In the practice of the internal arts, you're supposed to relax the hips. Sometimes it is said that you should "tuck the tailbone."
I prefer to use a different description.
Relax the lower back.
Here are two photos. The first one shows a common posture that I see in beginning students -- the butt sticks out in postures such as Single Whip.The second photo shows a more "centered" tailbone. The lower back is relaxed.
When most of us stand up, our lower backs are tense. They are concave, bowing inward toward the navel. But when you work on the body mechanics that are essential for quality internal arts (Taiji, Xingyi and Bagua) you learn to relax the lower back.
When I teach this, I have students put a hand firmly on my lower back. I stand normally. They can feel it bow inward. Then I relax and the lower back "fills up." At the same time, the hips drop down and inward. By relaxing the lower back, you are "tucking the hips," and no tension is required.
Relaxing the lower back is crucial for the opening and closing involved in movement. Bowing and unbowing the back is essential for silk-reeling and for storing and releasing in fajing.
And it's crucial for a centered stance in the internal arts.
I bought a VCR in 1978 -- one of the first in the nation to do so. It cost $998 and a blank VHS tape cost $27.99. I was a poor radio news reporter in Lexington, Kentucky earning around $10,000 a year but I had to have it.
Before long, I started adding martial arts videos to my library. Wing Chun, karate, a little kung-fu -- I was ready to see it all and study it all.
By the time I began studying Chen taiji in 1998, I bought some videos by Chen Xiaowang to study his movement. And that really was all the videos were -- movements repeated at various angles with very little instruction. I got instruction from from my teachers but wanted more from the investment I made in the DVDs.
My first instructional video was Tournament Point Sparring -- a sport that I had been doing pretty successfully and had some helpful techniques to offer. It has sold a lot of copies over the years. I demonstrated winning tournament techniques with a partner but I also added a lot of actual tournament video that I had taken over the years.
When I made my first Hsing-I video, I decided to take a different approach than most of the videos I had seen. I put real students in it, demonstrating techniques with them and coaching them through the movements. I wanted my videos and DVDs to actually instruct -- going in-depth in not just how to do the movement but the body mechanics involved and the self-defense applications.
It's rare to see internal arts videos that teach the real body mechanics of the art. The use of the ground path, peng jin, whole-body movement, opening and closing the kua, silk-reeling, rotation of the dan t'ien -- and how all of that works together for quality movement but also for powerful martial arts.
So that became my main goal with each DVD -- to drill deeper and give customers something they couldn't find anywhere else.
I have taken this approach in each of my DVDs and it works. Each time someone around the world buys one DVD, I can usually expect them to return to buy a few more, because I try to put value in each one -- information they usually don't even get from their own teachers.
Some of my favorite compliments have come from people who have studied directly from people like Chen Xiaowang, who have told me that they have learned things from my DVDs (and the online school) that they haven't learned from Grandmaster Chen.
I have plans for more DVDs this year. You can explore different DVDs on the right side of this blog. Coming up this year will be the complete 12-Animal Xingyi form, the Bagua 8 Main Palms Form, the Bagua Elk Horn Knives form, and the Chen Straight Sword form and -- with a little luck -- Laojia Yilu. All the video I shoot for my DVDs ends up on the online school -- in fact, the website has hundreds of video lessons that aren't yet on DVD -- videos that go in-depth into Tai Chi, Xingyi and Bagua.
It's frustrating to see a video that demonstrates moves from several angles but doesn't go beneath the surface. I suppose the top masters don't want to go beneath the surface in their videos. So I will gladly do that. :)
In 1975, I bought my first copy of The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, by Bruce Lee. It was a paperback copy. For Christmas in 1976, I was given a hardbound edition. I still have both copies.
This year -- 2011 -- Nancy gave me the Expanded Edition of Tao of Jeet Kune Do for Christmas. As I started reading it again, it really brought back memories of just how influential these writings were when I was 22 years old.
Growing up in the Bible Belt (Kentucky, Georgia, Florida) in the Fifties and Sixties did not provide opportunities for a young guy to think outside the fundamentalist church. Anything that wasn't understood was Satanic, including the Beatles, according to ministers in my church. Actually, it was a Sunday School lecture against the Beatles that first made me realize that the religion might be full of crap. If they would lie about the Beatles just to prove a point, what else would they lie about? It started me on the journey that led me to reject that sort of narrow-minded thinking. That was around 1969.
By the time Bruce Lee arrived, and I began studying Shaolin Do with Grandmaster Sin The, I was 20 years old and fascinated with the Kung Fu TV show and its Taoist morality.
Bruce Lee's book drove it home.
"Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo."
It was a new way of thinking.
"The eye sees it, But no hands can take hold of it. The moon in the stream."
"Nothingness cannot be defined. The softest thing cannot be snapped."
I began stepping out of the teachings of my youth and embraced a more abstract way of thinking.
Every martial artist since 1972 owes a tremendous debt to Bruce Lee. One of the things that I still practice is his concept of discarding what is not useful. When my students and I come across a self-defense application that seems preposterous, we discard it. If it wouldn't work in real life, we don't worry about it.
But my debt goes much deeper than just technique or martial philosophy. It goes to the very heart, the philosophy of life that I embrace. It's very peaceful, and it has carried me through some very down periods in my life.
I have a lot to thank Bruce Lee for -- I only wish he still lived so I could tell him. Instead, I'm telling you.
I'm making the switch. When I began teaching the internal arts, I considered whether to write "Tai Chi" or "Taiji."
On mainland China, Taiji (or Taijiquan) is the accepted translation style, known as pinyin.
Tai Chi (or T'ai Chi Ch'uan) is the Wade-Giles method of translation, developed by two men (Wade and Giles).
In 1997, I chose to use Tai Chi because that is the spelling most commonly known. That's the spelling you saw in newspapers and magazines such as T'ai Chi magazine. When I advertised my classes, I wanted the general public to see the ad and understand what "Tai Chi" meant. I didn't think they would understand that "Taiji" was the same thing.
It was purely a marketing decision, even though I knew that "serious" practitioners of the art used the term Taiji.
In recent months, I've started using both terms in my writing, and you might still see a Tai Chi pop up for search engine reasons, but for the most part, I'm changing the way I spell the art to Taijiquan, or Taiji.
My main reason for this change is this -- I no longer try to attract local middle-aged or elderly people for classes. The art that I practice and teach is not necessarily geared toward people who want a slow motion exercise for health and meditation. This isn't your grandmother's tai chi. In fact, that audience began falling as soon as I switched from Yang style to Chen style back in 1998. Chen style is much more athletic, contains more fa-jing, and it just isn't what elderly folks want to practice.
In the end, it doesn't matter what you call it -- Tai Chi or Taiji. What matters is that you practice. It's an amazing martial art, no matter how you spell it.
Today, Colin came over to the Kung Fu Room and for one hour, we drilled three techniques over and over and over.
The techniques can be found in the Bagua Fighting Skills section of the website -- Bagua Keywords.
We practiced Threading, Hooking, and Turning.
First we practiced proper form, then one would throw multiple attacks in a realistic way and the other would use threading to deflect the attacks. After a while, we worked hooking in a similar way. Then we worked on turning, which is very effective up close.
This was a satisfying practice because we slowed down, selected three techniques and practiced them repeatedly. There are a lot of techniques on my website, and a lot of principles. But just seeing a video or learning a technique in class and practicing it a few times will not make you good at it. Practicing all the keyword techniques in an hour won't help you to improve.
The key to mastery is practicing each technique thousands of times, solitary and with a partner.
I'm a firm believer in the basics. When someone is learning an art, it doesn't help them if I try to get fancy and explain or demonstrate things they aren't ready to perform or even understand. It doesn't help when your partner is trying to get fancy or trying to show that he or she is better than you. It works best when both partners are trying to help the other become better at one basic technique.
By slowing it down and exploring each technique individually, taking apart the body mechanics that make it effective, then making sure you include the body mechanics when working with a partner -- that's when you begin to internalize this material and are able to perform it when you need to.
I wish we had more time today. I could have spent the afternoon working those three techniques. And if I spent the next few years just practicing these three techniques, they could be the only three techniques I would ever need.
As Bruce Lee said, "I don't fear the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks one time. I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."
Whether it's a silk-reeling exercise or the movement of a Chen taiji form or a Bagua keyword like threading, it's the one who practices it 10,000 times who will be able to use it best.
Kim Kruse achieved a black sash on Sunday. She has worked very hard for 4 1/2 years to get there.
Colin Frye became a second-level brown sash on Sunday. He started studying back when we were renting training space from Jazzercise in Bettendorf. He was in college at the time.
Kim becomes the third person to reach black sash under me since I began teaching 14 years ago. Colin is the fourth person to reach second-level brown sash.
The photo shows -- from left to right -- Chris Miller, Kim Kruse, me, Colin Frye, and Leander Mohs.
Congratulations, guys!!
