An Invitation to Join Taichi Thoughts

“Life is finite, While knowledge is infinite.”
-- Zhuang Zi

What is Taichi Thoughts?

Taichi Thoughts is a thoughtful and thought provoking exploration of Taichichuan. In its pages you will find questions, answers, observations and insights from Wolfe Lowenthal, and many other subscribers, all exploring the solo form, push hands, sword, and the many ways in which Taichichuan relates to our daily lives. Please see the sample below.

As a subscriber, you will be able to share in the insights of others and contribute your own questions and insights.

How is it published?

Taichi Thoughts is published as a monthly Internet publication. Once a month subscribers receive a thoughtful selection by email of some very special writing on Taichichuan.

How do I join?

The cost of a subscription is a one-time membership fee of $40. You can subscribe by check or online.

By Check -please include a *typed* email address and make check payable to:	Online via PayPal
David Mazor 27 Woodlot Rd. Amherst, MA. 01002

Taichi Thoughts; Volume 8, Number 10, May-08

(Wolfe writes)
PLAY

One of the things I love about workshops is how they seem to produce a crystallization of the various themes I've been studying over a prolonged period of time. As I contemplate a trip down to New York, a one-day mini workshop, the idea that seems to be calling forth my focus is PLAY. Also in anticipation of the maxi-workshop in Salamanca, I'm planning to ask Jose Luis Monforte, our fine Spanish translator, to think about the translation into Spanish.

As we think about the word in English a number of relevant meanings come to mind: First, a quality of the mind. "Children at play," or "playing Taichi." Not so much the absence of seriousness, but the presence of a certain freedom, a lack of attachment to thoughts like: "Will this be a success? What does it say about me?" the desperate will to succeed.

In my practice I have been focusing on a secondary meaning of Play, "freedom for motion or action," contrasting Play with the one-piecedness necessary to access the internal force: One line of energy from the foot, through the correctly aligned body, emerging from the hand. One chi unified with the ground. It's characterized my play in the recent period of time, and I've come to credit it with the source of a real leap forward in my -- and my fellow students' -- understanding.

However, there are risks: primarily a rigidity, a lack of the flexibility that is the basis for much of the potent application of Taichi. Yin and yang, flowing around the opponent's hardness into their vulnerable insubstantiality. I believe it's what my fellow students in the Master Tapes were saying about Professor's fencing, "He wasn't doing it, we were." As Professor's opponent tries to get away, they begin to block or try to shove his sword aside. It is that blocking/resisting that Professor was constantly detecting and flowing around which produced the false sense that he was forcing the issue. He was always there -- coming at you -- but you were creating the conditions allowing him to do that.

It was flexibility that was his tool. However, not a flexibility that results from everything being disjointed. The key is to combine the ideas of one-piecedness with flexibility, creating Taichi. And once again, we don't need to reinvent the wheel as we explore this theme. In the classics much is made of the quality of Taichi being like a whip, rather than a stick. It's relevant that a whip is still "one-pieced" but it is not rigid. It combines a unified chi with complete flexibility.

Speaking of translation -- Chinese to English in this case -- we should remember that when we say "Relax," we are also saying, "Be loose." In the progress of Taichi, the necessary sinking can tend to produce "strength" -- stuckness -- in the "waist" (area of the hips, pelvis and sacrum). Of course, ideally the sinking should be a releasing, a letting go, but it's easy to fall into the trap of forcing downward, rather than relaxing. This tight, bracing quality -- stuckness -- inhibits our ability to be loose in the waist. To counteract this tendency, we need to pay more attention to what Professor called "the suspended headtop." Visualizing a string lifting us upward eliminates stuckness in the body.

This upward lightness combines with downward weight, eventually resulting in root and flexibility.

--Wolfe

(Patrick Cavanaugh writes:)

I wonder if you heard any stories about what motivated Chang San-feng to create Taichi Chuan, i.e. to develop a system of self defense? He was a monk, with a focus on meditation, so what prompted him to move toward a martial art?

--Patrick

It's really an excellent question, though I will confess, I don't believe in Chang San-feng. For me he's kind of up there with Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. However, the idea of Chang San-feng is true. In other words, in the distant past and over many centuries, monks, martial artists, and white-bearded taoists (a little like Santa, come to think of it) studied the Great Tao and wondered how much of the principle could be incorporated in how they lived their lives, including the art of self defense. In terms of the development of Taichi, I doubt that the progression through the ages has been a straight line. There have been times, and individuals, who were able to follow the principle to its core. And there have been other times when the principle became a distant dream of possibility while the practice was a faithless, hard and tense pursuit of victory over others.

David sent me a video the other day of a "push hands" competition in China. About the only thing that elicited the Taichi that I'm familiar with was the name. Otherwise it was almost precisely sumo with all the attendant hardness and resistance. The "winner" was a student of a first generation student of Cheng Man-ching, underlining how quickly the principle can be gained and lost: Cheng Man-ching standing at the pinnacle of the faith in relaxation, the practice of softness and the understanding of the greatness of the chi -- and a "grandson" committed to a practice that is Taichi in name only.

Returning to Patrick's question: out of what was almost certainly a tradition of meditation, they developed a system of martial art. To my mind there is an inspired logic to the "development." To discover Tao it is necessary to overcome the fearful ego. So "Chang San-Feng" took an activity that traditionally seeks to defeat an opponent, and used it to defeat the only opponent that really matters -- ourselves.

--Wolfe

(I sometimes correspond with Tony Zayner, an able fellow student who studied in Taipei. Here's his response to the "sumo video:")

The sad thing is, I used to be that guy, but always felt like (even though I was winning) that I was doing something wrong... like I didn't deserve to win... like those that went before me weren't smiling down on me. Glad that in Oct.,1989 Dr. Tao introduced me to some principles that cold rainy first morning at Sun Yat-sen park in Taipei, when he told me, First, "you know nothing" and two "Now you study with me, you use no force for two years" and three "If my Tai Ji doesn't change your personality, leave me"

After two years, he asked me one day in push hands class if I wanted to push now. I paused and said, "I don't need to." From his facial response I knew it was the change he was patiently waiting for, and I felt the heavens smile once again.

(A student writes from New York)

The Master Tapes confirmed again to me the most obvious thing that I keep dismissing: our Professor's achievements and extraordinary ability is one piece with his physical disabilities and weakness; his thorn in the flesh that required his reliance and dependence on the chi and right form. That's why I and all of us find his tale so inspiring and encouraging. My mistake usually lies in my perception of relying on my "muscles" and physical prowess (diminishing).

The tapes just feel so fresh and naive, in the best sense. Ask Len if we can change our dress code to slacks, dress shoes & shirts, beat & mod. While it feels so serious, there is a light-hearted atmosphere I want to keep in my mind. You've spoken of it but to get a view of it is almost bitter-sweet.

I tried to imagine being there when the Professor first talked about "the soft overcoming the hard" and how it must have been like hearing "blessed are the peacemakers," or "the meek inheriting the earth" -- either laughing, jeering -- or too shocking to be taken seriously, or accepted but too gut stunning in its rightness to be rejected.

Course now it is not a fresh idea and hearing similar sentiments countless times have dulled the impact, though each "refreshing" still packs a punch, still seems funny, still stunning & resonating.

NOTES FROM CLASS

Jon Gimbel, one of the excellent health care practitioners studying at Long River, told me the following story: A patient had been diagnosed with the early stage of osteoporosis, loss of bone density. She didn’t want to take the recommended medication; Jon suggested that she take up the study of Taichichuan. Even bad Taichi would be helpful, but Long River has a class starting soon. After a year of Taichi, tests revealed that she was no longer in the danger zone. (Even so, said Jon, the doctor still
recommended the medication.)

Cheng Man-ching often talked about a major benefit of Taichi being that it strengthens the bones. Osteoporosis can be a fierce disease in older people, the bones becoming so weak they literally begin to disintegrate. Relaxing and treating the air like water strengthens the bones as does the lessons of sinking weight into the legs. Probably most beneficial is the near miraculous, alchemical benefit where, after some time of concentrating chi, the chi permeates the bones, causing them to become essentially firm, like steel.

Suzette Theadorou quoted Ed Young, speaking of his first look at Professor Cheng doing Taichi at the UN. It looks as if nothing is happening.

It occurred to me that, actually, nothing is happening. Almost all the doing happening in the form is an expression of tension and force. When we learn to get out of our own way, dropping force and tension, we’re left with nothing. In that state of Non-action, we arrive at the real Taichi, and the greatness of the chi.

Happily, David Fagelson has returned to Vermont Long River from his winter in Tennessee. After listening to my latest paean about the eventual achievement of Taichi practice, he said, Not in this lifetime.

I’m not sure he meant it. If he really believed that why would he study so diligently, but I expressed my disagreement. For most of us, significant progress does seem to take a long time, decades, but it doesn’t have to.

The image of Cheng Man-ching that is strongest in my mind these days is his little gesture of flopping his wrist, demonstrating its looseness as he leads his students in the form. That little gesture seems to highlight the paradox that confronts students taking up the study of Tacihichuan: To be absolutely relaxed, hands (and the rest) as soft as Professor demonstrates, while at the same time being able to send an attacker flying. resolve that paradox by assuming that Cheng Man-ching’s relaxation is a rough metaphor; an approximation of the idea rather than a literal expression of it. It can’t work being that soft, we think to ourselves. What he’s trying to tell us is that we need to be relaxed, but without some degree of force, we’d collapse back onto ourselves. Without some degree of force, it wouldn’t work.

Finding our way past the barrier of this assumption is what takes so long. We can eliminate many years if we accept the teaching at face value. Make the priority being absolutely soft, loose. Invest in letting go of the need to experience how it works. The productive way to resolve the paradox is to have faith in the method of softness, rather than pursuing the result.

Wolfe

(Another question from Suzette)

"How are we to think of shifting into the right leg at the beginning of the form?"

Describing this first moment, Professor Cheng said, "Mobilize the chi." We begin to differentiate yin and yang; the weight shifting into the right leg establishes a line of energy -- and of potential force -- from the heart of the right foot to any point on the left side of the body.

Of course, though the form begins with the weight shifting into the right leg, it just as easily could be the opposite. Two days after Suzette's question in Vermont, a student in the new Beginners' class in Northampton came up behind me. Wanting to get my attention, he touched me on the right shoulder.

It produced an instant mobilization of the chi. My weight shifted onto my left foot and my right arm filled outward behind me, contacting his arm near the elbow. The shift allowed me to create space between his hand and my body. Rather than touching my body, he was now on the perimeter of an energy field defined by my right arm, very much a Wardoff-like position.

The center of the "perimeter" was the heart of the left foot. The line of energy from left foot to right arm -- in contact with his hand -- had two potential applications. Discharging: sending force through his hand, attacking his root. The other application would be Neutralizing: allowing the perimeter to rotate with his force, emptying and filling.

Of course, in the absence of any aggressive intent on the part of the student, I did neither, but the instantaneous shift established the condition where my mobilized chi could protect me.

As is true of so many principles in the form, the opening postures are the best teachers; not because they are unique -- the principles exist throughout, in all the postures -- but because they are the simplest.

--Wolfe

(Wolfe writes)

Grasping the Sparrow’s Tail: Transition from Wardoff Left to Wardoff Right

Shift more of your weight to your left leg until your right foot is brought to toes. Simultaneously turn your left hand over so that the palm is down while the palm of your right hand is up. Relaxing your left shoulder, turn your right thigh to the right and turn on your right toes about 45 degrees, placing your right foot down heel first just an inch or so forward of its previous position. Shift your weight from your left leg to your bent right leg.. Protect with your right arm, elbow down, palm toward your chest, and your left arm, elbow down, the palm forward midway between the right wrist and elbow but not touching. Stretch the left leg and turn the foot slightly inward. You now face directly to the east.

--From Cheng Man-ching’s Tai Chi Chuan

Lao Lao-fan Commentary:

When we speak of being centered in Taichichuan, there are a number of elements we could be referring to. One has to do with the way the nose is in line with the belly button so that the spine does not twist and the hands tend to be at the periphery of the energy field, in general opposite the center line.

In general. The hands are not necessarily exactly opposite the center line.

For instance, in the transition from Wardoff Left to Wardoff Right, we roll forward onto the left foot, then turn, but the hands stay where they are and we are turning away from them slightly. At this point the hands are slightly to the left of the center line (facing each other on a vertical plane). We then raise the hands, mainly the right hand, as we shift weight from left foot to right foot, and then square the hips. All through this movement the hands are positioned to the left of the center line rather than directly opposite it. When the position ends with hips square to the east, the hands face each other on a horizontal plane, opposite the heart, slightly to the left of the center line. It allows the left elbow to hang from the shoulder, aiding the flow of jing energy.

The principle is to have the nose in line with belly button and the curved energy field filling out from the center. The hands are part of the energy field, usually defining the perimeter, releasing energy in application.

Another aspect of the principle is the hands Not-doing; but sometimes momentum moves them, as in the end of Rollback; sometimes we move away from the hands as we described above; or sometimes there is no movement with the hands relative to the body as in the turn into the corner which begins the Rollback.

NEW VIDEO: RECEIVING: a Push Hands Class with Wolfe Lowenthal

Speaking of workshops, there's a new video available for sale in class and in the Long River on-line store. It’s called "Receiving, a Push Hands Class with Wolfe Lowenthal".

I think it was about a year ago I did a one night workshop in New York. For a few years we had been working on the idea of "Receiving," the way to use the internal energy to borrow the resistance of the opponent, to push formidable resistance without using force. As tends to be the case with workshops in general, it seemed like years of ideas crystallized in that one hour class.

Lenny had a nasty bicycle accident a little time before, so unable to take the workshop, he spent his time with a video camera. I didn't pay much attention to it, but six months later, when I next came down to New York, Lenny said, "You know that push hands workshop you did last time was really exceptional." He reminded me that he taped it and gave me a copy to look over.

I decided to make it into a DVD, which I recommend to my fellow students. The DVD is not a general, extensive examination of Push Hands. That awaits another, rather daunting, kind of effort. But I believe this DVD is a good presentation of the idea of Receiving, which at this point in my study is the deepest level of Wu-Wei (not doing) that I've been able to achieve. In my opinion, it's quite important. Besides being a formidable technique in the martial application, Receiving is a confirmation of Tao, a confirmation of our ability to let IT do it; to access the greatness of the chi instead of the hard, stiff strength of our will.

--Wolfe

(End of Taichi Thoughts, Volume 8, Number 10. COPYRIGHT [c] 2008 WOLFE LOWENTHAL)
(A legal statement follows below:)

AGREEMENT By subscribing to this list, you accept and agree to the following conditions. These conditions may change from time to time. You may unsubscribe by contacting me at wolfe@rcn.com. If you paid to subscribe and do not agree with these terms, I will refund the unused part of your subscription.

PROPERTY You own the materials that you send to me in connection with the list, including your private messages. Among other things, this means that you wrote them yourself, and not for an employer, and not by materially quoting other sources.

I own the name "Taichi Thoughts", and what I write for the list, and a non-exclusive, royalty-free irrevocable, worldwide license to use your messages to me in connection with the list, and whatever electronic or printed book in which I may include or quote from them. When quoting your private messages I will include your name unless you tell me otherwise.

CONTROL OF LIST The list is copyright protected and is private among us, and its contents should not be distributed or quoted on the Internet, or in newsletters, or otherwise by list subscribers.

Membership in the list is subject to my discretion, and accordingly I may limit membership, or put the list on a website, or end it without any further obligation except on request to refund the unused portion of any subscription fee I received. The list invites questions, but no promise is made that all will be answered, which is no judgment on their quality.

DISCLAIMERS THIS LIST AND THE INFORMATION ON IT ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT ANY REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS TO ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS OR TIMELINESS, OR THE INADVERTENT TRANSMISSION OF ANY COMPUTER "VIRUS" OR OTHER CODE. OTHER THAN FOR A REFUND AS SPECIFICALLY PROVIDED ABOVE, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHALL I BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THIS LIST OR ITS USE, WHICH EXCLUDES REMEDIES OF ALL KINDS, INCLUDING CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES AFTER NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF THEM.

Version May 7, 2000

www.longrivertaichi.org