Balance

 

A few years ago, I was talking with someone about tai chi & qigong, and she said she couldn’t do it because she was clumsy and had no balance.  I told her, “This is exactly what tai chi and qigong improves, which is why you should consider it.” This only caused her to dig her heels in deeper – she was clumsy and had no balance, therefore it was impossible.  ‘Round and ‘round we went.  I’ll refrain from further commentary but it’s a conversation I’ve had a number of times; so often, in fact, that now when I hear “Oh, I can’t do that – I’m too clumsy/my balance is awful” I just say “Okay, you’re right” in my mind, and then change the subject.

 

This sounds like a form of giving up – not making a strong enough case for the benefits tai chi has for us – but I submit that the problem is larger.  Tai chi is like every other martial art in the world in that it offers benefits to the player, but the player must work to achieve them and more importantly, be willing to put in the work to achieve them.  No martial art – indeed, no learned activity at all – can conduct a person from inexperienced tyro to confident expert with no effort on the individual’s part.  It would be like saying you’re training for a marathon by riding a mobility scooter around the block a few times a week.  Like I’ve said before, no one can go to the bathroom for you, and no one can do your tai chi for you.

 

Tai chi therefore takes effort.  Thankfully, not the kind of painful struggle of holding a “Horse-riding stance” for hours on end or beating one’s hands against striking pads for years.  But it still takes effort and work, and some of that work might in fact be daunting or even scary.

 

Improving our balance can be daunting and scary, because in order to improve balance, we must be willing to go to a place of “imbalance.” 

 

Let me explain.  If I lie on the floor, there’s no balance involved at all – you can’t fall off the floor.  If I sit up, I might schlump over but we all have sufficient core strength and internal balance to sit on the floor.  Even if we do schlump over, it’s not far and unless there’s a table corner nearby for us to bonk our heads on, the worst that will happen is we’ll look a bit foolish.  Those of us who are not wheelchair bound can stand unassisted.  This carries the risk of falling but we all agree that the benefits of standing up outweigh the risks of falling over, so we put in the effort without giving it any thought.  Same with walking, crouching down, rising up, stretching and the rest of our physical activities.  We do things like standing, walking, crouching and stretching every day and we’re comfortable in doing them.

 

When we first start perching on one leg as in some of the postures in tai chi, we’re hesitant and daunted, and our first efforts are clumsy.  Mine certainly were.  I was unfamiliar with the postures, not comfortable at all in my ability to do them, and very conscious of how I’d look and feel if I fell over, even if I didn’t hurt myself.  My instincts and some small bit of trepidation would kick in and hold me back, and this happened with me for a lot longer than I’m proud to admit.  With continued practice and purposefully working on the “perched-on-one-leg” postures, I eventually started to improve.  Then I started working balancing exercises purposefully into my at-home practice and started to actually get good at it. 

 

It took the following things for me to improve:

·         Being dissatisfied with my state of balance

·         Wanting to do something about it

·         Being willing to work at it

·         Finding the exercises to help me improve

·         Doing the exercises

·         Pushing past my comfort zone, but not too far

 

I underwent a medical procedure in 2015 that botched up my balance and strength, and I had to start pretty much all over again, and that hesitancy and fear were right back with me just like they were before.  It’s a part of getting older, I suppose.  But I’ve improved – even better than before the medical procedure – and that’s the important part.

 

Improving our balance involves pushing past our comfort zone, but not too far.  When we do the “leg swings” in the 9 Temple Exercise qigong, I direct the class to have a light touch on whatever they’re using for support – next to no touch at all.  You notice of course I don’t use this support, but I do use “an invisible chair” – I visualize leaning on the back of a chair when I do the exercises.  “Leg swings” are an excellent exercise to improve balance, but only if we purposely go just this >< far past where we’re comfortable.  Doing so forces our core muscles and our inner ears to start working together better – they get lazy over a lifetime of not needing to do so. 

 

Being slightly off-balance and forcing our bodies to make those small corrections is how our balance improves!  When I focus on the “empty stance” and “cat stance” and ask the class to “check your posture,” what I’m actually doing, in addition to getting students conditioned to do kicks, is throwing in a little balancing exercise.  Just doing our “checks on posture” will improve our balance, almost without us knowing it’s happening.

 

There are many qigong exercises to improve balance.  We do some of them in class but as yet I haven’t spent much more time on the more aggressive ones.  The most aggressive balancing exercise I do in class so far is “Crane” from the “Five Animals” set.  But it’s also the best balancing exercise there is.

 

The good news is that improved balance is one of the very first benefits to tai chi or qigong you should experience.  It only takes a few practice sessions to start feeling more confident in standing and moving.  Celebrate achievements like this!  By all means share them in class – you’re not only taking pride in your own accomplishment, you’re also encouraging your fellow students.  We go to class to grow; it’s important to acknowledge and celebrate that growth when it happens, and encourage it in those around us.

 

Balance, core strength and confidence all go together, but we have to get a bit “off-balance” to improve them.

More about Yin and Yang

 

For reasons sufficient to myself, I created an I Ching hexagram yesterday to settle a question related to a personal matter.  The question and the matter is unremarkable – it’s related to family and is irrelevant to the topic of this post.  More important is something I read when consulting the I Ching about the hexagram and its commentary.

 

The I Ching deals with a number of concepts in Chinese cosmology, but principally that of yin and yang.  We’ve discussed yin and yang at length in this blog and in class.  I consider Yang Jun’s definition of yin and yang as “mutually dependent opposites” to be entirely satisfactory.  The I Ching, however, added something worth spending more time on, to wit:  That yin and yang are not merely opposites but complementary opposites.

 

I’ve hinted at this before as well, particularly by bringing up Hermann Hesse’s quote in “The Glass Bead Game” – that opposites are not merely “contraries, but two poles of a unity.”  In other words, yin and yang are complementary elements of a unified whole.

 

In tai chi, it’s relatively easy to translate this concept into push-hands, the two partners exchanging yin and yang roles; the “unity” being the act of push-hands itself.  Perhaps a better way to express it would be that the “unity” in push hands would be “excellent tai chi.”  Picture two tai chi players doing push-hands, with one pushing toward their partner’s center.  Yin is the proper response; if the partner pushes back, that’s just struggle and that’s not tai chi.  But yin isn’t submission either – if the partner simply collapses, the yang player just pushes the other over.  The yin player must act in a complementary way in order to neutralize the yang player’s push, at which point the roles reverse.  The yang player becomes yin – whether he or she wants to or not – and must either express good yin energy or risk being drawn off-balance.  The yin player becomes yang – again, whether he or she wants to or not – and must express good yang energy or else the partner will continue pressing in, ultimately gaining advantage. 

 

It's pretty easy to visualize yin and yang with regard to push-hands.  It’s more challenging to visualize yin and yang inside each of us.  But it’s there all the time – again, whether we want it or not.  In each posture and in each transition there are yin and yang elements, inside and around us, and good tai chi requires us to recognize it.

 

We start with the Essential Principle “Separate Empty and Full.”  When we enter into a posture like “Ward Off,” it’s easy to point out which elements of our bodies are empty (back leg, pressing hand etc.) and which are full (weighted leg, warding-off arm etc.), and these naturally correspond to yin and yang.  Likewise, when doing “Cloud Hands,” it’s easy to see which hand is yang (the one you’re looking at) and which is yin (the one underneath which is setting up) and so on.  Yin and yang are right there, in each of us and we can easily point it out in most postures and transitions.  What’s harder yet is to imagine yin and yang actually INSIDE.  “Separate Empty and Full” doesn’t just relate to the “external” aspect – the things we can see.  It’s intrinsic to the “internal” element of tai chi as well, and that’s where the big payoff is. 

 

I’ve lately encouraged you to actively relax between completing each posture and beginning the transition to the next; and while doing this, many of you discovered that you began to become more aware of the “internal” energy connected with each posture and transition.  This is important, because tai chi is an “internal” martial art; we can’t use this “internal” energy or move it around in us until we actually become conscious of it.  It’s been there all the time, but we weren’t aware of it.  With increased practice and concentration, we become more and more aware of it, and perceive it with greater subtlety – how it feels not only in our torso and legs, but in our arms, our feet and our hands. 

 

At-home practice is an important part of this process.  When we can do the solo form without narration or following someone else, it frees our minds up to explore the internal aspects of what we’re doing.  Once we start to perceive what the energy in our bodies is doing as we move from posture-to-posture, we learn how to direct it here-and-there at our will, by carefully coordinating our movements to move more efficiently.

 

Joining this awareness with the movements, we can, in time, direct this internal energy more and more at will.  The upshot is that those times when you’ve moved me around “effortlessly,” without knowing how you did it, will now feel like the most natural thing in the world.  And those times when I’ve moved you around with an almost mysterious and irresistible ease, will become less mysterious and easier to respond to.

 

Civil and Martial

 

“Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.” – Cato the Elder
“Where do they think we’re gonna find that much salt out here?” – Scipio Africanus (probably)

 

We’ve spoken about “martial” and “civil” as distinct concepts in tai chi, both in this blog and in class.  It’s time to expand on these concepts and lay out what we mean when we say “civil” and “martial.”

 

The following passages come from “Explaining Tai Chi Principles,” attributed to Yang Banhou around 1875.  The book is a wealth of knowledge about tai chi from a man who knows what he’s talking about and is able to explain it well.  With thanks to Paul Brennan for his admirable work in translating this and many other important martial arts texts, I take the liberty of using his words to convey Yang Banhou’s intentions:

 

“The civil quality is the substance. The martial quality is the application. The civil training within the martial application is a matter of the essence, energy, and spirit. It is the physical cultivation. The martial training of the civil substance is a matter of mind and body. It is the martial reality.”

 

“It is said that a dose of civil in the martial makes it a softened physical exercise, the sinewy power of essence, energy, and spirit [jing, qi and shen, the “Sanbao” or “Three Jewels” of Chinese Internal Alchemy, which we’ll talk about more later – ed.], while adding more martial to the martial would make it a hardened fighting drill, a solid effort of mind and body. The civil quality without the martial quality at the ready would be just application without substance. The martial quality without the civil quality in tandem would be substance without application. Since one piece of wood will not support a whole building, and since you cannot clap your hands with just one hand, this is not just a matter of health and fighting, but is a principle that applies to everything.”

 

“The civil quality is the inner principle. The martial quality is the outward skill. Those who have the outward skill but lack the civil principle will be consumed by reckless glory. Discarding the original purpose of the art, they will try to overpower opponents and inevitably lose. Those on the other hand who have the civil principle but lack the outward skill will be distracted by meditative expectation. They will have no idea what to do in a fight, and they will be destroyed the moment it turns chaotic. To apply this art upon an opponent, you must understand both the civil and martial qualities.”

 

“Once you are identifying your own energies, you will be working your way toward something miraculous. Succeed at the civil aspect and then delve into the martial.”

 

“As far as the Way goes, without cultivating the self, there is no source from which to obtain it. It is separated into three vehicles for cultivation, “vehicle” meaning accomplishment. The greater vehicle takes you all the way to the top. The lesser vehicle gets you at least to the bottom. The middle vehicle is to succeed via sincerity. The methods are separated into three kinds of cultivation, but are working towards the same accomplishment.

“Cultivation of the civil quality is internal. Cultivation of the martial quality is external. Physical training is internal. Martial affairs are external. When the cultivation methods, both internal and external, surface and interior, are merged and achieved together, this is a grand accomplishment, the top.

“When one obtains the martial quality by way of the civil training or obtains the civil quality by way of the martial training, this is the middle.

“When one knows only the civil training but knows nothing of the martial part of it or focuses on only the martial part of it but does not do the civil training, this is the bottom.”

 

It’s helpful, when reading passages like these, to return to the source material.  We can’t just assume, when we read a section of a book written by a Chinese martial artist from the late Qing dynasty, that we know what he means.  Time shifts meaning, and all language is closely related to the culture of the speaker or writer.

 

The Chinese word translated as “civil” is 文, pronounced “wén” but with a rising lilt, like asking “When?” in English.  The Chinese word translated as “martial” is 武 and is pronounced “wŭ,” with a dipping lilt in the “u” sound.

 

武 (wŭ) is straightforward.  It means “martial” or “military” and not much else.  It’s the first part of the word “wushu” which literally translates into “martial arts.”  The character (with the same pronunciation) finds its way into many Chinese place names (Lingwu, Pingwu, Changwu and so on) that all refer to counties.  It may be pareidolia but it strikes me that this element of the place-name bears similarity to a number of places in the United Kingdom whose names all end in “caster” or “chester” such as Lancaster, Tadcaster, Manchester or Colchester.  The ending – “caster” or “chester” – ultimately derives from the Latin word “castra” which referred to a Roman fort or fortified camp, and indicates that the town grew around a Roman military installation.  It may be that 武 has the same vestigial meaning from a long-ago fortification, but I’m only guessing from the fact that the word has an unusually small “cluster” of meanings.

 

文 or “wén” is a harder word to pin down.  Its cluster of meanings tend to refer either to a) written language or b) formal, cultured gentility.  Yang Banhou goes to some length throughout the book describing what he means by “civil,” which suggests to me that he’s using the term as a sort of allegorical jargon-word.  I don’t know enough about traditional Chinese martial arts generally to know whether this usage is common in arts like Xingyi quan, Bagua zhang, Hung Gar or elsewhere. 

 

What I believe he means by 文 – and bear in mind, this is only my opinion – is twofold, what I’ll refer to as the “technical” and the “artistic.”

 

By “technical,” I refer to the things like the Ten Essential Principles, the Eight Energies and Five Steps, the purposeful planting of the leading foot before shifting our weight to it and so on.  In other words, the things that will lead to success if only we do them correctly.

 

By “artistic,” I mean things like feeling how a move feels right for you, the subtlety of perception and the non-thinking way we learn to “enter voids and redirect solids” in push-hands, the differences in our expression of tai chi, one person to the next, and even one day to the next, depending on how we feel, the degree of connectedness between our art and our “self,” and so on.  In other words, the things which differentiate our art (and our expression of it) from every other martial art and every other martial artist.  It is the “art” portion of “martial art,” both creative (yang) and receptive (yin) at the exact same time.

 

What follows is speculation on my part, but it’s based on the record.  What I gather by his explanation – in particular the way he expands on it – is that by the 1870s, many tai chi players were engaging in the art with little thought of its “martial” aspect, just like there were people who thought of it only as a martial art and trained in it no differently than any other art; that is to say, “externally.”  20 or 30 years is plenty of time for such shifts in focus and dilutions to occur.  He refers to these “half-players” as the “bottom accomplishment;” and if he sounds judgmental, he’s kind of entitled to be.  He still refers to this as an “accomplishment,” but it’s clear he saw such players as cheating themselves out of tai chi’s fullest potential.

 

You’re doubtless sick of hearing and reading me say that the reason I teach tai chi as a martial art is so we can better understand its energies and more easily unlock its potential.  These passages and others in Yang Banhou’s book are where the idea comes from.  Civil and martial are two aspects of the same thing; focusing on one without considering the other is like choosing to look at only one side of a statue…

 

 

…and the odds are good you’re not even looking at the important side!