Quigga wrote:Be sure to move quicker from time to time and to add some explosive movements. Especially if it feels like too much to hold, when you start shaking/vibrating like you describe. It's a bit like lightning and thunder.
Once its too much for your current body development, it will want to come out naturally. Just a spark, or mentally triggering it, then bam.
IME the slower you go, the more energy builds up and more quickly too. I spent some time practicing 'Raise Hands', doing one move in 10-20 minutes.
Super slow moving is quite interesting imo. 60-80% super slow, 20-40% normal Tai Chi speed, 10% normal speed, 5% explosive is what I read somewhere.
charlie_cambridge wrote:Are you training the 1st loosening as taught by Mizner? I would not call that "HSS song gong" as at least the stuff in public youtube is not what HSS taught.
How are you thinking of the release? PK would say you cannot be completely relaxed in taiji, that's completely wrong (if you were completely relaxed you would just be lying on the ground), so first off something has to activate (and waves of changes through the body etc, not going to even try to summarize in a message).
So first off if you are just thinking "release more and more" without collapsing, then maybe you will unconsciously overactivate certain things (you have to activate something to not collapse) and if you keep telling your body it is releasing then you may miss (even unconsciously blinding yourself to) the subtle activations/contractions, and if that happens then you maybe only notice when it gets to a dramatic extreme (e.g. vibrating is often something activating/contracting quite strongly unconsciously while you release other things).
wayne hansen wrote:Release is a product of relax
Relax is a product of release
They are the same thing
charlie_cambridge wrote:I think part of the confusion with taiji is everyone seems to mean very different things when using the same simple words like "release" and "relax" etc..
"Releasing extraneous tension, energy, intention, expectation" sounds the same as "relax" to me. Now I agree it can be confusing when people translate "sung" as "relax" since those are two different things, but for common words like release/relax we prefer to use the most obvious literal meaning of the word (i.e. to let go)
"It's not becoming a floppy noodle or running away from energy. It's letting it move through you." --I would not use the word "release" for this, because that's not what the muscle is actually doing.
So we would say release=relax =the muscle lengthening with a decrease in tension decreases.
The energizing and activation (opposite of release in a way) is an impulse that causes the muscle to begin to build a tension--if it shortens under that tension we call in contraction, if the muscle lengthens under that tension we call it stretch (what the physiologists call "eccentric contraction" but actually we see stretch as something more subtle than just that).
If you are "not becoming a floppy noodle" then by definition something has to activate (if every muscle just let go of tension you'd flop). Now you did qualify with the word "extraneous" so sounds like we agree some tension is required. We prefer to define our terms so the distinction is very clear e.g. release= tension going down period, activation =the beginning of increasing some tension. This makes it very clear what is doing what when.
But I think it can be confusing to define release as "letting go of extraneous tension etc" rather than just "letting go of tension" period because it can be very unclear what is "extraneous" and what is not, so from the very beginning the basic concept is not clear. I think this is relevant and not just semantics because it can then for example lead to the vibrating you describe because you could be holding excess tension that you do not believe/realize is extraneous.
wayne hansen wrote:So are you saying Huangs first exercise done by your teacher on YouTube is incorrect
Seeing this is an exercise not derived from Huang all other people and lineages are not correct
charlie_cambridge wrote:@origami_itto: one of my students asked about my hand vibrating a few months ago, I thanked him for calling my attention to it, and explained that I was incorrectly contracting something subconsciously that I should not be.
origami_itto wrote:charlie_cambridge wrote:@origami_itto: one of my students asked about my hand vibrating a few months ago, I thanked him for calling my attention to it, and explained that I was incorrectly contracting something subconsciously that I should not be.
Yep, as I'm working on releasing further I'm losing the vibrating in some parts of the movement.
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