Nailed into the ground

[suckinlhbf]

that last bit of the tailbone was fused and keeping things disconnected

That last bit..... It will be a big step forward once it is activated. But it takes years.

[windwalker]

I am rambling about my practice. I just love this shit. The marvels are endless, right?

Echos

google translate

掌握的理解
唐风驰 杨式望脉太极拳的主要特点是“点破”，所谓“学以点”
“段段锦才是真教”，段锦的核心是入门，如何真正上手，既困扰着学习者，又让大家无所适从。


understanding of mastery
Tang Fengchi The main feature of Yang-style Wangmai Taijiquan is "point and break", the so-called "learning through point
"Duan Duan Jin is the true teaching", the core of Dian Duan Jin is getting started, and how to really get used to it,
which both haunts the learners and makes everyone at a loss as to what to do.


我上面说的只是我自己的理解，不一定正确。 用朱老师的话来说，“太极拳的魅力在于学不会，学得快，就没人练了。” 初入境界，“不求不得，不求不得”，“不求不得” 修之，修之不得”，需要用心体会，所谓渐悟、悟道。 但也不是理解了就完全理解了。 不同的阶段有不同的理解，需要一点一点慢慢细化。 因此，入门应该是各位爱好者毕生的追求。 无尽的。


]In Master Zhu's words, "The charm of Tai Chi is that you can't learn it. If you learn it quickly, no one will practice it." The state of getting started, "you can't get it if you don't ask for it, you can't get it if you don't ask for it", "you can't get it if you don't practice it, and you can't get it after practicing it", you need to understand it with your heart, the so-called gradual enlightenment and enlightenment.

But it’s not that once you understand it, you will understand it completely.

Different stages have different understandings, which need to be gradually refined bit by bit.

Therefore, getting started should be the lifelong pursuit of fellow enthusiasts. endless.

[everything]

Sounds like a very nice progression, Origami. A pity there's no chance of a nice tuishou exchange.

With regard to heavy or light, to the question of either/or:
The way I'm developing is that I increasingly feel a heaviness inside me and also a lightness. In principle simultaneously, synergetically. The result is a kind of subjective ease of movement and, I think, increasingly less inner friction in joints and tissues.
When in physical contact with others, I can let them feel the heaviness, making me very hard to move and also putting a lot of felt mass and impetus behind issued force, or I can let them feel the lightness so that they can touch me but feel very little substance.
-- As always, this is my direction but not something I can always realise fully - also depends a little on the day and the direction of the wind...

this is a great description. yin and yang. if you could always realise it fully, tai chi.

sometimes my limbs (mainly the arms) "feel" heavy - very much the "swimming on land" feeling - as if the air gives great resistance. Idk about "light and agile" and less inner friction ... i need more practice. an interesting thing to do is baguazhang palms held statically with slow changes, the same arm feelings, but walking with the "agile steps".

[Giles]

OH AND ALSO, what Ray Hayward teaches as the "I Chuan Standing Meditation" ZZ has gotten deeper for me. It starts with arms at the sides, then fingers pointing at each other in front like carrying groceries, then holding the tree, then thumb and forefingers suggesting a triangle around brow height. Doing those postures "brings it up". It feels like the specific way the posture causes the energy of gravity pulling down, combined with relaxation, shifts the pieces into the right slots from the bottom up, leading to that feeling of solidity through the frame. Combined with the constant expansion, together, something is happening.

Sounds like it is happening. At some moments you can put most of your mind/perception into the heaviness, at other moments more into the lightness. Alternate day for day, or minute for minute. I find that, after a while, just adopting a good skeletal posture (really in the plumb line, not leaning even just a little backwards or forwards) and opening oneself will allow the different impulses to manifest themselves: tending more to one, tending more to the other, or both at the same time.

Here's a body/mind image that might be useful. And nice:
Inside you is a great waterfall. A bit like a waterfall in some beautiful nature documentary, very tall but seen from far away, so that the water has plenty of time to fall from top to bottom. Almost like in slow motion. The waterfall starts at your crown, or a little above it, and falls/drops through the interior of your being down to the soles of your feet, or a little below them. It's not at all hurried but it never stops flowing down. And also never gets any lower, just like a real waterfall maintains its height. Your skeleton stays upright, legs at least 95% stretched, but your tissues are wanting to flow downwards with the water.
When the water finally reaches the bottom it falls into the carved-out pool, and then fine spray or mist rises up again around the falling water. Rises all the way to the top of the waterfall and further up towards the sky. You can then focus a little more on the rising mist.
And then you put your mind in the slowly plummeting water and the rising, floating mist at the same time. (Two way traffic). And you let your body relax and respond the way it likes.
The only deviation from actual natural phenomena in this felt image is that the water and mist can be pleasantly warm if this is more helpful.

I feel like I had a good spine to tailbone stretch, good connection between the arms across the back into the spine, good legs, but that last bit of the tailbone was fused and keeping things disconnected. I had several better push hands players tell me to loosen it up so I've been working on it every way I can figure.

A decent osteopath and/or craniosacral practitioner would probably be able to free up and reintegrate your tailbone in 2 or 3 sessions.

I am rambling about my practice. I just love this shit. The marvels are endless, right?

Yes, they are. For me, it never gets boring. The teacher of one of my teachers was fond of saying: "Beyond each sky there is another sky."
I'm so happy I've found something that will keep me entertained and challenged and amazed until I drop down dead, or at least until at the age of 90 I'm no longer able to move my walking frame a few inches. And even then I can keep doing a lot of the stuff in my mind.

[suckinlhbf]

A decent osteopath and/or craniosacral practitioner would probably be able to free up and reintegrate your tailbone in 2 or 3 sessions

They can mobilize the joints but getting the torque for the movements is necessary to develop the body into a big elastic band. CMA wants elasticity on stretching over relax on stretching.

[Giles]

A decent osteopath and/or craniosacral practitioner would probably be able to free up and reintegrate your tailbone in 2 or 3 sessions

They can mobilize the joints but getting the torque for the movements is necessary to develop the body into a big elastic band. CMA wants elasticity on stretching over relax on stretching.

I have to take issue with your statement here. A skilled and experienced osteopath or craniosacral practictioner, or indeed a practitioner of many other well-founded bodywork methods such as Feldenkrais Functional Integration, or possibly shiatsu or Rolfing, will be able to do far, far more than just 'mobilize the joints' or 'help you relax'. This kind of bodywork can go really deep into all kinds of body systems that include the many levels and types of fascia, fluids (blood, lymph, liquor), the nervous system, viscera and loads more. Realignment and reintegration of tissues (and hence of movement patterns, among other things) at local and whole-body levels is quite possible and there are literally thousands of points and permutations for this in the body. So putting things in terms of either 'stretching' or 'relaxation' is a false dichotomy. Just as it would be a false dichotomy to say that in CMA you can EITHER relax more OR become more elastic. If you do it right, you can get more of both simultaneously, plus more strength, more speed, more flexibility and more hitting power, all in one package.

[wayne hansen]

My first teacher was an osteopath chiropractor and acupuncturist and I was his apprentice in the clinic
After that I apprenticed to the Dean of two Osteopathic colleges in Sydney
I have 3 students who are craneosacral practitioners
I had 3 osteopaths in my Sydney class who came to me for their adjustments
Alexander,Feldenkrase and so many other body work methods have been in my classes
I have yet to find any who have achieved any real personal body awareness through those methods
Saying that I agree relaxation should produce elasticity
People get sidetracked by minor achievements
Eg. The yoga practitioner who is naturally flexible and forgets about strength being an equal part
Correct pushing should increase both and I feel is more important for health than form or noi gung

[wayne hansen]

PS
People get so tied up in their connection to the ground they actually become detached from it
My advice is
Drop all strength to the bubbling spring point
Then let it be born anew from that point
Letting your roots go through the earth is like giving 110%
It is not possible

[suckinlhbf]

A skilled and experienced osteopath or craniosacral practictioner, or indeed a practitioner of many other well-founded bodywork methods

For sure they are do a lot of things but their focus is not martial arts, unless putting martial arts in a health prospective then it cannot be framed as "martial arts". I have met martial artists with their martial achievement from proper hard martial art training and still wanting to meet a martial artist with his power obtained through transfer frome somebody else. I have not yet believed in those transfer as put up in the novels until I can meet one. It is through our own efforts to get results and of course can get a boost up from body workers and even medicine.

[quote][tied up in their connection to the ground they actually become detached from it/quote]
It is exactly what have happened. Trying to drop but can't and feel like stand on a bouncing ball.

[Giles]

Maybe we're all pretty much on the same page. I'm certainly not claiming that any of the cited bodywork methods - which I think are excellent and potentially highly beneficial in many aspects - will in themselves lead to the kind of changes and development most of us aim for in CMA. That can only be achieved by long and targeted training (unless you happen to be a 1 in 10,000 natural talent). What I'm saying is that good bodywork sessions (you usually need at least 3, or maybe more) can help to free up many systems in the body, sometimes to dissolve blockages or 'wonky' structures that can be very hard to reach or change just by one's own training efforts. (Unless you can train for hours a day, for months and years, in which case you'll probably be fine anyway). By removing blockages etc, good bodywork can kind of create 'fresh, fertile soil' in the body, or more 'open space' to use another metaphor, that can then be taken more easily in the right direction by your own training.
Remember, my original remark was prompted by Origami's account of his apparently blocked or 'stuck' tailbone. This is a typical instance where one of these methods could quite possibly reconfigure the matrix of fascia directly around and also further away from the tailbone. The resulting increased mobility and responsiveness could then propagate up the spine and down the legs, and specific CMA training can then reintegrate and recruit this area in a way that supports good training results.
Actually I've trained and practiced in craniosacral bodywork/therapy, although it's been on the back burner since Covid-19. So my observations are based on experience both in my own body and with people I've treated or have been treated by others.

[origami_itto]

tied up in their connection to the ground they actually become detached from it

It is exactly what have happened. Trying to drop but can't and feel like stand on a bouncing ball.

That's half the work, IMHO, getting off your tip toes inside. Then expanding from the dantien out is the other

[origami_itto]

Maybe we're all pretty much on the same page. I'm certainly not claiming that any of the cited bodywork methods - which I think are excellent and potentially highly beneficial in many aspects - will in themselves lead to the kind of changes and development most of us aim for in CMA. That can only be achieved by long and targeted training (unless you happen to be a 1 in 10,000 natural talent). What I'm saying is that good bodywork sessions (you usually need at least 3, or maybe more) can help to free up many systems in the body, sometimes to dissolve blockages or 'wonky' structures that can be very hard to reach or change just by one's own training efforts. (Unless you can train for hours a day, for months and years, in which case you'll probably be fine anyway). By removing blockages etc, good bodywork can kind of create 'fresh, fertile soil' in the body, or more 'open space' to use another metaphor, that can then be taken more easily in the right direction by your own training.
Remember, my original remark was prompted by Origami's account of his apparently blocked or 'stuck' tailbone. This is a typical instance where one of these methods could quite possibly reconfigure the matrix of fascia directly around and also further away from the tailbone. The resulting increased mobility and responsiveness could then propagate up the spine and down the legs, and specific CMA training can then reintegrate and recruit this area in a way that supports good training results.
Actually I've trained and practiced in craniosacral bodywork/therapy, although it's been on the back burner since Covid-19. So my observations are based on experience both in my own body and with people I've treated or have been treated by others.

I'm totally with you. Some things we can only do internally but some things are much easier applied externally

[suckinlhbf]

I respect osteopath so much even it is not yet one of the mainstream medical practices. It does dissolve blockages and can reach some body parts that are hard to get to. Its technique on unwinding fascia by following the movemnts is so amazing and it is like the following approach of martial arts. Their practitioners spend much more time in standing meditation that most of the martial artists. They can sense and reach deep inside the body to make things better but to make things worse is not their focus unlike martial art practitioners.

That's half the work, IMHO, getting off your tip toes inside. Then expanding from the dantien out is the other

It is indeed half the work. Some trainings go from inside out, and some from outside in. To work from inside out and outside in at the same time is also fine. Eventually, the aim is to empty the body. At some point, it is going to ignore the dantien even though it is always there when the movments are harmonized. Osteopath trains on standing meditation to feel, reach, and heal their patients and martial arts trains to feel, control and damage (if they want to) their opponents. Both may start their training from inside and still the standing meditation training is to serve their purpose to work on something outside.

[wayne hansen]

What standing meditation do Osteos do

[suckinlhbf]

My first teacher was an osteopath chiropractor and acupuncturist and I was his apprentice in the clinic
After that I apprenticed to the Dean of two Osteopathic colleges in Sydney
I have 3 students who are craneosacral practitioners
I had 3 osteopaths in my Sydney class who came to me for their adjustments
Alexander,Feldenkrase and so many other body work methods have been in my classes

Wow.... What can I say? Will you be kind enough to tell us something about it?