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???