Origins of silk reeling Qigong in Chen style taijiquan

[twocircles13]

[Deleted]

[robert]

This is Zhang Xue Xin’s video of the Chansi Gong. It is close enough to Feng Zhiqing’s Chansi Gong that I don’t remember a difference. I don’t know how they compare to Chen Xiaowang’s.

I trained SR with both ZXX and CXW. I would characterize CXW's SR set as a jibengong that's designed to teach someone the body mechanics of chan si jin. They're simple movements that let you focus on how you're moving. IIRC there are 8 or 9 movements. They're a stepping-stone. FZQ's/ZXX's SR set is a stand-alone system. It looks like there are 25 movements in FZQ's set. Here's part of a write up I got with ZXX's videos.

Silk Reeling Exercises

This video is Volume I - “Silk-Reeling Exercises" of the Feng Zhi Qiang Taijiquan series and it is demonstrated by Master Feng Zhi Qiang's senior indoor student Master Zhang Xue Xin and his students.

Master Zhang will demonstrate the complete set of silk-reeling (known as Chan Si Gong in Pinyin) and dantian rotation exercises arranged by Master Feng based on his studies of Chen style Taijiquan. One major objective of this set of spiral exercises is to open up and exercise the 18 major joint areas of the body (in sequence from the head to the ankles). The 18 major joints consist of: neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, chest, abdomen, waist, kuas, hips, knees, and ankles.

These 18 major joints are also referred to as 18 "balls" of the human body. By harmonizing the internal turning and external twisting with the Qi and Yi via the silk-reeling exercises, one can reach a state where the entire body will become an integrated "Taiji sphere...

These exercises also train the famous eight energies of Taijiquan - Peng, Lu, Ji, An, Cai, Lie, Jou, and Kao along with qinna (joint locking and grappling) and counter-qinna movements.

Master Zhang and his students will also demonstrate applications of the silk-reeling exercises and the fundamental dantian rotation exercises.

All of the exercises presented are useful foundation training not only for students of Chen style Taijiquan but for students of any style of Taijiquan. They are also a good foundation for students of related internal martial arts such as Baguazhang and Xingyiquan."

[EDIT] I could not get the YouTube code to work to embed the video, but the URL seems to work fine.

I think you need a full url to embed YT. Short urls and the urls supplied by share don't work? FYI.

[twocircles13]

I trained SR with both ZXX and CXW. I would characterize CXW's SR set as a jibengong that's designed to teach someone the body mechanics of chan si jin. They're simple movements that let you focus on how you're moving. IIRC there are 8 or 9 movements. They're a stepping-stone. FZQ's/ZXX's SR set is a stand-alone system. It looks like there are 25 movements in FZQ's set. Here's part of a write up I got with ZXX's videos.
...
I think you need a full url to embed YT. Short urls and the urls supplied by share don't work? FYI.

I did a quick search for Chen Xiaowang and Silk Reeling, Chansi Gong. Included in the results was these two videos. The first one only show Chen Xiaowang teaching positive and negative circles, then two-hand patterns. Thinking back to others of the Chen family, they also limited their teaching to these patterns.



A 2013 video shows Chen Xiaowang performing a set more similar to Feng Zhiqiang’s.



Thanks for the tip on embedding videos.

[wayne hansen]

Can anyone tell me the difference and when Chen started teaching the new version
And a reason why they changed
Like with Huangs 5 exercises I have my theories why he changed the manner and order and I know when

[robert]

Can anyone tell me the difference and when Chen started teaching the new version
And a reason why they changed

If you're talking about the two videos of CXW above, the difference is that the top video isn't a full video, it's just the first part of CXW's SR set.

[wayne hansen]

I misunderstood just finished watching both
I thought they meant he had changed how he did it to be more like Feng
Now realise that it was referring to the composition not the manner

[charles]

Although Taijiquan is based upon a set of principles, there are many variations in interpretations of how to physically implement those principles. This gives rise to variations in how movements are performed between styles, within styles and from one teacher to another within the same style. Add into the mix differences in purposes or goals of practice – for example, for health versus martial efficacy - and one sees even greater variation in how movements are performed. In addition, it is not uncommon for some teachers to alter what and/or how they perform their movements as they age as their focus changes towards practice for health and longevity.

In the case of Chen style Taijiquan, Hong Junsheng, Chen Fake’s (CFK) longest-standing disciple, observed that CFK performed his movements one way in solo practice and another during application. With CFK’s approval, Hong altered how movements were performed in solo practice to be the same as how they were performed in application. Hong observed that to be effective, the movements needed to be performed in a specific way, a way more strict than commonly required for solo practice: practicing for health has less stringent requirements. Hong called his resulting approach “Practical Method”.

In my experience, it isn’t uncommon in many styles of Taijiquan that the solo movements are performed one way and when required to be martially effective (i.e., applied) are performed a different way. For example, many students are unable to get form movements to work as applications, while their teachers can: the teacher is doing something different than the students, often without explicitly telling the student what the difference is.

In Chen Village solo practice, the elbows are often raised, and is a basic element of most solo practice, including foundational silk reeling circles. Chen Xiaowang (CXW), for example, explicitly teaches that during an “outgoing” portion of a circle “qi” travels from the dantian to the mingmen, up the back to the shoulder, to the elbow and then to the hand. Feng Zhiqiang’s training doesn’t explicitly teach this pathway but performs the circle similarly. By contrast, in Hong’s Practical Method, it is taught from the onset that raising the elbows is an error in any part of practice and is to be avoided from day one. In application, regardless of sub-style, the elbows are rarely raised since a raised elbow is a liability easily taken advantage of by an opponent or partner. One of the distinguishing characteristics between Hong’s “silk reeling” and that of Village/Feng is the use/non-use of the elbow.

This leads to a second distinguishing characteristic. With Village/Feng solo silk reeling circles, and the dantian/mingmen/shoulder/elbow/hand sequence, the movement of the elbow precedes the movement of the hand. In Hong’s style, the hand precedes the elbow. In long weapons training – and some shorter weapons training, such as saber – the hand must precede the elbow: the weapon won’t work if the elbow leads. For example, if thrusting a spear outwards, the forward hand leads the action, not the elbow. Similarly, when withdrawing the spear, the opposite occurs: the elbow leads the hand, pulling back with the elbow as the hand follows. In Village/Feng solo (empty hand) work, the elbow leads in outward-going movements while the hand leads on inward-going movements, the exact opposite of Practical Method. This has huge implications in how the solo movements – including the basic “silk reeling” circles – are performed and trained.

Another significant difference between Hong and Village/Feng methods was already mentioned by Richard: one cannot move the fulcrum during application since doing so reduces it efficacy. In practice, this means that one does not shift weight back and forth during application. In Village/Feng solo practice, there is a constant shifting of weight back and forth. (It is interesting to see video of Feng pushing hands where he does very little weight shift.)

In the 1990’s, when CXW was travelling the world to give seminars, he explicitly taught that there is one foundational principle and three techniques for achieving that principle. The First Principle is that when one part of the body moves, the entire body moves, or, put another way, when the dantian moves, the whole body moves. He taught that there are three techniques for achieving that. The first technique is to move the dantian left and right, that is, in a plane parallel to the front of the torso, i.e., the Coronal/Frontal plane. The second technique is to move the dantian forward and back, i.e., in the Sagittal plane. The third technique is any combination of the previous two, that is, movement of the dantian on any arbitrary plane.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jo ... n-body.ppm

CXW teaches movement of the dantian left and right using the common “arm circle” silk reeling exercise and its immediate variations. The arm circle exercise can be performed in two directions of rotation that he does not explicitly label. CXW teaches movement of the dantian forward and back using a single circling-of-the-wrists-against-the-abdomen exercise. That is the entirety of the silk reeling exercises he teaches, at least publicly: the arm circle, its variations, with and without stepping, and the wrist exercise.

I have not encountered any other teacher who presents the material in the terms CXW uses. Zhu Tiancai, for example, does not explicitly teach it this way. He does, however, present something that CXW does not, the most common ways in which the arm circles can be combined, as seen in forms. Zhu presents these in his 13-posture neigong set.

By contrast, Hong does not present or conceptualize movement this way: he does not breakdown three-dimensional movement into 2D (i.e., planar) motions. What he does do is present two – and only two – “3D circles” that form the basis for the entirety of the style, its solo work and applications. He explicitly distinguishes each direction of the circle, calling one “positive” and the other “negative”, terminology not used in other Chen variants. The entirety of forms are comprised of these two circles and/or portions thereof. (This is vaguely implied in Village presentations but left to the student to figure out, or not.) In Hong’s method, if one cannot identify at any place in any form or application which of the two circles are being performed, the action is being performed incorrectly. As in Zhu’s neigong set, there are eight most-common combinations of two circles with two arms.

In Feng’s teachings, none of the above is explicitly taught or stated: he, generally, did not break movement into 2D components, did not assign specific movements or actions to movement of the dantian (i.e., the basic arm circle being dantian moving left and right), did not teach that there are two and only two basic arm circles or that they could be combined to become the basis for all form and application movements.

One of the biggest differences between Feng’s silk reeling set and CXW’s silk reeling set is that Feng included many different actions with a wide variety of body parts, while CXW’s is almost entirely a presentation of the two basic circles with their variations. Feng included much more general training that includes things like striking with shoulders, elbows, back, chest, knees, forearm rubbing, grabbing, wrapping, punching, kicking, foot sweeps, and so on: its focus is much more along the lines of developing “the whole body is a fist”. In my opinion, Feng’s silk reeling set, along with his Hunyuan qigong set, are his primary contribution to Taijiquan. However, as Feng aged, he dramatically changed how he performed his solo work, including the silk reeling exercises, with much greater emphasis on health and longevity. He added more circles to movements, made the circles looser and less well-defined and introduced a lot of swaying back and forth and bending at the waist. Feng would turn on and off martial effectiveness at will, switching between loose, ill-defined movements to suddenly focused effective application, demonstrating the difference between how it was practiced solo and how it was effectively used.

The above only scratches the surface of what is similar and what is different between Village, Feng and Hong styles. There are some significant differences and some similarities.

Charles

[charles]

I agree with Richard that Zhang Xuexin's demonstration of Feng's silk reeling set is the best that I've seen, if one ignores the voice-over. He was paid $200 to be filmed. Later he produced his own video of the silk reeling set that was not as informative. One of Zhang's students, Brian Guan, has a demonstration of the set grouped by body part. https://www.silkreeler.com/articles/silkreeling

Tentatively, later this year, I'll record a detailed instructional video of Feng's silk reeling set. Unfortunately, despite the popularity of Feng's style, it is not well documented and relatively little effective teaching material is available.

[Bob]

Charles - much-needed thanks for your efforts in providing that post - extremely informative

[robert]

I have not encountered any other teacher who presents the material in the terms CXW uses. Zhu Tiancai, for example, does not explicitly teach it this way. He does, however, present something that CXW does not, the most common ways in which the arm circles can be combined, as seen in forms. Zhu presents these in his 13-posture neigong set.

I agree with you - I am not aware of others who teach SR the way that CXW does. I thought I'd point out that two of CFK's students, Shen Jiazhen and Gu Liuxin wrote a book about CFK's taijiquan Called Chen Style Taijiquan and in it they break down taijiquan body mechanics in the same manner. Here's the beginning of section 5 of Chapter 1.

The Fifth Characteristic
Lumbar Spine Takes the Lead, Internal and External Appear Together, Joint by Joint Strung Together Movement

As can be seen from the above four rules, in order to achieve one moves all move, it is necessary to use the lumbar spine serving as the center, because the yao (waist) is the central axis that rotates simultaneously to the left and right, and the spine bends up and down. Taijiquan movement important one move all moves, in that way movement first should not simply revolve left and right, also should not be dedicated to the up and down, forward and backward produce bending movement, and it is necessary to use the lumbar spine to combine, so that the movement is both left and right and up and down, forward and backward, in order to establish one moves all move as the foundation.

Later in the section there are two diagrams, one of side to side movement and the other of front to back movement.


https://drive.google.com/file/d/10q4QTQfzOSoDm4-0Ze3XRWujzeDEsyMp/view?usp=share_link


https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kzCc6T8xkcXJSakREPRGgmh-lqhGHL_8/view?usp=share_link

FYI.

[charles]

I agree with you - I am not aware of others who teach SR the way that CXW does. I thought I'd point out that two of CFK's students, Shen Jiazhen and Gu Liuxin wrote a book about CFK's taijiquan Called Chen Style Taijiquan and in it they break down taijiquan body mechanics in the same manner.

I know that the book was written and have read a few translated excerpts.

Are you suggesting that the presentation that CXW uses is, essentially, from that book?

Hong waited until after the authors died to comment of the content of the book. He apparently disagreed with some aspects of what was written.

[Bao]

Thank you Charles for the breakdown and explanation, very good post.

[robert]

Are you suggesting that the presentation that CXW uses is, essentially, from that book?

No, but I am pointing out that the analysis is not original. One of Chen Bing's students published a book on 25 Chen taiji training secrets. He grouped them into categories - in silk reeling method he has -

纏絲法
Chan Si Fa
Silk Reeling Method

以腰爲軸
Yi yao wei zhou (zhou - axis/axle/spool [for thread])
Use the waist/lower back as an axis

胸腰折疊
Xiong yao zhe die
Chest and waist bend/fold

丹田運轉
Dantian yun zhuan
Dantian is used to turn/to change direction

節節貫串
Jie jie guan chuan
Joint by joint strung together


意到氣到, 氣到形到
Yi dao qi dao, qi dao xing dao
The intention goes to [a place] and qi goes to [the place], the qi goes to [a place] and the form (body) goes to [the place]

內外相合, 周身一家
Nei wai xiang he zhou shen yi jia
The inside and outside mutually harmonize with the whole body as one family

https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Tai-Chi-Taijiquan-Disciplines/dp/1548554553

Hong waited until after the authors died to comment of the content of the book. He apparently disagreed with some aspects of what was written.

HJS wrote -

“Chen Style Tajiquan” promoted the idea of shifting the center of gravity to the left or to the right. This is contrary to the principles of “the waist is like the axle of a wheel" and “erect like a balance scale.” They both misunderstood the meaning of “fast interspersed with slow" referred to in Chen Ziming's book. They thought it meant there were different speeds within one form. This destroys the balance of the
movements. Also, the beginning and ending of the Cannon Fist is not in the same location.

In SJZ's & GLX's book they write about empty & solid -

At the beginning of learning, the movement can be very empty and very solid, later step by step train to become small empty and small solid, and finally achieving internally there is empty and solid and externally the empty and solid are not seen, which is the deepest gongfu of empty and solid.

[Trip]

I'm not a Chen stylist, but Charles,
I was waiting for you to return to this thread.

You returned, and you did not disappoint!
Two Thumbs up!

Tentatively, later this year, I'll record a detailed instructional video of Feng's silk reeling set. Unfortunately, despite the popularity of Feng's style, it is not well documented and relatively little effective teaching material is available.

Looking forward to this video

[twocircles13]

Neither the best video nor words will convey what is best obtained from both direct-feedback, hands-on instruction and lots of repetition. If you don’t have the instruction, at least, try repetition. However, unlike some exercises, this is also a promise that these will yield fruit for your taijiquan.

Below, He Shugan performs just the advanced versions of two exercises from Chen Fake’s Jibengong. Although there is movement, most of the connections and work are internal, so unseen. These are not silk reeling exercises, per se, however proficiency in these exercises will set you on the path to discovering Chansi Jin, silk reeling force, and other essential elements of Taijiquan. Although initially taught to He Shugan by Hong Junsheng, these exercises were personally corrected by Chen Fake until he was pleased with them.

Each drill in Chen Fake's jibengong adds complexity to the previous foundation. From a modern perspective, each drill modifies the mental focus, kinetic chain, and neuromuscular pathway through the body based on a basic theme.

The first exercise:
1. Twisting towel (forward)
2. Six sealing four closing (45° to each side)
3. Drawing water from the well, aka Fetch water.
a. on each side (45° to the side and 45° descending)
b. alternating sides (demonstrated in the video)

The second exercise:
1. Carry a pole, or Carry water (on a pole).
a. The axis of rotation of the upper extremity should extend through one of the fingers of each hand, usually the middle finger. That finger should not move in space, only rotate. You can even fix it on something like a wall to start with. Neither hand should move in space only rotate.
b. Slide your hands in and out along the pole.
c. As you rotate the hands they can start to come down "off the pole" but they must remain in the same plane. (Demonstrated in the video)
Note: The pole does not need be a straight line (180°) across your shoulders. It should be bent at about 135°.

With the physical knowledge obtained from practicing the first exercises, you can know what is happening internally in Taijiquan and is directly applicable to the form and push hands.

The single-hand positive and negative circles is normally taught next, and since that is common among all teachers that was probably Chen Fake's method. However, to me, since I've been training with two hands, it feels most natural to move into two-hand circles, and then isolate each hand to train what it does in detail in single-hand circles. But, this is an individual preference.



Watching internal exercises is always underwhelming to me. Take standing or sitting meditation, what is it that you are seeing? Similarly, it may be a little difficult to see what is going on. It looks like he is just shifting his hands back and forth, but there is so much going on internally that it usually takes months of hands-on instruction to break it all down.

In our 2004 interview, He Shugan demonstrated the first levels of these drills. My teacher, Chen Zhonghua was well acquainted with these drills, because he had learned them from Hong Junsheng and trained them for years. Almost immediately, he was ready to move on. Though I also had learned most, if not all, of the drills, I had an “a-ha” moment.

Notice that He keeps his elbows close to his ribs. When he showed us the exercises in shirt sleeves, I noticed that the palm turning upward actually squeezes inward toward the core line (dantian). Yet, it appears to go forward (down the leg) because of the rotation of the hips and torso. This creates an optical illusion that the upward turning hand is reaching forward when it is actually squeezing inward. The other, downward-turning hand is the one that can actually move away from the body, though in these versions of the drills it is kept close. Chen Zhonghua also teaches this, but not initially, so it is hidden in his method, which focuses on optimal alignment for eventual usage.

The method shown by He Shugan illustrates two rules of energy in taijiquan. The first was explained by @Charles in his lengthy reply above on p. 7. These are each topics for another thread.

"Out with the hand; In with the elbow."

The second is

"To withdraw is to issue."

Chen Zhonghua has a lot of videos on these exercises and many different levels both on Practical Method channel on YouTube and free trailers and videos for purchase on his website, practicalmethod.com. I am not saying you need to purchase a video, so don't go there.

This is a pretty good one and exemplary of his teaching method. At the end, he shows the kinetic chain of "Fetch Water.” If you have a practice partner experiment with this too.



The OP was curious about the origins of silk reeling exercises. That name was used by Feng Zhiqiang and Chen Xiaowang. Who was first is largely irrelevant because Chen Fake taught foundation exercises (jibengong) that they modified and relabeled as Silk Reeling Exercises. Chen Fake also said that he never taught anything that was not taught to him in his family, so the roots likely go back further than we can trace.

EDIT: to the OP’s title, I try to avoid the term “qigong". It is simply to broad and poorly defined.