挤 Ji as "squeeze"

[Trick]

I' I'll have to agree with my own explanation, which comes from quite a well known Chinese scholar who is regarded an authority on language, Chinese culture and folklore.

One an the same

[Bao]

I' I'll have to agree with my own explanation, which comes from quite a well known Chinese scholar who is regarded an authority on language, Chinese culture and folklore.

One an the same

Oh, that sounded wrong. My teacher, I referred to him earlier.

[Yeung]

If you squeeze a ball it became elliptical, and if you push both hands forward without squeezing the body then it is a triangle. Is this the meaning of triangulation?

[Bao]

If you squeeze a ball it became elliptical, and if you push both hands forward without squeezing the body then it is a triangle. Is this the meaning of triangulation?

Chinese traditional thought and culture is extremely subjective and individualistic in the sense that everything is decided and interpreted through the personal experience of the individual. You can see this if you read Kongzi, Daodejing or the Zhuangzi or any of the old classical philosophical texts. Tai Chi thinking is based on old thought. That is why I believe that the ”8 energies” have a very personal aspect. The ”squeeze” is about how your body feels when you express the force. You feel like you squeeze it out. You compress the arms together slightly if you use both of the arms to ”ji”. The shape is therefore triangular.

You can see that the other "energies" also make much more sense if you have this approach. ”Push downward”, or an, is not push downwards, instead mostly the pushing is expressed upwards. But when you push, you use your bosy in the same way as you would push yourself up. Cartmell use the analogy of using the edge of a basin pushing yourself up from the water. And ”Split” is not actually to split an opponent, you can use ”plit” techniques with one arm only. But the force you use when you split is a strong ”kai” or ”open” movement, so you feel like the body splits in half.

If the jins were just simple movement that needed no ”quality” or practice to do, they would not be called ”jin”. The term suggest that they are all body movements that needs practice and understanding.

[Steve James]

I think that Bruce P. needs to explain what he means by triangulation.

[charles]

The ”squeeze” is about how your body feels when you express the force.

That is an interesting perspective: to define things in relation to how the practitioner feels, rather than the effect on the opponent.

You compress the arms together slightly if you use both of the arms to ”ji”. The shape is therefore triangular.

One can, for example, use the front of the shin for "ji". What makes that "triangular"?

”Push downward”, or an, is not push downwards, instead mostly the pushing is expressed upwards. But when you push, you use your bosy in the same way as you would push yourself up. Cartmell use the analogy of using the edge of a basin pushing yourself up from the water.

That doesn't make sense to me. Pushing oneself up is not the same as pushing something else down.

And ”Split” is not actually to split an opponent, you can use ”plit” techniques with one arm only. But the force you use when you split is a strong ”kai” or ”open” movement, so you feel like the body splits in half.

I was taught that "Split" involve a force couple of forces acting in opposite directions. That can be done with any parts of the body as the two points of contact and can be done involving opening, closing or both simultaneously with different body parts.

[johnwang]

The ”squeeze” is about how your body feels when you express the force. You feel like you squeeze it out.

I believe the ”squeeze” is about how "your opponent's body" should feel when you express the force instead. For example, when I apply Lu, I don't feel Lu Jin myself.

mostly the pushing is expressed upwards.

To push someone "upward" make no sense in combat. If you push your opponent up and his head is still up and legs are still down, when your opponent are in the air, he can land back down safely. Unless you can push your opponent to make him head down and leg up in the air. That's not that easy to do.

[Steve James]

The way I imagine the idea of Ji's "triangulation" (especially as it relates to the Death Star) would look something like this.

https://d18l82el6cdm1i.cloudfront.net/s ... bdR2Lo.jpg

The point apex of the triangle represents the direction of the focused force. (Btw, I ain't saying that the person who gave the name first meant that).

[everything]

I like that diagram.

Different question:
- in the PH movie classic type press demo application, are you squeezing your hands together and to what extent as you press forward?

[Bao]

The ”squeeze” is about how your body feels when you express the force. You feel like you squeeze it out.

I believe the ”squeeze” is about how "your opponent's body" should feel when you express the force instead. For example, when I apply Lu, I don't feel Lu Jin myself.

Good point. I meant the mechanics behind it.

mostly the pushing is expressed upwards.

To push someone "upward" make no sense in combat. If you push your opponent up and his head is still up and legs are still down, when your opponent are in the air, he can land back down safely. Unless you can push your opponent to make him head down and leg up in the air. That's not that easy to do.

I don't proclaim pushing. In forms etc, pushing upwards should IMO mean uproot, take his balance, not push. If you first lift them up it's more easy to destroy them downwards. Just push someone down doesn't makes sense either, to push someone into his balance means to stabilise him.

That doesn't make sense to me. Pushing oneself up is not the same as pushing something else down.

Pushing down is the same as pushing yourself up. You press back when you walk forward and you press down into the ground if you want to jump. It's the opposite force that make something go in a certain direction. It makes perfectly sense to me.

When you "an", the body movement is similar as pushing yourself up, i.e. pushing downwards. This doesn't mean that you need to push someone down.

I was taught that "Split" involve a force couple of forces acting in opposite directions. That can be done with any parts of the body as the two points of contact and can be done involving opening, closing or both simultaneously with different body parts.

That is the common perception. I don't agree. In my opinion all of the 8 jins can be 8 different qualities of using force, as Peng and Lu are expressed by two distinguished opposite kinds of forces. But IMO they are at the same 8 different expressions of "kai-he", 8 different ways to open and close the body. Both the expression of force and the body mechanics must be there for it to be called Jin. IMO, the single whip in Wu/Hao and Sun (and there are similar variations in Yang schools) when both of the arms splits open at the same time is a "split" movement. You can use it as two simultaneous movements or forces in two directions, but that is not necessary. You can use the splitting movement of the body and still only use one part of the body to express the jin.

I know that this is not a common view. But why just listen to simplified official explanations meant for the masses and be afraid to dig deeper?
...IMO, there should be some strong logic behind the 8 jins rather than regarding them as just randomly chosen techniques put together and then called Tai Chi. That doesn't make sense. There must be a reason for this collection and a structure behind it. For instance, we have all heard the expression "kai he should be present in every movement." The most basic movements in Tai Chi represents the 8 jins. If not the movements of Kai He are very clear and clean in the eight jins, there would be no reason for this expression "kai he must be there in every movement". And that is what we see today, mostly no kai he, not in form nor in the 8 jins. There's mostly no thread and no common feature that unite Tai Chi techniques or jins into one single principle. So If we want to understand the depth of this art, IMHO, we should try to get to a point where everything make sense. Why not start looking deeper into the 8 jins? Seems like a good starting point for me.

[BruceP]

^That's why Bhassler says there's no such thing as Taijiquan

[BruceP]

I think that Bruce P. needs to explain what he means by triangulation.

I never wrote anything about triangulation. It might work ok for squeezing limes, but it aint my thing

[Steve James]

I think that Bruce P. needs to explain what he means by triangulation.

I never wrote anything about triangulation. It might work ok for squeezing limes, but it aint my thing

Apologies. Somehow I'd attached the term to you or something you'd said. Sorry.

[BruceP]

No worries, Steve. Stuff gets mixed up around here sometimes.

[charles]

...There's mostly no thread and no common feature that unite Tai Chi techniques or jins into one single principle. So If we want to understand the depth of this art, IMHO, we should try to get to a point where everything make sense. Why not start looking deeper into the 8 jins? Seems like a good starting point for me.

Seems reasonable.

Some have suggested that Taijiquan is the art of manipulating peng jin. Problem is that few can agree on what "peng jin" is. Thus, Taijiquan is the art of manipulating, uhm, er, something or other, where "something or other" depends on who's doing the art. That's pretty open-ended and open to huge interpretation, hence what we have now in the Taijiquan "scene".

When Chen Xiaowang was making the rounds and introduced the statement that the "5 thingamajigs" weren't directions/stepping, but something else, I asked my teacher about it. He reiterated that it was the "5 thingamajigs", the directions/stepping. We pushed the point, thinking he was keeping "the real deal" to himself. He eventually got somewhat impatient with my/other students persistence in the matter and finally said, "It's all peng jin". You can break that down in to sub-classifications of peng jin, such as lu, ji, an, and further, still, into zhou an (an with elbow), zhou lu (lu with elbow), an with knee, koa with the knee, kao with the hand ... Where do you stop classifying and sub-classifying? Somebody chose 8 as enough, but, he stated, it is somewhat arbitrary where you stop. It does, however, fit in a nice, neat package if you state there are 8, particularly if one states it with conviction.

As for pushing up and pushing down being "the same", try this. Get a garbage can overflowing with stuff. Try putting the lid on the can and pushing down to close the lid. Then try your/Tim's example of lifting you body out of a bathtub by pushing down on the edge of the tub. Are the physical mechanics really the same the way you do that? They certainly are not when I do it. I think you are confusing the forces acting on the body modelled as a rigid "free body" from the forces developed by a the non-rigid human body, specifically, how the body's weight is manipulated in each task, pushing down vs pushing up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_body_diagram

While I agree that every movement in Taijiquan involves some form of opening and/or closing - it is a basic mechanism of whole-body movement, because it is a basic mechanism found in every movement, it is not what distinguishes one action, one "jin", from another.

You can use it as two simultaneous movements or forces in two directions, but that is not necessary. You can use the splitting movement of the body and still only use one part of the body to express the jin.

That might make sense if you are focused, as you stated you are, on the actions of the practitioners, rather than the effect the action has on the opponent. If viewed from the perspective of what the opponent feels, he, the opponent, doesn't know or care how you generate the force. To be effective, it only matters what the forces are and that they are applied in directions that accomplish the desired result. For example, if I want to break an opponent's arm, an effective way of doing that is to use two simultaneous forces applied in opposite directions, one, say on his wrist and one an the back of his elbow, one up, one down, or one left and one right. I was taught that this is an example of the term "splitting" as applied to the art of Taijiquan. A better, less traditional term might simply be "couple", as in two forces simultaneously applied in opposite directions. The applied forces can be linear or helical ("spiral").