Ch.9 Relax

Now we are getting into a topic that really causes problems to kong fu students. When the word “relax” is used in English, it means relax. But when your Chinese Kong fu master tells you to relax it actually mean something much more complicated and elusive than merely “relax”. The better word for me to put it is "balanced". You need to be balanced in motion as well as in stillness. And once you achievied such balance, you are relaxed.

A lot of issues trouble foreign kong fu students are caused by the language and culture barrier. Actually, because China is such a vast and diversified country, many Chinese don’t fully understand the people who comes from remote areas are talking about.

So, what relax really means? You have to start learning the concept of Kong-Fu-Relax by ditching the idea of relax first and start evrything from scratch.

First, you need to know the real Chinese kong fu is based on the concept of “Dan-Tien”, the field of energy, which is located inside your belly and is not a tangible organ that you can touch or feel by hand. It is the root of everything you do in kong fu and you connect everything through it. Good kong fu build its system around the concept of Dan-Tien like a F1 race car build around its engine. I know, now you are getting confused more than ever, bear with me, I will get you out of here in later chapters.

Second, since we store and utilize the energy from Dan-Tien, all other parts of our body should follow its commend without putting any extra effort outside the energy flow of Dan-Tien to insure efficiency and avoid any waste of energy. As a result, your moves will be connected and supported by the energy flow of your body which uses Dan-Tien as the center hub instead of the partial muscular fixation of different areas. If you don’t, then you are not in the zone and it is not the kong fu relax we are talking about.

Now you may have found that the “Relax” is actually the tip of an ice burg that represents a lot of things in Kong Fu while most of the teachers include them in one word and create a lot of confusion and disputes. But we can easily categorize these problems into three major different areas. You should be able to recognize or ask your teacher to point it out for you exactly which area is the problem that causes the “unrelax” of yours. And of course, these three major areas are interconnected to each other but there will always be one that is responsible for causing your problem.

The first category is the structure of your outside frame; the stances, the elbow or shoulder positions, the back arch, the chest and waist positions…etc. Most of the relax problems are caused by the wrong positions of your body. And when your body positions are not aligned with your internal energy flow, you are going to be stiff and not “relaxed”. So it is important for your teacher to spot your structure problems and it is even more important for you to learn your own body and can correct yourself. You need to lay the rail well for the train of energy to come by.

The second category is the internal structure of your energy flow. Well, if your master doesn’t tell you much about it, you have to wait for next chapter. The only thing I can tell you now is that we need to lay out a clear path for your internal energy to flow without obstruction; in the mean time we want the flow to be steady, strong and smooth so that it can align with the outside form of your body parts to exert the force we want efficiently and strongly.

The third category is the mental structure of yours. When you have a correct frame outside, a smooth energy flow inside, you need the right mind set to make things happen. This is the most difficult part of kong fu(or any human endeavor) but it is also the most important one. Again, I will talk about this later, for now, you need to know that a right mind set is the key to continuous and stable control of the body structure and internal energy flow. If you have problems here, none of the first two categories matters since you will lose the balance sooner or later.

All three areas together balances you inside out, as you can see, if you are a man/woman who is balanced inside out, you will be relaxed…Next time, when your master tells you that you are not relaxed enough, ask him exactly where and how you need to change to be right. Now you know what to ask and help yourself.

Coming up next: Ch.10 CHI???

Ch.8 Circles

It is the circles you make that create power for the moves. Punch, Kick, Wrestle, Grapple, move, and everything you do in Kong Fu, you need to identify the circle(s) you are making.

Generally speaking, the major circle that you use the most is the movements of your waist, it is a horizontal circle that you are making every time you move your waist around. Then there are the most obvious circles: your shoulders, elbows, wrists, pelvis (hip bone), knees and ankles. Together they can make very complicated circles within circles and generate very strong power that a straight line move can never compare to. But there are some more subtle circles you need to learn to leverage if you really want to know the secrets of your masters. The circles made by your ribcage and shoulder blades.

Start learning the tiny movements that you can do with your chest, feel how it can affect your upper-body and how it connects your waist and hips. If you take time and feel it, you can learn how the force is transmitted from the foot to the hands and how it works when you throw a punch and pull the hands back. And you will find there is a circle you can leverage from your ribcage to dissipate excess forces and direct necessary power to where you want it to go.

Then there is the shoulder blades, if you try to extend them as long as possible or retract them as much as you can, there will be at least 30 cm of distance you can maneuver without moving other upper limb joints, and that is a huge difference between hit or miss in a real combat situation! Now, try to make vertical circles with the shoulder blades and you will see how much more maneuverability you gain from it! If you leverage the circles correctly, you can throw punches at your opponents and they will never see them coming.

These two extra parts of your body and how to leverage them are overlooked by most of the fighting systems while some oriental martial arts treat them as big secrets that will give them major advantage either in offensive moves or defensive ones, for example, Systema in Russia and Xing-Yi Quan in northern China are good examples of how to leverage the chest area and shoulder blades to the extreme. And don’t ask me any more detail about these two, there are Google and YouTube.

Now we have talked about all the major circles you should know to leverage in your body, the next step is to know how to leverage them in coherence and coordinate them in a good manner.

Each of your major joints of the limbs has it corresponding partner joint. The ankles are paired with the wrists; the knees are paired with elbows; the shoulders are paired with the pelvis. You will always connect the moves with corresponding joints or you will lose the leverage and coherence of your overall balance. In the meantime, since you drive 90% of the moves from your waist and the power generated by the waist movements will go to both the upper and lower limbs, the connected ways of movements will minimize the loss of energy that generate from the waist thus maximize efficiency.

Take an easy example and you will see why do we need to coordinate the upper and lower limbs: Stand loosely and let your foot point outwards then throw a straight right punch. First you spin your waist to the left, the power goes up through the torso and you relax the shoulder blade and let the power go and move your elbow forward, then you twist the shoulder a little and immediately your elbow and wrist follow through with the twist and complete the punch.

Now, in a coordinated manner, you keep everything the same for the upper body movement, in the meantime, you place your foot a little bit inward and when you swing the waist to initiate the punch, utilize the momentum to slightly tighten your knee and ankle as your elbow and wrist start to twist. Do it slow then increase the speed, I believe you will see my point and take your punch to a new level.

The same concept applies to all your moves and since you utilize the most out of every move you initiate, it actually saves your energy and keep you from exhausted by moving every body parts with separated maneuver. If you make this connection between joints a second nature, you will be swift, agile and unpredictable to the opponent’s eyes. Good luck!

Coming up next Ch9. Relax

Ch.7 Get start

It always starts from the stances and it is always the stances that screw people up. Once you screw up in the very beginning, the rest is a waste of time. I will not explain each of the stances and posting pictures or videos here, without face to face instruction and hands on adjustment to your body, pictures and videos only screw you up more. What I will share with you is the reasoning behind the stances and what should you feel when you get it right. Ask your master if you don’t feel what I am telling you and if you still don’t get it, ask yourself what is the problem, either me, you or your teacher, one of us has to be wrong.

Why do we need these stances? Why do we need to invest time keep the stances for a long time while they are simply different ways of spreading your legs open and create pain and sour?

I don’t care how many basic stances you have there in your system, but none of them should be just making bigger leg muscle by pushing you lower and lower towards the ground. You see, in Chinese kung fu, it’s all about balance. Your stances’ sole purpose is to help you understand your own body better and gain real balance. If you do them right, there is actually not so much sour and there shouldn’t be any pain. The sour tells you where to adjust to gain better balance, and it helps your body to build more muscle to maintain the ideal, balanced positions. So you need time to do each of the stances so that you can listen to your body and learn where to adjust. You want to make each of them smooth and confortable, and when you do it right on spot, you can sense a true balance that keeps you calm but vigilant and you can breathe deep easily.

A Kong Fu system is like building things up with your own body, you need start with the most basic blocks. The stances are the most basic building blocks. They serve as the basic elements of a stable weapon platform for you to launch the punches, kicks, to shoot out the wrestle or grapple, to make swift advance or retreat. You need them to be strong, stable and with right shapes. However, unlike bricks or steel bars, the stances should be easy to transition to one another and keep your body maneuverable any time you want to. So, if any of your stances locks your legs together, ask you to drop down dead on the floor and you need spend quite some energy to transfer it to another stance, it is wrong.

Ask your partner to press hard on the both sides of your shoulders when practicing the stances, if you do them correctly, the down force from your partner will directly transfer to the floor and you will not feel stressed or need to use leg muscle to fight the weight back. And When your partner suddenly retracts his/her hand, you will not feeling the pulse to jump or thrust up. That is what will happen when you gain the real balance of your body structure.

To sum it up, your stances are aim to help you to find and keep the true balance of your body, when practicing, you shouldn’t feel any pain with the joints and the sour will tell you where to adjust and gain more muscle to reinforce the ideal structure of your body. You should remain calm and can breathe deeply and freely when you do these stances while you can easily make the transitions between them. No lock up dead ones and your upper body should always be relaxed and ready to launch.

Coming up next Ch8. Circles