how are YOU working on fangsong

[cloudz]

I remember many years ago, when I was playing free push hands with a friends. We often played 2,3 or 4 hours without hardly any breaks. We were not very good back then. We would often start out pretty hard, use way too much strength when I think about it. But as we practiced for many hours, we would get tired and not able to use a lot of strength. So we learned to relax more and better just to be able to keep it up.

Once when we were practicing, I sometimes had a hard time pushing him away. But I remember discovering that I could withdraw slightly and then relax deeply to easily push him away. I would relax my breath, sink down and stretch out my limbs as I pushed, stretching out the joints. I used my whole body and back, while at the same time trying to relax deeper and deeper as I pushed him. I did the same thing over and over again. As soon I caught him or myself resisting, I would let go slightly and then I relaxed deeply while pushing into him. My push was too strong so he had no defense.

It didn't take me 20 years, or someone else to teach me or tell me about this. I had been practicing merely about 5 or 7 years back then, or something like that. I discovered by my own how to "release" into my opponent as a consequence of my practice and understanding.

And BTW, this is why you need practical partner practice. You should practice against an opponent, trying to become better maintaining the basic, fundamental principles while practicing against someone else. You should learn how to stay rooted and relaxed while someone tries to push you or drag you around, and to continue to relax against a resisting opponent. When you understand how to maintain your internal alignment, and understand how to "release" into your own actions, you will discover what Tai Chi is supposed to be.

all in all this a great post..

in the first paragraph you basically describe what all stand up grapplers and wrestlers do (a lot); be it sumo, be it judo, be it greco roman and so on.
is there really any better way to get better at something than the doing of it. You can do trainings and drills that help; isolate things or whatever. But basically no.

something like a tai chi form could fall into that category; but there can't be anything better than the thing itself. people will have the same process, whatever style. Intuition, experience, tiredness, just plain discovery of what works will all play its part. A good coach can obviously be massive.

I think to 'relax deeply' under pressure of external force is a thing, but was only really made possible by the hours you put in being pushed around and pushing people around. And I bet, most of the time, it looked pretty ugly. Every now an again what feels so effortless is timing a direct push - when someone is vulnerable to it. I recall sending someone flying out at a class with a push. It felt ridiculously effortless - I couldn't be more 'relaxed' as i did it. I think it had more to do with timing - (they lacked the right 'footing' to defend/ no rooting) - than anything else. but ok.. sometimes we look for causes for things, and I'll accept that the more you do something the more 'relaxed' you can be doing it - if that means less muscular tension. You have to become economical with it; more and more so you learn this over time put in.

what I will add, is that competition is another step up in intensity, however hard you go with partners and training friends/ class mates. It may last a little then inevitable you get to know them more and more - not in terms of friends but what they do. The unknown, uncertainty factor adds it own hurdle to overcome initially. (another one)..

It's really not easy.

That's why it's so annoying when you get woo woo clips or on the other spectrum critiques of 'too pushy and shove, too much li not jin...(hhmm that's just a weirdly tai chi critique if ever I heard one, but i think they just mean too much strength..), looks messy as shit.' Oh yeah ok.... it just is what it is. Mario Napoli in Chen village ? yea sure, what do 'you' actually expect to see in that environment and that ruleset. And Napoli was about right when he said their level was around that of a Judo brown belt. Do i believe he wasn't "relaxed'? about as relaxed as he could be in that situation facing that much strength against him. so no - I don't believe he wasn't, from the outside I don't think you can even judge that kind of thing very well; and I live in the real world..

[everything]

A lot of the "ju" do I've felt isn't very ju. A lot of times the "if pushed, pull" can be a "try hard to use force" but in the other direction. Other times, it can be like "roll back". Trying to be more "ju" is a fun and interesting way to work on the "song", though.

[Kelley Graham]

All the time. I was giving my fiancée a hug the other day and relaxed after squeezing her. She was effortlessly uprooted and found it very unsettling. I find moments throughout the day to release tension. It's like a small check of myself and then attempt to release. When I'm walking around, particularly up stairs, I attempt to root from the dantian and use integrated arm swings in conjunction with my gait. It's a constant feedback loop between daily action and my body method.

I would look very closely at this. In my practice, there is an important boundary that should be respected and maintained between you and others. Fansong should not result in affects outside your body. This distinction is very important for later understanding and safe practice of shen.

[cloudz]

if it's specific kind of exercises you're after..

I'd maybe suggest the various swings perhaps. Sometimes rather than define what song is, think of the qualities you would expect, other than 'relaxed' which to be honest is a bit ambiguous.

I would say quality wise a kind of heaviness and springiness. The combination of the stretching out and dropping from swings is a good place to start.
sometimes called loosening exercises - they are a bit of a staple of IMA systems including TCC. There's also I kind of in built release to them/ dissipation of tension. open/ close (extension - compression). so much really, wouldn't be without them..

Why don't you answer the question.. are you doing swings, why do you ask this, it's really a part of any CIMA exercise set; do you have one.
It's kind of intrinsic and fundamental, are you training, are you serious about it, what's the story here ?

[Quigga]

Everything, what is ju?

The pictures of Daoist peeps using a crane or dragon to soar high up in the sky start to make more sense now. Don't people also add the modifier 'feeling weightless' to very pleasurable moments sometimes?

[Quigga]

All the time. I was giving my fiancée a hug the other day and relaxed after squeezing her. She was effortlessly uprooted and found it very unsettling. I find moments throughout the day to release tension. It's like a small check of myself and then attempt to release. When I'm walking around, particularly up stairs, I attempt to root from the dantian and use integrated arm swings in conjunction with my gait. It's a constant feedback loop between daily action and my body method.

I would look very closely at this. In my practice, there is an important boundary that should be respected and maintained between you and others. Fansong should not result in affects outside your body. This distinction is very important for later understanding and safe practice of shen.

Yeah you shouldn't manipulate people knowingly or unknowingly at all cost. Don't mess with other's minds...

[cloudz]

he means the ju in jujutsu/ ju do
means soft.

sure soft is good, but you can't really have one without the other.
it's perhaps yielding skill and other skills; but that stuff isn't enough on its own.
there's a thread on those kind of skills stick, follow so on

At some point you are going to have to absorb someone else's strength at the least and hold firm - you can't run forever; no matter how skilled you are.. And that takes its own kind of strength. The strength of the posture at the very least. Connection, root, stability. That stuff isn't "soft" per se and won't feel like it.. otherwise it would get run over.

[Quigga]

Whenever I tried to firmly hold on to something, life broke me in some way. Not saying I'm done learning, far from it.

[Bao]

Thanks Cloudz,

I think to 'relax deeply' under pressure of external force is a thing, but was only really made possible by the hours you put in being pushed around and pushing people around. And I bet, most of the time, it looked pretty ugly.

I am sure both is true.

And I continued to make a lot of mistakes many years onwards. I was by far the best in our little class, but still, I often felt that I sucked and thought that I would never "get" it. It took a very long time to learn how to always stay relaxed and to keep the play "light".

Every now an again what feels so effortless is timing a direct push - when someone is vulnerable to it. I recall sending someone flying out at a class with a push. It felt ridiculously effortless - I couldn't be more 'relaxed' as i did it. I think it had more to do with timing - (they lacked the right 'footing' to defend/ no rooting) -

Yeah, it always feel effortless when you do it correct. One thing, might as you say, has to do with timing, or that you managed to unbalance/uproot the other person. But also, when you really relax through what you do, no strength gets stuck inside own body. All of the movement/momentum is transferred into the opponent. If you feel that you did something strong, it means that the strength got stuck inside your own body.


..... I had to look up what Li Yaxuan wrote, I remembered it vaguely. Think it suits the topic well...

When you spontaneously issue relaxed instantaneous energy from the dan tian it can cause your partner or opponent to jump out, or collapse when it penetrates deeply into him. You may push him far away, or you may hurt or even kill him. This is not ordinary physical energy. It is deeply sunk, completely relaxed, and issues instantaneously without any chance of detection or interception.

The ability to issue this kind of energy results from daily practice of total relaxation. From that this kind of energy will jump to your hands, but if you don’t devote your daily practice to complete relaxation you’ll never get it.

You have to achieve relaxation, but without forcing it. When you practice, think of relaxation, the concept or even the word, with your whole heart and mind. With consistent high-quality practice of a long period, you’ll begin to achieve real relaxation. And only then can you issue energy as described above. If you practice with adherence to the concept of “balancing hard and soft”, you’ll never get anywhere near the real state of relaxation, even if you practice your entire life.

So just keep working on relaxation alone in your daily practice, keep thinking only of that. Holding the idea of “balancing hard and soft” will guarantee that you'll never realize the power of true relaxation.

(From: Li Yaxuan’s 35 Points on Push Hands Training)

[everything]

he means the ju in jujutsu/ ju do
means soft.

sure soft is good, but you can't really have one without the other.
it's perhaps yielding skill and other skills; but that stuff isn't enough on its own.
there's a thread on those kind of skills stick, follow so on

At some point you are going to have to absorb someone else's strength at the least and hold firm - you can't run forever; no matter how skilled you are.. And that takes its own kind of strength. The strength of the posture at the very least. Connection, root, stability. That stuff isn't "soft" per se and won't feel like it.. otherwise it would get run over.

imho I don't have the "internal" "peng" and that is a different story (no getting run over) we can leave out, but my interpretation (at the moment) and experience for judo is the legs are quite strong, kind of legs yang, arms yin. if we use something like very soft "roll back", the upper body is quite "blended"/redirecting/leading/soft. if there is enough force to borrow, a kind of easy tai chi 101 is pretty easy. if you do a hip throw, the legs are strong, the upper bodies are moving. the "dominant center" as cartmell might say moves the other body. this is all fine and good. quite good. so yin/yang are balanced in a couple of different ways. if this is clear, I'd claim that it seems every longtime member on the board can do that. it's great and fun. we can say "more fang song", this should be better/easier/more "effortless". but this kind of stops short of the rest of the story (that we can leave out as the board doesn't seem to like that).

[everything]

exercises you're after

sorry, I missed this. I'm not really after anything. Or rather, for this topic, I'm just curious what everyone else is doing.

Maybe I should've been more clear, but I figured the YOU in all caps was clear enough. Was typing on phone. If I would've written more, it would've said something like "not interested in theories for the thread's purpose ... what are you actually doing?" But whatever people want to talk about is good.

[Michael Babin]

Bao and Cloudz summed up my opinion very nicely a little earlier in the thread when it comes to taiji as a martial discipline. Of course, most modern students aren't interested in anything beyond the relaxation that comes with any competent version of taiji solo form or qigong and that's fine for most. Anything that interrupts the modern tendency to have frozen shoulders, and a stiff uncoordinated torso is worth doing. For martial purposes from a taiji perspective, solo form and auxilliary exercises are necessary supports for a whole body of skills and attributes that are easier to write about than to achieve and maintain.

In my own training, aside from doing a variety of solo forms, I like arm swinging in both the vertical and horizontal formats... lots and lots of those. The Opening Posture and Cloud Hands are the most obvious manifestations of those simple exercises in the Yang forms. Cheng Man Ching apparently referred to the horizontal format as the Bear posture. Those exercises look superficially easy but are bugger hard to get right without proper instruction and some supervision on how you approach them.

In addition, Many years ago, I did a lot of standing qigong of various types and that trains a certain kind of relaxation very well but most people I've met won't invest the time to get any real benefit from standing. For years, I used to recommend it to my students and most of the time, I could see their eyes glazing over as they paid lip-service to how they should probably work on that.

I don't stand still anymore as I am getting old and it won't be too many years before my "stillness" is the kind that is permanent. I gotta move while I still have the time and some energy.

[Mrwawa]

In addition, Many years ago, I did a lot of standing qigong of various types and that trains a certain kind of relaxation very well but most people I've met won't invest the time to get any real benefit from standing.

This is where I am in trying to song. I think that if I can't achieve it here, then how am I going to do it while moving. Just where my practice is right now

[wiesiek]

standing, yes
Thanks Michael
wonder, why it showin` up so late in such thread...
"standing still" is the most simple and most advanced exercise in the same time.
Moving form(s) are the application of song trained in standing meditation.
Answer for thread`s q.- This is how I train fansong gong.

btw
judo means >way of the softness<
Hard to believe when you`re lookin` on contemporary competition, dough.
however,
quite easy to see in "nage no kata"(basic groups of throws), performed during "higher" ranks examines.

[cloudz]

Just to add, mention another important factor - though they all coalesce.

Alignment; both under load and not under load. It can take some time to fully appreciate this aspect.
But there are some simple ideas/ exercises that can illustrate.

Simply playing with a weighted item we can feel how our muscular and connective tissues fire tension; bringing that weight into an aligned position, dissipates most of that, not all perhaps but a lot. Now 'relax', under load; it's certainly possible to relax more. However it's important to realise that tension that results from a muscle under contraction is not 'bad tension'. Li or muscular force has gotten a bad rep in certain tai chi circles. But how true is that. There nothing wrong in seeing jin as trained or skilled force, but Li is a a part of that. It's like us having two inter changeable words like strength and force, add to that power even.

The problem comes in how the tai chi community has come to view certain distinctions based around terminology and the bias this can lead to.
Wang XiangZhai may have recognised this many years ago.. and I'm not pointing fingers; I'm sure it wasn't just the tai chi community back then either.
And it's not just Yiquan people who use terms like Fa Li or Fan tang Li.

To deny strength in Chinese Martial arts is a huge deviation from 'the truth' (tm).. As it was already posted I'll cite the Yang family and in particular the YSC descendants who practice 'power pushing' and compare that and some styles of the Yang form to CMC style.

This is not to knock CMC style of the people out there promoting softness and relaxing 'sung'.. and so on..
There are and always will be two sides to the coin. But for whatever reason the 'yang' side, if you will has been overlooked or looked down on as 'wrong'. By too many, too often.

Ji power is a good example of this; it's the drum skin. How does that feel when you run into it? soft, mushy, pliable, yielding, sticky ?
Hell to the No !
I've come to suspect, even firmly believe, this was the Yangs 'secret sauce'.

Just to come back to 'relax', whilst technically sung may not translate or map directly; removing unnecessary tension is and always will be important. If only a matter of being economical and not wanting to impede receiving and issuing of force.

Another exercise to discern optimal alignment and tension, without load this time, is simply rocking. I first got this through a Sam Chin student - a great lineage holder and Internal Martial Artist in his own right - and it also turned up in the 24 Nei gung I learnt in the CTH lineage.

It is simply 'rocking', like many exercises it it deceptively simple, but great depth can be plumbed and or derived. It's just a matter of committing the time and taking it as a meditation unto itself - if you will.

the rocking is back and forth, but you can play with side to side later if you like. As you rock gently forward (slowly) feel the tension building up from the front side from the feet up. This can and will climb as high as you may or can allow. Hold it, feel it, recognise and understand it. What is it, what is it doing; why the hell is it there anyway ?

Now reverse, dissolve that shit. Keep you mind in it, helping you do the work as you gently 'rock' back to neutral. Do the same to the rear.
Then there is 'the middle' or neutral. How does that feel? Where is the tension now. It's the perfect 'stack', it is the central equilibrium.
This is where you want to live, or return to more precisely - when you move (assuming you're on your feet), under load, not under load.