Nailed into the ground

Discussion on the three big Chinese internals, Yiquan, Bajiquan, Piguazhang and other similar styles.

Nailed into the ground

Postby origami_itto on Mon Jan 23, 2023 6:46 am

Going back like... what, 15 years or so, I started to notice a sensation of strength in my legs that I hadn't known before. They began feeling solid and stuck into the ground like tree trunks that the rest of me sat on. Still movable and agile and all that, but just very, very solid.

And that was pretty much the state of things until this last year, but then something changed. Looseness in the hips or something? Song kua? They linked up across the pelvis and I got the same feeling across the legs. At this point in like a horse or goat riding stance I can really feel the flow down on the inside and up on the outside.

So that was the state of things for a while, not too long, and then I finally got the lowest part of my spine loosened up and positioned correctly, sunken, and the sensation shot straight up my spine to the headtop. Not really shot though, more like if my back was mud and there was a metal rod in the middle representing the feeling along my spine, it's like it was laying horizontal and emerging from the mud.

So at this point, I've got this delightful sensation rising from the base of my spine, just constantly. Even when I'm walking around if I put just a little thought into posture.

Stability wise it feels like the tree trunk is growing from the ground up through the top of my head, or like a giant spike was sticking through me. Again though, it doesn't impact mobility, it's just a solid base.

Transparency was pretty good, like when I press with my feet I can feel it in my hands, but it wasn't really hooked up.

I've been working with this feeling of expanding or inflating from the inside out (and compressing from the outside in) like the dantien is pumping the arms full and that seems like the final piece here, when I get all of that hooked up together the feeling comes from the back through the arms and then I can just sit and relax. I feel like I'm sitting on the barstool and my head is suspended and my arms are propped up and I'm just enjoying the seat like one of those faker fakirs in the metal seats pretending they're holding themselves up with one hand on a staff.
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Re: Nailed into the ground

Postby everything on Mon Jan 23, 2023 11:00 am

this sounds like "Qi sunk" then "fullness of Qi" all the time - all parts getting "hooked up" together, "rooted in feet". idk, i'm not there yet, but it sounds great. sounds like you hit a "stage"/milestone in the continuous journey
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Re: Nailed into the ground

Postby Visky on Mon Jan 23, 2023 4:06 pm

hi,

congrats to that. this is a major stage accombilshment which changes many things in movement and energy work.

was it a streamlined training routine all this time. or did you change something in the past or added some stuff which help you accomblish this (so basically a routine where you can say "this helped me to focus on theses parts and let me get to the point of soften the inner tissues and accomblish a elstatic stretchy song in this area")?

for example we focus on this area to open it up with a movement feature where you double weight the hip area while moving (one feet is rooted with song state while other in air but you activly pull the airfoot-hip down while moving)
like this the (right foot with green line is the standing foot):
Image


sorry my english is for runaways. hope its understandable
Last edited by Visky on Mon Jan 23, 2023 4:13 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Nailed into the ground

Postby origami_itto on Tue Jan 24, 2023 3:44 am

Visky wrote:hi,

congrats to that. this is a major stage accombilshment which changes many things in movement and energy work.

was it a streamlined training routine all this time. or did you change something in the past or added some stuff which help you accomblish this (so basically a routine where you can say "this helped me to focus on theses parts and let me get to the point of soften the inner tissues and accomblish a elstatic stretchy song in this area")?

for example we focus on this area to open it up with a movement feature where you double weight the hip area while moving (one feet is rooted with song state while other in air but you activly pull the airfoot-hip down while moving)
like this the (right foot with green line is the standing foot):
Image


sorry my english is for runaways. hope its understandable


Thank you. It feels significant and I'm obsessed again. Really think I'm on the right track finally.

I couldn't point to one thing other than awareness. My wife is obsessed with my posture so she lets me know when I'm wrong. When I'm in front of a teacher I'm on my best behavior and even then get corrections. She is watching constantly. It's got me looking, too.

Awareness of posture and relaxation. Commanding the muscles to release. Searching and adjusting constantly. Working on movement constantly. I work set a standing desk. Listen to Ray and Alex, and even Adam. Each has something. Reading, particularly Alex's workshop notes and the "Lost Taijiquan Classics of the Late Q'ing Dynasty" by Doug Wile.

Yeah, too many adjustments to pick one.
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Re: Nailed into the ground

Postby Bao on Tue Jan 24, 2023 5:45 am

origami_itto wrote: My wife is obsessed with my posture so she lets me know when I'm wrong. When I'm in front of a teacher I'm on my best behavior and even then get corrections. She is watching constantly.


Lol! Same here. She often think I walk too sloppy, and sometimes she says I walk like an old man. She's never satisfied. ;D

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Re: Nailed into the ground

Postby Bhassler on Tue Jan 24, 2023 8:48 am

origami_itto wrote:Stability wise it feels like the tree trunk is growing from the ground up through the top of my head


I think it's less important for a practitioner to feel like a tree trunk than it is for one's opponent to feel like you're a tree trunk. What kind of feedback do you get from others?
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Re: Nailed into the ground

Postby origami_itto on Tue Jan 24, 2023 9:28 am

Bhassler wrote:
origami_itto wrote:Stability wise it feels like the tree trunk is growing from the ground up through the top of my head


I think it's less important for a practitioner to feel like a tree trunk than it is for one's opponent to feel like you're a tree trunk. What kind of feedback do you get from others?


Usually "needs work" or "how did you do that"
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Re: Nailed into the ground

Postby suckinlhbf on Tue Jan 24, 2023 1:48 pm

I feel like I'm sitting on the barstool and my head is suspended and my arms are propped up and I'm just enjoying the seat like one of those faker fakirs in the metal seats pretending they're holding themselves up with one hand on a staff


Do you feel your body is heavier than before or lighter?
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Re: Nailed into the ground

Postby origami_itto on Wed Jan 25, 2023 3:44 am

suckinlhbf wrote:
I feel like I'm sitting on the barstool and my head is suspended and my arms are propped up and I'm just enjoying the seat like one of those faker fakirs in the metal seats pretending they're holding themselves up with one hand on a staff


Do you feel your body is heavier than before or lighter?


I really had to think about this.

When I first get up in the morning, (I'm 46 with a history of injuries) I feel pretty heavy. Usually get motivated sitting down. Once the blood is pumping then everything feels pretty light and smooth, but still very much yi driven and I feel the movement and my weight. My weight is in my feet.

Now in pieces and parts and fits and spurts I can touch the sort of "weightless" feeling where it seems like my muscles are just not even involved in the movements and I'm just floating through the form, etc but it takes some work to get there. It takes some work to get to the nailed down feeling too, just a little bit more to get weightless.
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Re: Nailed into the ground

Postby suckinlhbf on Wed Jan 25, 2023 9:00 am

just a little bit more to get weightless

Nice. People out there say "from heavy to light, and then from light to heavy".
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Re: Nailed into the ground

Postby windwalker on Wed Jan 25, 2023 10:43 am

origami_itto wrote:
Bhassler wrote:
origami_itto wrote:Stability wise it feels like the tree trunk is growing from the ground up through the top of my head


I think it's less important for a practitioner to feel like a tree trunk than it is for one's opponent to feel like you're a tree trunk. What kind of feedback do you get from others?


Usually "needs work" or "how did you do that"


Do what,,,

What was it that you did they questioned...

Something they couldn't do
or
Something that if "filmed" would be questioned by those viewing :)
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Re: Nailed into the ground

Postby Bao on Wed Jan 25, 2023 1:43 pm

windwalker wrote:Something they couldn't do
or
Something that if "filmed" would be questioned by those viewing :)


If 2nd, "and" (both) and not "or" is implied. ;D 8-)
Last edited by Bao on Wed Jan 25, 2023 1:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Nailed into the ground

Postby origami_itto on Wed Jan 25, 2023 2:54 pm

windwalker wrote:Do what,,,

What was it that you did they questioned...

Something they couldn't do
or
Something that if "filmed" would be questioned by those viewing :)

Lol you got me. I haven't touched another person since November. And usually all you get is a "good one" nothing mystical just the subtle art of taijiquan

Usually if they keep doing the same thing I'll tell them
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Re: Nailed into the ground

Postby Giles on Thu Jan 26, 2023 6:16 am

Sounds like a very nice progression, Origami. A pity there's no chance of a nice tuishou exchange.

With regard to heavy or light, to the question of either/or:
The way I'm developing is that I increasingly feel a heaviness inside me and also a lightness. In principle simultaneously, synergetically. The result is a kind of subjective ease of movement and, I think, increasingly less inner friction in joints and tissues.
When in physical contact with others, I can let them feel the heaviness, making me very hard to move and also putting a lot of felt mass and impetus behind issued force, or I can let them feel the lightness so that they can touch me but feel very little substance.
-- As always, this is my direction but not something I can always realise fully - also depends a little on the day and the direction of the wind...
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Re: Nailed into the ground

Postby origami_itto on Thu Jan 26, 2023 6:47 am

Giles wrote:Sounds like a very nice progression, Origami. A pity there's no chance of a nice tuishou exchange.

With regard to heavy or light, to the question of either/or:
The way I'm developing is that I increasingly feel a heaviness inside me and also a lightness. In principle simultaneously, synergetically. The result is a kind of subjective ease of movement and, I think, increasingly less inner friction in joints and tissues.
When in physical contact with others, I can let them feel the heaviness, making me very hard to move and also putting a lot of felt mass and impetus behind issued force, or I can let them feel the lightness so that they can touch me but feel very little substance.
-- As always, this is my direction but not something I can always realise fully - also depends a little on the day and the direction of the wind...


Thank you.

This year I am hitting the road I simply don't care. Life is arranging itself to make it possible. Wife wants to travel the world and we'll have the time and money for it.

I actually first felt it up to the shoulders doing the 7 point push exercise, when they pull the shoulder on I think number 7 (the instruction was to neutralize it to the ground, I'd have to review,) and it was like it just stuck through me? Like from the point of contact to my foot it was literally like a stake going in and coming back up. Like I have done rooting exercises and getting my peng pushed on or whatever as a posture test, sure, but it feels sort of qualitatively different somehow.

I am not so good at the lightness against an opponent, lol. Working on that. Some of these guys it's like pushing a cloud. I'm still too aggressive. When I'm on, though, it's like you described. Suddenly disappearing and suddenly reappearing. I'm working on staying relaxed on impact when punching. Some folks teach to tense on impact but it doesn't seem in keeping with the method.

In individual practice, I've been working on that lightness in the body to feel like the floating arm trick. I think this is a key method to develop reaction speed and sung. It's a different way of engaging the muscles to motivate the movement. This research is looking at it for the exact OPPOSITE reasons.

https://www.science.org/content/article ... -arm-trick
Press the backs of your hands against the inside of a door frame for 30 seconds—as if you're trying to widen the frame—and then let your arms down; you'll feel something odd. Your arms will float up from your sides, as if lifted by an external force. Scientists call this Kohnstamm phenomenon, but you may know it as the floating arm trick. Now, researchers have studied what happens in a person's brain and nerve cells when they repress this involuntary movement, holding their arms tightly by their sides instead of letting them float up. Two theories existed as to how this repression worked: The brain could send a positive "push down" signal to the arm muscles at the same time as the involuntary "lift up" signal was being transmitted to cancel it out; or the brain could entirely block the involuntary signal at the root of the nerves. The new study, which analyzed brain scans and muscle activity recordings from 39 volunteers, found that the latter was true—when a person stifles Kohnstamm phenomenon, the involuntary "lift" signal is blocked before it reaches the muscle. The difference between the repression mechanisms may seem subtle, but understanding it could help people repress other involuntary movements—including the tremors associated with Parkinson's disease and the tics associated with Tourette syndrome, the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.


OH AND ALSO, what Ray Hayward teaches as the "I Chuan Standing Meditation" ZZ has gotten deeper for me. It starts with arms at the sides, then fingers pointing at each other in front like carrying groceries, then holding the tree, then thumb and forefingers suggesting a triangle around brow height. Doing those postures "brings it up". It feels like the specific way the posture causes the energy of gravity pulling down, combined with relaxation, shifts the pieces into the right slots from the bottom up, leading to that feeling of solidity through the frame. Combined with the constant expansion, together, something is happening.

I feel like I had a good spine to tailbone stretch, good connection between the arms across the back into the spine, good legs, but that last bit of the tailbone was fused and keeping things disconnected. I had several better push hands players tell me to loosen it up so I've been working on it every way I can figure.

I am rambling about my practice. I just love this shit. The marvels are endless, right?
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