Hugging the chee ball

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Hugging the chee ball

Postby Ian on Sun Jun 01, 2008 11:30 pm

What do you get out of your static zham zhaong practice?

I'm talking about static postures like hunyuan zhuang or santi zhuang where the movement is mostly small and imperceptible, rather than dynamic postures like kaihe zhuang where the movement is obvious.

Do you feel that it strengthens the tendons? Does it make your bones more dense? Does it give you striking power and does it improve your movement? etc.

I'm confused.

Thanks!
Last edited by Ian on Sun Jun 01, 2008 11:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Hugging the chee ball

Postby RobP on Mon Jun 02, 2008 1:17 am

On the positive side I got big thighs, the ability to learn how to dissolve tension when in that position and possibly some patience. The other things you mention - no, there ae better ways to get those IMO

cheers

Rob
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Re: Hugging the chee ball

Postby Ian on Mon Jun 02, 2008 1:30 am

I used to do zhan zhuang, then I stopped, and I gave it another shot last night.

And I pretty much came to the same conclusion.

'Hugging the ball' allows you to breathe and move through tension, but only in one position. What about other positions, and during movement?

It clearly trains your patience, though.


"The other things you mention - no, there ae better ways to get those IMO"

I recently broke the 15 minute mark for static pushups. Those seem to do more for the tendons in your arms than standing. Other exercises work better for different areas, and take less time.


But I'm a total n00b and could very well be wrong. Any suggestions?
Last edited by Ian on Mon Jun 02, 2008 1:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Hugging the chee ball

Postby Formosa Neijia on Mon Jun 02, 2008 2:21 am

Ian wrote:'Hugging the ball' ...

But I'm a total n00b and could very well be wrong. Any suggestions?


Can you feel the qi ball? If not, why not? What's getting in the way?

That should keep you busy for quite a while.

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Re: Hugging the chee ball

Postby Ian on Mon Jun 02, 2008 2:25 am

I can feel the qi ball. Feels quite nice actually.

But I can't blast it at people.

Is the qi ball useful in a martial context?
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Re: Hugging the chee ball

Postby shawnsegler on Mon Jun 02, 2008 2:39 am

Do you feel that it strengthens the tendons? Does it make your bones more dense? Does it give you striking power and does it improve your movement? etc.


It does all kinds of things depending on where you are at in your training and how long you do it.

Firstly it allows the muscles to fatigue in such a way as to gas them and over time let you use your skeletal structure and your tendons to support you. It burns the shape you are holding into your nervous system and memory and once again over time lets you separate all the disparate parts of your body (muscles, veins, organs etc) from one another thereby giving you the ability to learn and control the inner landscape of your body to allow a higher degree of manipulation of the shape of the body itself...compressing and expanding, opening and closing the joints etc.

All of this separating (once again over a long period of time) is a huge act of releasing long bound stagnation of the feedback loop which is basically your ego. Your sense of self is an incredibly complex set of self imposed instructions based on your whole lifetime of experiences in your body. You are basically a whole bunch of "if this then that" commands based on using your brain to keep you safe...say you break your arm when you are a kid...you have huge pain and worry and all kinds of shit associated with that event and you tell yourself things as commands to prevent more danger or whatever...you hold tension there to keep it from getting hurt again and over time. As you stand and the stagnation starts to clear you see more deeply into the nature of your mind and get a clearer picture of how your emotions and intellect are connected to your body and you start to see how they work which allows you more control over it and eventually lets you choose how the brain and body interact rather than being subject to the reactive state most peeps live in..being able to turn off your fear, not have your mind distract you in a danger situation because it's trying to analyze shit when it would be better served reacting spontaneously...in short it gets rid of yo bad brain syndrome.

The greater degree of mental freedom and control you acquire through this puts you in a position to start putting in your own commands...burning more functional shapes into your nervous system and commands between your body and brain.

Anyway...it's a good practice. I'm for it...and of course it's sister circle walking.

I could expound on it some more, but I think I'm ready to go back to sleep again.

Best,

S- little bit of insomnia tonight.
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Re: Hugging the chee ball

Postby mixjourneyman on Mon Jun 02, 2008 4:33 am

That insomnia is probably from when you broke your arm.
Just sayin is all. ;)

But that brings up a really interesting question for me: does ZZ help to recover from certain injuries?
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Re: Hugging the chee ball

Postby fisherman on Mon Jun 02, 2008 4:41 am

I did something nasty to one of my ribs last Thursday, not sure if it is cracked or what, (going to the doc today), but ZZ seems to help relieve the pressure in the area that hurts. So, maybe it is helping?
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Re: Hugging the chee ball

Postby mixjourneyman on Mon Jun 02, 2008 4:42 am

I think there is something in that, since relaxation exercises tend to make parts of my body that ache feel much better. To me zz is basically a relaxation exercise, and also an alignment exercise, so I can see it doing good things for a sore body.
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Re: Hugging the chee ball

Postby ppscat on Mon Jun 02, 2008 5:42 am

Ian wrote: Is the qi ball useful in a martial context?


Besides obvious peng, it's key to understand open-close both for attack and defense.
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Re: Hugging the chee ball

Postby shawnsegler on Mon Jun 02, 2008 5:48 am

Mix: As to the injury thing...When I was 19 I was riding my bike all hungover early one morning and while going down a hlll I hit a little oilslick that was on the pavement from someones leaky oil from their car and my foot slipped off the the pedal and went into the spokes....I flipped sort of over the handlebars and me and the bike rolled a couple of times with my foot still in the spokes...needless to say, this sucked and I messed up my shoulder pretty bad and haven't been able to do pushups without pain for the longest time. The muscle around my scapula was all knotted and you could fel parts of the scapula itself with like minimal muscle covering over it....it was all fuk up.In the last three years or so everything has slowly moved back to the original configuration. It's still a little messed up from what I guess is some cartilage damage, but the actual injury is pretty much fixed, and it was ALLLLLLLLL fuckedc up and out of shape...and by out of shape I mean not functional. You could put your hand on both sides and feel which side was damaged. They are both pretty indistinguishable now.

I have a few other stories like this too. The alchemy thing is all about getting soft enough to change the actual configuration of your flesh and bones and everything.

Anyhoo....

Best,

S
Last edited by shawnsegler on Mon Jun 02, 2008 5:51 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Hugging the chee ball

Postby mixjourneyman on Mon Jun 02, 2008 6:04 am

Cool shite.
I have a couple injuries that don't bother me anymore and I'm pretty sure its from IMA practice that they were able to heal so well.
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Re: Hugging the chee ball

Postby TaoJoannes on Mon Jun 02, 2008 7:58 am

fisherman wrote:I did something nasty to one of my ribs last Thursday, not sure if it is cracked or what, (going to the doc today), but ZZ seems to help relieve the pressure in the area that hurts. So, maybe it is helping?


The healing power of standing meditation has been advocated by quite a few high-level guys I've encountered.
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Re: Hugging the chee ball

Postby qiphlow on Mon Jun 02, 2008 11:38 am

Ian wrote:What do you get out of your static zham zhaong practice?

I'm talking about static postures like hunyuan zhuang or santi zhuang where the movement is mostly small and imperceptible, rather than dynamic postures like kaihe zhuang where the movement is obvious.

Do you feel that it strengthens the tendons? Does it make your bones more dense? Does it give you striking power and does it improve your movement? etc.

I'm confused.

Thanks!

zz helps me with: relaxation, structure, strength (via integration of structure), patience, keeping a cool head.

zhan zhuang, plus circle walking, plus some very simple movement drills are my formula of choice for the time being. it works so far.
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Re: Hugging the chee ball

Postby nianfong on Mon Jun 02, 2008 4:45 pm

hey ian, can you describe the hunyuan and santi zhuang?

-Fong
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