cognitive biases can also show up in learning internal gongfu.

In hindsight, I unwittingly applied all three of these cognitive biases (and more) in an attempt to understand an experience outside of my previous range of experiences. These cognitive biases did not help my practice but instead, they hindered my practice

These biases were so deeply embedded and their influence so subtle that I simply could not recognize how they were influencing my practice in that present moment. Now with some temporal distance from those days, the issue becomes obvious.

I am thus inclined to think of Cognitive Bias as the modern psychological equivalent of the poetic and proverbial full cup, the carved block, the marked slate. To empty the cup and approach each new training experience as unique unto itself means to become aware of my cognitive biases and then to make an effort to mitigate this bias in my training. Obviously the best case is to have no previous experience; no cognitive bias, an empty cup.

This series will continue with each article filling in one of the puzzle pieces until the entire puzzle is complete. We’ll wrap up by considering how this puzzle can be interpreted in an Internal Gongfu Progress Matrix and finally we’ll look at the role of the Source and Level of Instruction.


Further Reading

Subjective Probability: A Judgment of Representativeness
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky
Cognitive Psychology 3, 430-454 (1972)

Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman
Science, New Series, Vol. 185, No. 4157 (Sep. 27, 1974), pp. 1124- 1131

Confirmation Bias: a ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises
Raymond S. Nickerson
Review of General Psychology, 2 (1998), pp. 175–220.

Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioral Economics
Daniel Kahneman
The American Economic Review, Vol 93, No. 5, (December 2003), pp. 1449-1475

Kahneman and Tversky and the Origin of Behavioral Economics
Floris Heukelom
Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper, TI 2007-003/1, (Sept 2006)

From Mindless to Mindful Practice — Cognitive Bias and Clinical Decision Making
Pat Croskerry, M.D., PhD.
New England Journal of Medicine, 368;26, (June 27, 2013)

A Neural Network Framework for Cognitive Bias
Johan E. Korteling, Anne-Marie Brouwer and Alexander Toet
Frontiers in Psychology, Volume 9, Article 1561, (September 2018)


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