The power of Peng

[windwalker]

"down with woo woo... more mma! aargh" /s

writing about it, is ok

Showing what was written about
is not

MMA is opposite, they show

Write less... must be different

[everything]

[D_Glenn]

It’s evidently clear that a lot of people are confusing Zhongding with Peng. Which could be understandable because there is the technique of Peng, which Zhongding can achieve.

But here, I believe, the topic is the body quality of Peng.

As a body quality Peng is passive, you don’t have to think about it, a lot of people who train CIMA don’t even realize that their body manifests it.

Zhongding is a quality, but it takes mental effort. It requires thinking, which with practice can become something that you don’t have to think about.

There’s a good number of people out there who have Zhongding but don’t have Peng.

There’s also a lot of people who have Peng but don’t have a trained or practiced Zhongding.

It’s good to practice with people who have one or the other, in isolation. Because when someone has both it’s not as easy to comprehend.

There’s a lineage of Wing Chun that is doing a really great job at teaching people Zhongding. I would say that whatever teaching methods they’re using are getting people up to speed at a way better rate than what’s happening in the TJQ world.

[origami_itto]

I agree that it's about that zhong ding, that earth, and maintaining and returning to wu ji via wu wei.

The 8 gates and 5 steps are just ways that gets resolved, so talking about any one of the energies is going to involve referring (by implication if nothing else) to zhong ding (and fang song, and song ch'en), you cant discuss these in isolation, they are ingredients in the cake.

[D_Glenn]

I agree that it's about that zhong ding, that earth, and maintaining and returning to wu ji via wu wei.

It’s a subtle thing, but technically you don’t want to use a Wuwei Zhuang and go back that far both physically and mentally. It’s only a preparatory stance. In Chen Taijiquan they have a Zhongding Zhuang that you stand in. A proper practice would be to stand in Wuwei for about a minute and then transition into standing in the Zhongding Zhuang. You can feel the difference. Of course the Zhongding stance is a supplementary thing.

I think way too many people, (provided their goal is to be proficient in self defense, if they’re just doing the hippie tjq then it doesn’t matter.) are practicing Fangsong at too early of a stage. There needs to be Gong Li before you can soften it. Ideally TJQ is picked up by someone who’s already been practicing a hard style- judo, karate, Shuai Jiao, Shaolin, Wing Chun etc etc. and then they actually need to practice Fangsong because they only have Gong Li. You have to be diligent and precise to practice Gong Li and Qi (a generalized term for internal practices) at the same time. But if you do both Qi exercises and Gong Li then you can have a really long career in martial arts. If you only practice Gong Li it will be a fast but short career. If someone only practices Qi then they aren’t really martial artists to begin with, and they will have a hard time trying to add Gong Li to a limp overcooked noodle. (And this isn’t talking about on a physical level. Physically it’s easy. It’s mentally where they feel it’s incorrect and they’re being taught wrong, and don’t trust or have faith in the process, citing thousands of tjq teachers and books and insist that Fangsong is the only way.)


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[D_Glenn]

The other disadvantage of doing Fangsong too soon, and putting emphasis on it, is that they telegraph. It’s easy to avoid their attack. They unwittingly and unknowingly get stuck in the Ming Stage (Obvious), but think they’re in the Hua Stage (Transforming).

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[origami_itto]

I think way too many people, (provided their goal is to be proficient in self defense, if they’re just doing the hippie tjq then it doesn’t matter.) are practicing Fangsong at too early of a stage. There needs to be Gong Li before you can soften it.

Alex has been saying the same thing lately on facebook. Try some external strength first and then make it internal.

Ideally TJQ is picked up by someone who’s already been practicing a hard style- judo, karate, Shuai Jiao, Shaolin, Wing Chun etc etc. and then they actually need to practice Fangsong because they only have Gong Li.

So this is maybe a divergence on fang song. Bear in mind I'm thinking and learning through these conversations. Don't take my tone to think I'm speaking authoritatively, only ever through my own subjective understanding of my own sense data and experimentation.

We talk a lot about fang song/song ch'en as a state, but some teachers also teach this like a give and take process. Song Ch'en, sink down, fang song, release up and out, as components of opening and closing. It's like a relaxing in both directions. The relax and sink creates a tension in the opposition muscles, so we relax and release that and it creates that rising that is tension in the sinking direction again. It didn't really occur to me that you might be referring to something similar to that idea here. Adam Mizner calls it the six harmonies down and long jin out as part of the Song Gong 1 exercise starting at level 2 in his curriculum.

You have to be diligent and precise to practice Gong Li and Qi (a generalized term for internal practices) at the same time. But if you do both Qi exercises and Gong Li then you can have a really long career in martial arts. If you only practice Gong Li it will be a fast but short career. If someone only practices Qi then they aren’t really martial artists to begin with, and they will have a hard time trying to add Gong Li to a limp overcooked noodle. (And this isn’t talking about on a physical level. Physically it’s easy. It’s mentally where they feel it’s incorrect and they’re being taught wrong, and don’t trust or have faith in the process, citing thousands of tjq teachers and books and insist that Fangsong is the only way.)
.

I agree that there is a strong emphasis on RELAX and YIELD coming from an incorrect understanding that basically saps any hope of using Taijiquan to affect another human being. Correcting it, as far as I can tell, requires direct in-person instruction and confirmation. I've gotten some tuneups with it but still a long way to go and not enough partner time so a lot of Yiquan I guess.

But they have the limp arm with no real connection, it's just an empty arm. Relaxed, but empty.

Words are a poor medium, I think I've said before and will again. The internet is a poor forum. This is known. I dream of a day when we can give each other the benefit of the doubt that we're working sincerely within a somewhat common paradigm with more alike than different aside from individual interpretation of ultimately esoteric and useless intellectualization. Like just do the exercises, right? But I believe these discussions have the possibility to open up new perspectives and considerations that we can, if not accept wholesale... try out in our practice, maybe look for.

[Taste of Death]

But they have the limp arm with no real connection, it's just an empty arm. Relaxed, but empty.

They have to have structure not just relaxation. In Han Shi Yi Quan we express through the fingertips. In I Liq Chuan they spread the hands.

[origami_itto]

But they have the limp arm with no real connection, it's just an empty arm. Relaxed, but empty.

They have to have structure not just relaxation. In Han Shi Yi Quan we express through the fingertips. In I Li Quan they spread the hands.

I don't know what structure means there. It isn't a matter of the structure. It's not a static shape. It's about the connection between the pieces being open and alive.

[BruceP]

To recap, so far in the thread we find we need to develop a kind of sunk or heavy energy, or even a kind of lightness via possibly, standing and keeping the head alight -- okay, but we also know that isn't peng. I would point out there are too many videos of (especially older) masters with poor back and neck posture demonstrating excellent peng. Yet, so far no one has been able to explain what it is or how to train it. I would have expected at least one person to mention push hands, but I like what you have said here about two first timers. If someone could expand upon that I am sure we would find the answer.

Zhan Zhuang + time = Peng

Xingyi has Peng, Bagua has Peng, Yiquan has Peng but with different qualities that feel differently because each art has different types of Zhan Zhuang.

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Right, Zhan Zhuang

The types/progression of Zhan Zhuang in the development of peng in the training I've done for more than 20 years;

-Interactive Zhan Zhuang (not push hands) - imparts peng on an intuitive, internal level as a touchstone from which peng in solo training can be explored

-Passive solo Zhan Zhuang - Developing peng in natural stance with attention focused on holding it in stasis

-Active solo Zhan Zhuang (postures and ball-holding) - changing peng from natural stance to forms postures and transitions or other activities (hitting, grappling, recovery)

-Other solo Zhan Zhuang

Was in a chatroom with windwalker one night right around the turn of the century. We'd spent an hour or more discussing our different approaches to developing peng and ting. He outlined a ball-holding Zhan Zhuang exercise I could try that would give me some idea of the things he was working on at the time. While working through the drill, I could 'feel' a similar connectedness and feedback that I'd been exploring. His exercise had/has an all-in-one method to unifying lightness, sensitivity, expansion and contraction (peng).

Without being around the people windwalker was training with, and without a teacher to guide the progression of those qualities that the exercise imparted, it's nothing more than a cool insight that is resigned to hanging in a vacuum, which, obviously, is a dead end without being in the type of training environment windwalker had access to. At the same time, though, the exercise was quite profound as a deep internal experience that I thought would be something beginners could do as an interactive drill for awakening their innate peng while simultaneously testing it.

Long story longer... At the time, I was still actively testing my tjq in various sport formats, and training others who wanted to test theirs in those same formats. I was also leading tai chi study groups whose participants weren't interested in sport - only forms and qigong. After playing with windwalker's exercise for some time, I finally figured out how to modify it as an interactive drill where two people could get a real, tactile experience of manifesting peng, ting and lightness so they could know what to 'listen for' in their at-home practice in dialing in that mind-body state in their standing/Zhan Zhuang.

After some months of having the people in the study groups play with the drill, I learned a lot about how people respond differently as they dial it all in. Almost invariably, though, at some point they'd stop breathing the first time they got it, and each time afterward for a while - just like beginners do in the Nine Temple Qigong when they first light up the Harmonies. When that 'forgetting to breathe' occurred, their partner would comment or react in some way to a change in the feel and interaction across the ball. It was obvious that the unity/integrity of an individual's peng, ting etc was being tested as it developed/manifested naturally and spontaneously, and that the testing could be repeated in a consistent manner as pairs switched and mixed.

The exercise/drill imparts peng as an unmistakable, internally understood quality of body-method without the trainee ever being told what peng is, what it should 'feel like', or how to apply it. With less than a minute of instruction (thousand pounds hanging from each elbow, elbows held away from the body, shoulders relaxed etc), the drill forces honesty in the interaction and ownership of the skill as it reveals itself simply by doing the drill(s) - Neutrality Principle.

I introduced the exercise to our fighty group some months later. By that time, it had evolved in the tai chi study groups into a number of variations/drills where peng, lu, ji and an could be explored as the quality of basic peng transmutes into those four directions. Being that the Nine Temple Qigong was already addressing the 8 Gates via Prayer Wheel, Polishing Mirror, Grinding Corn, etc, and due to the natural exuberance and aggression of the people in the fighty group, the drills were well suited to eliminating the hard contact and resistance, and the resultant free-for-all that sparring demands. The drills also served well to channel aggression and minimize the risk of injury in both the fighty group and the kids groups in preserving Neutrality Principle by making the other person irrelevant in the interactive work.

I thanked windwalker once before on EF, but another thanks is in order here.

[Taste of Death]

But they have the limp arm with no real connection, it's just an empty arm. Relaxed, but empty.

They have to have structure not just relaxation. In Han Shi Yi Quan we express through the fingertips. In I Li Quan they spread the hands.

I don't know what structure means there. It isn't a matter of the structure. It's not a static shape. It's about the connection between the pieces being open and alive.

What I mean by structure is holding the shape without being stiff or its opposite, collapsing.

[windwalker]

@ BruceP

Thanks for the kind words, it's been a long road.

[Appledog]

@ BruceP

Thanks for the kind words, it's been a long road.

What do you think of Marshall Ho's nine temple qigong? I think you should have a talk with your friend

[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.

[BruceP]

@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.