Who is Yang Chen Fu?

Yang Chen Fu, grandson of Yang Style founder Yang Lu-chan, receives great credit for popularizing the Supreme-Ultimate Fist Form. He emphasized health components of the system. Check out Yang Chen Fu’s oral instructions in Yang Family Secret Transmissions (aff link) or in The Essence and Applications of Taijiquan (aff link) to glimpse the source of the following 10 reflections.

1. Lighten Up!

Stop thinking, scheming, believing, strategizing so much. Stop it. Chen Fu’s bit about “the energy at the top of the head should be light and sensitive” recommends lightening up. So relax; lighten up. Your head is built with highly sophisticated sensory equipment. Too much thinking, scheming, believing,  and strategizing is a way of filtering, filtering, filtering, and filtering all your sensory information. Instead: enjoy sights, sounds, smells, and tastes. Lighten up.

2. Hear Your Heart

Relax your chest and shoulders enough so that you can hear and feel your heart pulsing inside. Let this sensation expand, slowly, throughout your body. Allow your heart, pulsing, to guide your movements, your decisions, and your mind. Listen.

3. Find Your Waist

Tense and relax your belly; wring your air out and allow it back it. Coordinate with your lower back… flex (while exhaling) and extend (with an easy inhale) your lower back. Then add a twist. Twist your waist while exhaling; find center with inhale. While the goal is to “Relax The Waist” tensing it is part of discovering it: so put a little tension on the exhale and then go deeper into relaxing while inhaling. Once you feel your waist winding and unwinding then relax more. Allow your breath to release and return naturally.

4. Find Your Roots

Learn to sink into your heels. Actually, sink into the front of your heel. While sinking, grip the floor a little bit with your toes (or squeeze the Earth or the insides of your shoes). Then learn to rest on one leg, gripping and sinking. Then learn to lift the other leg. You can “distinguish full [weight] and empty [no weight]” now. This simple physical sensation is the beginning. Get this (it’s critical) and then look for energies.

5. Hang Your Shoulders & Elbows

Your shoulders hang from your head & neck, your elbows hang from your shoulders. From your head and spine they hang, by your trapezium and rhomboid musculature and attending tensile structures. When the shoulders & elbows hang, they can be driven by the lower muscles (like latissimus dorsi) and thereby develop great power.

6. Use Tensile Strength, Not Compressive Strength

The architecture of your body uses tensegrity: continuous tensile membranes wrapping discontinuous compressive members… in other words: your bones, the discontinuous compressive members, are wrapped in fascia—continuous, interwoven web-like membranes (each and every physiological structure is wrapped in this). Fascia provides tensile strength. Explore this concept to flex and develop a mature idea about strength.

7. Coordinate Your Upper & Lower Body

Move them together, and then move them separately. At first, T’ai-chi Chüan instructors teach you to move as one whole unit, do that well. (Some teachers end their teachings with whole-body-moving.) When you’re ready, move on. Begin exploring waving motions: power driven by the feet & legs, churned in the waist, and slung out the hands. Like a wave rolling from toes to fingers…

8. Discover the Inner and Outer Layers of Your Body

Stand Still. Breathe. Feel, deep down, into the layers of your body.

9. Continuity Doesn’t Exist, But Strive For It

Searching and searching for continuity helps us create it, but, like dream fragments, the more unified we become, the more we discover the whirling chaos mumbling around the smooth edge of awareness.

10. Go Slow To Go Fast

Going slow lets us get to all the important parts of our task, never needing to retrace one’s actions. This concept is embedded in the warrior’s mind. Under the effects of adrenaline or other kinds of duress, time shifts: it slows. When we practice slowly, we prepare for smooth continuity that allow impressive speed and power without the hindrance of regret, forethought, or hindsight and without the barriers of ideas, beliefs, and ego structures.

Deep, whole stillness is immense.

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Reflecting on Yang Chen Fu’s 10 Important Points of T’ai-chi Chuan

Taiji offers a good amount of relaxation-talk. Depending on who you talk to it can be the end or it can be the means. Physically, relaxation is the means towards efficient movement. Efficient movement is movement that uses only the necessary amount of tension required. The idea of relaxation is simple, but the execution takes ongoing awareness and care.

An interesting thing happens when we try too hard to relax—we create tension. We get the exact opposite of what we wanted. I touched on this phenomenon in my article Pistol Qigong is a Blast. Here, mental tensions create excess physical tensions. In general, the more we try to get our bodies to do something, the more tension is created. And that, in turn, negatively impacts performance.

In terms of relaxation, The Loop goes: mentally strain to relax–>create physical tensions–>poor performance–>mentally strain more to relax–>more tensions–>poorer performance–>…etc.  This is what I refer to as the Negative Relaxation Loop. We’ve all be there and hopefully through experience we found ways out.

The following 6 methods interrupt The Loop in my practice.

6 Ways to Circumvent the Negative Relaxation Loop

1. Shake it off. Use this one in the context of solo forms. A nicely placed “Pah!” is like hitting the reset button. Sure, a vigorous shake might not be in its rightful place according to the teachings, but that’s okay, you need it.
2. Breath. Attend to your breathe. Belly-breath into the tensions you want to release. Fill tensions with breath and empty them while expiring.
3. Slow Down. Use this one in partner work where a violent shake could be dangerous. As tensions created by the Negative Relaxation Loop escalate, you put yourself and partners at risk. The pace quickens with mounting tensions whereby mistakes can be costly. Take time to slow down and breathe.
4. Indulge. Instead of fighting your tension, indulge in it. Deliberately create tension where you’re trying to relinquish it. Find it and bare down on it. Hold it for a bit. What does it feel like? Release it. Again, what does it feel like? If we can figure out how to create certain tensions deliberately, then we should be able to figure out how to alleviate them.
5. Take a note. Mentally note how you’re talking to yourself when you’re in The Loop. Be nice. Understand. You’re learning and you’ll always be learning. Forgive yourself for not being perfect (an unrealistic ideal anyway). You may even notice more pervasive mental themes that aren’t exclusive to your Taiji practice. As opposed to the previous methods, the interruption of The Loop isn’t as immediate.
6. Get out of the way! Chances are your body knows how to do what you want it to do. It’s probably done it before. Let it do it again. Instead of thinking about doing it, do it. Better yet, don’t do it, let your body do it or let it happen.

If you have other ways to circumvent The Loop, please share them here. [This article was first published 01 February 2009.]

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6 Surefire Ways to Circumvent the Loop

Fa-Jing (or Fa-Jin) means explosive energy. Chuan: Boxing. T’ai Chi Chuan teaches Fa-Jing, slowly and surely, as long as we practice accurately and consistently.

Robin, over at Obey My Blog, spent two years studying T’ai Chi to get it:

“…that beautiful squishy center o’ mine generated a PA-PA-PA-POW! And totally surprised me.”

—In Yo Face!

We gain Fa-Jing by practicing the System of Taijiquan.

Systems include many parts. Reviving Taiji reveals 5 distinct aspects that martial arts systems should include: moving naturally, striking things, practicing forms, interacting with people, and knowing acu-points and crazy applications.

And Taijiquan Systems include many specific tools…

• Qigong
• Long Forms
• Single Pushing Hands
• Double Pushing Hands
• Corner Pushing Hands
• Weapons Forms

What To Do Now?

When available, you can learn Old Yang Style Forms right here.

Take a peek at this following clip where Master Erle Montaigue demonstrates how to use Single Pushing Hands to gain Fajing.

Fa-Jing Explosive Push Hands

Click to View the Video...

Other supplements exist to get your Fa-Jing going.

• Wudang Hand Weapons, for example, offer repetitive partner punching to get it.
• Baguazhang weaves another complete, systematic, circular layer of learning around your Fa-Jing progress.
• And one of my favorites: Dragon Boxing.

Try them all.

Get good at a couple.

And let me know what works for you…

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Fa-Jing Chuan—Explosive Energy Boxing

[From 31 July 2008]

“No pistol shooter, no matter how expert, can hold a pistol in firing positions without some motion.  This is called the arc of movement.  The very best that any shooter can do is to keep the arc of movement at a minimum—it cannot be eliminated” The N.R.A.’s Basics of Pistol Shooting (57).

Minimizing the Arc of Movement With Qigong

For humans, perfect stillness does not exist in the living. Our bodies constantly make adjustments, large and small, to maintain even simple postures. In marksmanship, constant adjustments add up to what is called the arc of movement. The arc of movement is the amount that the firearm moves as a result of a body’s natural inability to maintain perfect stillness. The greater the arc of movement, the more difficult it is to maintain proper site alignment which leads to inconsistent marksmanship.

At first we might think that to minimize the arc of movement we need to force our arm into stillness. This severe willing of stillness inevitably leads to muscles contracting, causing tension as well as motion. Anyone who has tried showing off their bicep could tell you that intense muscle contractions cause trembling in surrounding muscles. We can conclude that forcing our arms into stillness leads to a greater arc of movement, the exact opposite of what we want.

Now we may conclude that, since willing our bodies into stillness causes an increase in arc of movement, then perhaps relaxing our bodies has the opposite effect. This would be correct, but it overlooks the fact that if we were completely relaxed we would collapse to the ground under gravity’s pull. The arc of movement decreases dramatically, but we couldn’t stand to shoot a firearm.

The answer is, you guessed it, somewhere between these extremes, but where? And how do we find it? Muscle tension is required to stand, hold the firearm up, and squeeze the trigger. We must figure out what tension is necessary and what tension is superfluous. To figure out this challenge, we will examine Qi-gong.

The ancient art of Qigong brings insight into minimizing the arc of movement.

In Power Taiji, Erle Montaigue explains that “Qigong literally means ‘internal work’…any physical and/or mental actions combined with certain breathing methods that cause an internal flow of energy” (1). Qigong is practiced as a meditative, relaxing exercise to increase health, and it’s used to cultivate physical and mental power and awareness. It’s practiced as a moving exercise or as a static, standing one. To explore minimizing the arc of movement, we will concentrate on standing Qigong.

In static or standing Qigong, the practitioner holds a particular pose. This practice usually focuses on experiencing relaxing while still maintaining proper posture. In other words, practitioners aim to learn to use only the necessary amount of muscular tension to hold the pose. This is difficult because, as the practitioner starts to tire, more muscles crave participating to compensate.

Relaxing into the pose, teaches practitioners to tap more into Type I Muscle Fibers. According to Gerard J. Tortora and Mark Nielsen, in Principles of Human Anatomy, Type I fibers “are very resistant to fatigue and are capable of prolonged, sustained contractions for many hours…[and are]…adapted for maintaining posture….” (298).  Once we teach these muscle fibers the posture, we need to get out of their way and let them do their job. Keep in mind it isn’t black and white.  Through experience, we learn which other muscles besides Type I are necessary and which are just excess.  In addition, by relaxing, practitioners may begin to feel the tensile strength of their connective tissues and the supporting role they play.

Through regular practice of Qi-gong, we discover deeper awareness of our bodies and tissues. Our awareness can be applied to the stance and body structure needed for the practice of marksmanship. Instead of relying on muscular tension to position ourselves in front of a target, with our new found awareness, we work to relax all those muscles that unnecessary. By minimizing the amount of muscles doing work we will minimize bodily tremors that accompany excess tension, and we, in turn, minimize our arc of movement.

Quiet down and allow your body to do what it knows how to do.

We examined physical awareness. Let’s turn our sights to the mind and its relationship to the arc of movement. In the Inner Game of Tennis, Timothy Gallwey tells us that “if the conscious mind thinks it…knows which muscles are actually needed…and tries to control those muscles, it will inevitably use muscles that aren’t needed.  When more than necessary are used, not only is there a waste of energy, but certain tightened muscles interfere with the need of other muscles to relax…which will actually impede…[the outcome]” (35).

In other words, when we use more muscle energy than we need, we end with an outcome opposite of what we seek. Moshe Feldenkrais describes this phenomenon in his classic book Awareness Through Movement: “People who know how to operate effectively do so without great preparation and without much fuss.  Men of great will power…who often have poor ability…tend to apply too much force instead of using moderate forces more effectively” (58).  In terms of ability vs. will-power, someone who owns ability and trusts that ability will be much more effective than someone who lacks ability or who does not trust that ability.  In the latter, the person compensates by using will power which translates to using excess force.

Both Gallwey and Feldenkrais emphasize the effects our thoughts have on our actions. If we’ve competently performed a particular skill in the past then our body can do it again. However, by focusing too hard upon a desired outcome, we encourage tensions beyond what we require for proper performance. Even if we have never competently performed an action before, by desperately willing or forcing it, we create excessive tension and poor performance. In relation to the arc of movement, if we focus too-intently on decreasing the arc of movement, our bodies will respond to our brains’ desires by forcing extra tension.

Qigong, in addition to helping us become aware of necessary and unnecessary tension, also aids us in managing self-defeating thoughts. While practicing, our awareness can bounce back and forth between our bodies and our breathing. Inevitably, thoughts will arise, but, as we practice returning to our attention to body and breath, we learn to manage and minimize self-defeating thoughts. The more we become comfortable with this practice, the easier we achieve stillness while practicing marksmanship (or any activity for that matter). Instead of getting caught up in thinking, really hard, about how much we must keep our arm from moving, we return our awareness to our body, to our breathing, without engaging in the thought. Once that thought is gone we can allow our body to do what it knows how to do.

Physically, to minimize the arc of movement, one balances tension and relaxation. The difficulty is finding the balance. Qigong is one way we explore and experience this balance. Once we experience it, we can apply it to our shooting. Mentally, once we know how to minimize the chatter in our minds, we can also reduce unnecessary tensions in our bodies that arise from our thoughts.

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Pistol Qigong Is A Blast

“Try not to stop at the end of each posture once you start feeling comfortable with them. The movements should flow together in a slow and even rhythm.”

—Power Taiji

It’s clear instruction, and it’s good advice.

One preemptive way of getting smooth moves, especially between postures, is to learn larger chunks of form before digging into the details.

Like framing a house before putting up sheet rock and paint, or like examining a book’s contents and skimming it before reading the text, getting an overarching view of a form provides a great structure before going deeper.

(We tackle Old Yang Form that way in the Old Yang Taijiquan Course. First an overview, then dig into details…)

Power Taiji (yep: this is an affiliating link) is one of my favorites. Erle Montaigue and Michael Babin spend 184 pages detailing:

1. Qigong Theory and Practice
2. Taiji Long Form
3. Basics of Push-Hands and Related Methods
4. Advanced Concepts: the Four Levels of Taiji
5. Form Applications and Self-Defense

Back in the mid-90’s, I learned the details of the Long Yang Chen Fu Taijiquan Form from this book. The written details match the pictures…and it’s loaded. For some, the level of detail may be overwhelming. But if you’re into lots of precise text about where to put your hands & feet and how to breathe for every single Taiji posture, you’ll dig this book.

Power Taiji is a Classic Taiji Text.

Check out Power Taiji.

This series — Taijiquan Quote of the Week — pulls a quote from a Taijiquan book and wonders about it briefly. This series intends to offer quick insights and brief glimpses into Taiji Treasures.

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Flow in Slow and Even Rhythm

[From 05 August 2008]

Need balance? Need grounding? You got it! Or had it? Oh…it’s back again. Think of balance in terms of degrees as opposed to absolutes. Balance requires movement and adjustments. At first the movements and adjustments tend to be large, and, over time, they become smaller and smaller. The adjustments never cease. Balance gets better and your body develops efficiency at maintaining it. The same with grounding. They never quite seem effortless. They’re both dynamic. Sorry, I’m not talking metaphorically here.

The kicks in the Yang Chen Fu Form give my balance a run for its money. In the beginning, my balance was all over the place. I’d fall out of all of the kicks, or, at least, I would make big, awkward adjustments, fighting to not fall out. My balance issues exasperated the slower I did my form.

Nowadays, I work my balance using the 4 Corner Balance Drill (4 CBD) from Scott Sonnon’s Warrior Wellness DVD (replaced by his Intu-flow DVD). As a part of my daily joint mobility exercises, I do a round of the 4CBD, holding each posture for 5 slow and even breaths. I attribute my increased balancing prowess to this ingredient in my routine, and I encourage those with balancing woes to try it out.

Integrating this exercise into practice improves balance and grounding while performing kicks. In addition to better balance and grounding, you’ll gain experiential knowledge of how gripping the ground with your grounded foot and toes helps root and balance. To top it off, you’ll gain functional flexibility.

Watch the following video and try it! Post your experiences, difficulties, successes, and ideas right here, please. If you can’t figure it out, shoot me a message or purchase Warrior Wellness.

Four Corner Balance Drill

Click to View the Video...

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Kick Your Balance Woes

I feel safe in the presence of stress and aggression. I speak bravely and hold a confident attitude because I can kill with my bare hands. What silly rules of etiquette, scary social norms, or sadistic corporate policies stand in my way? What deviant criminal or sadistic fool can harm my good will? None. I remain calm and watchful in the midst of aggression and chaos.

I won’t need to compromise my principles. I protect those close to me (including myself), my family, my friends, and anyone who stands nearby. And I cannot be provoked, with pushing or screaming, into chaotic scenarios. Taijiquan — the system of martial-art training methods including martial pushing hands and death point strike training — lets me live so well.

Martial Stillness

I remain calm and present — often achieving more quiet, more calm, and more presence — when confronted with aggression or chaos. I trust that my reflexive responses will be appropriate to any aggressor, situation, and level of violence; I just turn on my senses and wake up. It’s nice. It’s good for everyone’s safety.

You could attend varieties of seminars that teach deadly point strikes. But it’s not enough to know the points and the angles of attack. You must be able to touch those points on aggressors: in the midst of chaos. While we must build some intellectual knowledge of the acu-points, we must also develop real methods to hit them.

To emulate chaos and forces generated by attackers, we train the martial art aspects of Taijiquan these ways…

1. Qigong and natural motion studies instill stillness and an ability to see and hear more clearly.
2. Strike things the Taiji martial art way! Strike mitts and pads using elastic, waist-generated, fast, fierce fight-power — Fa-jing!
3. Practice Tai Chi Chuan Forms. This way, if done right and well, we program our bodies to strike at particular points at peculiar angles. It’s a perfect, subconscious training device!
4. Push-hands using pressure develops a capacity to cope with real force; change speeds and levels of force to learn to accept and divert whatever force presses on us.
5. Study acupuncture points from Traditional Chinese Medicine. Learn to touch one another’s points (lightly, never with Fa-jing) to see and sense proper angles, distance, and timing, with varieties of opponents.

Deep-quiet responses may provoke quiet and calm in an aggressor, settling a hot situation rather than heating it. Real stillness further allows for unpredictable actions. Using heart sounds and stillness as a guide, not using common, fearful defensiveness, actions and choices take on a clearer, cleaner resonance; heart sounds bring calm into wild scenarios. Inner confidence overwhelms, projects outward, and soothes others.

Fighting for Peace

Learning to fight, to maim, and to kill expands available choices in every scenario. Widening a spectrum of choices — from backing away peacefully to attacking ruthlessly — creates a vast and powerful array of options. Allowing stillness to enter mental, emotional, and physical bodies, one can allow the heart to guide, choosing proper and necessary actions.

The real challenge: maintain calm under pressure. Too often, I’ve seen soft-stylists tense when they feel real forces approach. It’s difficult indeed and it requires work to teach one’s body to maintain calm even as the pressure cooker of martial-arts training increases. Real stillness, deep calm, and true quiet, however, require these early, preemptive pressures. Increasing pressures reveal natural abilities and uncover subtle skills to cope with stress and tension while under duress.

Begin soft and end soft but allow for a crescendo of struggle, of force, and of real work inside Taiji martial-arts training drills. Use repetitive actions, not random hand-pushing, to create patterns that gain amperage as the pattern develops. A tight, pressurized push-hands drills, for example, may uncover and flush out fears and anxieties. In such a controlled scenario, one releases emotion and realizes more and more competence and confidence. At some point, the acu-points on the opponent’s body can be seen.

The internal, systematic, martial-art of Taijiquan, permits studies of aggression and fighting practices that can begin softly and increase in pressure, duress, and intensity as experience grows. Such martial methods explore and release personal stress and tension in safe ways, so that, when (or if) the real pressure is on, options do not diminish, but expand.

Peace of Fighting

Studying fighting, maiming, and killing methods expands awareness about the fragility of human beings, about being alive. I am fragile. I see that others are too. Everyone — even the apparently toughest loudmouth — is vulnerable and fragile.

Because I see and empathize with this vulnerability, I can show my vulnerabilities. By showing it, paradoxically, I am safer.

The calm that one can exude in stressful scenarios has, at its root, an acceptance of vulnerability of life, the tedious nature of existence. And we all have it, somewhere, inside. It’s that little something that one can tune to in others, to let them release their angst and terror, their defensiveness and aggression, and let them calm down.

But it take guts. It requires the tender heart of a warrior. And to get that: learn to fight. No one can be invulnerable, but everyone can feel safe. Everyone can tap the sensitivity and vulnerability at the heart of us all.

Study Death Point Striking. It’s a fragile art of war and a hearty study of peace.

[This was from...17 September 2008.]

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Death Point Striking For Peace

Dear Good Reader Person,

2009 was fun. Let’s start 2010 fresh.

Here’s some bits to expect from RealTaiji this year.

Some Series

Of course, you’ll get high quality articles about whatever’s going on in my mind…and, in addition, I’ve put together some longer running concepts.

I’ve sketched some visions of articles that run in longer series (how do you say serieses?) for richer views on several topics. Some of these series will appear bit by bit throughout the year… Reviving Taiji is an obvious version of this, but I’ll tackle some complementary subjects too.

• Acts of a Warrior
• Cleansing (as in…physical cleansing)
• Meditation

(Please let me know if you want a specific subject tackled.)

There’s more…

Pretty Darn Comprehensive On-line Taiji Course

This is coming soon: in two weeks.

Get ready.

It’s not for people don’t like anatomy or precision. This course dials in details. It offers burly, solid foundations for beginners and eye opening details for experts. If you’ve thought about tackling an Old Yang-Style Long Taijiquan Form…this is the place.

It’ll be bold. This 4 month course includes 32 thirty-minute videos. You get 2 per week for 16 weeks. The shows are in High Definition, with options to watch online or download. The topics covered include:

• Old Yang Long Form Parts 1 and 2
• Combat and Healing Applications
• Additional Exercises to Get-It

This course is cutting edge. We’ve dialed in the most user-friendly, high-quality services to make this Old Yang Taijiquan Course shine.

See and hear it clearly. Get it fast.

There’s no need to wait for snail mail: we’ll offer two lesson-watching options that work fast and easy. Our private Vimeo collection streams videos in High-Definition right away, and our SimpleCDN collection delivers downloads fast and easy. No need to wait for DVDs in the mail (besides…our HD is higher resolution than DVD).

Most at-home courses end with delivery of the product. This one will deliver more: the internet’s vast networking powers  and cell phone technologies make it possible to connect to real people for inspiration and information about these lessons. You can talk to me about this stuff.

So you’ll get all this too:

• Connected: each week, get support from me and/or from one of my senior students.
• Answers: the Q&A themes covered each month will be revealed in added video lessons.
• Learn for Real: upload, email, or otherwise send a video, each month, and get reviewed.

The total value is easily $350/month, closer to $450 if you add things up individually:

1. 4 hours of HD quality (better than DVD) videos per month ($200).
2. Two supporters ($130).
3. Added HD Quality Q&A shows ($50).
4. Reviews of  your progress ($65).

Still, I want it to be affordable for everyone. Right now, I anticipate that the full 4 month course will be $497, with an option to extend reviews and feedback for more months for as little as $49 per month.

This stuff works, it’s practical, and it’s natural.

The launch of Pretty Darn Comprehensive Old-Yang Style Long Form Taijiquan Course is fresh. It’s coming soon. It’s scheduled to launch January 15th, and we’ll spend a week or so talking about it. We’ll take 100 people. The next round won’t be until at least May. And the price will go up.

Stay tuned for the January launch.

The package is big. Tell me about your reservations or difficulties you’d have. We’ll make it work. Please contact me about any specific arrangements you’d like to make. And I’ll reveal more details about the Course in the coming weeks.

Complete Reviving Taiji

It’s on course to be finished earlier than April, and here’s three ways to keep you eye on it…

1. Reviving Taiji—the E-Book (right now, it’s free)
2. Move Naturally…chapter 1’s video companions
3. Strike Things…chapter 2’s video companions

Chapter 3: Practice Form is coming soon.

More Mini Courses

As if what’s already happening is not enough, we’ve shot most of the footage and started the editing of some other fun, mini courses. Including:

• Rockabye: Be a Cradle with Qigong and Cloud Hands to Help Your Baby Sleep.
• The Big View…Wandering with Eagle Eyes for Fun and Preemptive Self-Defense Silliness.
• Aligning with Your Real and Imagined Aggressors: Tickle without Tickling.

Really, by we I mean…my wife Shannon. These are her shots and edits of some fun films…these Mini Courses offer light, fun introductions to Taiji and some silly visions of how to integrate Taiji into daily life.

Mini Courses will remain free and open for everyone to play with, make fun of, and laugh about Taiji and life.

Montana Practice

We’re moving toward tidier options for Taiji in and around our wild mountain home.

1. Workshops. No doubt, we intend to host a World Taiji Boxing Association Workshop with Head WTBA Instructor, Mr. Eli Montaigue. And I’ll put on 2-4 workshops this year. Workshop details will be sorted though in February, so look for details then.
2. Classes. I’m relocating to River Park on the west side of Hamilton, along the Bitterroot River. Watch for me Thursdays at 5 pm.
3. Private Lessons. More on-line options are available now. And you can always arrange a time to meet me personally.

2010

It’s a big year with lots of options and opportunities.

Come out and play.

Warm regards,

Steven Smith

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How About Awesome Taijiquan in 2010?

If you’re reading this, thanks. I appreciate your presence on this little blog.

Here’s a few gifts I’d like you to have.

1.) The first free gift is Reviving Taiji.

If you don’t have it yet, please download Reviving Taiji. By now, it’s through the second chapter. It’s a free, and it’s a gift for everyone.

(If you feel like giving a gift in return, simply spread the word about Reviving Taiji…that’s my favorite gift this season.)

Next, I want you to know that in January, RealTaiji will present more learning opportunities. The details are coming soon. The general idea: a comprehensive Taiji Course becomes available mid-January. It will include extensive video lessons, live support, and a network of Taiji experts.

2.) Here’s the Next Gift…

The RealTaiji Affiliate Platform.

You will earn money simply by spreading Real Taijiquan lessons. It’s currently set up to dole out 15% for the 1st deals and 5% more for second tier.

Sign up for the program here.

(Note: there’s not much to sell right now, except private consultations. In 2010, watch for a Old Yang Taiji Course, some easy videos, and Reviving Taiji Comprehensive.)

3.) Your third RealTaiji Gift…

You get a great discount on my Taiji Consulting Services.

I’ve recently released on-line consulting services for $75 per consultation. Consulting is a great way to get personal, refined lessons in your martial art or healing art, from me.

Until December 30, purchase Consultations for 55 dollars or $135 for 3.

Get some consulting.

1.) Whisper what I’ll bring to you…

I’ll tell you if I can…

I want to know what you really want. What can I bring for you in 2010?

• What could I be focusing on that will help you?
• What is missing here?
• What do you expect when you visit?

Please leave your wishes in comments or contact me directly.

Thanks for your support.

Merry Christmas,

Steven Smith

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3 RealTaiji Gifts For You (and 1 for Me)

Revolutions

The best Holidays revolve around nature. Christmas is one of them. The great gift nature brings us, this time of year:

Darkness.

Do you practice Taiji in the dark? Surely, you must.

It’s a time to gravitate into stillness and quiet.

The focus, for many, this time of year is on light. Cabin fever and school vacations create a yearning for brightness. We dress up trees with lights and ornaments, as if denying darkness.

It’s easy to miss dark gifts.

Dark (or Yin) gifts include:

• Stillness
• Quiet
• Light

See the Darkness

That’s right…in the darkest of dark, you might see.

Try to look right at it: the darkness. People have different experiences. (In comments, please tell me about what you see in the dark.) When they look long and soft, most people see something. Stare deep into it.

It’s here that many might experience…the magnetic edges of bodies…the luminous cocoons of electric beings. These lights are subtle.

Subtle lights go unseen in the day, never noticed in the flurrious, furious midst of Holiday shopping.

Take some time at night, in the dark.

• Breathe Thoroughly.
• Do Qigong.
• Practice Taiji.

Until you can see…

The Dark.

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Great Extreme Holiday Gift

[Reviving Taiji's Chapter 2: Strike Things is here.]

Striking Things is natural.

I’m pounding away on this keyboard to say this to you: I’ve learned subtle strikes by typing. My typing grows more fluid and efficient through the years, more accuracy and more endurance are hallmarks of my proficiency. That’s how striking works.

When I first learned to strike things, I punched with a lot of tension. I had great desire to hit hard and to hit fast. But I had limited tools back then…tension, fists, and loud shouting…were the extent of my tools.

Retooling Strikes

Taiji brought new tools to my striking repertoire.  Many are obvious because they evolve out of form practice:

• Lots of palm strikes
• A couple of punching methods
• Some simple kicks

Two-person practices like Pushing-Hands and Da-Lu reveal more Taiji strikes, like elbow and shoulder strikes.

The principles of Great, Extreme Boxing reveal more…that the whole body (or every part of it) strikes.

Why We Dig Relaxing

Relaxing is a good start on the path of un-learning poor striking methods. It allows us to learn from our bodies rather than demanding the body learn unnatural motion.

Move naturally while striking. It’s easier, it’s more fun, and it opens up the body-mind to deeper kinds of learning.

Relaxing allows us to peek at transition moments in movement. Few movements are smooth. The slower we move, the more the choppy, staccato beat of movement becomes highlighted. And some spots are downright sticky. Those sticky spots, like right before lifting the foot for raise hands or play guitar, are keys.

Those points are where natural, structural tension rebounds into the next posture. And while the mind may remain soft, the body gets to revolve from opening to closing to opening again.

Explosive action hides right there, between poses.

Naturally, Striking Heals Old Wounds

Soft focus, vision that stretches to the periphery, points the way. When soft vision begins to be second nature, one begins to see all sorts of things. Pressure points become clear. Where another person holds tension becomes obvious. Flaccid, unstructured spots are revealed.

We make a shift.

Fighting becomes healing. Healing: a fight.

When engaging with friends (our pretend opponents) in fighting, strike those tense spots. There’s where he carries old wounds. Those are the places she needs to open up. Fighting can heal.

Healing is not easy. We must fight for it. Old wounds became scars, and those deep scars affect living. Breaking up scar tissues, old patterns, and terrible ideas is tough. It’s not a walk in the park…it’s work.

We must fight for it.

Come out and play

Chapter 2: Strike Things is here. It details some ways and means to get strikes happening heavy and natural.

Right now, Reviving Taiji is free. Please give it a whirl and let me know how it works for you.

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Wisdom of the Striking Body

I’ll try not to bore you. But it’s not a thrilling story. There’s no unusual magic (just the normal stuff).

There’s no super-hero drama…here’s the simple version:

My whole martial arts paradigm collapsed.

It started in 1992, on the brink of my second-degree Shotokan black belt.

I served tables in a Holiday Inn restaurant in St. Cloud Minnesota. One of my co-workers chatted with me about my years of karate training, touraments, and katas. Tim told me that he started Karate Lessons at the University and that they used pressure points.

I scoffed. (That’s ridiculous I thought…)

“Okay—” I said… “show me.”

He lightly grasped two points on my hand, turned my wrist, and WHOOP—my knees buckled….

That’s it.

Everything changed. His little lesson, in the middle of work, was instantly repeatable. I couldn’t not buckle my knees. It worked…every time. It was fairly practical, that little move (there are better, more practical moves)…was at least pretty-darn practical. And it was natural: as much as I tried to not let it buckle my knees, I could only pretend. It worked every time.

So I went to meet his instructors. I trained with Jack and Beverly Gustafson, at St. Cloud Karate Instruction for roughly a year and half. In 1993 they hosted an Erle Montaigue World Taiji Boxing Workshop. I attended.

My first introduction to Taiji was potent.

That’s how I found It.

What happened to you?

Why did you go looking…and how did you find Taiji?

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How I Found Taiji