Battle for the Soul of Internal Gong Fu

The March 2011 issue of National Geographic magazine has an article titled: "Battle for the Soul of Kung Fu" by Peter Gwin; pages 95-113 of the hardcopy.


What I found interesting while reading this article was how the same could be said about the current state of the internal martial arts, namely, Tai-chi chuan:

"Shaolin kung fu is designed for combat, not to entertain audiences. It is hard to convince boys to spend many years learning something that won't make them wealthy or famous."

To read the full article, please see Battle for the Soul of Kung Fu at the National Geographic website. (This article was subsequently put behind a pay wall.)

It seems to me that the internal gong fu styles, Tai-chi chuan, Ba-gua chuan and Xing-yi chuan, have fallen into the same predicament. While it is true that Tai-chi has become a mainstream commercial success, that success has come with a price; Tai-chi chuan was stripped of its soul, of what made it the "Grand Ultimate" fist.

Since I began nearly thirty years ago, there has been a fairly steady increase in the amount of high level expertise made routinely available and accessible from the traveling masters' annual world tours to the various training opportunities in China. Given all this, you would think that the world would now be absolutely flush with internal gong fu practitioners demonstrating high level skills in internal strength/effortless power.

And yet, is it so? How many of those who have trained with real masters actually develop the internal strength that put the "Tai-chi" in Tai-chi chuan? 80%? 50%? 10%? 1%? (I would venture to guess the number is pretty low. But to be fair, I haven't been out much lately.)

I suspect that those who have trained with real masters are generally not seeking advice and direction regarding their individual practice of developing internal strength but rather are looking to be spoon fed morsels of their "brand".

What I am learning is that, gong fu is not something that can be given nor acquired through mimicry. You have to earn it. You have to know what you want and you have to be working on it. You have to take ownership of it. Once you are walking on this road, you begin figuring out your own body. You encounter and learn about your own internal adversaries. You begin figuring out the feeling. You begin figuring out the truly relevant questions.

Then when you get access to a real master, ask your questions as, "I want to feel how X feels. Show me in my body." Don't get stuck talking philosophy. Talk is cheap. Experiencing "the feeling" is pure gold. You may need to request (and pay for) an hour of private class to get what you want.

Ultimately, the battle for the soul of internal gong fu is a battle inside yourself. Are you going to continue being spoon fed your "kung fu" or are you really going to start walking your own gong fu path?

The expertise is available. They are giving the audience what the audience wants and is willing to pay for. What do you want?

Be really, really honest about your practice. How deeply can you feel and understand the fundamentals? What can you demonstrate?

Here's the paradox; the deeper you feel and understand the basic, boring, fundamentals, the higher the level the skill you develop. The more "higher level" skills you are taught, the lower the level skill you actually wind up with.

As we say in Wujifa, "You are where you are and that's where you start."

Get started... today!

Training Spirit (神;shén): Journal Notes #34

Notes from my December 2005 Zhan Zhuang Training Journal. I train with The School of Cultivation and Practice which practices Wujifa zhan zhuang. (My current reflections are added in italics.)

Question: In Tai chi, they talk about the Three Treasures: Jing, Qi, Shen (精;jīng, 氣;qì, 神;shén). What's a functional way to interpret Shen or "spirit"? What's the relation between spirit and developing internal strength?

Answer (discussion):
* Having the right spirit or attitude is the key to making progress. It doesn't make any logical sense to ask: "What is the connection between internal strength and spirit?".

(Right. Internal strength or effortless power is a mind-body, kinesthetic quality. There is no direct relation between the attitude or spirit, the "How" that inspires my training to develop internal strength and the resultant kinesthetic quality.)

* The Taoist "De" roughly means the nature of "x" or the spirit of "x". What is the spirit of your practice? Not spirit in the mystical sense but spirit as in attitude? If the spirit is of duty, obligation, discipline, then what is the spirit behind that?

* Many soldiers don't like getting up a 5:00AM or running or doing push-ups but their spirit is to train to defend their country, their homeland.

* From the Christian tradition, what does it mean to be like Jesus? To be like that spirit, that attitude, that nature?

* You've seen the car bumper stickers, "What would Jesus do?", well, "How would Jesus stand?"

* Be curious. It is through curiosity that insights will come. What you seek you will find. When you knock, the door will be opened. Very simple.

* Practice the "Flower Blooming Ice Melting in Warm Sun" stance and breathe "Ahhhh".

(This is one of the many practices or "medicines" used in Wujifa zhan zhuang.)

* Consider growing a flower garden. Preparing the soil, planting seeds, watering and weeding are all dull, ordinary, necessary activities repeated over and over and over before any flowers come up and even after the flower blooms, you still have to do the ordinary weeding and watering. This is how it works.

* There's two ways to grow a garden; with love or with hate/resentment/anger. Both will grow a garden but the latter is not open to observe nuances that will result in allowing for more growth.

* The saying "Seeing is believing" is a lie. The truth is, "Believing is seeing." What you believe is what you see. You are not your beliefs. You make the mistake that a belief is who you are. The real you is independent of any belief.

* See the book: Yuan Dao: Tracing Dao to Its Source by Roger T. Ames and D.C. Lau (1998)

* Check into Mr. Rogers recordings.

(At school there is always music playing. Not your typical, new-age "spiritual", drive me into a mindless coma, meditation music, but rather a range of rock and blues songs as well as songs from the "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood" shows. And what is most amazing is when the words of a song coincidentally summarize whatever teaching point is being made. I'm always amazed when this happens.)

* Unattaching is easy. It is not changing to another belief. It is realizing a place of joy in which there is only love which has no beliefs.

* When you focus on changing to another belief or choose to not believe a certain belief, doing so just keeps you attached to that belief.

* Question: How long to practice a particular method?
Answer: Until the feeling becomes natural so that it is there 24/7 and not only when doing the method. Once you get the feeling then you can innovate on the feeling but it must be the feeling that others in the field recognize as "the feeling" (assuming you want to develop in that field).

* For some reason, we have been taught and fiercely hold to not wanting the head, heart and pelvic areas to integrate. So we notice in class when adjusting stances, if the heart and pelvis get linked, then the energy moves to cut off the head. If the head gets integrated (with the heart and pelvis), then the energy moves to block the heart or pelvis. You see this in how the muscles tense or relax and where they tense or relax with each adjustment.

(Watching other classmates receive adjustments and how they (body) respond has got to be the most amazing, educational and instructive stuff! I am even amazed sometimes at what I am able to see.)

* Question: How to treat thoughts that arise during practice?
Answer: When thoughts arise, then life is cut off. Don't attach to thoughts. Just observe them and comment, "Isn't that interesting?" and keep practicing.

* By not attaching to a thought, you don't give it energy and eventually it dies. The key to practice is to build and develop your energy. But if you keep building the energy in the observer, then what? When you meet the Buddha, kill him.

* Personal note: As I close my journal notes for 2005, I am now standing in stance for one hour each morning and find it very easy to do. The biggest hurdle was overcoming the mindset that there is something else more important to do. Once I deeply understood, "There is nothing for you to do but relax." then it became easy to just stand.

Further reading:
Introductory article explaining this "Journal Notes" series: Zhan Zhuang Training Journal
Previous article in this series: Discover Your Power: Journal Notes #33
Next article in this series: Revealing Grandfather's Face: Journal Notes #35

Beginner's Mind: The Zen of Internal Martial Arts

Much has been written about the "Beginner's Mind" both in Zen (or in Chinese: 禅;chán) meditation practice and its interwoven history with the internal martial arts: Tai Chi, Ba-gua, and Xing-yi chuan. This article suggests one way to refresh the Beginner's Mind when it doesn't feel like a beginner anymore.

In Discover Your Power: Journal Notes #33, I mused over whether I would ever be able to develop the internal strength or effortless power that made famous Tai Chi, Ba-gua, and Xing-yi chuan. Shortly after posting that article, my elder school brother talked to me and I'd like to share our conversation.

Developing internal strength or effortless power should probably take about three years of diligent and correct practice to bring someone "through the door"; to change the mind-body sufficiently to elicit the kinesthetic experience upon which internal strength or effortless power may develop.

Yet, in my case, I've been chasing this butterfly for twenty-five years and practicing stance for over ten years and have been brought "through the door" on multiple occasions by a very dedicated teacher and friend, and yet I still cannot demonstrate the kinesthetic quality of internal strength or effortless power. Why not?

My pattern, as observed by my instructor was not apparent to me until he pointed it out to me; every time I get close, every time he takes me through the door, my response is to either literally run away (see my Three Years Away: Journal Notes #11) or to withdraw or shut down. There are a wide and probably endless variety of reasons or excuses. And even though I have noticed this pattern in others (it must be a typical pattern), I could not see it in myself. Interesting, eh?

Question: So how do I recognize what pulls me away before it pulls me away?
Answer: That is not the correct question. It is better to ask: How do I keep it going?

As I blog my Zhan Zhuang Training Journal, I notice that my notes, the data I've gathered are mostly class notes and not primarily a daily training diary or journal. Data is my strength but I'm not using my strength to my advantage in this project.

Here is a suggestion to begin a new way to practice. Write a real training journal. Begin each morning with an "Intention for the day" and how I intend to achieve it. Intention and action plan. Then practice. Immediately after practice then write down your experiences and any questions or observations that came up during practice.

Collect your own data. Analyze your own data. Reach conclusions about your own data. Pose questions to yourself based on your own data. Make training decisions based on your own data.

Set the intention. Make a choice. Act on it. See it through. Take a Project Management approach to developing internal strength.

What do you want? Internal strength. Effortless power.
How do you develop that? Practice stance; Wujifa zhan zhuang.

I'll bet that many people come to the door of internal strength/effortless power and then walk away and look for another door (Oh no! Any door but that!) or they quit altogether and in both cases, never learn the real reason why. I've done this repeatedly.

It's easy to have the Zen-like beginner's mind, the unbridled enthusiasm, passion and openness when you have not yet encountered that which must change in yourself to "get it". I have run into my "demons" and have run away from them. Sometimes it is not pleasant to have a beginner's mind.

So how will this story end? It seems there are a few options:

1. Quit. Walk away for good. Be done with it forever.
2. Continue the same old approach and never really "get it".
3. Begin again but this time, take a different approach.

Bottom line, keep practicing...

Discover Your Power: Journal Notes #33

Notes from my November 2005 Zhan Zhuang Training Journal. I train with The School of Cultivation and Practice which practices Wujifa zhan zhuang. (My current reflections are added in italics.)

* Question: How does zhan zhuang stance work to develop internal strength?
Answer: Remember the Wujifa Triangle (Relax, Balance, Structure). Stance brings attention to bone structure. However, proper structure is not attained without relaxing the muscular tension that holds the bones in a less than favorable structure. As the muscular tension relaxes, you can begin to feel the fascial structure. Increased feeling is proportional to increased relaxation.

* Question: I've discovered that I am comfortable with being powerless. If stance is to develop internal power, then my core attitude is in contradiction to my practice, an impediment to my own progress. How to resolve this?
Answer: You've been given a wonderful gift of understanding. Keep standing.

(I continue to be surprised and amazed at what comes out from practicing Wujifa zhan zhuang.)

* Question: What's a good method to practice stance?
Answer: All beginners do the "stance dance" which is where they continuously squirm around making continuous adjustments to their structure. Try this:

• Make an adjustment. Hold that posture for three breaths then make another adjustment Repeat.
• Maybe work on correcting just one area in a session or over a few sessions then go to another area.
• Over weeks and months, increase the number of breaths between self adjustments.
• Spend more time standing still and observing and less time adjusting.

(I have the idea now that people may start zhan zhuang practice standing like a dead post; rigid and not moving. Then people may become aware of and begin correcting structural imbalances and move into a "stance dance" phase. Becoming aware of this, people may move into a less locked, less squirmy, more alive stillness of standing. In terms of "phases", this pattern strikes me as being somewhat parallel to the phases Chen Xiaowang mentions: No shaking, qi blocked. Shaking, some qi moving, some qi blocked. No shaking, qi moving. Just a thought.)

* You've heard it said that "Your strength is your weakness." and to "Invest in loss". These phrases mean to look at your weakness and develop your weakness. If you are strong in one area and continually use that, then you are missing an opportunity to develop and will continue to have that weakness.

(In my case, my strength, such as it is, is in data, thinking, analyzing. I once thought I could develop internal strength using this strength. After many years of pursuing the thinking approach, I learned the truth was in feeling, my weakness. I am now focusing on developing my weakness. Thinking is a strength but it is also a weakness. The trick is knowing when and where a strength is useful and where it is an impediment.)

* Never miss a stance session because doing so will set you back. If something is preventing you, then do stance and learn what that something is.

* Regarding the "rotating the dan-tian" exercise,

• First level: move hand as an aid to move the dan-tian
• Second level: Move the dan-tian and then the hand in sync with the dan-tian
• Third level: Connect the hand and dan-tian so the movement of the dan-tian moves the hand.

* The types of questions asked in class are typically "Fix me" requests. There's a dependence on the teacher to do something. But the only way to really get it is to try something and when you get together with a teacher, then have the attitude of show-and-tell. Have the attitude of, "Here's what I'm doing. What are you doing?" Try to get away from the dependence mentality and follow your own path.

* Chen Xiaowang laid out the whole program in four short phrases:

1. Calm down.
2. Listen behind.
3. Relax.
4. Sink.

* "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Albert Einstein

(Who knew Albert Einstein was a great internal martial arts teacher? And yet, even in the most recent Wujifa class I attended, I persist in relying on and calling upon habitual patterns that fail miserably at moving my body using effortlessness. I continue to try, to want "to do". Experiences like this make me wonder if I'll ever get it. And experiences like this point out the distinction between efforted and effortless moving which is very valuable insight indeed, yet continues to confuse and confound the thinking that created the problem... I wonder how many times I need this insight before I un-figure it out...

And the phrase "effortless power" springs to mind, and though I consider it cliche' , I can understand how this word has been used to describe this particular kinesthetic experience. When I "got it" in class (granted, a small taste of it), the "it" feels like nothing special, like nothing at all, like I'm not doing anything, but I am feeling something very different. Yet if I do nothing in my habitual pattern, this does not create the same experience. Doing nothing is not the same as doing nothing. So, do something different but don't do. That's the trick as I understand it now.)

* A story: A student was sick. The teacher said, "You're looking better." The next day, the student was better. The teacher said, "You're not looking well." The next day, the student was not well. And again for two days. Then the student thought the teacher had some magic power to make the student sick and well and inquired about this. The teacher said, "No. I have no power over you. You believed what I said and through your belief you made yourself sick or well. You alone have the power." Discover your power. Keep practicing.

Further reading:
Introductory article explaining this "Journal Notes" series: Zhan Zhuang Training Journal
Previous article in this series: Zhan Zhuang Practice Time: Journal Notes #32
Next article in this series: Training Spirit (神;shén): Journal Notes #34

My Journey to Feeling: Part 4

Feeling the ever increasing subtleties of kinesthetic feeling, the internal connectedness in Wujifa zhan zhuang also requires a journey into feeling the depth and breadth of emotional feeling.

If you haven't read My Journey to Feeling: Part 1 you may want to start with that before continuing here.

* The word "emotion" includes the word "emote" which (per Merriam-Webster online) means "to give expression to emotion especially in acting". We can say that emotion implies action. For example, the action associated with fear is fight or flight.

* In the same way that your feelings interpret your environment, you also send out 'vibes' or emotional signals to others.

* We humans don't have claws, beaks, fangs, venomous stingers, horns or antlers. We're pretty helpless when we're alone. However, in a group we "kick butt". Emotion sense-feeling is the pre-verbal group language.

* If you dampen a feeling, you also dampen the outbound signal to others. If others don't respond to you emotionally it could be because you're not giving them anything to respond to.

* If you have trouble identify feelings, a good friend or therapist who is attuned to hearing verbal cues or "emotional words" can help you identify your core feelings. In these examples, the base emotion is fear. Although the person may not explicitly report feeling afraid, the underlying emotion may be verbally revealed, for example:

• I'm afraid what she'll say if I...
• I'm scared of what will happen if I...
• I'm afraid of you because...
• etc...

(Sometimes in Wujifa Zhan Zhuang class, I'll be receiving an adjustment to my structure/posture and this will take me to the edge of an emotional reaction and I'll choke back and not express that emotion. Just too scary to let it go... I wonder how zhan zhuang would feel to me if I weren't holding so much... ? )

* Imagine living in a state of constant vigilance to keep the damper on. It must be like being on guard duty 24x7 without ever getting some R&R. Must be very tiring.

* How much of your posture is an embodiment of emotional cowering? How would your posture, your structure change if you were to allow the free expression of all emotions, not damper emotions, not holding?

* If you feel free, relaxed, and emotionally open in one situation but not another, it may be that the perceived threat is removed. However, the internal pattern persists. It is that emotional neuro-muscular patterning that is the focus of changing. What is the threat level? Is it even real? Is it a "ghost" from the past irrelevant to the present?

* Every time you get into a situation where you feel yourself dampening the feeling, simply tell yourself, "I am afraid." Doing so "puts it on the radar", so to speak. It elevates the pre-conscious, pre-verbal feeling into verbal consciousness. It helps makes the feeling noticeable and so it becomes track-able over time.

* A book I'm currently reading and which is giving me some background information is Emotions and Life: Perspectives From Psychology, Biology and Evolution by Robert Plutchik (2002). This reads as a college textbook summarizing many theories and perspectives and research. I like the cover:



* Another source I've found useful in helping me identify the breadth of my emotional feelings is the List of Emotions at Wikipedia specifically, the "Emotions by Groups" section ("... tree structured list of emotions as described in Parrot (2001)" ) . Notice that "tension" is the tertiary feeling of "fear".