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| Peng (3) | ||
| The first power | ||
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Open or closed centre?
If you hug a tree and bring your fingers too close together... you will
feel immediate tension in the shoulders, chest and back.
The arm muscles will also tighten.
The hands need to be in front of the shoulders, otherwise your body will
stiffen.
Listening to your body
Finding the correct position for peng is very important.
You must listen to your body.
Ask another person to apply pressure through the limb and into your
centre:
Maintain the position without tensing-up
Feed the incoming power into the ground
Make adjustments to your frame in order to optimise the channelling
Consider: weight distribution, position of the arms, elbows, waist to weighted foot relationship, relaxed sternum/hip kwa
Open or closed centre?
Compensatory tension or
crumpling indicate poor awareness.
Listen with your body.
Listen to your body.
Shoulder joint discomfort
Incorrect peng will cause discomfort in the shoulder joint.
If there is a tangible sense of mild pain, it must not be ignored.
Poor bodily awareness and an insensitive nervous system can mean that an
inexperienced student may not even feel discomfort initially.
Be mindful.
Tai chi practice does not cause pain in the body.
Any indication of pain is caused by a prior health-problem or incorrect body
use.
Correct your pattern of movement repeatedly until discomfort is removed.
Moving with kwa
Skilled use of kwa will enable you to maintain the 5 bows yet move the limbs in
a flexible, coordinated manner.
If the kwa are allowed to open and close of their own accord, they imbue every
movement with additional power.
Kwa provides the necessary flexibility to reduce the possibility of jarring.
If your joints flex naturally, you find it easier to adapt to physical
difficulty and find opportunity for movement.
The kwa help you to create space.
Elbow and shoulder kwa
It is necessary to differentiate between substantial and insubstantial when
using the arms, and make sure that the arm muscles never stiffen.
Locked joints impede movement.
If you meet resistance, stop rather than push.
Allow the joints as much movement as possible without losing connection.
Differentiate between 'hip' and 'hip kwa'
The hip joint is not the hip kwa.
The hip joint moves far less than the hip kwa does. Our aim is to spiral through
the soft tissue of the body, not through the joint.
Higher & lower peng
When the peng needs to be higher, the elbow does not lift.
Fingers to the ceiling, elbow to the floor.
When the peng needs to be lower, the elbow remains where it is and the
fingers go lower.
Maintain open kwa at all times.
Palm-in or palm-out
Peng can be either palm-in or palm-out.
When it is palm-in, the hand is closer to the body. The palm rotates up and away
from the body. The arm spirals outward.
When it is palm-out, the hand is further away from the body. The palm rotates
down and away from the body. The arm spirals outward.
Be careful not to lift the elbows or affect the shoulder joint.
Note that in order to maintain open elbow kwa, palm-out is further away from the
body than palm-in.
Punching & palming
Contract when you punch, extend when you palm.
Contraction and extension are the natural action of your muscles.
The action only occurs on contact.
Do not exaggerate this or your will tense-up.
Contracting & extending
If you fail to contract/extend, your striking limb will be flaccid and
bounce-off.
There may be some risk of wrist injury.
If you exaggerate and tense-up, the strike will affect the opponent more but the
strike will not penetrate.
Much of the force will feed back into you.
Most inexperienced people make a total mess of this and just tense-up. At
that point, they are no longer training tai chi.
Stages
There are three main stages of peng development:
Stiff
A drawn bow
A Swiss ball
These
correspond to different stages of tai chi skill;
beginner, advanced and expert.
The preliminary level student possesses no peng and is too insensitive to remove
their inherent degree of postural tension.
Their muscles are chronically over-contracted.
The more accomplished student is like a bow that has been drawn prior to the
release of the arrow.
Tendons and ligaments are taut.
The muscles are relaxed to the highest degree they can manage.
The expert loses the overt bow tension and becomes externally soft.
They are more akin to a Swiss ball; yielding and soft outwardly, but with a very
firm centre.
Folding
Allow the arms to fold but not collapse.
Shoulders need to relax, the scapula, collarbones, upper chest and joints must
roll.
The elbows perform natural arcs as a consequence of the movement.
You are not flaccid or tense and the opening & closing occurs without
contrivance.
Groundpath
Groundpath involves putting your bodyweight into someone else.
This is not merely a matter of connection, structure and alignment.
It also requires yielding.
Your entire framework must be soft and loose, but integrated.
Let your weight fall through your body into the other person, without in any way
compromising your own balance.
You must yield.
Relax?
Many people translate sung to mean 'relax' but this does not adequately capture
the nature of this neigong.
Sung feels like the limbs are moving by themselves; all doing is gone.
It is a composite skill which relies strongly upon yielding.
Sung requires the body to be naturally sunk at all times and for the joints to
open & close without conscious effort.
The groundpath permeates the body at all times, creating elastic bow tension
although no conscious will is required to manifest or sustain it.
Resistance to force should now feel anatomically uncomfortable.
The waist should return to the centre by itself once rotated and the elbows
should be heavy.
Sung is not flaccid or inert - it is a cat-like readiness within the mobile structure.
What is the meaning of wardoff energy?
It is like the water supporting a moving boat.
First sink the qi to the tan tien,
then hold the head as if suspended from above.
The entire body is filled with spring-like energy,
opening and closing in a very quick moment.
Even if the opponent uses a thousand pounds of force,
he can be uprooted and made to float without difficulty.
(Tan Meng-hsien)
Page
created 18 April 1995
Last updated
16 June 2023
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