Origins of silk reeling Qigong in Chen style taijiquan

[cloudz]

Charles,

those are nice exercises and they illustrate nice and good sound principles of engagement.
What I will say is that; whilst I will happily accept there are tai chi (and other) teachers of very high level skill - it's all kind of relative.

in the sense that there's nothing new under the sun so to speak. The principles illustrated by those exercises are not profoundly unique to tai chi. they underpin a bunch of techniques I can think of, as well as skills.

I used to train regularly with an ex UFC fighter who got the tai chi bug. We would often play the classic free pushing game with fixed feet. Despite his ability to 'get me' and mine to 'get him'; there were times where I could literally do what I consider 'spooky skill' on him lol. for some reason those exercises have brought this 'move' to mind. It's not a strength thing as you point out, neither a speed thing.

I'm not saying that to big myself up or anything, in other contexts and situations he would out skill me, amongst other things. But there was this one particular thing I seemed to be able to do to him a good few times, and it's something I've done to others. It's basically where someone had a 'hold' (I'm usually just aware it's a good connection, could be a firm push on my forearm/ light hold - it's not always clearcut in the moment - / wrist/ forearm /hand for some reason it tends to be my side.. and I'll basically draw the arm back and down toward my rear past my hip waist. In something like an ark. On the face if it, there is literally nothing special about that at all..

And it'll be done in such away it produces this odd sensation between myself and the partner - at least I'm feeling it - I'm not sure they are feeling the exact same thing but it's odd nonetheless. as in not regular. They are literally stuck to me as I'm drawing them into a kind of 'void'. It's like they are unable to let go - it's not a fast yank were they don't have the time. it feels like slow motion almost. They don't almost can't pull back and resist it. I've got the time to think to myself; why don't you let go ? They are pulled off balance by the nature of the game - they are forced to step forward to catch the balance that's been taken away. It's like they have lost control of themselves and are completely dependent on me in that moment - and for whatever reason they can''t let go. Even though physically speaking there's really no reason why they can't just let go. As i said when it happen it feels spooky, I recognise the feeling now. The only clear way I could describe it in tcc terms is about as pure an example of stick, adhere, join, follow as I've experienced in a non co-operative drill. But is is a 'narrow' drill none the less.

If you moved that skill to moving step it would take on a different dimension or significance. The question becomes how can I use such a thing to my advantage. what am i trying to do here ?

I guess what I'm saying some skills seem really profound and deep in a certain context. In others, they just become the kind of skill that are used to pull off techniques regularly. People get really good at stuff they practice long enough; doesn't really matter what that might be.

Context.

[salcanzonieri]

Before Chen Fake, there was no mention of the specific Silk Reeling Exercises seen today amongst Chen TJQ practitioners. No one seemed to know the origins of specific exercises. Chen village claimed that they created it.
But, by using field gathering methods, it can be discovered that Chen Fake’s student Feng Zhi Qiang 冯志强 stated that although Chen Fake was always doing twisting and coiling movements that he called Silk Reeling, he never taught any specific Silk Reeling Exercises to anyone.
It can be inferred that it was Feng himself that created the specific movements through his observation of Chen Fake and through his studies with other teachers. Feng learned Shaolin from his uncle Wang Yun Kai, Tong Bei from Han Xiao Feng and Taoist and Buddhist Qigong exercises from Hu Yao Zhen.
When comparing Tong Bei coiling exercises and Shaolin Chan Yuan Gong coiling exercises movement by movement there is a one to once correspondence to movements also found in Silk Reeling Exercises.
Through his Buddhist and Hua Shan Qigong studies, Feng adopted the material and created the specific 30 Silk Reeling Exercises seen today. Further. Feng went to Chen village at least 5 times to interact with the practitioners there, passing on his Silk Reeling exercises.

BTW, I gave an online presentation at Beijing University recently about this and about origins of Bagua Zhang using data gathering methods from Behavioral Sciences..
My book is being translated into Chinese for publication there now.

[HotSoup]

Sal, my own research confirms your timeline of the development of these exercises. I also couldn’t find any traces of them existing before Feng took business in his hands, so to speak. At the same time, recent attempts to back port them to modern Shaolin appear to be just that—attempts. No evidence of the opposite has been presented so far (I know that your hypothesis gives the central place in origin of everything to Shaolin, but the historical community, based on existing evidence, doesn’t support this idea).

With that said, the concept of Chan Si Jin, the power generation method, not exercises, was known before Chen Fake, as you probably know from Chen Xin’s book. It’s also known in Bajiquan, so it must be something having a broad areal of knowledge in North China, in general.

[wayne hansen]

Paramount in Hsing I
Likewise Ba Kua

[salcanzonieri]

Sal, my own research confirms your timeline of the development of these exercises. I also couldn’t find any traces of them existing before Feng took business in his hands, so to speak. At the same time, recent attempts to back port them to modern Shaolin appear to be just that—attempts. No evidence of the opposite has been presented so far (I know that your hypothesis gives the central place in origin of everything to Shaolin, but the historical community, based on existing evidence, doesn’t support this idea).

With that said, the concept of Chan Si Jin, the power generation method, not exercises, was known before Chen Fake, as you probably know from Chen Xin’s book. It’s also known in Bajiquan, so it must be something having a broad areal of knowledge in North China, in general.

Following the historical info, via Shaolin Da Quan AKA the Shaolin Encyclopedia, one lineage is of the XinYi Ba system, this system contains the Rou Quan forms, the Ape-Monkey Form, the Chuan Yuan Gong, the Louhan 13 Postures. As such it is derived from exchange of information from Ji LongFeng (Ji JiKe) and later his students. This would set the time to be the very early Ming era, was that is when Ji LongFeng went to Shaolin. Around 1644? Hence you can see XY influence of these Shaolin forms (mentioned previously). As we know, XY material was also an influence on the development of Chen TJQ, as their manuals contain material from XY manuals as well as from writings from Shaolin influenced Chang NaiZhou (as shown by writers Marnix Wells and others).

Further, Chen family cousins the Li family was famous for their practice of Shaolin material. Shaolin is connected to Dengfeng village, where the Li family is from and Chen village is only 50 miles from Shaolin. We know there was exchange of information between Chen WangTing and their Li cousins, specifically the infamous rebel Li, who fought against the imperial government. Researchers have shown that the majority of the names of Chen form movements are Shaolin Buddhist, not Taoist, including all the weapon forms.

Anyways, the Shaolin forms predate Chen WangTing, and it is known that he also exchanged info with the founder of TongBei, who also has 2 Shaolin teachers, who taught him the Rou Quan forms, as well as Tai Zhu Chan Quan, Hong Quan, and other Shaolin forms that Chen writings have directly said were Shaolin material that directly led to the creation of Chen TJQ.

Thus, there are many intersections that strongly suggest Shaolin and Chen TJQ were overlapping material.
Also, the Chen Lao Jia form closely follows both the sequence of movements and the postures of various Shaolin forms, especially the Shaolin Xie Quan set, which shares specific postural movements that can only be found in Chen Lao Jia and Shaolin Xie Quan and no other forms in all of China have this postures except these two forms.

[yeniseri]

As I look at the thread again and the topic, "silk reeling" is not qigong but a type of movement sequences (somthing of a 'wave generator" that accentuates the posture/form movements as a way to strengthen the "frequency" and "vibration"
of whatever is generated from the opening/closing, expansion/contraction, etc of the specific sequence(s).

The Wave Generation" thang is novel because it enhances the strength of x waves and provides 'snergy' and 'force" . I am referreing to the concept of wave generation using external things to make the wave mpre pronounced for some type of function and utility.

[charles]

Through his Buddhist and Hua Shan Qigong studies, Feng adopted the material and created the specific 30 Silk Reeling Exercises seen today. Further. Feng went to Chen village at least 5 times to interact with the practitioners there, passing on his Silk Reeling exercises.

Sal,

I'm not too interested in getting into protracted academic arguments about "origin theories". However, it seems pretty clear by your statement that you are not familiar with Feng's set of exercises and Chen family forms. While there is no question that Feng was prolific in his creation of adjunct material, few of his isolated silk reeling exercises aren't movements simply extracted from standard Chen family forms used for isolating and practicing the underlying methods driving those movements.

In addition, if you look at the work of Hong Junsheng, Chen Fake's longest standing disciple, he has his particular presentation of the art, the basis of which is two, and only two, specific circles. The two specific circles of his presentation are "variations" of the basic two "silk reeling" arm circles that are found in Feng and Village curricula. Hong referred to his set of basic exercises as ji ben gong, rather than chan si gong.

One can interpret that in one of several ways. First, two students of a single teacher each independantly created something new that is very similar to the other's creation. Second, that the two students collaborated with each other and created two variations of the same thing. Third, neither student created anything new and simply offered their interpretations/variations of what they had learned from their common teacher. Choose which interpretation you like. Which you choose doesn't change the art as it is currently taught and practiced.

Who first extracted movements/actions from Chen forms to practice them separately, or when they first did that, doesn't seem to be of great practical importance. If one turns the question on its head, in early days of many martial arts, individual movements were practiced that were later strung together into a practice sequence or "form" in order to codify the art and to act as a pedagogic tool. The approach of extracting movements from forms for isolated practice of those specific movements is simply a way of deconstructing an art into its basic elements. It is neither a new approach nor a radical one.

[Bob]

Chan si jin can also be developed with a properly weighted qiang with 12 or 13 foot length. You wouldn't necessarily see it many of the clips on youtube as there is a tendency to muscle through the drills - lots of shoulder and back strength in those clips which is not the way to achieve - breath coordination along with slower execution - one arm slow thrusts - heng haa breathing a possibility to also be utilized - some open hand practices can be extracted from the qiang drills

One of 12 for development:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwXXDOtCtDg

[twocircles13]

This thread came up in a Google search for something entirely unrelated a few weeks ago. I was unable to reactivate my old username, but it looks like I only posted 4 times after the 2008 server change, but I was active before then. I have re-introduced myself in the appropriate sub-forum.

In all that time, I was really surprised that discussion of Silk Reeling has not really progressed very much. Many of the same old misconceptions and disagreements still pervade, and a few correct ideas are shared too. Rather than addressing the whole thread or each individual post, let me share my experience and knowledge. Please take what is of value to you and disregard what you consider dross.

I think the OP’s question about the origins of silk reeling exercises has been answered, but let me summarize and add some history. Sometime after Chen Zhaokui’s death in 1981, Chen Xiaowang tried to visit as many of Chen Fake’s students as he could find. I know of the visits to Feng Zhiqiang and Hong Junsheng. Chen asked what and how Chen Fake had taught them.

Feng, although officially a student of Chen Fake, had trained quite a bit with Chen Zhaokui, even though they were about the same age, so a lot of the visit was reminiscing about Chen Zhaokui, comparing and correcting forms and so on. Feng was still in his prime, so some push hands too. I can’t say who taught what to whom, but Chen Xiaowang was the junior student.

It is interesting to compare Chen’s and Hong’s accounts of their visit. Chen said he asked if Hong had ever heard of Silk Reeling Exercises (Chansi Gong) to which Hong answered, “No,” so Chen has said that Chen Fake did not practice Chansi Gong. But Hong adds that he then asked Chen to demonstrate after which Hong laughed and said, “That's just taiji basic training (jibengong) that you have to learn before you can start training taijiquan." Hong also demonstrated how to do some of the foundation training, but he could see that Chen was not grasping what he was doing. Chen (in his 30s) was very dismissive of the visit and said that Hong was a frail, old man (in his 70s) and that he did not get much from the visit. But, just a few years later Chen Zhonghua was seeking a good martial art instructor and was referred by friends to the “Old man in the park that no one can defeat.” He found Hong tossing around the head of a delegation of Japanese karatekas.

Hong is also significant in the silk reeling exercise development question, because of He Shugan. HSG was Hong’s first disciple, and when he went to Beijing University in 1955, Hong wrote a letter introducing HSG to Chen Fake. Chen Fake had HSG stay in his house for about a month until classes began, and HSG studied daily with Chen Fake. Once classes began, HSG traveled weekly to train with Chen Fake until his death in 1957. Although HSG had studied previously with Hong, IIRC, for 7 years, Chen had HSG start over with the basics.

In 2004, I was able to interview He Shugan at his home. During the interview I asked HSG to demonstrate Chen Fake’s jibengong. It consisted of four exercises that could be subdivided into different aspects and progressively led to double-hand circles and moving circles. From that the single-hand circle could also be gleaned. I had trained Feng’s Chansi gong. They were quite different, except that both contained single and double-hand circles, but were still quite different.

In the years since, my take away has been that Feng’s Chansi Gong trained chinna and introduced some energy issuing skills; skills in which Feng and Chen Xiaowang were both interested. Chen Fake’s jibengong trained how to develop silk reeling force (chansi jin). Silk reeling force (Chansi jin) is not a set of exercises, but the force generated by specific methods. A look at what it actually is must wait for another post.

And maybe later, we can discuss from whence the very notion of silk reeling came.

[Mrwawa]

Twocircles13, welcome back. I would like to hear more about what the differences between Hong junsheng and Feng zhiqiang's exercises. You can't leave us hanging like that!

[Bao]

Chen said he asked if Hong had ever heard of Silk Reeling Exercises (Chansi Gong) to which Hong answered, “No,” so Chen has said that Chen Fake did not practice Chansi Gong. But Hong adds that he then asked Chen to demonstrate after which Hong laughed and said, “That's just taiji basic training (jibengong) that you have to learn before you can start training taijiquan."

Thank you for confirming that Silk Reeling Exercises are just very basic beginners exercises. Have always thought they look like beginner exercises in other styles, and that Chen stylists make too much fuzz about them.

I would like to hear more about what the differences between Hong junsheng and Feng zhiqiang's exercises. You can't leave us hanging like that!

I would ditto that.

[Appledog]

The reason we can't come up with an ultimate answer is because silk reeling is a discovery and not an invention.

[johnwang]

the origin of silk reeling ...

Silk reeling is just body pull/push arms. You rotate your body horizontally or vertically, your arms rotated with you.

Many silk reeling application can be seen in this video.



Silk reeling used in single whip.

[twocircles13]

In a previous post, I shared a bit of the history I have learned about Chansi Gong (Silk reeling training).

But, what is Chansi jin?

In its simplest form, Chansi jin is the forces caused by rotation. In physics, we might call this description torque. Torque is included in the concept, but Chansi jin is a somewhat broader concept. It includes the many different ways one can use rotation. For example, it is also the deflecting force if you tried to stand upon a wheel or ball, and it rolled out from under you.

The spirals, curves, helices, and circles and other patterns do not create Chansi jin. The rotation that produces Chansi jin creates the patterns. It is not strictly accurate to say that Chansi jin is spiraling or circling energy, but its not completely wrong either. This is one way treasures are hidden in plain sight.

Chansi jin has strict requirements, or it simply doesn't work. The primary requirement is that the axis or point of rotation must stay fixed relative to the thing the force is acting upon. By analogy, using something soft or weak as a fulcrum (axis of rotation), like a big marshmallow, would not work. Another example, a wheel with bearings around its axle turns smoothly, but remove the bearings and the wheel, when turning, is unstable and can even lock up. A moving axis like this is called wobbling.

Look at a wheel from the side, I place a weight perfectly balanced on one point directly above the axle. If I add "four ounces", or even less, to one side or the other, the Yin energy of the weight sinks on one side of the wheel and the Yang energy rises on the other side of the wheel creating a perfect real life taiji diagram. One challenge of chansi jin is learning to do this anywhere, or everywhere, in your body.

Chen Xin wrote in his classic, published posthumously in 1933,
夺势在争脉；出奇在转关。(*Duó shì zài zhēng mài chūqí zài zhuǎn guān.*)
Seizing power is in striving for the meridian (vein, vessel, channel); To make this happen, surprisingly, is in rotating the (mountain) passes (i.e. joints).

"Seizing power is in striving for the meridian..." in biomechanical terms is vying for whose kinetic chain delivers its full force to the other's body. Whether this is a strike, a joint lock, or some other attack or counter. "...rotating the (mountain) passes (i.e. joints)", is nicely demonstrated in the traditional method of harvesting silk from cocoons.

In taijiquan writings outside the Chen family, Chansi jin is described as "balanced like a scale; spinning like a wheel."

There was a question in this thread about taijiquan sometimes being linear. An answer was given that movements that appear to be linear are actually helical. This is correct. But, taijiquan, if nothing else, is pragmatic. If I have an opening for a liver shot, and the only way to get there is a straight line, I'm going to take it. However, it is always to my advantage to use rotation, if possible. It would have been better to add as much rotation as I can muster to that liver shot. Further, in practice and training, I always want to focus on using Chansi jin correctly in every move.

Another answer to this question is that in addition to rotation around longitudinal axes, chansi jin can also be generated using transverse axes in a seesaw-like rotation. If ones moves the axis of the seesaw to the end of the bone, it will be in the joint. So, there are very few human movements that are truly linear. However, not all human movements, even if they are technically some sort of rotation, that generate chansi jin, but they could if modified. We can discuss this further and using chansi jin in other martial arts, if someone is interested.

I have sought to disambiguate Chansi jin from Chansi gong. Can one use chansi jin in performing chansi gong? Absolutely. In fact, I support the notion that chansi gong is best performed with chansi jin. However, it would just be very difficult to learn chansi jin from chansi gong without a teacher to breakout and show how to use the chansi jin within each exercise.

That is a somewhat lengthy, introduction to Chansi jin, but still, just an introduction. Using Chansi jin is a major hurdle to mastering taijiquan, and it is just one of several essential forces or energies. It has taken me decades of the practice-correction cycle, and more practice to incorporate the least bit of chansi jin effectively in my taijiquan. A major chunk of that time was ridding myself of false notions and habits. I hope this helps you.

Good luck and happy practicing.

Richard Johnson


Another topic brought up in this thread boils down to a history of taijiquan and the evolution of northern Chinese martial arts. I find merit in much of the evidence that Sal C. presents, but I see a very different overall picture than he does, based on his evidence. If Sal will PM me, we can find a question for a new thread that is worthy of a discussion that will benefit all.

[twocircles13]

Twocircles13, welcome back. I would like to hear more about what the differences between Hong junsheng and Feng zhiqiang's exercises. You can't leave us hanging like that!

Does my second post answer any of your questions?

I am not sure I could describe the differences. Showing you would take a few seconds.