Standing Meditation

[robert]

Who invented standing meditation, i.e. the practice of holding postures for benefit?

I don't know who invented it, but it's mentioned in the Satipatthana Sutta. This is a Buddhist discourse on mindfulness and is documented to be at least 1800 years old. In it, it discusses the four postures -

The Four Postures
“Again, bhikkhus, when walking, a bhikkhu understands: ‘I am walking’; when standing, he understands: ‘I am standing’; when sitting, [57] he understands: ‘I am sitting’; when lying down, he understands: ‘I am lying down’; or he understands accordingly however his body is disposed. 7. “In this way he abides contemplating the body as a body internally, externally, and both internally and externally … And he
abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. That too is how a bhikkhu abides contemplating the body as a body

These are very common poses for statues of Buddha. These are also postures found in vipassana. Alignment is not important as far as I can tell in vipassana. Alignment in meditation is found in Chinese practices.

I don't have sources at hand, but old martial arts manuals point to Zhuangzi as commenting on zhan zhuang - The True Man breathes with his heels; the mass of men breathe with their throats.

In the first chapter of the Huangdi Neijing - 黃帝曰：余聞上古有真人者，提挈天地，把握陰陽，呼吸精氣，獨立守神，肌肉若一，故能壽敝天地，无有終時，此其道生。
The Yellow Emperor said: Yu heard that there were real people in ancient times, nurturing heaven and earth, able to grasp yin and yang, breathing essence and qi, standing alone observing/guarding the spirit, muscle/flesh as one, able to live a long life with a range without end, this was their dao.

[johnwang]

But what does Tai Bao even mean, and why 13? I looked into these 13 tai bao, and although it is usually very similar some lists contain 1 or 2 different exercises. My school for example has a completely different set of exercises with (of course) very different names. But it is 13 tai bao. Now that is confusing.

13 Tai Bao is used to develop certain MA skill. It's not MA skill by itself.

太保 Tai Bao is the prince's teacher. He helps a prince to become a good emperor. But he is not emperor himself. The standing postures (along with dynamic postures) help to develop good MA skill. But it's not MA skill by itself.

The 1st time I went to China (in 1980), I met GM Chang's young brother Chang Tung-Pao. He asked me if I had trained 13 Tai Bao and 24 Shi or not. I told him that I was only taught 12 postures. He then showed me the 13th posture.

[robert]

What I know is that Yang Cheng Fu's generation of Tai Chi teachers, both him and teachers from other Tai Chi schools practiced standing meditation (standing exercises practiced as meditation), which means that it's highly likely that standing as meditation is at least older than Yang Cheng Fu's generation, long before "taiji went all floppy", maybe something practiced at least as early as by Yang Lu Chan's students.

That is something I have been looking into for quite a while. I've never been able to find such information. In fact all accounts I have been able to verify state that Yang and his teachers did not practice standing. (ie. it was affirmatively denied, not an inference or a lack of mention). The flipside is that some well known teachers have insinuated that despite it not having been historically trained as a part of tai chi, it can serve as a fast track to some parts of the traditional training method.

Some of YCF's students write about it, notably Chen Yanlin in his taijiquan manual. He has a section on stance training.

Taiji Boxing’s stance training divides into the horse-riding stance and the three-line stance. When the earlier generations trained in Taiji Boxing, they first had to practice these two kinds of stances, which cause the lower body to have power rather than resulting in floating. They advanced to practicing the solo set and pushing hands later on, and were thereby able to achieve efficiency.

https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/taiji-boxing-according-to-chen-yanlin/

FZW mentions yuandi standing postures is his taijiquan manual.

It's said that students of the Yang family were all given access to YBH's taijiquan manual. This wasn't made public until 1985.

There's a chapter in it -
對待用功法守中土　俗名站橦

The Correct Way to Achieve the Method of Central Earth
Commonly Called Standing Post (Zhan Chuang)

The first line is - (Stand) stable, upright, and centered to have the feet rooted,

Certainly not conclusive, but I think it's interesting.

https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2013/09/14/explaining-taiji-principles-taiji-fa-shuo/

[windwalker]

Who invented standing meditation, i.e. the practice of holding postures for benefit?

I don't know who invented it, but it's mentioned in the Satipatthana Sutta. This is a Buddhist discourse on mindfulness and is documented to be at least 1800 years old. In it, it discusses the four postures -

The Four Postures
“Again, bhikkhus, when walking, a bhikkhu understands: ‘I am walking’; when standing, he understands: ‘I am standing’; when sitting, [57] he understands: ‘I am sitting’; when lying down, he understands: ‘I am lying down’; or he understands accordingly however his body is disposed. 7. “In this way he abides contemplating the body as a body internally, externally, and both internally and externally … And he
abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. That too is how a bhikkhu abides contemplating the body as a body

These are very common poses for statues of Buddha. These are also postures found in vipassana. Alignment is not important as far as I can tell in vipassana. Alignment in meditation is found in Chinese practices.

I don't have sources at hand, but old martial arts manuals point to Zhuangzi as commenting on zhan zhuang - The True Man breathes with his heels; the mass of men breathe with their throats.

In the first chapter of the Huangdi Neijing - 黃帝曰：余聞上古有真人者，提挈天地，把握陰陽，呼吸精氣，獨立守神，肌肉若一，故能壽敝天地，无有終時，此其道生。
The Yellow Emperor said: Yu heard that there were real people in ancient times, nurturing heaven and earth, able to grasp yin and yang, breathing essence and qi, standing alone observing/guarding the spirit, muscle/flesh as one, able to live a long life with a range without end, this was their dao.

The movements are said to have come from the static movements of buddhist guardian deities linked together.
Met the teacher long ago in Beijing ..




"Zhang Wei Dong's master, Teacher Qiao was in is early eighties in this video. His stances are not low, but you can still feel his skill. "Dabei Zhou" is the Mandarin name for the Buddhist Compassion Sutra. "Dabei Quan" is the physical practice of that mantra. This is not a style of Taiji ... nor of yoga ... but something unique in between. This is also commonly called "Shaolin Dabei Tuoluo Ni Quan".


interesting style

[robert]

It's worth mentioning the mawangdui tu, it shows people standing as well as stretching, so it seems that standing is likely a part of daoyin going back 2200 years.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daoyin#/media/File:Daoyin_tu_-_chart_for_leading_and_guiding_people_in_exercise_Wellcome_L0036007.jpg

[johnwang]

Here is a video for 13 Tai Bao workshop (1980).

[charles]

... once taiji went all floppy and lost the bitter jibengong, people had to find a reason for why they were standing there, and "meditation" was what they came up with.

All of that said, I tend to agree that just standing on it's own accomplishes little that is not done better in other ways. Moving forms/exercises can accomplish the same physical benefits (usually better), and taking advantage of modern, comfortable training spaces gives opportunity for more effective practices on the yin/mental/spiritual side of things, as well.

My primary Chen teacher of more than a decade, after a year or two of studying with him, he once stopped a forms class in the middle of the class and, for reasons unknown, asked me to push on him while he stood there. I pushed on his chest as hard as I could as he just stood there in a high nondescript stance. I pushed on his abdomen as hard as I could and he just stood there. He then had the class pair-up and take turns trying that on each other. None of us could withstand our partners' pushes. After about 20 minutes of our failed attempts, I finally asked my teacher the question, "Clearly, you are doing something different than we are that allows you to withstand the pushes, what are you doing?" He replied, "Sinking qi to the Dantian." I then asked the obvious question of, "How do we learn to sink qi to the dantian?" He replied, "Standing." He learned standing from Feng Zhiqiang, for whom standing was an important practice. Feng spoke of the single "grain" of hunyuan qi, something developed through meditative practice. He considered that to be the starting point of "real" internal development.

My experience has been that, for me, the primary benefit of standing practice is to learn to "let go" (fang song), a prerequisite to nearly any skill or ability in Taijiquan. In my experience, sitting meditation is something different and for a different purpose.

Can this skill be learned from some other practice? Maybe. Is there some practice that will allow one to obtain that skill faster? Maybe.

An obvious question is where does "meditation" fit into the acquisition or maintenance of martial skill. Clearly, there are people of high level skills that do no standing or meditation and those for whom it is an important part of their practice. That seems to suggest that standing and meditation are not essential practices to gaining skill.

[Mrwawa]

Thanks for the information, Charles. I am also in the GM Feng zhiqiang lineage and there is great importance placed on standing meditation for us as well. For me, it has helped to really pinpoint where I am holding tension. Even moving slowly in tjq, one can "cheat" through an area of tension. Standing meditation, to me, is like going camping with the in-laws versus stopping by for an hour. You have got to learn how to deal, or you are going to go mad. Settling in while standing is a lot of fun.

Not sure where the zhan zhuang came from in Feng zhiqiang's system, but I am guessing Hu yaozhen and his background in xingyi quan. Does anyone know?

[wayne hansen]

His original art was Hsing I

[robert]

Not sure where the zhan zhuang came from in Feng zhiqiang's system, but I am guessing Hu yaozhen and his background in xingyi quan. Does anyone know?

I don't know, but I worked with ZXX (a student of FZQ) a bit and I did taiji with him. I'm pretty sure FZQ taught taiji. There's a problem that the old martial arts manuals aren't always clear about jibengong, so standing isn't always explicitly called out. To a large extent the old manuals assumed you had a teacher to show you how to train and the manuals are supplementary material. What you see in a manual will to some extent depend on how you were taught. In Chen style I was taught standing. Although I worked with ZXX on SR I did attend a couple workshops on hunyuan qigong. It started with wuji standing. What FZQ says about wuji/taiji standing is very similar to what Chen Xin writes about it in his Illustrated Canon of Chen Style Taijiquan.

Here's what FZQ wrote about it -

Everyone, greetings. This is a good question. Standing posture is Wuji, [Translator note: as in "ultimate nothing"]. Standing posture is posture of Wuji. Wuji is the state before Heaven and Earth was formed, when everything was in the primordial soup, when yin and yang were not differentiated. Wuji is silence, not moving, is quiet, whereas Taiji, the name of our practice, is opposite. Even though it looks as if standing posture/standing meditation there's no movement, however inside, just like in the primordial soup, there's always something, there's always something moving. When the internal subtle movement suddenly reaches critical level, then there's a Big Bang. That's when the light stuff floats up and the heavy stuff sinks down. And those that floats up form the heaven, and things that condenses become the Earth. The Big Bang essentially causes Taiji to happen. Taiji is yin and yang, the interplay between yin and yang. Between the interplay of yin and yang, everything else in this world is born. Without Taiji there's nothing, there's not even us. Everything, all life forms. Plants, animals. Human being are at the top of the animal kingdom, we are spiritual beings. The relationship between Heaven, Human, and Earth is the three pillars of the universe. Basically, from Wuji, even though there's no apparent movement, there's always something happening internally. When the time is right, the universe is formed, and Taiji is born. Same thing when we're doing standing meditation. There's no apparent movement, but there's always a little subtle shift. And after you've been doing it for a while you could generate so much energy in your body that you'd just have to move, that's the time for you to start doing your form. Within Wuji, even though the external is without motion, inside there is the beating of the heart, the circulation of blood, the flowing of chi. So within the motionless external something is contained inside that is moving.

Wuji diagram from Chen Xin's book -


https://ctnd.de/images/pics_ctnd/chen-xin-wuji-stehende-saeule.png

This is basically the posture I was taught in hunyuan qigong as wuji.

[Appledog]

Not sure where the zhan zhuang came from in Feng zhiqiang's system, but I am guessing Hu yaozhen and his background in xingyi quan. Does anyone know?

His original art was Hsing I

Here's what FZQ wrote about it -

...the light stuff floats up and the heavy stuff sinks down. ... Taiji is yin and yang, the interplay between yin and yang. Between the interplay of yin and yang, everything else in this world is born.

Feng's original art was something like Longfist. I'd have to look it up. It may have been huaquan. Not so important exactly which, but, Feng discusses how he met his xingyi teacher, and he comments on standing. He said, it is a little known fact outside (of such schools) but the external schools also possess many standing methods. But the requirements are different, and needless to say I had to stop practicing those and start practicing the internal way.

At a certain point, some arts just do things so differently from one another that they really cannot be combined. I don't think this is true of xingyi and chen style but I sometimes wonder, what the real difference is between various schools of standing as mentioned above. Sure, there is a difference, ok, but really, is it a difference? What is a difference, then?

[robert]

At a certain point, some arts just do things so differently from one another that they really cannot be combined. I don't think this is true of xingyi and chen style but I sometimes wonder, what the real difference is between various schools of standing as mentioned above. Sure, there is a difference, ok, but really, is it a difference? What is a difference, then?

The first standing I learned was a praying mantis standing set. It was a form that consisted of 8 postures held on both sides. I learned the praying mantis standing and an 18 taiji qigong set from a guy in Taiwan early in my taiji training. The emphasis was on doing the postures as low as possible. I started off holding each posture 30 seconds and worked my way up to 1 1/2 minutes. No concern for being relaxed or calm. I learned xingyi santi. The way I was taught was somewhat relaxed, but relatively low. I studied Liang style bagua and it didn't have standing, but I did some workshops with Xie Peiqi and learned an Yin style bagua standing set. It was interesting - there were a number of animal postures and there was some antagonism, some winding that was done with a fair amount of strength. Most of my standing has been done in Chen taiji. The emphasis is on being relaxed and calm, but standing correctly can cause the legs to shake. They each seemed different, although the xingyi and chen style seem pretty similar. The Yin style bagua surprised me with the use of antagonistic strength, but it seemed to work well. The praying mantis was the most different and is OK early in training, but I wouldn't suggest it later in training.

[yeniseri]

Yangsheng 'literature' and Daoist/quasi Daoist works often mentioned what was called Standing Meditation but it was not until the 1900s that a didactic body of
theorical' modern works brought it into some type of 'workable' health technology in the service of "wellness", and even within modern yangsheng systems. The founder of Yi quan/Dachangquan
along with Hu Yaozhen (xingyi) brought the theory into a modern age, which at times appear to be fractured though beneficial form wellbeing.

The Australian fellow Erle Montaigue! who studied with a few mainland teachers of the day mentioned a broad enough methodology of postural consideration (Yang style tai chi) for assisting with standing
meditations within the broader class of postural "choices'.

[twocircles13]

One detail correction, which may be due to autocorrect turning Xin into Xing: Thanks for putting up with my fastidiousness.

Feng Zhiqiang learned LiuHe Xinyi Quan from Hu YaoZhen, hence the full name of Feng’s system: Chen-style Xinyi Hunyuan Taijiquan system. LiuHe Xinyi Quan (Six-harmony Heart-mind Boxing) is described as related to Xingyiquan (Form-mind Boxing), but it is a separate martial art. Hu also taught Feng Ruler, and several gongs that would later be labeled Qigong and become Feng’s Hunyuan Qigong.

Hu was on the committee that coined the word “qigong”. The committee essentially saved many esoteric, internal, and alchemal practices by labeling them as health-promoting qigong or medical qigong. He has been called the "father of qigong” because of this work. We owe him a debt of gratitude for saving much that would have been simply deleted. With all the gratitude and respect for my Great-grand Master, I also think that outside of China, we need to start unpacking many of the practices that were saved by the "Qigong umbrella" and understand their origins and functions and call them by their names, where possible.

Of course, it is well known that Hu YaoZhen and Chen Fake were good friends and exchanged knowledge and ideas. Eventually Hu asked Chen if he would take Feng as a student because Hu thought Chen Taijiquan would suit Feng’s pugilistic personality. The rest is history.

There are several videos of Hu Yaozhen’s daughters and students performing exercises from his system. Just search for Hu Yao Zhen on YouTube.

[wiesiek]

I would go deeper than any Art.
Standing is present in human race from time when we started to hunt.
Later we started to make names, Arts, and complicated something what been natural.