circle walking and standing

[jjy5016]

Wang also recommended regular walking after doing standing for the same amount of time as the standing session.

Do you have a quote for that or did you get that from your teacher/s?

Wang taught it to Han and Han taught it to my teacher. But Han also taught a set of exercises that he called the "small movements" which according to him could replace the lengthy walk. Nothing esoteric, just a few kicks & stretches. The full body pat down that some do after qigong routines probably achieves the same thing that is, to bring the body back to a normal state.

So in a way, yes it is a quote but not verbatim. Not everything is written down.

[Doc Stier]

http://www.scribd.com/doc/26928084/Ziranmen-Article

Achieving heightened awareness is also the subject of Zi Ran Men lore. It is said that Du Xin Wu was forever testing the skill of Dwarf Xu, by launching surprise attacks on his Master. Some of these attacks were said to be bold and precocious, sometimes while the master was asleep, sometimes with a weapon, and on one occasion dangerously near a cliff when Dwarf Xu was not paying attention. However the young Du Xin Wu never got the better of his master and was, more often than not, on the receiving end of fast retribution for his attacks.

This type of Extrasensory Situational Awareness is a specific area of reseaerch and study which I find woefully lacking in many martial art training regimens today and is a topic especially near and dear to me in my own study and training, as witnessed by this thread:

http://rumsoakedfist.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=14580

[Patrick]

Thanks for the information jjy5016.

[Peacedog]

Dr Stier,

The extra sensory stuff gets real weird real fast. I can't speak to ziranmen specifically in that regard as my training never went that far. However, if you do a shit ton of chi gung and then go into a war zone some strange stuff happens. I don't know if it is because the individual is on high alert and their adrenaline is pumping or if it is because that kind of environment has its own altered reality. But I suspect it is the latter as I've had the oddest experiences when I was completely relaxed and then something bad happened.

What I can say without reservation, is that the presence of killing intent causes people to do some strange things and I've never seen that kind of thing happen in a training simulation or dojo. Chi gung practitioners seem to handle these things far better than most.

I truly believe that having a serious practice in energetic yoga and meditation greatly increases your chance of a surviving a war intact. The sages didn't say much, but they sure as hell said that over and over. Based off my experiences it is true. At this point in my life I believe most societies professional fighting classes probably had well developed systems for this prior to industrial revolution in Asia and the Inquisition in the West. If. You can get the training and practice for a few years before you go, you have much better chances of coming back intact.

[GrandUltimate]

Not sure if you are talking about Wang Xiang Zhai of yiquan or not. But in WXZ did teach a warmup exercise to do before standing. It involved shaking the body up and down, almost bouncing for several minutes. Wang also recommended regular walking after doing standing for the same amount of time as the standing session.

Hi, do you have any details about this "bouncing warm up exercise?" My Sifu taught me something similar when I started learning Tai Chi and referred to it as a "rooting drill." The bouncing was really a drop from being relaxed, almost as if falling, and then rising up again and repeating this over and over. Over time, one of my friends that I cross train with started studying Chinese Medicine and showed me the rooting drills he learned in class, which were different and thus started making me wonder about the roots of the exercise that I was taught.

[jjy5016]

The shaking is done in the even weighted posture that looks as if someone is resting both hands on a table. The key is to make sure that the body shakes as one or simply stays connected. After a minute or two one can drive the heels into the ground hard on the down shake. Important to shake the insides as well as the outsides.

Two of my yiquan teachers both taught this exercise. One a student of small Han and one of Zhang Chang Xin so I'm convinced that it is an authentic yiquan practice and not just an add on that someone used to fill in class time.

I've seen similar shaking in at least three other systems so I don't believe this exercise is anything exclusive.

[Mr_Wood]

Yeah ive been taught something similar but more of a warm up exercise to relax the body not so much for rooting.