Lifting a Thousand Pounds

[Appledog]

It is nice to practice in the fresh morning air~

[charles]

What is the purpose of this exercise? What are physical mechanics involved in correctly performing it?

[Appledog]

What is the purpose of this exercise? What are physical mechanics involved in correctly performing it?

Thanks for the great questions! In one sense, I don't know. We do one of these exercises per month for solid time in the morning. I kind of didn't do number 9, 10, 11 and 12 this year. Busy at work.

As I was taught, the purpose is to pull the body into the correct position. The mechanics are to just stand there. Now, the "physical mechanics" are not just "standing there" because there are specific cues you have to follow, which are mainly reserved for learning from the teacher, however if you just stand there it is good enough for now (because see below).

As I was taught, you do one of these every morning for a month and you will make progress. The nature of this progress unfolds in stages where the first few stages are about figuring out what the physical requirements are. Then you can ask your teacher about your experiences. Unfortunately I have not had time to study this exact posture in depth, but it seems to me that a lot of these exercises have a similar theme.

For example the names of the exercises often contain a clue. 'Subdue the Tiger in the Southern Forest', or 'Vanquish the Dragon in the Northern Sea'. What is the southern forest, what is the northern sea? What is the significance of subduing or vanquishing a great beast? If you apply the same logic to this move, it seems as if we are being drawn to, at a minimum, a particular kind of connection through the shoulders. You will notice that the boy on the left cannot raise his arms in the same way as the girl on the right (ex. arm to ear). That is because he has shoulder and posture problems. Doing this exercise will allow him to gently settle into a correct position (ex. arm to ear). If he makes significant progress I will post a follow up video noting this.

Turning around between sets and adding a hunyuan qigong #1 between left and right parts of a set was added to characterize the ritualization of the exercise. In practice we are not so strict we only do a baihui gathering qigong between sets.

[charles]

Thanks for the great questions! In one sense, I don't know....

As I was taught, the purpose is to pull the body into the correct position. The mechanics are to just stand there. Now, the "physical mechanics" are not just "standing there" because there are specific cues you have to follow, which are mainly reserved for learning from the teacher, however if you just stand there it is good enough for now (because see below).

What makes progress in the "internal" arts and qigong difficult is often a lack of explicit teaching. It is easy to copy the external choreography of any practice or exercise and one can learn the gross choreography from nearly any video. It has been my experience that far too many students learn little more than the gross external choreography and then conclude that the core of the art IS that choreography and progress is simply repetition of that gross choreography. There is nothing "magic" about the choreography, itself, it is what one does with that choreography. That is, HOW that choreography is practiced/performed is what leads to understanding and progression.

Ideally, what a (good) teacher does is to teach sufficient explicit detail about what to practice and and how to practice it that the student can make progress by working with sufficient intensity and focus on those details. Even when explicitly taught, the student still has to put in sufficient focus and intensity to progress. Academic awareness of the details won't, by itself, produce much progress.

A sure recipe for lack of progress is to repeat external choreography over and over again.

As I was taught, you do one of these every morning for a month and you will make progress. The nature of this progress unfolds in stages where the first few stages are about figuring out what the physical requirements are. Then you can ask your teacher about your experiences.

How does one gage that progress or identify that progress, particularly if one doesn't really know why one is performing that exercise? Does it involve how long one can hold this posture? Is one supposed to feel something specific? And so on.

Experience has shown that many students have no idea what they don't know. To then ask questions about what they are unaware of is a particularly ineffective recipe for progress, since many students don't know what relevant questions to ask about things they are unaware of.

It isn't uncommon for a good teacher to provide explicit guidelines of practice and then reply to questions about the practice that arise from doing the work. (Too often, students who haven't put in the requisite work ask questions about the practice that aren't relevant to their progress. Or don't ask questions at all.)

For example the names of the exercises often contain a clue. 'Subdue the Tiger in the Southern Forest', or 'Vanquish the Dragon in the Northern Sea'. What is the southern forest, what is the northern sea? What is the significance of subduing or vanquishing a great beast?

I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 100. Nope, that wasn't it. Guess again. Not a great pedagogic approach.

If you apply the same logic to this move, it seems as if we are being drawn to, at a minimum, a particular kind of connection through the shoulders.

Why would you make that assumption? Why is it that the shoulders would be what is "lifting a thousand pounds"? Is "lifting" a correct translation, rather, than, say, "maintaining" or "supporting" a thousand pounds? "Lifting" implies motion. A static held posture probably doesn't involve overt motion.

That's part of the problem with "guessing". There are many viable-sounding interpretations, many of which can be incorrect and drive the exercise in a wrong direction.

You will notice that the boy on the left cannot raise his arms in the same way as the girl on the right (ex. arm to ear). That is because he has shoulder and posture problems. Doing this exercise will allow him to gently settle into a correct position (ex. arm to ear).

It might. It might not. Unless the boy gets explicit, hands-on corrections, probably not and at the end of a month's practice will see little to no progress.

Has the boy received any hands-on correction? Videos you've posted of him go back a few years, suggesting that he has been practicing things (incorrectly) for at least a couple of years. Has anyone corrected his forward-hip sticking out too far, not being aligned with ankle and knee, which also affects his vertical spinal alignment? Has anyone had him open/sink into the kua? Has anyone taught him to close his chest, allowing the muscles of the ribcage to drop, pulling the shoulders down with gravity while his arms/hands are raised? Has anyone corrected his bending forward of his head/neck, "suspending" the head/spine vertically? These are all basic day-one corrections that a good teacher ought to have provided. Correction of those are all elements of "progress".

I'm assuming that the video is "for demonstration only" and that their actual practice would involve holding the posture for a progressively increasing period of time. In the video, they hold the actual posture for not more than 30 seconds. No progress is likely from such a short duration.

Turning around between sets and adding a hunyuan qigong #1 between left and right parts of a set was added to characterize the ritualization of the exercise. In practice we are not so strict we only do a baihui gathering qigong between sets.

As demonstrated, there seems to be more "ritualization" than content. Is the hunyuan qigong 1 that you refer to from Feng Zhiqiang's hunyuan qigong set?


I'm not trying to give you a hard time or be a pain in the ass.

My concern is that too many students spend too much time in "ritualization" filled with repetition of choreography they don't understand with the assumption that if they just keep repeating it progress and knowledge are guaranteed. My experience has been that very few students make much progress that way.

[Appledog]

I'm not trying to give you a hard time or be a pain in the ass.

Haha, no, what you say is correct, I agree with you. It is a coincidence that what you spoke of, we were working on today. Today is January, 2024. It is the start of the second session. Today we did "Subdue the Tiger in the Southern Forest". However, as I told them, today is the second round. It is not sufficient to merely repeat what was done last year. This time, after a comfortable step out, I informed them to take a second step (move the foot out further) and sink down into the hip, placing the knee no further than over the toes. I told them it is better to hold a deeper stance where you are 'locked in,' (a term I use informally in class) for 5 to 10 seconds than holding a higher stance for 30 seconds to one minute (We had worked up to 1 minute in some medium depth stances which I view as a milestone accomplishment, esp. for a 14 year old!) Also in my opinion the boy has made some remarkable progress in the first half of raising his arms shoulders straight although there is still some discussion over what happens at the top. The girl also fell into a bad position today during ya tui gong, and she is of the backtalking age. When I corrected her she said she was going to 'fix it'. I said no, you cannot fix it, it has to be correct from the beginning, and to lower her arm and raise it up from the side again. When she did, it was perfect. The issue with the boy is that he can't raise his arms up in that way, so I said to hold the position at the moment of divergence and work on it from there.

So anyways, we are working on quite a number of those issues you mentioned but, to be honest, although they like kungfu they are not really into it as much as their main likes, which are programming for the boy and piano for the girl.

We have also hired a personal trainer at world's gym to help correct the posture with mixed results. The issue is more about getting them to do the exercises more. They tend to not do it spontaneously on their own, but only during class. So be it.

How does one gage that progress or identify that progress, particularly if one doesn't really know why one is performing that exercise? ... Why would you make that assumption?

You and I don't really disagree, fundamentally, on the benefit of rote repetition of external movements. However I tend to assume the conditions you gave, such as having access to a teacher and asking questions out of experience. I would say that all of my deep epiphanies have come from practicing a move 1,000 times or more during a session, after which I will usually come to some kind of epiphany. Then if I ask my teacher about it, he tends to introduce new things or give changes and suggestions.

I believe the key to rote learning is that when you do the exercises, you come to epiphanies about them because you are looking for the epiphanies. I sometimes get an idea I don't know if it is really correct or not but there is a clear and present value proposition, or, realized information, which I can now go back and ask my teacher about. Without that discovery, which only came through hard work, I don't feel comfortable asking too many questions.

My concern is that too many students spend too much time in "ritualization" filled with repetition of choreography they don't understand with the assumption that if they just keep repeating it progress and knowledge are guaranteed. My experience has been that very few students make much progress that way.

I think another important aspect is whether or not a student is interested in the training. The more interested a student is, the more fun they are having, the easier it is for them to learn this way.

As for Feng's Hunyuan gong, we do many of the same type of exercises (some exactly the same) in our Xinyi, but, they are a bit different than what I have seen in the Feng, ZXX and CZH videos. It is my goal to go to Edmonton (or somewhere) for a year and really go deep on Hunyuan Qigong to try and understand it as it's own thing. But, what I was referring to is the exercise where you raise your arms to the sides and gather qi in to the baihui point. We do it slightly differently than CZH but after reading his book I think we are doing the same basic exercise. I do think his version is much more complete than ours, which is why I want to learn it, I think it would be nice to try and get back to the roots of the matter.

[charles]

Thanks for your response.