Holding postures

Discussion on the three big Chinese internals, Yiquan, Bajiquan, Piguazhang and other similar styles.

Re: Holding postures

Postby Bao on Fri Jul 13, 2012 1:15 pm

My view on the subject is much more simple than "qi development" and "meditation". First, your balance and posture will and must be different if you position yourself to stand for some minutes, compared to just moving through them without stopping. This practice will make you think more about your body structure. Also, if you stand in any tai chi posture for some minutes, you will find that you must do some kind of change to be able to stand for a longer period of time. This is why it is said that at least 6 minutes is to prefer for each stance. Also, when you move into a posture and change the same posture, you will need to use different muscles for the same posture. This means that incorporating "holding postures" into your practice will be a better physical exercise as you will use more of your body and put more effort on muscles that you otherwise wouldn't use as much. Therefore, I also believe that this kind of exercise is excellent for older people, not the oldest, but for people about 60-70 this is a great health exercise. Especially great If you combine this practice with, more classical tai chi practice with very slow, uninterupted movement, and holding postures. So I don't say that "holding postures" is a better tai chi practice. I believe that we should explore tai chi and find different ways to benefit from it.
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Re: Holding postures

Postby kreese on Sat Jul 14, 2012 1:33 am

Sorry if I repeat others' thoughts on this, but this is traditional basic training for IMA.

When you are being taught, you are holding the postures as the teacher makes general corrections. It sort of burns in the right alignments, always mediated by one's sensation of energy flow, and makes you solid at every point in your movement.

So you are not just slowly walking through a form per se, but getting some basic training at the same time.

It is in my opinion the fastest way to really own a set of movements, be it pi quan, lan zha yi in taiji, or single palm change. From static holding of individual postures, to linking held postures, to slow, grinding movement, to faster and faster, looser movement for speed and oomph.

And there's no reason why one can't go back to it, because you will be a different person and your experience will be different even if the posture is the same. You can always go deeper, get into more subtle levels of your body, because remember we are all mostly empty space and energy in movement, not solid mechanical things by our conventional way of thinking.

I believe the highest skills arise from going from mechanics to quantum type phenomena. It's the only way to explain the almost magical nature of high level skills, with the mind as the motivator and the energy/physical body as the field in which interesting things can happen.

I think you need a high level of energy and sensitivity to start playing with these things, basically by upgrading all your systems through neigong and other training. Hence it's not so common or easy to even experience a taste of the higher level stuff.

Meditative stance holding is just cutting out all unnecessary stimuli so that you can start developing the regions of your brain and other systems that would normally get drowned out by the massive amount of information and energy flowing through your nervous system when you move.

This is my interpretation of such pre-heaven/Xian Tian type exercises.
Last edited by kreese on Sat Jul 14, 2012 1:39 am, edited 5 times in total.
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Re: Holding postures

Postby Dale Dugas on Mon Jul 30, 2012 4:42 pm

As my teachers have taught me various methods to help reduce the excessive tension from your structure, it can be simplified into learning to relax using visualizations of hanging the meat from the bones, to place your awareness into certain muscles and with movement open them up.

The least amount of residual tension in your muscles can then be entrained to be utilized.

Standing helps to reduce this and to teach other concepts.

I have stood in Uechi Ryu Karate, South Mantis, and Baguazhang.
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Re: Holding postures

Postby Aged Tiger on Tue Jul 31, 2012 11:11 am

Dale Dugas wrote:As my teachers have taught me various methods to help reduce the excessive tension from your structure, it can be simplified into learning to relax using visualizations of hanging the meat from the bones, to place your awareness into certain muscles and with movement open them up.

The least amount of residual tension in your muscles can then be entrained to be utilized.

Standing helps to reduce this and to teach other concepts.

I have stood in Uechi Ryu Karate, South Mantis, and Baguazhang.



Agreed Dale, my favorites taught are; the "sinking into mud" for rooting, and "skin hanging from your bones" (absent/sung muscle) examples. I liken it to a Salvador Dali painting, but still alert. ;D
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Re: Holding postures

Postby Bao on Tue Jul 31, 2012 2:42 pm

Aged Tiger wrote:Agreed Dale, my favorites taught are; the "sinking into mud" for rooting, and "skin hanging from your bones" (absent/sung muscle) examples. I liken it to a Salvador Dali painting, but still alert. ;D


I liked the Salvador Dali painting analogy, but those watches have no real weight. My teacher says stuff like "be like a potato sack" and "feel that you are like wet cement". I like to feel heavy. :P
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Re: Holding postures

Postby Aged Tiger on Wed Aug 01, 2012 9:51 am

Bao wrote:
Aged Tiger wrote:Agreed Dale, my favorites taught are; the "sinking into mud" for rooting, and "skin hanging from your bones" (absent/sung muscle) examples. I liken it to a Salvador Dali painting, but still alert. ;D


I liked the Salvador Dali painting analogy, but those watches have no real weight. My teacher says stuff like "be like a potato sack" and "feel that you are like wet cement". I like to feel heavy. :P


Bao,

As I get older, it is way too easy for me to "feel heavy", so I try to "think light". LOL ;D

Potato sack is good, I like it! :)
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Re: Holding postures

Postby yeniseri on Tue Aug 14, 2012 6:00 pm

D_Glenn wrote:Dr. Xie said all the Taijiquan who were worth their weight practiced the form this way. It's not so much about moving into a posture and holding it but taking roughly 2 or more minutes to move into and out of each movement (shi). The important part was to get the sensation of 'weiqi' in your hands and keep it there for the whole 2 hours or so that it took to go through the form. Keeping that unbroken 'silkthread' of 'weiqi' is the determining factor for how fast you can go, if you lose it you need to slow way down, even stopping to regain it, then slowly start moving again.

.


Question for D_Glenn.
I have only heard about ding shi about 5 years ago! Previously my reference was taijizhuang (holding individual postures for x duration) independent of a form! I had on older teacher who used the term but he had a different perspective as I understood. Am I to understand that the practice of ding shi involved going through a specific form but stopping at e.g. certain areas for x duration then continue to the next stopping posture for x duration until the ending of the routine? Am I right here per the question?
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Re: Holding postures

Postby D_Glenn on Wed Aug 15, 2012 8:26 am

yeniseri wrote:Question for D_Glenn.
I have only heard about ding shi about 5 years ago! Previously my reference was taijizhuang (holding individual postures for x duration) independent of a form! I had on older teacher who used the term but he had a different perspective as I understood. Am I to understand that the practice of ding shi involved going through a specific form but stopping at e.g. certain areas for x duration then continue to the next stopping posture for x duration until the ending of the routine? Am I right here per the question?


Zhan Zhuang and Ding Shi are slightly different. ZZ is DS but DS is not really ZZ.

Zhan Zhuang looks like the various ending positions of a movement but with slight variations so that it's stretching the tendons and fascia of both arms, both legs, and the whole torso by isometrically moving the body parts in six different directions.

Ding Shi is the ending position of an attack so both arms, legs, and torso are working towards the same goal or in a sort of unison or moving the body parts in one direction.

...but stopping at e.g. certain areas for x duration then continue to the next stopping posture for x duration until the ending of the routine?


Moving extremely slow; stopping, in a stable position, if you lose the sensation, for x amount of time until you regain it, then start moving extremely slow again at y speed.
Through practice you begin to have/ get the feeling in your hands quicker ( x decreases) and maintain that feeling while moving faster (y increases).


.
Last edited by D_Glenn on Thu Aug 16, 2012 7:16 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Holding postures

Postby Mr_Wood on Sun Aug 26, 2012 4:17 pm

I have found the holding of postures and especially micro analysing each and every movement to be invaluable over the years in Hsing I practice. I cant imagine how anybody could ever improve their practice without this. I do not practice Tai Chi but i imagine the same principles would apply as they do throughout other IMA. you are learning how your body operates inside out. To learn any new skill you start slowly and once you have got good / mastered it slowly then you can speed it up a little and then master at this speed and so on.
I think holding postures and moving through postures slowly hold their own rewards. I like D Glenn's example of how x relates to y.
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Re: Holding postures

Postby wiesiek on Wed Sep 12, 2012 3:41 am

Bao wrote:
Aged Tiger wrote:Agreed Dale, my favorites taught are; the "sinking into mud" for rooting, and "skin hanging from your bones" (absent/sung muscle) examples. I liken it to a Salvador Dali painting, but still alert. ;D


I liked the Salvador Dali painting analogy, but those watches have no real weight. My teacher says stuff like "be like a potato sack" and "feel that you are like wet cement". I like to feel heavy. :P

:)
i use " glue hangin` on the bones"
something in between watches and potato,
potato sack is pretty often left lifeless in the basement corner ;)
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Re: Holding postures

Postby Dale Dugas on Fri Sep 28, 2012 8:04 am

No matter how you view it, doing work as described in this thread will only help you.

I see it as helping rid the body of excess tension as well as relaxing more muscle fibers that are engaged in holding the tension.

The more tension you can remove, that means those muscle fibers involved can then be utilized in movement, no matter the usage.

So you will have more power, more speed, due to more muscle fibers being utilized.

Stand still and relax and learn to move faster and with more power.

nothing wrong with that at all.
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Re: Holding postures

Postby Bugang on Thu Sep 29, 2016 4:28 pm

We do 2 -3 MIn each Posture. Yang Style. 100 % Weight distribution, sometimes literary (at least all the Backstance Postures) on one leg. Purpose is not endurance, but maintaining Yi / Peng Jin constantly. Sort of similar to what someone wrote about maintaining Waiqi IMO.
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Re: Holding postures

Postby DeusTrismegistus on Fri Sep 30, 2016 7:34 am

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Re: Holding postures

Postby northerndevotee on Mon Oct 03, 2016 12:56 am

I was taught ding shi in the wu tunan lineage and would just like to point out holding for 3-6 breaths as we are taught does not mean 3 4 5 6 breaths depending on your ability or time available. You should be able to relax into each posture within 3-6 breaths then move onto the next (without having to adjust tension) thus the form should take 2 hours. To 'work up' to 6 breaths per posture and take 4/5 hours is not the goal here.
As for standing postures 40 min per posture is a good target especialy for beginners who will often take 30 min just to relax enough to find their chi flow.
Just my tuppence worth take it as you will.
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Re: Holding postures

Postby Bao on Mon Oct 03, 2016 9:01 am

northerndevotee wrote:I was taught ding shi in the wu tunan lineage and would just like to point out holding for 3-6 breaths as we are taught does not mean 3 4 5 6 breaths depending on your ability or time available. You should be able to relax into each posture within 3-6 breaths then move onto the next (without having to adjust tension) thus the form should take 2 hours. To 'work up' to 6 breaths per posture and take 4/5 hours is not the goal here.
As for standing postures 40 min per posture is a good target especialy for beginners who will often take 30 min just to relax enough to find their chi flow.
Just my tuppence worth take it as you will.


Interesting. Thank you for your input. :)
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