the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Mostly interested in health.

However it’s nearly impossible to try 5 elements and not wonder about MA stuff. Especially if you pick up any everyday object (such as an umbrella or remote control).

nevertheless people talk about “this is good for that health thing”.

Have you tried hard to pay attention to only the qigong aspects, especially having nothing to do with MA, especially if you relate it to TCM?

I guess NOT since the board is MA oriented, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.

I’m not into 5 element theory but what would metal, etc. mean from a TCM and qigong for health POV? Does this jibe with your practical feeling?

There are "martial" exercises and "health" exercises. The martial exercises contain all the health benefits of the health exercises. The health exercises are for people who can't or won't do the martial exercises.

In IMA you don't need to focus on qigong aspects, just practice correctly and you'll get all of the benefits of qigong and much more.

Yes IMA is health and combat method, there’s no distinction.....however, I was taught if do santishi and one are in a weak condition palms best to face down

Trick wrote:...however, I was taught if do santishi and one are in a weak condition palms best to face down

Interesting, never heard about that.

I got into Kenny Gong style because it focused more on the esoteric aspects of the 5 elements. The typical pentagonal layout is not useful for these pursuits, only mental mapping and you'd have to switch it later anyway. The 5 elements are the Heart and Friends Middle Dantian Show. Almost every internal arts teaches the lower dantian and hip gua. The 5 elements specifically relate to middle dantian work and connecting your upper gua (shoulders and clavicular girdle to your lower gua. You are literally working on the trunk of your human body tree so wood should be your primary focus here. Creative cycle practice going Wood-Fire-Earth-Metal-Water is the primary focus with wood and water being a minimum. Basically, the idea is that you can balance these things out, gain greater awareness of your internal body and "open your heart" in a literal, physical way that some call dragon body. You can use the torso like a snake or an accordion because you have the room in your torso and ribs. Look at Mao Shan 5 Elements in Max Christensen's Kunlun Nei Gung book then just put those on the centerline and you basically have the 5 element fists.

Yes I’m more wondering about the TCM 5 elements theory.

For example if I want to improve digestion, does Earth help?

How about just holding santishi? And not doing 5 elements?

It all sounds far fetched to take a practical MA and relate it to TCM theory, but I do not think TCM does not have real value even if I don’t like the five elements theory. So I’m wondering if people have noticed real (non MA) benefits that seem to line up with the TCM theories.

You can get you there with just santi (or sancai, or sanmitsu, Heaven, Man, Earth) but most people who work with computers and smart phones have fucked up postures when working so 5 elements helps remove that interference. You have perfect diet, flexibility, emotional balance? You don't need 5 element work.

If you can, spend the money on Tom Bisio's Xing Yi Neigong on line course - I have found a lot of cross-over with the material I learned since 1985 and the material is well organized (you can still practice the 5 Elements and I also like to add in the xing yi da qiang exercises)

Full disclosure - I am not Tom Bisio's student, never met him, and don't know any of his students - I just find his material to be very worthwhile and it integrates a lot of the ideas I have encountered during my study of baji/pigua from the Li Shuwen/Liu Yunqiao lineage.

In the pentacle the constructive and destructive part have a direct correlation to tactics which is seen in the linking form. No qigung there that I know of.

The organ to form correlation can be loosely seen eg metal opens the lungs to colon when the back bows and seals. But knowing all this and as was mentioned is kind of irrelevant to just getting on with correct practise.

Santi is a different thing. Its got a lot of different benefits like self awareness, learning to be song under pressure, lowering the body weight to shift the load from large muscles to connecting joints, learning to twist and align again for structure under angles. It's easier to become aware of them when standing. Harder to do when doing the elements. That's more martial related vs. learning to sink and release mental stress that most people do.

Done right and Santi is strenuous after a couple of minutes like a twisty yoga posture. But it also supports the body methods of the elements.

(Regular)Santishi, As I wrote should probably not be practiced if one are in weak health. Santishi properly practiced works with visualization of pushes and pulls, the feeling of it goes deep, the work on puls and breath becomes deep, breath of as breathing through the skin comes profound. If one is weak one will come out of breath, which does not happen if one is in good health.
My XYQ teacher said if in weak condition one can still do the Santishi but palms best face down(visualization different) and hand held as(now he didn’t say like this, he showed) ZMQ’s ‘fair lady’s hand’

It is impossible to talk of the health benefits of Hsing I 5 phases if you train BaJi,Ba kua,Tai Chi ,Xin I ,I chuan or any other art,weight training yoga or any mode where the Shen fa differs
It is like taking herbs while taking western pharmaceuticals or a McDonald's diet
How can you know what is the over riding cause
My student Jeff Pike in his book the power of chi tells of how he cured cancer with the ba tuan chin
I pointed out to him how He leaves out the fact that he had heavy cemo at the same time
I think things like tien Kan are a much better way of developing health methods

The 5 element work is basically a Chinese take on Kabbalah.

The one advantage to a 5 element vs 4 element model is that it avoids development of a state we refer to as "equilibrium" in Hermetics and as such is safe for use by lay practitioners. Frequently establishment of equilibrium results in eventually accessing Akasha/void power and what the Indians refer to as kundalini. Keep in mind Kabbalah in this context refers to a specific technology that actually came from the Phoenicians. And they in turn got it from a lost group of people that we know virtually nothing about other than they dressed in purple clothing, were considered sailors and engineers of great renown and apparently lived in hidden gated coastal compounds.

The breakdown on points of focus and the sounds are: focal point above the head and silently generating the sound = Akashic level of development, focal point of the head (i.e. upper dan tien) and silently generating the sound = mental level of development, focal point of solar plexus/heart center (i.e. middle dan tien) while whispering the sound = astral level of development, and focal point of lower abdomen (i.e. lower dan tien) and VIBRATING the sound aloud through the ligaments/tendons (think Tibetan bowl singing) = physical level of development.

Bisio's work is interesting in that if you get his comprehensive course on the 5 elements he makes a very important point of emphasizing specific body cues to amplify the effects. This is important.

People here have correctly pointed out that by just practicing the fists you get many of the same benefits and this is true. By actively manipulating the body you can move the organs internally in a way that definitely improves the functioning of those organs. What you miss out on is a lot of the higher level effects. But doing both the movements, adding the focal points, sounds and colors you get the astral level effects as well. The combination of the astral and physical effects is where most of the health benefits come from.

The effects on the practitioner don't necessarily end there however. Particularly once the mental and Akashic level effects kick in and these don't necessarily track along lines that are easy to determine or even appear related in a reason based context.

The technology being leveraged is essentially how magic works. In the context of "chuan" it is simply being applied to martial arts. For those of us on the more esoteric side of things, we generally find it strange that more people cannot seem to make this connection. And the technology itself is pretty universal. I haven't seen many, if any, exceptions to this model regardless of culture, language, time period or geographic location.

Very interesting reading.

Always wonder of those posting on writing are they writing or posting from personal experience
or academic inquiry.
Can they do, or have they met those that can do
showing the results of what is written
about.

Windy,

Exclusively from personal experience in this context.

Most people have some real cognitive dissonance when it comes to how a lot of this works. The biggest obstacle is the current round of no holds barred indoctrination into the materialist view of the world.

When you see Derren Brown, NLP practitioners, hypnotists and most "mentalists" at work, what you are seeing is mental level magic at work. Low level street hustlers, and panhandlers, usually have some level of ability at this as well. It's not complicated. It is also why most of these guys don't live very long either.

They just figured out a way to harness this kind of thing, usually by accident, and they are continually converting their vital force into mental energy to power this crap. But because they have no foundational level practices, they eventually run out of juice. It is also why they frequently do this stuff for years and then wake up one morning and it doesn't work for them anymore. We've all met people who had a "magnetic" personality when younger and when they got older it just stopped working for them. You see this a lot with celebrities.

It takes very little power to make this work if you are dealing with someone who has a very open mental body. It's also why it doesn't work on very grounded people like say Joe Rogan. The common use of various drugs by very grounded people to be creative is also a side effect of having a very closed mental body. What most people refer to as "creativity" only happens when the mental body is in an expanded state.