Internal Martial Arts Books: Sorting Fact From Fiction

For the newcomer to Chinese internal martial arts, sorting fact from fiction is a near impossible task. In that beginner's enthusiasm, there is a tendency to trust all published material at face value. However, doing so could "muddy the waters" of developing a functional framework for practicing the internal arts.

As you know, books are typically divided into categories by subject area. For example, the Book Industry Study Group lists "Martial Arts & Self-Defense" under "Sports & Recreation". Alternatively, Plum Publications, my favorite site for martial arts books and DVDs, categorizes martial arts books by style.

Point being, if you want to find a book on Chinese internal martial arts, you are largely restricted to using the category listings of the book seller. This system may not serve your best interest. And so while these categories are effective at the level of grouping topics or titles, they do not answer the fundamental concern, "Can I trust what the author has written?"

Hopefully, applying the categories below will help you sort fact from fiction both in your book selection process and while reading that which you've selected...

Academic Scholarship
These books and journal articles may be direct translations of primary sources (original documents in the original "source" language) with an accompanying analysis or interpretation. These can also be presentations of original field research. These works can reference prior scholastic publications and typically provide footnotes and a lengthy bibliography. Works are published by a university press and meet the rigors of the scholastic, peer-reviewed methodology.

Non-Academic Scholarship
These books and journal/magazine articles are usually well written. "Facts" may be presented but the source document where this "fact" originated may or may not be referenced; may or may not be reference-able. These works may or may not include a section on "Further Reading". Quality can vary by publisher.

Autobiographical Experience or Point of View
These books and journal/magazine articles are primarily experience-based or perspective-based and typically do not include efforts at being a work of non-academic scholarship. Some of these works may include a section on "Further Reading" and are also published by a wide variety of presses.

Evaluating Chinese Nei-Gong Books

Given these three broad ways of viewing books on Chinese internal martial arts, how can you use this information to be more selective in your reading and to get a clearer understanding of what the author really has to offer?

First, there is value in reading books and articles in each of these categories. Each has something to offer and conversely, each has a hidden danger. Here are some Pros and Cons:

Academic Scholarship

• Pro: Peer review process maintains certain academic publishing standards. It keeps everyone in line. Scholars in academia have a different audience and criteria of success than martial arts teachers publishing and selling their own books.
  
  Sometimes, too, scholars will re-publish their Ph.D. dissertations in a more easily accessible format for public consumption. These re-workings may either appear as books or articles.
• Con: What is considered acceptable academic work in contemporary, scholarly circles may exclude certain documents, translations or traditions from consideration. For example, martial artists of old were usually not literate and so there is no written documentation that scholars can reference. And where old martial family poems do exist, these are usually not translated correctly by scholars because these poems are written in a "code" whose meaning is only relevant to the practitioners of that style.
  
  Even within academia, scholars may not be in complete agreement over certain points. Be wary of taking one author's point of view as absolute truth without reading others in the same field.
  
  Scholars of today look back on scholarship of even a century ago and assign new understandings and interpretations. Just because a scholar makes a particular interpretation today does not mean that that interpretation can stand the test of time. Pay attention to publication date.
  
  Some popular books in China about martial arts (as well as their translations) may be problematic due to the close relation of the media and publishers to the central government. I once read a bi-lingual "History of Chinese Martial Arts" which was published by a reputable university press in China and parts of it contradicted American scholarship on this topic. Who's right? Who's wrong? What and how much is a matter of interpretation? I don't know.

Non-Academic Scholarship

• Pro: Publishing houses have a reputation to maintain though what qualifies as "publishable" is not as narrowly defined as at a university press. A wider range of valuable material can be found here.
• Con: When references and citations are not required, editors, and not a stringent peer review process may allow some questionable documents and interpretations to be published. It can be difficult to know which authors are telling the truth.
  
  Some earlier books on the internal martial arts may reference "historical facts" as they were known at that time. Since then, more recent scholarship may have updated these "facts". Some newer works reference these older works and out-dated "facts" instead of the more current historical "facts". Pay attention to publication date.

Auto-biographical and Personal Experience

• Pro: Probably one of the best sources of good insights on internal martial arts practice! These can be particularly valuable in learning how another practitioner describes his or her internal experience or how another practitioner approaches the art. You've found a real gem if the author includes challenges and problems as well as gains and triumphs. Finding someone who shares both the good and bad is more likely to be telling the truth; reporting their true experience.
  
  After reading a few of these accounts, you may begin to understand how the same or similar experiences can be described in different ways. And you may also learn that you don't necessarily need to force yourself into an alien paradigm to learn and acquire nei-gong skill sets.
• Con: When the author claims everything is great and there are no problems, or talks about extra-ordinary powers, you may wonder, "Is this for real?" Sure enough, people can imagine and fabricate all kinds of stories.

The bottom line is that it may take you as long to learn how to distinguish fact from fiction and real from fake as it takes to develop internal skill itself. And it may be the case that the two go hand-in-hand; until you start to get some skill of your own, it is difficult to sort out all that has been written on the subject.

In all my years of pursuing and later learning what's required to develop internal skills, I have to admit that all the reading I've done over the past two decades has not contributed one iota to my developing internal skills. Learning and practicing under the guidance of a knowledgeable teacher is of paramount importance!

Reading and developing theoretical frameworks and memorizing lineages and history and staying current in the field all have their place. Just keep in mind that reading is no substitute for feet-on-the-floor practice if your goal is to develop physical skills!

Finally, if you have any insights that have helped you sort out and understand the wide range of writings on the internal martial arts, feel free to share.

Getting Clearer on Chinese Nei-Gong

To many westerners, Chinese nei-gong is often interpreted through a mystical lens. Growing up in a dualistic, mystical-physical cultural milieu created a filter in me which tainted and distorted my understanding of Chinese nei-gong and associated terminology.

This past July, I wanted to write a blog article with a background reference or two. Soon, scope-creep set in and I found myself reading a long list of articles and books about Chinese science, Daoism, Qigong, Daoyin, New Age Movement and even works that discuss issues with translating words and topics from "eastern" to "western" mindsets.

Curiously, two things are happening: 1. I'm scratching the surface of the academic scholarship that has been published since I received my Bachelor's degree in Religious Studies in 1987, and 2. I am discovering that I'm understanding old topics in new, clearer, more grounded ways.

I believe I am now getting a clearer understanding of Chinese nei-gong. If I were to describe this process as a "path", here's how this has unfolded for me:

Stage One: Interpret everything through the dualistic, mystical-physical filter.

When I began my practice of Tai-chi Chuan in 1983, I interpreted and understood my practice and all I read about Daoism, qigong, and nei-gong through the filters of my religious upbringing and through my later acquired New Age metaphysical perspectives. While I thought I had an "enlightened" understanding, I truly did not know that I was, nor how I was applying my biased views to my readings.

Stage Two: Practicing Wujifa

Through the course of my more recent years of practicing Wujifa, which takes a very functional, practical, and grounded view and approach to developing certain nei-gong skill sets, I've slowly come around to a more grounded understanding.

Stage Three: Seeing Water in the Glass

While reading these topics this summer, I noticed that I was understanding the presented words and concepts in a very practical, functional manner, stripped of any unconscious intention to imbue or apply or interpret any sort of mystical perspective. I only noticed this in hindsight when I reflected on the mental links I was making and the understandings I was arriving at.

And so, at this point, I've got a plethora of notes and a bibliography fitting a graduate term paper. My goal now is to slowly think all this through and develop a few different articles; practical, functional, grounded articles on topics that are typically treated with a mystical brushstroke.

You may ask, "Has this research helped your Wujifa Zhan Zhuang practice?" To this, I must answer, "No". At this point, I don't believe that having the viewpoint I now have of these topics contributes to developing the physical skill sets of Wujifa. Physical skills sets must be developed with physical practice. Conversely as I said above, it is actually the practice of and exposure to Wujifa that has contributed to the view I now have of these topics.

Stay tuned. I'm not done writing just yet...

Holding To Routines: Journal Notes #104

Notes from my July 2012 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: Why do you teach with questions?

Answer: Because the "question and answer" format shows how students' brains work as they develop. It shows where your focus is. It shows your intention.

* Question: Can you check my stance to see if I'm doing correctly what I learned in last class?

Answer: Show me. (Reminder of what I was shown):

1. Arch your lower back to give you the "kua in" feeling. This is a faux "kua in" because you did not attain "kua in" with relax.
2. Relax the lower belly just above the pubic bone and feel the kua move in deeper.
3. Now relax the lower back and butt muscles, let the femur heads roll forward. Slide the knees forward with maybe bow slightly forward on the hip joint.
4. Check the belly again. Is it still relaxed? Is the kua still in?
5. Drop the chest.

The key is that the hips should always remain over the ankles. Your tendency is to roll back off-line as you roll your hips so you need to shift forward to keep the femur heads over the ankles.

* Question: As I walk around during the day, I feel like I'm letting go of the lower back as I step out. I feel this more with the right side and not so much with the left side. I used to call this feeling "pain" and avoid it but now I've slowly gotten comfortable with this feeling and now I'm calling it "stretch". What I used to avoid and hold against feeling, I am now aiming for. So the question I'm working with when I practice is, How can I get this feeling of stretch in stance because I've only felt it when walking?

Answer: Show me what you're doing. (I get into stance and demonstrate.) You're tucking. You're using tension in front to feel the stretch in back.

Me: I don't feel that I'm tucking. I only notice feeling a strong stretch in back.

Instructor: As you're standing with the stretch in the lower back feeling, use your fingers and push in just above the pubic bone. It should be soft even when you feel a relaxed stretch through the back. And the pubic bone should not rise when the lower back goes down.

If you simply let your flesh hang, this will give you a truer stretch than using tension.

Here's a guidepost: If the pubic bone rises when you relax the back, then you are tucking. That said, the pubic bone may move a fraction due to where the hinge point of the hip is between front and back.

Me: Darn! I thought I was making some progress re-framing the feeling from "don't let go, holding and painful" to "letting go, stretch".

Instructor: If you were just beginning, I'd say this is good but you're not a beginner. Can you notice without preconceived ideas? Your resulting data will be skewed when you approach a feeling with preconceived ideas. When you label a feeling, it's like you're putting it in a box; first, the "pain box", and now the "stretch box". What's next? What are you going to label it after "stretch"?

Instead of labeling feelings, how about simply feel? Simply notice what is there. Notice what you are doing and notice the result you get.

* Practice note: I went home and practiced stance in front of a mirror and recreated this feeling of stretch in the lower back. With my clothes on, I could not see what I was told. After undressing, I could easily see in the mirror how the front muscles are tightening. Not so much the surface abdominals as the muscles deeper inside the pelvis. When I jamb my fingers into the front sides of the pelvic crests, I can feel these muscles engage.

* Question: How do I find stillness in stance (referring to last month's class where you guys felt and noticed my back muscles twitching and not relaxed)?

Answer: What do you mean by stillness? There are stages of stillness developing. Beginners either move excessively or they are stiff like a dead post. Asking a student to relax, whatever form it takes, is a form of stillness for them. Calming the mind is a form of stillness.

* Question: Is it possible to practice point-to-point alone? For example, can I push against a wall or the top part of a door where the bottom is against the door stop (so there is a little play in the top part)?

Answer: Do not use a wall because there is no push back. The door has push back but you'll do it wrong. You could use a small tree because it is alive and connected to the ground but you've got to play real light like just barely touching.

* Question: Is point-to-point a necessary method for everyone to train?

Answer: It depends on your purpose. Point-to-point can be used to help discover where tension is in the body. It can be used to help refine connections. The problem arises when using it as a method to practice beyond your current capabilities.

* In the July 29 class, we learned a few new perturbation exercises with the wobble discs and theraband. These are adjunctive exercises which are not recommended until you can perform the basics and you've had your performance of the basics validated. If you cheat in the basics or do them wrong, then you will cheat in these adjunctive exercises or do them wrong as well.

* Question: What about the warm-up exercises like the Wujifa Hip Swivels? Are these adjunctive exercises too?

Answer: Yes. But you need something to do for warm-ups. Even though these appear simple, without a qualified Wujifa instructor, it is easy to do these wrong too.

* Comparing my performance of these new adjunctive exercises on the wobble discs to a school brother's, I tend to try to control my balance instead of allowing the perturbation to run through my body as he does.

* If you are trying to control, then you're going to work hard and be too slow - it takes time to implement a control plan. This occurs at the milli-second level. When you feel connection and you aim to maintain connection under perturbation, then where there are breaks or spaces, then you will automatically be able to connect. This occurs at the nano-second level.

* Remember, the micro-level is what shows up in the body. The macro-level is what shows up in daily life. From the micro, you can see the macro and vice versa. This kind of perturbation can show that if you are stuck in a routine, you may be disconnected from the flow. However, if you are connected to the flow, you may be able to vary your routine according to conditions.

* Do all your core and adjunctive exercises with weight in quads. Most people think their legs are getting stronger when they don't feel the weight in their legs but in reality, they are cheating and not progressing in relaxing to allow more and more weight to drop into their legs. Relaxing and dropping, and getting the burning feeling in your legs is not a one time goal but rather, is an ongoing process.

* Note: I went back for my sixth set of three Rolfing sessions during this month. Focused on really working the ankles. The last session "cured" my problem with the right foot arch collapsing as I step onto that foot. The arch doesn't collapse as it used to.

* I went for an Active Release Technique massage therapy session which seems like a blend of Physical Therapy manipulations and Swedish massage. (In my experience with Physical Therapy, the therapist does not do massage.) The therapist worked on the tight muscles in my hips and pelvis. He recommended particular stretches to target these muscles.

* My daily practice journal for July shows I'm standing 10-20 minutes every other day with some 30-40 minute sessions. I've been working on and noticing more distinction between the feeling of "kua in" and "kua out".


Further reading:
Introductory article explaining this "Journal Notes" series: Zhan Zhuang Training Journal
Previous article in this series: Learning From Myself: Journal Notes #103
Next article in this series: - Working the Lower Back: Journal Notes #105

Martial Arts and the Olympics

During this 2012 Olympic season, I learned about a side of the ancient Greek Olympics that might make some of today's martial arts fighters think twice before entering that kind of Olympic competition.

The August 2012 edition of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) magazine has an amazing article by Katherine Dawson titled: 'Victory or Death': Ancient Olympic Sports.

As I read this well referenced article, I was surprised by how violent some of the ancient Olympic games were especially when looking through the lens of today's Olympic sporting events!

Katherine writes, "Unlike the modern jock of today, ancient athletes had to harden their bodies for the brutality of potentially life-threatening contests... Some events reached a point where states found it necessary to immunize athletes from laws against committing homicide when opponents were accidentally killed." (pg 20)

According to this article, some of the ancient "games" could be mortal contests where contestants exercised and developed their military combat skills on the field of sport.

Contrast this with the current popular understanding of the Olympics as promoted at the official website of the Olympics which alludes to the ancient games as being a peaceful event associated with religious festivals and which "aimed to show the physical qualities and evolution of the performances accomplished by young people..."

Clearly there has been a shift in purpose over the centuries as well as what seems to be a whitewashing of that portion of Olympic history!

And yet, the summer Olympics do retain events that are both remnants of former combat arts as well as events of modern martial arts: archery, boxing, fencing, javelin throw, Judo, shooting, Taekwondo, and wrestling.

Here's the link to 'Victory or Death': Ancient Olympic Sports. See pages pages 18-24.

And here are the references cited in this article:
Ancient Olympics: A History by Nigel Spivey. Oxford University Press. 2012
Combat Sports in the Ancient World: Competition, Violence and Culture by Michael Poliakoff. Yale University. 1987
Sport and Society in Ancient Greece by Mark Golden. Cambridge University Press. 1998
The Olympic Games: The First Thousand Years by H.W. Pleket.. Chatto & Windrus Ltd. 1976
Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World by Donald Kyle. Wiley Blackwell. 2007
The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games by Tony Perrottet. Random House. 2004
The Ancient Olympic Games by Judith Swaddling. University of Texas Press. 2008
Athletics of the Ancient World by E. Norman Gardiner. Dover Publications. 2002
Sport in the Ancient World from A to Z by Mark Golden. Routledge. 2004
More Than Just a Game: The Military Nature of Greek Athletic Contests by Nancy Reed. Ares Publishers. 1998
Greek Athletes and Athletics by H.A. Harris. Greenwood Press. 1979

Learning From Myself: Journal Notes #103

Notes from my June 2012 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.)

* My journal entry of June 19 says: I haven't practiced zhan zhuang since April 3rd. I've only been doing some of the Wujifa adjunctive exercises and my Tai-chi form. However, I think I've hit a turning point with this intestinal problem recently. My body seems to be transitioning back to what was normal for me.

* My daily practice log shows 10-20 minutes zhan zhuang practice every other or every third day through June. Sometimes in the morning. Sometimes in the evening. Nothing consistent. Previously, I was trying to keep a practice log at the recommendation of my instructor but I didn't really have my heart into it. Something has changed recently. Now I want to write something in my personal practice log every day.

* Even though I went to Wujifa class as usual throughout June, I was not really interested in attending nor did I take any notes.

* I spent some time reviewing some of my old blog postings. I am amazed at what I've written! Re-reading my older postings has given me some insights. I feel like I've got a clearer understanding of what I want and need to do.

(Learning from myself in this way is new territory for me...)

* Questions that came up for me during one of my mini- practice sessions this month:

1. How can I shift my spirit? How can I get into a new "space" and not slip back into the mood I was in for the past few months?
2. How can I change my view to see the process instead of the points in the process; how to develop a process view instead of a thing view?

* When practicing the rubber band exercise one day, I noticed a kind of fullness feeling on the inhale which extends into my arms and then which recedes on the exhale.

* I went for a massage therapy session. When I asked the therapist to tell me what he was noticing and feeling, he said noticed that my spinus erectus is not abnormally tight but the underlying muscles are tight. As he worked my hips and thighs, he noticed that my psoas is tight which he says is likely pulling on L1-L2 which is accounts for the tightness of the underlying muscles of my spine: tightening against the tension of the psoas. He also noted the quads in my left leg are "bunched" near the top of the leg.

(From his reporting, I got a much clearer understanding of the kinetic chain. The issue it seems is not just that one muscle is tight, or that an emotional trauma may tense one or a group of muscles, though, this may be true. What I understand now is that the tension of one muscle can cause another muscle to tense in reaction, and another, etc.. in a chain-like fashion. This kind of pattern of chronic tension can lead to fascial adhesions which "glues" these muscle fibers in place reducing the plasticity or "sung" of the body.)

Further reading:
Introductory article explaining this "Journal Notes" series: Zhan Zhuang Training Journal
Previous article in this series: Not Practicing: Journal Notes #102
Next article in this series: - Holding To Routines: Journal Notes #104