64Palms wrote: Often keeping an open mind - even to the unknown and seemingly mystical can lead to infinite knowledge and understanding.
Guy's as much as I enjoy trading conceptual ideas, I would love to hear more stories about the greatest/coolest neijia/taiji skills you have felt.
Another skill that has tripped me out is pulsing. Even more surprising is seeing that only one other person has mentioned it on these boards using that term and I think they are talking about something else. Any body else have experience with this and have another name for it? Maybe it's an old thread - point me in the right direction please. I feel I may be opening myself up for attack because this is one of those woo woo things that is not explainable in the current western model of how the human body is supposed to work.
What I observed was the wrist area of Bernard "Bernie" Langan extending and contracting. What it looked like was the carpals were expanding and contracting so that the hand moved further away from the ulna and radius. Bernard would also let me feel the carpal area and then I would feel the same thing. It was kind of freaky feeling and looking. The expansion looked to be about a half inch: this was not a small subtle thing but a lot of movement.
The way it was explained to me is you relax the muscles, ligaments, and tendons around a joint and then you let the synovial fluid expand. We were told there was a natural pulse already there. It was also said that every joint could be pulsed this way. The way we developed this skill was to work with someone who had the skill. They would secure the ulna a radius with one hand, then with the other they would hold your metacarpals. Then they would gently align your wrist so it was straight and then gently pulse your wrist - basically pulling the hand away from the forearm and then bringing them back towards each other.
You would actually feel a gentle opening and closing of the carpal area. Part of the technique of pulsing another person was that you should not pull it open so far that you reached the maximum range of the fascia and you should not let it contract so far that you reach the tissue and carpals maximum ability to compress: the movement was kept well within the current range of motion. The skill was to do this by feel. The feeling was as if your wrist/carpal areas became this warm area that would just pulse with an expansion and contraction. It is very relaxing and feels good. This may be woo woo for some but my wrist felt like it was woshing inside.
I was told you could practice pulsing another person on any joint and that the quickest visible gains were seen at the wrist. The only other joint we would practice pulsing was the ankle area. After working with partners who worked on you then you could add awareness of pulsing joints to one's standing practice. It was not that your intentionally trying to make joint pulse and expand but that you brought awareness to the pulse and you would bring intention to having the surrounding tissue relax.
I got to the point where I could feel a sense of pulsing on my own and could do the exercise on others. I never developed the level of skill that Bernie or anyone who trained consistently for a year had. I know of three of his students who can do the same thing with the same observable range of motion. The three of them teach now also. I also understand this is supposed to be a standard skill that BKF teaches. I was told that this was another way to generate power and that it could also happen very fast instead of the slow pulsing I had observed.
Bernie did demonstrate generating fah jing in this method but to be honest it could have come from a multitude of other structural components. At the time I really didn't worry about it because as far as I was concerned until I could actually get that kind of movement, learning the martial application of such a skill was moot. Also there were times where he might demonstrate over a dozen different ways to generate his fah jing (There is a clip on youtube of BKF doing the same thing. In the full clip he talks about where he connects to the ground and the direction of his projections. At that time I might only really understand and feel 6 of them, feel 3 and not be sure of how or what was being done and the other three were the same to me: I could not feel a difference. What has me believe in the nuances is that at the beginning I might have only understood that i was being thrown - with training I developed new awareness and eventually the skill to do the same.
One thing about Bernie that I appreciated is that he was really straight forward about what it would take to develop various skills and he had students who could do it. While stuff masters do that are amazing are cool - I want to know if they have successfully passed the skill on. Do they know how to teach it so others can learn it and if I was to take on studying with them what hoops would I have to jump through to learn it.
I've met a number of people who can generate untypical heat from there hands. Only one who actual produced a sensation of cold in my body. It was extraordinary and it helped with the pain I had in my stomach. But when I asked him how he did he just laughed. So in effect it was a useless tool for me at the time (still is actually). I also do bodywork so the tips I've learned about having warm hands have been great though.
and more of 
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Wow. Didn´t know. What teacher/lineage?
Old School all the way!
