China Camp Notes

November 30 – December 14, 2004
Shanghai and Suzhou, Jiangsu

“Okay? . . . O-kay!” Master Xu Guo Chang repeated all day long.

“Okay,” I agreed almost as often.

“Okay!” my taijiquan teacher yelled enthusiastically again and again, peering closely with happy eyes. Mauro,an instructor from Italy said Xu Guo Chang was employing a Taoist method of instruction. Training was like child’s play, highly animated and full of clowning.

“Okay? . . . Ming bai?” he would say in his native Shanghaiese, gazing through those questioning, encouraging eyes. “Ming bai?” Understand?

“Okay?”

“Okay.” I guess okay, maybe. So much was happening inside and outside of me I couldn’t tell the forest from the trees. Nevertheless, my teacher was happy.

My taijiquan training experience with Xu Guo Chang, a traditional Wu Style master, triggered an urge to consider the abstractness of taijiquan. Oddly, he instructed us to ignore “abstractions” and open the body to learning. But by not focusing on the abstract, we actually received new insights into just that; like seeing a star only by looking slightly away from it. The body’s ability and approach to learning is as abstract as the notion of mind that actually moves.

Stored somewhere in the body and mind are small memories that are like little doors into the secrets of internal martial arts. Those moves we did over and over every day for weeks feel every time you practice them. Fresh insights await discovery. With the teacher present, movement is merely following along; often lacking nei jing (internal force) and an jing (invisible whipping force). In solo practice, I must initiate the moves and come up with a motivation on my own. The motivation must come from within.

Learning Tai Chi seems like a slow process. My body doesn’t seem to do what I tell it. However, China Camp and Xu Guo Chang reinforced the idea that it is the mind (yi) that we have to change in order for the body to go where it is capable of going. Often, the body is more willing than the mind. The trick is to quieten the yi and allow the qi energy to loosen and flow, even be directed. Sounds simple.

To learn with the ease of a child would be ideal. Maybe tai chi practice brings us back to that state of being where learning new things is all there is for us. When it easier to progress in practice of training the body to shift into new positions. The key is the yi. It must redirect its attention while also letting go of its spell over the body rather than blocking qi; letting the body go where it is capable of going, where it wants to go.

Solo practice offers the opportunity to gain a better sense of what the teacher asks of you in class practice. You will come up with more relevant questions to ask of yourself and the teacher in the next group practice session. Where is the “yin”? Where is the “yang”?

Leaning taijiquan is like learning a language, one in which you speak with your body. Teaching and learning the internal information really requires dialogue–lecture and discussion. Conversations are stimulating.

We speak through body language, a universal language. Taijiquan is like a matrix through which we can communicate. Each speaks a dialect of that language. Each hones our ting jing (listening). And despite the communication obstacles, we managed to learn. Using gravity, push hands, applications of form postures, the internal aspects of the sequences. Learning the sequence of moves requires the use of a different part of the brain than the part it takes to apply them. Even simply tapping into the energetic level has its twists and turns. Learning the sequence of is only a beginning to really knowing the internal foundation of the moves. I realize, or perhaps remember, that daily drilling does eventually get you where you want to be, which is to have a clear understanding of essential internal principles. The “art” is in knowing these martial “secrets.”

Traditional Wu Style has special characteristics, which Xu Guo Chang, one of the teachers at George Xu’s China Camp, elucidated:

You have options at all times

The body has substantial and insubstantial parts

In structure, each joint junction has equal pressure = song li (sic)

Everything moves like a chain by your natural weight/force/power (gravity); this relates to his nickname, “The Gravity Man.”

. . . song (attainment). I’m not sure what this means. Later, I thought it means relaxed, everything in place and working together. He referred to this concept a number of times during training.

Total relaxation (suè=relax).

The secret is to “come back to a natural state.” Zhong ding and “natural weight.”

Running away versus “falling, which is to run away with control to somewhere. (Pu tu pu ting: don’t go against, don’t runaway.)

On the next day, the first full day of training, Xu Guo Chang added other key concepts that he wanted our small group to incorporate in training. The first is to concentrate on the horizontal axis that passes through the hips (qua), knees and ankles. He showed us a few basic exercises and had us imitate him as we performed them. Apparently, he wanted us to concentrate on finding our center, or core, as we incorporate intricate attention to our sense of gravity. The simple movements he showed us seemed to be designed to wake the attention to the horizontal axis passing through the hips and the vertical axis along the spinal column and exiting through the perineum.

The “central core” seems distinct from dantien, is a “window” to raise your attention. It is a location, he said. My understanding was the central core was where the vertical axis of the central equilibrium (zhong ding) and the horizontal intersected, but I am not certain that this is what he meant. It seemed that where the horizontal and vertical lines meet is the central core of the body. An astute clarity of that place, or “space,” is key to performing moves gracefully and with power.

The form is done slowly in order to cultivate awareness of and to utilize this core and its relationship with the horizontal and vertical axes. Whether in the form, in applications, or in qin na, it is crucial to maintain that sense of core and its limits. Solo practice helps to move your towards greater understanding.

It takes effort to figure out subtle intricacies, but it gets easier over time if you practice regularly. Translate the language you are learning and accept it as a challenge. After practicing taijiquan long enough you attain a sense that you are achieving an ability beyond the regular senses; that universal level of communication. It works even though you don’t speak the same language as your teacher who communicates knowledge when we were ready to learn, ready to grasp.

Sometimes the message doesn’t come across clearly. Reflect on what you do have the control to do; then go further . . . in towards bone and out into the spirit.

Xu Guo Chang has said that body language can be superior to talking, because you can get entangled in meanings. Why rely so much on spoken language to understand what can be understood more deeply by utilizing a sense that exists beyond language–that part of our being that knows things directly?

I think Guo Chang saw a neediness in us and felt it was important to point out. He made other cryptic statements about special abilities that Tai Chi has given him. “I have not had much education but I know a lot anyway,” he said. “If you do taijiquan long enough, knowledge comes to you.”

He was very quotable. I jotted down some of his comments about Tai Chi and life as a practice of Tai Chi.

“Only through observing yourself can you achieve the most natural way of moving,” he said. “Technology has made life too easy and we are losing awareness of the body.” There is a difference between riding a bicycle and riding in a car. On a bike you still have to balance yourself.

“Take care of yourself so you can help people. . . . Many people do martial arts to fight, but what is the use in it? . . . If you fall off your bicycle after being reckless and you can’t walk, then everyone has to support you. So take care of yourself. A person is not just a person. Whatever happens to you happens to everyone, even people you don’t even know.”

When he was asked if he utilized any herbs in his personal health care, he said, “Don’t strive for longevity. If you are a good person you will live a long life. If you think only of yourself, what’s the use of a long life?”

When asked about what the “dantien” is doing in a particular move, he said his whole body is dantien; then suggested not to place too much attention on such an abstract concepts. He cautioned us to shake off preconceived notions of such terms as “mind,” “chi,” and “zhong ding,” and just do what he told us.

Someone asked about “root” and he replied not to root through the feet, because “you’ll lose structure.” Once you brace yourself, you’ll lose your fulcrum, your balance, or line of the zhong ding. You want only to be weighted.

This is all only basic information.

Even though Xu Guo Chang told us to throw out preconceptions about dantien while we trained with him, he taught us an exercise that seemed to be just for developing sensitivity to the dantien. It consists of standing in place, bouncing up and down lightly just barely raising the heels and simply bending the knees enough to accommodate the up and down (or rolling) motion of the belly. Guo Chang sang a melodic and rhythmic chant while he bounced, almost in a trance-like state. He appeared totally relaxed, which I assumed creates the options that he described earlier.

In addition to bouncing, he taught other meditative, relaxing exercises. They were warm-ups designed to refine the connection to balance and gravity in our bodies. Tai Chi is the “ultimate” he said. “Every move you do, you want to reach the ultimate.” We didn’t quite understand the term and our translator revised her interpretation to say “limit.” And he said that was correct. You want to reach the limit of your center of gravity. For the exercise, we stood in wu chi, arms in front holding the ball, then rock gently until we begin to fall either forward or backward. This is intended to teach us our “limit” and so that we will know it when pushing with an opponent. He said that in fighting, the winner always finds the other’s limit and knocks him off balance. So it’s important to know your own limits. Sang shi (sic): “Embrace your enemy, know your enemy, become one with him.”

Go slow in movement, he said. “If you go too fast, even if you achieve it, you don’t really experience it,” he said. “So, do it slowly to experience it.” The ultimate has to be correct, together, and consistent in order to experience it, he said. Going slow is also good for healing, he added.

Lining up the head is the hardest part, he said, and suggested thinking of the process as a string of pearls. One suspended, then the next, and the next, and so on.

In our conversation about abstractions, I remarked that mind is another abstract term that was not explained well enough. I have felt for a long time that it seems left up to me to figure out what mind is; this thing that can be directed on and through the body and into space itself.

“Mind is everywhere, so everywhere you look, yi is there,” Poh Kheng, the translator said. “When you hit someone, yi is already there.”

Then he described “intention” as analogous to typing words and projecting them on a computer screen or printing them on paper. What is shown on the screen or paper is “fulfilled” and yi is there. The result of the action is the proof that the yi is there, I concluded.

Yi is like “a platform” he said. If you’re on a different plane, you won’t get a connection to something there.

Certainly in Tai Chi, your level of achievement is measured by your ability to learn the internal principles while simultaneously learning the surface movements. Early in your training you tend to learn the more superficial sequence of moves and the structure, then when you have them down you begin exploring the internal aspects. Yet the internal principles are really the foundation. The moves you see when someone does the form are merely visible outward expressions of what is happening inside.

Once you get the internal, you will progress exponentially and the more deeply you will go into unraveling the wonderful secrets of taijiquan and internal martial arts. You can use the mind in such a way that that the body has time to learn. Later, you begin to figure out where the mind can best put its energies in order to assist the body in learning.

I left my first trip to China with enough information to work on for some time to come. It seems true that once you cross a certain threshold in the practice of Tai Chi, you begin communicating with your surroundings at a higher level of understanding. We all have our own little Tai Chi miracles. Training really has no end, like a string of pearls that you keep adding to throughout life.