Alexander wrote:Alrighty, so I was pondering this today. Zhan zhuang, at least in one of its forms, is designed to condition the body to be used in a combined manor. Wang Xiangzhai's serious students supposedly had to hold the postures 5 hours a day, in all forms of weather, to condition the body to be used as a whole.
Now, I remembered a study I read regarding memory, neuroplasticity, and bodily conditioning. A big catch phrase was that neurons that "fire together, wire together". Monkeys were taken, and certain fingers were sewn together. The monkeys got used to using those 2 fingers as one unified finger -- these were brand new neural pathways embedded in the brain. After a period of time (months?), the stitches were undone, and lo and behold, the monks could not use the fingers individually -- only combined. They had to be retrained to use each finger individually before they could do it reflexively.
In my opinion, zhan zhuang is designed to do exactly this. It creates the (ideally) permanent habit of using your entire body as a tool.
But are 30 minutes, or even > 1 hour going to imbed that type of conditioning?
Alexander wrote:hold the postures 5 hours a day,
If you've got 5 hours a day to stand around, you're either being paid for it, or you need to work out where your real priorities lie...
Bhassler wrote: If you want to learn how to coordinate the body, I think there are other methods that are designed to do that more broadly and effectively than zz.
Andy_S wrote:AFAIK, ZZ is a relatively recent addition to Taiji (20th century), influenced by Wang's work. (And Wang, of course, was working from HsingI, which has the santi stance holding method). Perhaps there was also stance holding work in early Taiji - Yang Chengfu was said to spend lenghty times holding just two postures for compressive and expansive energies. Still, some people do not do ZZ at all. I asked Dan Docherty, whose Taiji has a strong neigong component about ZZ, and his reply was, "I'd rather watch paint dry!"
ZZ can be traced back to Indian Yoga Warrior postures. Similar requirements, similar time standing.
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