The internal way of moving | ||
Internal work/whole body strength | ||
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Whole-body
Neigong is concerned with whole-body
strength expressed via whole-body movement.
This is distinct to how most people normally move in that every body part
should be involved in every movement.
Accomplishing this is not easy.
As a child you possessed whole-body movement, but as an adult you have lost
it from a lifetime of bodily misuse and bad habits.
Why bother?
Imagine that you have a large amount of
work to do and you give it to 1 member of staff... Now, consider sharing that same amount of work amongst 100 members of
staff?
Instead of 1 staff member working extra hard to do the job, 100 people are
working together.
The job will be done more quickly and each individual has less of the
overall responsibility for completing the job.
A new way
Conventional muscle use involves a limited number of muscles being assigned
to a given task.
Whole-body power entails all of your muscles being used together.
Consequently, the task feels less strenuous and is more easily fulfilled.
Connection
Connection is literally the process of
uniting body parts.
It is the most basic and simplistic concern.
Instead of moving your arms via the shoulder or relying upon local
muscle
strength, you 'connect' the arms to the back and move via the torso and legs
instead.
Maintaining connection when performing different tasks is a major
undertaking for the new student.
It is not enough to do a movement.
You must move in a whole-body manner.
The hardest part of this requirement is to remain relaxed but not floppy,
flaccid or crumpled.
Disconnection
Here are a few examples of 'disconnection':
Localised arm and shoulder movement
Tensed muscles
Over-extended limbs
Locking the joints
Deep, long or wide stances
Bending the knees too deeply
Hunching-over
Lifting/puffing the chest
Bending from the rib cage or waist
Leaning
Fixed legs - disconnected upper & lower
Over-emphasis of the waist
Incorrect use of the pelvis and hips
Once you can connect, work on neigong,
peng and sung.
Still external
In itself, connection is not internal at
all.
Any martial artist could cultivate connection in order to increase power.
It is merely a start.
Shedding the external
Having gained a crude sense of connection,
a student may feel like a robot.
This is not correct.
The aim is to move freely, comfortably - in an agile, supple, flowing way -
without ever losing connection.
How is this accomplished? By incorporating subtle yet sophisticated concerns into how you move.
These neigong qualities serve to unite the body in a manner that is not
awkward or clumsy.
What is the catch?
Whole-body movement will take
years to accomplish.
The main impediments are the mind
and failure to practice adequately or
accurately.
Train the basics.
Be patient.
Exercise
An exercise designed to cultivate neigong
is not a neigong itself.
Neigong exists in your body all the time.
It is part of how you move.
A habit: unconscious and familiar. As easy and present as speaking or
drinking from a glass.
If you have to think about a neigong quality or practice it, or engage it
when needed... what good is it in combat/application? An exercise is a training tool.
It helps you to get the hang of the habit, to feel how it works and to
incorporate the feeling into your framework.
When you have the neigong quality as part of how you move, the exercise is
no longer required.
Tzu-jan
Some neigong can be cultivated by exercise.
Others are more subtle and need the mind to be engaged in a particular way
until the neigong is habit.
The more advanced neigong arise because existing neigong are in place.
With practice and experience they arise by themselves.
Tzu-jan concerns cannot be made to happen or directly cultivated.
They are a by-product of ingrained internal movement habits.
Use
How you move and use your body in everyday
life will radically affect your progress in tai chi.
Day-to-day habit patterns are the strongest.
These are the hardest to lose.
If you spend all day hunched-over, tensing-up, nervous, over-extending...
this cannot be ironed out with a 90 minute class.
It is necessary to think about body usage as you are using it.
If you catch yourself off-balance, strained, tensing - then stop.
Re-establish equilibrium and perform the task again, with mindfulness.
This may sound a little difficult, and it is, but with practice you will
improve very quickly.
As new habit patterns emerge and you begin to move as a unified whole,
disconnection will be immediately evident and feel physically uncomfortable.
Training internal movement
Qigong exercises train the body to move in
a unique, connected, relaxed way.
These exercises are simple and quite easy to learn.
The student focuses upon basic movements without additional concerns
intruding.
Form
Whilst learning the fundamental movements,
a student is introduced to form. Form serves to challenge the student.
The movement principles and habits must now be employed in a significantly
more diverse manner.
Variety, combinations, permutations and stepping all require the student to
extend their range of skill.
Martial
Form also has the added difficulty of being martial in nature.
Not only must the pattern be accurate in appearance, it must also contain
whole-body strength.
Long-term, the student must possess the knowledge of how to
apply the form
in combat.
Weapons
Weapons forms and drills require the
student to take all of their existing knowledge and utilise those skills
when wielding a weapon.
This may sound easy, however, extending your
peng through the weapon is
difficult.
Practicing a weapons form in a martially-viable manner is another
consideration entirely.
Partnered exercises
Training partnered exercises enables the
student to determine whether or not they are employing the principles correctly and effectively.
Inappropriate body use becomes immediately apparent when working with a
partner.
Combat
The real test of your understanding lies in
your ability to apply the art in a thorough and convincing manner against a
diverse and varied range of attacks.
It is difficult to remain connected, relaxed and composed if the internal
way of moving is not ingrained and intrinsic.
Applying the Weber Fechner
rule, we know that gentle movement leads to a more accurate and
discriminating perception of the mechanics of the movement. In other words,
there is more detailed and refined information available to the brain to
build the movement map. The map becomes clearer with greater resolution.
It’s like clicking the zoom button on Google Maps. There’s more detail, more
side streets are revealed, more information about how to move around that
joint.
(Todd Hargrove)
Page created
18 April 1995
Last updated
16 June 2023
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