Appledog wrote:everything wrote:unfortunately people don't seem to want to talk about it, even though it should be the "101" class homework. we want to talk about the map or another map of something different. we want to talk about some external technique or weight shift or something. or maybe we're just too low level or inexperienced to try to share anything from the "inside". or moving qi inside the body isn't so "exciting". or people cannot do the baby stuff at all. or if some of you are higher level, it's still hard to convey. or if you can do stuff on the "inside", it's too hard to integrate with the "outside". or maybe someone hasn't learned much "outside" stuff, either. or people are deluded about their level. or like fantasy-master-lecturing. it's a bit hard to tell from most people's posts, and i'd disagree about video, b/c we can't see your "inside" invisible stuff happening or not happening. but from self-reported feelings/experiences, it seems there is a good bit of commonality.
I don't know why people don't want to talk about it but maybe if people are between the knowledge level and the internalization (wu wei) level it can be
difficult to talk about it clearly.
Ego gets in the way a lot. People don't seem to be comfortable with not knowing, only with pontificating and lecturing or listening to their guru pontificate. Lets get to the nitty gritty.
In this thread here in particular and the other I'm not really interested in talking about Qi cultivation so much as nailing down what someone actually means when they use the word Qi. What is the difference between a westerner, a modern Chinese, and a Chinese from the 1800s.
Two circles posted a brilliant summation of that conceptual framework in the pot of rice thread. Definitely go check it out.
If you can get THAT then it's worth starting to talk about all the manifestations of "Qi" that we work with in Taijiquan. It isn't just one thing, one substance, one concept, one framework. It's something that everything has but it's not the same for everything.
So when we talk about cultivating it, cultivating what? The life force, the movement potential, what is it?
Adam Mizner talks about this in a video directly saying that people conflate the meanings of Qi, and that the Qi they talk about in TCM carrying the essential life energy that sustains cells is not the same as the Qi we use for fighting in Taijiquan .
The conception that people seem to have is that Qi is this substance we accumulate in the body (okay, sure I can buy that) and that we can send it out into the environment like tendrils of an invisible octopus to attack our enemies.
It's not a substance. We can cultivate our life force Qi through the traditional means of food, drink, and proper preventative medicine and exercise like Taijiquan.
Through prolonged practice and specific conditioning of the body and mental conditioning and developed prioproception and spatial awareness we cultivate the perception of "movement potential" Qi in our body as it interfaces with the Qi of our immediate environment and beyond and any objects or persons within it. But that's not all the same Qi any more than it is the life force Qi.
Movement potential like, which way will my knees bend, how will my weight shift, how could it bend and shift, etc, but on a subconcious level of knowing without knowing. Reading the Qi of our system through Ting jin.
Through knowing that, we learn to know our weapons, our opponent, our world...
If you can't get that I don't know how to explain it any simpler. Two circle's post is the best, go read that.
For example, for a very (very) long time I was suspicious about the HSS/CMC type lineages. Then recently I met up with a dragon from the park, a new player, who showed me some of the stuff from the Mizner program he had been doing including "song gong #1." As we went through the details I instantly recognized the relaxation force from the ground that I had self discovered just from following other people doing Yang style in the park. So now, I have some newfound respect for Mizner's/HSS's stuff, (in contrast to traditional Yang/etc). Somehow they found a way to 'teach' that so people wouldn't have to work so hard (or be lucky) to hit upon it.
Adam has some pretty clear insight into Taijiquan and explains things well in my opinion. You get more value out of the stuff you pay for than the commercials, of course, but that's what people judge the material against. I have no complaints about the methods in his course, I completed the first level (five years) but am not interested in continuing with it.
What I don't like is when people haven't had time to "wu wei" the knowledge into their body, they tend to bring in outside analogies that don't make a lot of sense to me. Or say that this knowledge is not in certain other styles or branches of Tai Chi. I think at that point too much talking will just get in the way of learning and internalizing your art.
Think less about what you think others don't know and worry more about achieving your own understanding and you'll be making much better use of your time.
So my latest epiphany is these are just two different approaches to the same goal. I think that if more people understood this there would be less bickering between the CMC and TradYang (and chen etc) crowds. There would be more understanding between them.
They say the path is an inch wide and a mile deep, but for the most part we're all wandering in the dark looking for it and take shit way too personally.
