Those of you who had read enough books, articles and webpages on the internal martial arts cannot fail to have noticed a recurring theme: that the internal arts cultivate natural movements based on the reflexive responses of humans. This is why in the stress of combat, you are supposed to be able to react and respond instantaneously, in the most natural way your body was meant to.
For example, the most fundamental pattern in Yang-style Taijiquan, and indeed all styles I know of, including Wahnam Taijiquan, Grasping Sparrow's Tail is, in theory, an expression of natural body movement, as opposed to say, the rigid and artificial techniques of the external martial arts (to which many internal martial artists mistakenly consider Shaolinquan belongs).
But if you have any experience in free sparring or a street fight, you may find that these so-called natural movements are not what comes out naturally in the heat of combat (even simulated combat during sparring). Instead, the more common scenario for an inexperienced fighter is a display of flailing arms interposed with wild kicks.
Even for qigong practitioners, the question of what constitues natural movement is also relevant. Sifu told me at my first course, and I have told my own students, that teaching Shaolin Cosmos Qigong is not difficult because the art merely enhances what is happening naturally in ourselves, that is, harmonious qi flow. As Sifu often says, good health is our birthright, and that being healthy is natural. It is disease that is a unnatural state.
But as any average modern person would know, relaxation does not come easily, when one would expect it to be the most natural state of all.
If an art is so natural, why would it be so hard to train and apply in stressful situations?
The answer came to me when I was travelling one day - like something simple, what is natural is not easy. Humans like to take the easy way out, which is often contrary to what is best for them. We gravitate to the path of least resistance. The more uncharitable would say the human race tends towards laziness, and all of human evolution and "progress" reflects this, from our transportation to our home comforts such as electric lights and remote control devices.
Another example came to me when I was listening to some lady colleagues discuss childbirth. Childbirth by natural means is terribly painful (I may be male but trust me, I am not unfamiliar with the pain). And so, most women who have the choice take the easy way out by having a Caeserian operation. Except for Macbeth, I believe most babies born before the 20th century came into this world by normal and natural birth. It was not until Caeserian operations became popular last century that what was natural slowly became displaced. In my country today, according to some doctors, you would be hard-pressed to find a woman who can or is willing to give birth naturally - if not Caeserian, then an epidural-assisted delivery.
What is your most "natural" reaction to a stressful situation, such as an impending fight or a quarrel? Your heartbeat may increase suddenly, your blood pressure may rise, your vision may narrow and you may find yourself getting short of breath. All these are physiological reactions that in the past helped our hunter-gatherer forefathers to get ready for action - fight or run. In the internal arts, we do not seek to suppress these reactions, but channel them to constructive action. A good Taijiquan, Shaolinquan or Baguazhang exponent will not seek to meet force with force but move around the attack and seek out the opponent's weak points.
But even a beginner in Push Hands will experience the "intuitive" pull to succumb to tense up and resist the oncoming force. It takes a great deal of training and practice to yield calmly to an incoming or oncoming force. And this is only during Push Hands practice, which is safe and progressive. Things change for the worse when a fight happens in your face.
In your Taijiquan or Shaolinquan practice, be mindful that you often have to overcome long-ingrained habits which seem natural and instinctive. Foremost among them is to endure when tired or in pain or to tense up when stressed. It is very difficult to, as I told my students over the weekend, "relax into pain". Most people who are trying to improve their flexibility will bounce or jerk into a lower position, instead of slowly easing into the proper position.
It is just like what Henry Ford was reputed to have said: "Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it." In my experience, most people would rather take comfort in working very hard in an inefficient manner instead of taking time out to see how they can do things more efficiently and greter effectiveness. Paradoxically, working harder is actually being lazy, because doing mindless work really takes less effort although it can still be very debilitating. In long distance running and swimming (two activities I like), many athletes tend towards "water buffalo" training, as Sifu would call it. I will use swimming as an example. To swim faster and further, some coaches advocates repeated drills and conditioning. Too slow? Swim more, and do more weight training and pull harder. A smart coach and a smart swimmer, on the other hand, would explore how to improve the swimming technique and how to swim in a more stream-lined and hydrodynamic manner. But, and here I speak from personal experience, it is much easier to just use the same old inefficient technique, than to keep paying attention to details such as finding your optimal balance in the water, re-shaping the body and using whole-body motion rather than pull with arms and kick with legs. In the same way, external martial artists (some of whom train very hard indeed and are models of dedication to their art) may rather carry heavier weights to punch harder or run further to improve stamina, rather than investigate how to use power without using muscular strength. Because that sort of internal power can be very elusive, some prefer to just slog along using a method which yields more obvious and visible results.
I wrote earlier that we gravitate to the path of least resistance and criticised how we tend towards laziness, and yet in the preceding paragraphs, I advocated using methods to do things more efficiently. This is not a contradiction. The process of reaching the goal of making something effortless, efficient and effective may be a long and arduous one, requiring not merely effort but also much thinking, tinkering, contemplation, repeated trials and errors and learning from mistakes. It is often also necessary to pay meticulous attention to multiple facets at the same time (although at the beginning, it is vital to break the learning steps into small chunks).
For example, in Taijiquan, moving from the waist actually involves doing and paying attention to many things simultaneously. I will share part of the secret from my Yang Taijiquan lineage (I am only using this example because there have been other and better Taijquan exponents who have published this - I have not gotten approval to share Wahnam Taijiquan secrets or other secrets from my Yang Taijiquan lineage). When you move from the waist, you have to ensure that both your arms and feet move together as your weight shifts from one leg to another. You are in fact concentrating on four limbs at once when most people have difficult keeping their mind on one limb to start with or get distracted by more than one point of focus.
A dedicated practitioner who has spent much time on the boring basics, such as zhan zhuang or paying close attention to proper execution of a set or combat sequence, would find the higher levels effortless and natural. This is true also for great sportsmen, like a basketballer who can pass without looking or take a difficult jump shot without appearing to try too hard.
But someone who wants a cop-out solution to a problem without working for it would never get anywhere. Each time you feel an incoming force in Push Hands and you feel that it is easier and faster to just use your muscular strength to push back, you are copping out. Bad habits that become natural to us are formed when we would rather take the easy way out. The example that Marcus Santer Sifu likes to use is how people would rather pop a pill than to exercise or practice qigong. When one puts in the effort to reach a healthy state, being healthy is of course natural. But if the easy way is chosen like eating pills (but living an unhealthy lifestyle), then one can never reach that true natural state. Much of modern technology takes us to the final destination (or a mere illusion of it) almost at once but does not allow us to learn and grow on the way there.
For example, the most fundamental pattern in Yang-style Taijiquan, and indeed all styles I know of, including Wahnam Taijiquan, Grasping Sparrow's Tail is, in theory, an expression of natural body movement, as opposed to say, the rigid and artificial techniques of the external martial arts (to which many internal martial artists mistakenly consider Shaolinquan belongs).
But if you have any experience in free sparring or a street fight, you may find that these so-called natural movements are not what comes out naturally in the heat of combat (even simulated combat during sparring). Instead, the more common scenario for an inexperienced fighter is a display of flailing arms interposed with wild kicks.
Even for qigong practitioners, the question of what constitues natural movement is also relevant. Sifu told me at my first course, and I have told my own students, that teaching Shaolin Cosmos Qigong is not difficult because the art merely enhances what is happening naturally in ourselves, that is, harmonious qi flow. As Sifu often says, good health is our birthright, and that being healthy is natural. It is disease that is a unnatural state.
But as any average modern person would know, relaxation does not come easily, when one would expect it to be the most natural state of all.
If an art is so natural, why would it be so hard to train and apply in stressful situations?
The answer came to me when I was travelling one day - like something simple, what is natural is not easy. Humans like to take the easy way out, which is often contrary to what is best for them. We gravitate to the path of least resistance. The more uncharitable would say the human race tends towards laziness, and all of human evolution and "progress" reflects this, from our transportation to our home comforts such as electric lights and remote control devices.
Another example came to me when I was listening to some lady colleagues discuss childbirth. Childbirth by natural means is terribly painful (I may be male but trust me, I am not unfamiliar with the pain). And so, most women who have the choice take the easy way out by having a Caeserian operation. Except for Macbeth, I believe most babies born before the 20th century came into this world by normal and natural birth. It was not until Caeserian operations became popular last century that what was natural slowly became displaced. In my country today, according to some doctors, you would be hard-pressed to find a woman who can or is willing to give birth naturally - if not Caeserian, then an epidural-assisted delivery.
What is your most "natural" reaction to a stressful situation, such as an impending fight or a quarrel? Your heartbeat may increase suddenly, your blood pressure may rise, your vision may narrow and you may find yourself getting short of breath. All these are physiological reactions that in the past helped our hunter-gatherer forefathers to get ready for action - fight or run. In the internal arts, we do not seek to suppress these reactions, but channel them to constructive action. A good Taijiquan, Shaolinquan or Baguazhang exponent will not seek to meet force with force but move around the attack and seek out the opponent's weak points.
But even a beginner in Push Hands will experience the "intuitive" pull to succumb to tense up and resist the oncoming force. It takes a great deal of training and practice to yield calmly to an incoming or oncoming force. And this is only during Push Hands practice, which is safe and progressive. Things change for the worse when a fight happens in your face.
In your Taijiquan or Shaolinquan practice, be mindful that you often have to overcome long-ingrained habits which seem natural and instinctive. Foremost among them is to endure when tired or in pain or to tense up when stressed. It is very difficult to, as I told my students over the weekend, "relax into pain". Most people who are trying to improve their flexibility will bounce or jerk into a lower position, instead of slowly easing into the proper position.
It is just like what Henry Ford was reputed to have said: "Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it." In my experience, most people would rather take comfort in working very hard in an inefficient manner instead of taking time out to see how they can do things more efficiently and greter effectiveness. Paradoxically, working harder is actually being lazy, because doing mindless work really takes less effort although it can still be very debilitating. In long distance running and swimming (two activities I like), many athletes tend towards "water buffalo" training, as Sifu would call it. I will use swimming as an example. To swim faster and further, some coaches advocates repeated drills and conditioning. Too slow? Swim more, and do more weight training and pull harder. A smart coach and a smart swimmer, on the other hand, would explore how to improve the swimming technique and how to swim in a more stream-lined and hydrodynamic manner. But, and here I speak from personal experience, it is much easier to just use the same old inefficient technique, than to keep paying attention to details such as finding your optimal balance in the water, re-shaping the body and using whole-body motion rather than pull with arms and kick with legs. In the same way, external martial artists (some of whom train very hard indeed and are models of dedication to their art) may rather carry heavier weights to punch harder or run further to improve stamina, rather than investigate how to use power without using muscular strength. Because that sort of internal power can be very elusive, some prefer to just slog along using a method which yields more obvious and visible results.
I wrote earlier that we gravitate to the path of least resistance and criticised how we tend towards laziness, and yet in the preceding paragraphs, I advocated using methods to do things more efficiently. This is not a contradiction. The process of reaching the goal of making something effortless, efficient and effective may be a long and arduous one, requiring not merely effort but also much thinking, tinkering, contemplation, repeated trials and errors and learning from mistakes. It is often also necessary to pay meticulous attention to multiple facets at the same time (although at the beginning, it is vital to break the learning steps into small chunks).
For example, in Taijiquan, moving from the waist actually involves doing and paying attention to many things simultaneously. I will share part of the secret from my Yang Taijiquan lineage (I am only using this example because there have been other and better Taijquan exponents who have published this - I have not gotten approval to share Wahnam Taijiquan secrets or other secrets from my Yang Taijiquan lineage). When you move from the waist, you have to ensure that both your arms and feet move together as your weight shifts from one leg to another. You are in fact concentrating on four limbs at once when most people have difficult keeping their mind on one limb to start with or get distracted by more than one point of focus.
A dedicated practitioner who has spent much time on the boring basics, such as zhan zhuang or paying close attention to proper execution of a set or combat sequence, would find the higher levels effortless and natural. This is true also for great sportsmen, like a basketballer who can pass without looking or take a difficult jump shot without appearing to try too hard.
But someone who wants a cop-out solution to a problem without working for it would never get anywhere. Each time you feel an incoming force in Push Hands and you feel that it is easier and faster to just use your muscular strength to push back, you are copping out. Bad habits that become natural to us are formed when we would rather take the easy way out. The example that Marcus Santer Sifu likes to use is how people would rather pop a pill than to exercise or practice qigong. When one puts in the effort to reach a healthy state, being healthy is of course natural. But if the easy way is chosen like eating pills (but living an unhealthy lifestyle), then one can never reach that true natural state. Much of modern technology takes us to the final destination (or a mere illusion of it) almost at once but does not allow us to learn and grow on the way there.
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