The power of Peng

[wayne hansen]

I it is passed on in the touch

[BruceP]

I it is passed on in the touch

right

that's why tjq, as a martial art, is in the state it's in

[everything]

@BruceP, that sounds like an excellent experiment and development. Would've loved to walk that road at the time. Similar to what I stumbled upon, but didn't have any "fighty group" to do more testing, nor was I too motivated to look hard (futbol is far more fun, subjectively-objectively). Finding the "right track" is already pretty interesting, I must say. I think that is how IMA will continue. Now imagine if that "fighty group" was among the most talented groups in Beijing at that time, and rather than ww telling you over a forum, someone teaches/shows you, and you are the "Messi" of the group. Then you have the conditions that produced a YLC. It's hard to imagine, but it's also easy to imagine.

Well, the thing with that kind of internal work is that it isn't something a person can teach. Like all the other elements of what differentiates internal from whatever else, the ability to develop [lightness, sensitivity and expansion and contraction] peng is latent/innate and can only be uncovered rather than 'learned'. There are no prerequisite abilities upon which that discovery occurs. There are only a couple of ways in which the experience of manifesting peng as a tactile, indelible and 'remembered' bodily understanding can be made to even happen in the first place, let alone make it repeatable. The same can be said of the other internal elements of tjq (dantien, Six Harmonies etc).

Creating the conditions for that discovery is the only real 'skill' an instructor possesses. (you can't really teach anyone anything - you can only bring out what's already there)

If, for instance, a person has had it put foremost in their mind to concentrate on a prescribed set of physical parameters and/or breathwork etc by their 'teacher', they'll have to be extremely lucky (against some huge odds) to 'get it' as a hit-or-miss endeavor - the same dumb luck that would need to occur in unlocking the other internal elements of tjq. In this case, the teacher makes such a big deal of their finger pointing at the moon (prescribed body and breath), that their student misses the opportunity to 'see' what's being pointed at because the teacher doesn't really understand it all that well himself. In short, the student probably won't 'forget to breathe' the way they should. That's what makes the internal training different from training stuff like western boxing, wrestling, etc.

The body already knows this stuff. It just needs to be put in the proper frame of mind to have it 'click'. The trick is to make that 'click' repeatable without the expectation that the next 'click' is going to be the same as the first 'click', or the second, or the third, and so on - the body evolves quickly if it likes what it's doing. That's why the exercise I wrote about evolved as it did, as it suited those who were deep into the internal experience of playing with it.

this is sort of how I've experienced things as well. teachers and students with "it", a little of "it", or none at all, all kind of said to do the same sorts of things. because that's how they got it firsthand, learned it, or were taught but still couldn't get it but talked about what they were trying to do. Eventually something "clicked" (at a super baby level) after someone without "it" showed us some other zhan zhuang.

what I'm saying (speculating) more generally is if you compress that, with a bunch of people who have "it", nobody who is sitting around questioning philosophy or translations or "physics" or other red herrings we see here and everywhere, and the same people are in the best MA circles of that time and place, then you have good or ideal conditions so somebody like YLC or Dong Hai Chuan can emerge.

[BruceP]

what I'm saying (speculating) more generally is if you compress that, with a bunch of people who have "it", nobody who is sitting around questioning philosophy or translations or "physics" or other red herrings we see here and everywhere, and the same people are in the best MA circles of that time and place, then you have good or ideal conditions so somebody like YLC or Dong Hai Chuan can emerge.

Got it. But who's to say that if you'd taken that track you wouldn't emerge as the YLC you'd need to be to suit your own needs/Personal Combat?

[BruceP]

So I would ask,

1. How do you begin training Peng? What are the various levels and exercises of it? (We can understand it from the shared experience of training)
2. What is the hallmark of Peng that cannot be achieved by great leaning force? (We can understand it from identifying it as something unique)
3. How precisely is Peng (and Lu) related to silk reeling? (We can understand it in the context of shared theory developed from practice)

I don't expect an answer, as I can't write one down myself. I just think these questions are interesting

Maybe just question #1 for now. Surely one of the teachers here can explain it simply and in plain language that a 10 year old can understand

How do you begin training peng? What are the various levels and exercises of it?

[wayne hansen]

Every step in tai chi is part of the training
You don’t train for it
It arises from the training

[everything]

what I'm saying (speculating) more generally is if you compress that, with a bunch of people who have "it", nobody who is sitting around questioning philosophy or translations or "physics" or other red herrings we see here and everywhere, and the same people are in the best MA circles of that time and place, then you have good or ideal conditions so somebody like YLC or Dong Hai Chuan can emerge.

Got it. But who's to say that if you'd taken that track you wouldn't emerge as the YLC you'd need to be to suit your own needs/Personal Combat?

this is what makes me pessimistic/optimistic. we don't really talk about "talent level" in these dicussions. it's assumed we can take any beginner of any level and turn them into a taiji master. but that's just not true.

whenever i watch one of those child prodigy musicians with perfect pitch and they say "ah, A flat dimished 7th sus 2" or some chord I'll never understand, I'm like 1. ok i have zero talent 2. imagine if this child prodigy type had "internal" talent and MA interest. if they came and learned your neutrality principle and full contact? that's really the only kind of way someone can be a "next YLC". we cannot take rando middle aged guy who is so-so at all sports (like me), give the "real it", and I'll get really good. just too untalented, too late in life. after some decades of putzing around, some qi sank, and i experienced maybe baby-peng. but that's like saying every so often, i can putt a golf ball half correctly. laughable.

[windwalker]

we cannot take rando middle aged guy who is so-so at all sports (like me), give the "real it", and I'll get really good. just too untalented, too late in life. after some decades of putzing around, some qi sank, and i experienced maybe baby-peng. but that's like saying every so often, i can putt a golf ball half correctly. laughable.

Some thoughts from




How to practice Tai Chi---Wu Guozhong

So the first way to learn Tai Chi is to have the courage to make mistakes.

If I feel sore, I will feel sore. If I don’t have beautiful hands, I won’t have beautiful hands. If I use strength, I will use strength.

It doesn’t matter. But I am more courageous to correct my mistakes. If my beautiful hand can't do it today, I will do it tomorrow.
If I can't do it tomorrow, I will do it next month.

I always have to correct it. So my teacher said that as long as you remember to dare to correct mistakes, don't say you correct one mistake a day. In fact, you don't have many mistakes. If you correct one mistake a month, you can correct twelve mistakes a year.

There are only eight basic points of the Yang family: loosening shoulders, hanging elbows, holding chest, straightening back, keeping the tail in the right position, using the top of the mind, sinking the Qi in the Dantian, and deficient and strong points in the legs.
If you correct one shortcoming a month, it will be a big deal. So the first method is:

"Be brave enough to make mistakes and correct mistakes."

One of teacher Wu Guozhong's students happened to be watching my practice
, spent a little time chatting... he talked about his teacher
and practice......he started as a teenager, now 78....
His taiji very good.

[everything]

maybe by 78 i can be past toddler stage

i'll settle for reasonable knee ability for walking, mild qigong

[Steve James]

maybe by 78 i can be past toddler stage

Get to 78 first. If you're lucky, your practice will allow you to get there and be healthy. That will be a success worth working for. There aren't enough lifetimes to learn all there is to know. Maybe not enough to know what YLC knew. Getting a PhD is like getting a black belt. It's just another beginning.

Yep, just being ablet to walk at a certain point in life is great. Everything you do that you take for granted should be cherished. And, they are (and will be) when they're gone.

[everything]

yes i was going to say "hope i can get there first"

i hurt my knee cartilage (luckily it is getting better) playing too much middle aged fubol. really want to go back, but OTOH really, really makes me appreciate being able to walk 99% pain free (still a twinge here and there). if I try to do BGZ circle walking, i can enjoy that, and it's great. we have a lot of posts about "application" and the "power", but nvm all that. just the way those old guys move doing that walking is amazing to me.

[wayne hansen]

I started tai chi because I had a bad knee from playing rugby on Saturdays and League on Sundays
I first damaged it in the 1965 Grand Final
That was 1973 it hasn’t bothered me since
Correct training takes care of things like that

[everything]

i need to give up things like that and just do lots of good, correct training for sure

[Appledog]

Well, the thing with that kind of internal work is that it isn't something a person can teach. Like all the other elements of what differentiates internal from whatever else, the ability to develop [lightness, sensitivity and expansion and contraction] peng is latent/innate and can only be uncovered rather than 'learned'. [...] (you can't really teach anyone anything - you can only bring out what's already there)

Well, that isn't really true. The difference is kind of like professional vs. amateur in Go. Amateurs can reach the professional stage, in terms of skill level, but the professional player knows many gokui that the amateur does not, which enables them to be taught. This is why strong Go schools produce such strong students -- such as the other students of Segoe Kensaku, all of which became legendary strong Go players. An example better suited to martial arts would be what is taught inside the door versus outside the door. If you are inside the family, then you "must" be taught -- at any cost. Therefore, tools and methods were developed over time that would ensure or guaranty that a student would 'get' "it", as you say. If you are inside the lineage, it's kind of secondary to this I suppose, because if you don't get it then it is not such a big deal, so maybe less effort would be expended, but the tools to guide your progress are there. For those outside of a lineage I can't comment because then it becomes a case by case situation, but the question then would be, why you didn't find yourself tapped by a top talent like Segoe Kensaku, if you really had anything to offer, and what the particulars are of how you came by a teacher willing to invest so much time and effort into you to guaranty your success.

Here in Taiwan when I teach Kungfu to the senior high school students in PE class, they do warmup exercises prescribed by the ministry of education. Many of them are very similar to the set of warmups and daoyin that I learned from another source. So it is difficult to teach them how to do "those" exercises properly and I have to use some "variations" on the same theme (The same idea but differing amounts of stringency). So I would classify the difference in terms of stringency. The movement is the same, but there is a long list of requirements and rules for every exercise that the student's don't generally know (or care about). In the sense that they don't care about such stringency and just use the exercises as calisthenics and warmups, you are "right". However, in the case where someone wants to learn, the question then becomes if the environment is suitable to teach that student. In most cases that is the question. If it is the other way around then the student should go and find a different teacher.

The body already knows this stuff. It just needs to be put in the proper frame of mind to have it 'click'. The trick is to make that 'click' repeatable without the expectation that the next 'click' is going to be the same as the first 'click', or the second, or the third, and so on - the body evolves quickly if it likes what it's doing. That's why the exercise I wrote about evolved as it did, as it suited those who were deep into the internal experience of playing with it.

Well, yes and no--mainly no. When a person is young they have more flexibility and they lose it over time. But this is not enough. It is also that they have a greater ability to adapt to the correct training, which (generally) takes them further than the natural flexibility in the direction that they are prone to losing it. Usually but not always. For example opening the lung channel is somewhat non-intuitive because it is at a 90 degree rotation to the usual method of 'towing the line', such as opening the small intestine channel. I'd like to write more about this but I think its best to nail the topic down a bit more, if anyone has a question that would be best.

[origami_itto]

It's not inaccurate to say that all the knowledge that exists in the universe exists within you and you merely have to be shown how to unlock it to be able to use it, Taijiquan being part of the total body of knowledge in the Universe, sure.

There's a matter of talent, some folks will just be better at some things, but without being taught by folks that have figured out how to maximize their own inferior gifts, they will never reach the heights of their potential.

When we are born into the world, we have eyes to see, ears to hear, a nose to smell, and a mouth to eat. Color, sound, odors, and flavors all appeal to our natural sensory endowment; gestures and steps and the vari- ous functions of our limbs are all derived from our natural endowment for movement. Considering this carefully, is it without reason that, while simi- lar in nature but different in habits, we have lost our original endowment?? Thus, wishing to regain our original endowment, it is impossible to dis- cover our movement potential without physical exercise or to find the source of consciousness without intellectual activity. This then leads us to move- ment with consciousness. With mobilization, there is sensation; and with movement, awareness; without mobilization there is no sensation, and with- out movement there is no awareness. When mobilization reaches its peak there is movement, and when sensation reaches its peak there is awareness. Movement and awareness are easy, but mobilization and sensation are dif- ficult. By first seeking to develop conscious movement in yourself and real- izing it in your own body, you will naturally be able to know it in others. If you seek it first in others, it is likely that you will miss it in yourself. It is essential that you understand this principle, and the ability to interpret
energy follows from this.