LaoDan wrote:Here is what a translation of a Yang Zhendo instructional video gave:Yang Zhendo wrote:Today there are many practitioners of Yang style Taijiquan, and unfortunately many have not fully comprehended the meaning of fang song, and they misinterpret its meaning. This is because song (relax or loosen) and ruan (soft) were put into the same category. Many think that song is ruan. What we consider as song is not ruan. Song requires that the joints and the muscles be intentionally letting loose, and extended.
And:Yang Zhendo wrote:Everyone should comprehend fully the meaning of fang song, let loose, in practice. One should be loose and extended, not loose and soft.
I would still be curious if anybody thought that fangsong is quantifiable (rather than being subjective or relative), and if so, then what instruments would be measuring what.
Some articles on loose and extended muscles.
Excerpt from "Is Active Muscular Extension Possible?," https://www.chuckrowtaichi.com/Muscular ... onQns.html:
Robert Chuckrow revised on 7/9/18 wrote:A Promising Mechanism for AME
Dr. Gerald Pollack has been directing research on hitherto disregarded properties of water and cellular phenomena at Washington State University for decades and has discovered an important feature based on the restructuring of water under certain conditions (see video on some unusual aspects of water). Our cells are primarily water, and his research indicates that neural electricity can restructure water in cells, resulting in their expansion and the consequent lengthening of muscles (read a review of one of Dr. Pollack’s books, Cells, Gels, and The Engines of Life).
I have been pondering Dr. Pollack’s research for the past several years. The concept that water in the cells can be made to expand is quite satisfying because it closely matches what I experience with AME; namely, I feel as though I am sending neural electricity to my muscle cells, and it feels as though the water in those cells is expanding as a consequence. In fact, I experienced those effects for quite some time and described them in similar terms before learning of Dr. Pollack’s research.
If the concept that the expansion of cellular water can result from the application of neural electricity, it nicely explains why AME can be sustained without fatigue for much longer periods of time than muscular contraction: Aside from the relatively small amount of chemical energy required for its neural activation, muscular contraction requires chemical energy and results in the production of lactic acid, which is irritating. Contraction restricts the circulation of blood that transports nutrients into muscles and waste products out. Thus, chemicals needed for contraction soon become depleted, and irritating waste products soon build up. These factors limit the time that contraction can be sustained. On the other hand, if extension is based on an intrinsic property of water, it only requires neural electricity for its activation—no chemical energy other than that for neural activation is required, and no irritating waste products result. In fact, a wonderful byproduct of extension is that circulation of blood is not restricted but actually increased, and the accompanying neural electricity is highly therapeutic.
Excerpt from "Gerald Pollack." http://outofthisworld1150.com/guests/gerald-pollack/:
Ted Mahr on January 11, 2019 wrote:In his 2001 book, “Cells, Gels and the Engines of Life,” Dr. Pollack explains how the cell functions. Research suggests that much of the cell biology may be governed by a single unifying mechanism – the phase transition. Water is absolutely central to every function of the cell – whether it’s muscle contraction, cells dividing, or nerves conducting, etc. The underlying premise of this book is that a cell’s cytoplasm is gel-like rather than an ordinary aqueous solution. . . .
Structured water does not have the same properties as bulk water. Water is the carrier of the most important molecules of life, like proteins and DNA. In the book, “Cells, Gels and the Engines of Life” evidence is presented that shows water is absolutely essential to everything the cell does. The water in our cells is not like water in a glass. It’s actually ordered pretty much like a crystal. Like ice, it excludes particles and solutes as it forms. The excluded space is called an exclusion zone (EZ).
Excerpt from "Gerald Pollack – It’s Not Liquid, It’s Water: #304," https://blog.bulletproof.com/gerald-pol ... water-304/:
Dave Asprey on Apr 26, 2016 wrote:Gerald: Um I was studying muscles and how muscles contract ,and what struck me is really weird uh one day uh is that when we think of muscles at the molecular level we consider the proteins and how the proteins interact to produce force. But you know muscles contain not only proteins, but also water, in fact two thirds, two thirds of uh by volume of our muscles and all other cells too are roughly two thirds of water. Um it’s actually, it’s, it’s even more dominant than that if you consider the, the fraction of molecules that are water molecules. You know the water molecule is so small that in order to fill that two thirds by volume, you need to put in uh, uh a lot of water molecules. And if you do the molecular count, it turns, it turns out that um 99, more than 99 out of every 100 molecules are water molecules.
And it struck me as odd that you could discount 99 out of a 100 molecules when trying to figure out how muscles work. There is a theory uh that prevails now about muscle contraction and how it works, and it dates back about 60 years or more. Uh it was developed by famous Nobel laureate, a member of the Huxley, famous Huxley family, Sir Andrew Huxley, and almost everybody follows it. Uh but I found some difficulty with, with that theory namely that the evidence didn’t fit.
