The Heart and Spine are Important

[BruceP]

Letting go, relaxing, fansong, hanging the spine, and other verbal concepts do not directly address the underlying issue. the underlying issue is our big brains and compensatory structural changes. this is a deep topic. what feels normal and relaxed for the beginner is the opposite of what internal training reveals over time. language, culture, power structures and social expectations reinforce these compensatory adaptations. a list of points or affirmations in practice do little to address issues of internal power in a full everyday life context. i teach according to this principle. "Big brains and socialization result in funny movement." Our identity is based on these postural expectations and adaptations and is very difficult to change. Again, a very deep topic.

Postural, structural and alignment habits are very difficult to change if a litany of directives (like the things you listed) are pushed to the forefront of the learner's mind - especially in the case of a beginner. It's a big mistake to put that in front of what a person is working with regards their current/immediate state of being at the outset of studying internal method(s). An even bigger mistake is to believe that a beginner doesn't have it within themselves to at least glimpse the integration of internal method in very short order - maybe, and sometimes, on their first day.

Without ever being told all that BS having to do with YCF's Ten Essentials or the Torso Methods etc, it's been my experience that an individual can physically understand the essence of internal method as far as their body is able, at any given time. Every body has to start somewhere and it's far better to start with no instruction and continue to study with no instruction for at least several months.

'Normal and relaxed' per se is replaced with free and easy, natural and spontaneous. Moving from the center can be experienced - and physically understood - on a person's first day without ever having been told that moving from the center is one of the things they're training toward. That experience of moving from the center serves as a reference point and proprioceptive 'memory' of what it feels like to move from the center. The same holds true regards dantien.

One approach to experiencing the development and a working knowledge of internal method is to have the learner explore the training material intuitively without instruction or jargon. Testing the development as much as working the material in solo is also essential - right from the first day - so that what has been self-imparted will stick as their current working knowledge of internal method. In that way, free and easy will always be normal and relaxed. Proper training and time spent takes care of everything else.

[origami_itto]

依規矩。熟規矩。化規矩。神規矩。不離規矩。

[GrahamB]

The ecological approach:

https://www.simplypsychology.org/bronfenbrenner.html

[Kelley Graham]

The ecological approach:

https://www.simplypsychology.org/bronfenbrenner.html

Good material. A bit stale. Would you care to share your opinion as to it's application to the topic?

[GrahamB]

Well I wouldn't want to speak for Bruce, (not would I want to) but I think you could characterise his approach to teaching as the ecological approach, whether he's ever heard of it or not.

It's become very popular in BJJ circles thanks to Greg Souders:



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

[BruceP]

Well I wouldn't want to speak for Bruce, (not would I want to) but I think you could characterise his approach to teaching as the ecological approach, whether he's ever heard of it or not.

It's become very popular in BJJ circles thanks to Greg Souders:



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

I don't have an approach to teaching because I've never been a teacher and have never had students.

That article you linked made absolutely no sense to me even after reading it twice, in trying to find a parallel between what I do and what the ecological approach is about.

The video however made some things clear - a really good discussion. Souders is very articulate and precise with the language he uses to outline his approach. In the interview, Souders cited JJ Gibson, so I looked him up and unless I'm mistaken the link you posted to the article about Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory is an entirely different thing than Gibson's Direct Perception.

At any rate, many of the same ideas are shared in what we've each developed (no techniques - the absence of deference between trainees and coach/facilitator - forced ownership - train for failure...) and we're both respecting the same truths of the evolution of an individual's learning. But there are a couple of fundamental differences that make our respective pedagogies quite different.

Context is the main difference and represents an immediate departure for everything else in each of our learning models that may be similar in principle, but the contextual element makes them very different in practice.

The second difference is that BJJ is a tactile, mechanical art whereas my approach to IMA is not - perception is applied to different learning media in each of our approaches.

I really liked Joey's comments at around 49:00 where he talks about teachers assimilating or otherwise co-opting words and terminologies that they don't have clue about. They can say the words, but have no experiential understanding of what the words connote. It's been my minor peeve here at RSF since forever.

Greg talked about his method of addressing stalls in a trainee's problem solving at around1:04:00 that's similar to my own 'Socratic' method of having beginners discover how to put their tjq into their body.

And the back and forth between Joey and Greg at 32:00 echoed something I've been repeating ad nauseam about 'teaching'. You can't really teach anyone anything - you can only bring out what's already there. I stole the truth of that from Karlheinz Stockhausen and his work in intuitive music, but it applies to IMA and fightiness as well.

Anyway, that was a great video.

Then there's this beast since we're talking a bit about learning models- read if you dare:
https://rumsoakedfist.org/viewtopic.php ... d853999682

[GrahamB]

To my simple mind you can split all this down into two ways of teaching (or coaching or learning or whatever you want to call it):

1 tell people what to do and keep correcting them until they get it right.

2 create training situations where they work it out for themselves.

Personally I like a balance of the two whenever I’m learning something.

So, we are back to yin and yang and a balance of the two, in a circle. I’m sure I’ve seen that somewhere before…

[wayne hansen]

Tai chi uses both methods as any good martial art does

[GrahamB]

Tai chi uses both methods as any good martial art does

Indeed - the things you work out for yourself are always the most satisfying and easiest to retain under pressure. However IMA contains things that have been built up over generations - hundreds, or possibly thousands of yeas of human beings discovering things. In one lifetime you cannot rediscover it all, without help.

[Giles]

Tai chi uses both methods as any good martial art does

Indeed - the things you work out for yourself are always the most satisfying and easiest to retain under pressure. However IMA contains things that have been built up over generations - hundreds, or possibly thousands of yeas of human beings discovering things. In one lifetime you cannot rediscover it all, without help.

Hey, a useful and respectful discussion.
Yes, the great majority (of 'them', of 'us') need or needed help in learning essentials of Tai Chi Chuan. One major example: the act of relaxing mind and body when you feel under pressure, feel threatened. Which means that to some extent, be it conscious or unconscious, you are feeling fear. Radically relaxing under these circumstances (but without collapsing, without freezing or mentally dissociating) is such a contraintuitive act that it's a wheel very few can re-invent. Protecting yourself by accepting and in a way 'letting it in' - but without making yourself a victim - is in itself often quite scary and can feel insane to begin with. For most people it seems totally 'unnatural' to start with. That's why help and guidance really are needed. But once you know this other landscape exists and have a first idea of how it might actually feel (as opposed to a purely intellectual understanding), then you can start discovering it for yourself and create your own paths through it.

[origami_itto]

Tai chi uses both methods as any good martial art does

Indeed - the things you work out for yourself are always the most satisfying and easiest to retain under pressure. However IMA contains things that have been built up over generations - hundreds, or possibly thousands of yeas of human beings discovering things. In one lifetime you cannot rediscover it all, without help.

You've got to have both methods. It's not "one thing" it's many things.

Some things you need to do till you do them correctly and you can see that from the outside and fix it.

Other things you need to come to an understanding of yourself. You can be told where to look, but if you try to find something in particular, you'll likely manufacture a counterfeit. See a lot of counterfeits.

As far as language goes, seems like everybody has a different way of articulating the theory. I find it's most helpful to keep listening for the truth than to insist I'm the only one that has it.

I have to consider that there will always be things out of my reach whether through my late start or genetic limitations, I think others should also accept this.

[Giles]

As far as language goes, seems like everybody has a different way of articulating the theory. I find it's most helpful to keep listening for the truth than to insist I'm the only one that has it.

+1
In line with that, over the years I've found it very useful to focus on the good qualities of skilled people I've crossed hands with, the common denominators, and not be distracted by the differences. Try to see the wood, don't get hung up too much on the trees.

And in the same spirit: it's often more useful to point out the good things that someone is doing in a video (assuming they are also doing some good things) than to focus just on faults. Nothing wrong with pointing out faults too - but not only. Be constructive; help to build, not just tear down.

[BruceP]

Tai chi uses both methods as any good martial art does

Yeah, Wayne...that explains all those tai chi people out there testing their tjq and showing well in various sport combat, right? How many of the 'teachers' here have had their training produce even one 'student' who was/is 'in the ring and proving it'?

Anyway, the learning model Souders is talking about is something I understand very well because it was something I arrived at from doing similar - or identical - types of work. He figured out how to apply it to BJJ in a comprehensive manner, and dare I say, as a fractal process of learning to learn. Once an individual has that depth of understanding of their own learning 'style', they don't need anything else. That idea seems to be an unfathomable concept among those who have chimed in on this thread today.

On 'concepts', and returning to what Joey talked about at 49:00, it's like the parroting here at RSF of the concept ...every step is a kick....it isn't a tactical paradigm and when it gets repeated as such, its really stupid. Every step is a kick, every throw is a punch, every kick is a step, every punch is a throw - was an allusion to the necessity of fostering neutrality of perception when I dropped it at EF. The same thing is being done here, already, to Souder's application of Ecological Approach. Graham doesn't understand it well enough to even see the difference between the article he linked and the video he posted afterward.

Abandoning what you've spent more than 10 years practicing to research and develop a completely new approach that goes against almost everything you thought was true takes a different kind courage, intelligence, and creativity. Involves getting your ass kicked as you hold true to the ideas without copping to what your senses of logic and self-preservation are screaming at you while the ass-kickings are happening. And after the dust settles the only ideal that's left standing in the mind of a coach/faciliatator who puts themselves through that wringer is; "To hell with what I can do. I'm more interested in what others can do" - by applying that learning model and the resultant training method(s) to their own fighty pursuits.

Indeed - the things you work out for yourself are always the most satisfying and easiest to retain under pressure. However IMA contains things that have been built up over generations - hundreds, or possibly thousands of yeas of human beings discovering things. In one lifetime you cannot rediscover it all, without help.

Were you ever able to figure out Six Harmonies for yourself, or do you still think there are three external and three internal 'harmonies' like you wrote about in your blog? I'm audacious enough to uncategorically state that The Six Are One and I welcome any reasoned challenges to that. Has anyone else ever made that that claim before? That idea is the cornerstone to all the rest of what I understand about putting tjq into the body. I was even able to develop my own Nine Temple Boxing from a shitty old qigong routine based on that understanding. It's easy...

IMA contains only what is already in the individual, and while the millions of years of evolution that went before them are there to be discovered insomuch as it's present in the individual, all they have is a piece of their own lifetime to discover their own internal method. It starts and ends with them. The old learning model is what really needs to be 'rediscovered'. Nothing new under the sun

[YMAA Cape Cod]

Weird. This is basically about small circulation (microcosmic orbit) in the "Jen" / Ren Mai (conceptional vessel - tendons/fascia down the front of the torso) and the "Tu" / Du Mai (governing vessel - tendons/fascia up the back outside of the spine and over the back of the head to the mouth). And its vaguely saying that small circulation will gradually open up when you practice taiji. In fact, the small circulation is always open or else you'd be dead. It will increase/decrease based on your age and activity. To truly open it to traditional abundant levels and "attain" the superhuman state usually described requires that you first have abundant qi far beyond normal, which hardly anyone trains anymore. Including me.

But Cheng is accurate is saying there is danger involved in trying to energize the Ren/Du Mai more than normal.

So it is both discussing physical good alignment, which is prerequisite for good circulation, obvs - and, the psychospiritual aspects of the heart/mind, which interestingly is starting to be increasingly validated by modern science, ie Heart/Mind institute. Balancing the front/back vessels with good posture and mindful intention can help create heart/brain coherence, where the heart wave frequency and brain wave frequency harmonize, not metaphorically but actually.
https://www.heartmath.org/research/science-of-the-heart/heart-brain-communication/

But it sure reads like a lot of blather in both artificial and actual human translation so far.

Also, suggesting that your spine alignment will naturally improve over time against the force of gravity without effort is bad advice.

[wayne hansen]

When I say tai chi has both methods what u and I consider to be tai chi might differ
I stopped fighting in tournaments in the 70’s because I could not see the value
It has only got worse
I have yet to see Systema proving itself in the MMA but u still see value in it