Taijipedia

Last year, I hurt my back – and I used my Taiji form to help me heal it and get back to my normal self within a week or so.. And I thought I should share how I did it.

It’s my own fault really, I had a “me Tarzan, You Jane” moment and was a typical man. I lifted a 45kg chest of drawers from the showroom to the car and then up the stairs to my son’s bedroom. Now, bear in mind that I (Tannage) am a middle-aged 5’4″ midget who weighs in at 65kg.

So, unsurprisingly something had to give, and unfortunately it wasn’t my pride.

Two days later, I wake up unable to really bend at the middle. If anyone of you have ever seen the Cybermen, that’s what I looked like when I walked around, well minus the shiny suit and evilness.

My back had gone into spasm, and a rather unpleasant spasm it was. I get stabbing pain, the sort that feels like hot chopsticks being stuck into your body.

Taiji person, heal thyself

So, having taken this hit to my pride, I resolved to be even more of a man. No painkillers. Stabbing pain? Crippling discomfort? Nah, I will be a man and get through it all!

Well.. Actually there was a method to my madness.

I’ve used Taiji to help me heal my back before, but it’s not quite as straightforward as just running through the form again and again, although that would also help.

Shotgun vs Sniper Rifle

Practising Taiji form heals the whole body, and if you have a bad back it will also help heal it, but this is something of a shotgun approach. A rising tide lifts all boats so they say. Raise the general health of the body and the back will heal itself.

Y’see, for a Taiji person, I was (1) Impatient, (2) in dire need of salvaging some pride.

I prefer Taiji practise for healing to be somewhat more focussed, I prefer it to be like a sniper rifle.

The question then is..

How Can I Practise Specifically To Heal My Back?

First up, I played through the form, paying attention to which postures caused discomfort, and the nature of the discomfort. Yeah I was doing the macho thing without taking painkillers, but there is method to the madness. Painkillers dull your sensations, and by taking them I would have dulled my sensitivity to the pain, and would therefore not have got as good a reading on which postures I needed to work on.

Don’t get me wrong, if you’re thinking of doing this, and you ARE in severe pain, maybe take some (but always consult your doctor first). There’s no point in being in so much pain you can’t concentrate on anything.

1) Find the Postures That Hurt

I drew up a list of postures that were uncomfortable or painful, and took some notes on how these postures were different to the normal way I usually practised. Unsurprisingly, these postures were the ones that all had gentle flexing of the back, like cloud hands, snake creeps down, needles at sea bottom and especially grasp swallow’s tail.

2) Play The Form, Focussing On The Postures That Hurt

So what I did next was play the form repeatedly, paying attention to those postures, focussing on the back at those postures and making sure it got some movement and some flexing and circulation during the form. The main focus was in relaxation, as it was my back muscles going into spasm that was causing all the pain. I didn’t push these postures as hard as I normally did, didn’t sink as low, or make the movements too big, as the focus was to help rehabilitate the back.

Well, it’s remarkable what a few days of focussed practise can do.

3) Other things to consider

Now this, in of itself is not the whole story. I was also paying strict attention to how I was holding my body during the day, as bad posture is a major contributor to my back pain, as a bad posture is sure to bend an already hurt back even more out of shape. Give your back the best chance at healing itself is what I say, so even though I’d be practising, I’d still be doing other things that would help too.

It took a week, but my back was well and I had no pain after that time.

It’s worth mentioning that I had strained the muscles in my back, and there was no structural damage like tearing or inflammation. This was a back spasm (which I’m sure many of you will be aware of), so if you have some tissue damage this method may not work and you should see a health professional.

Taiji Form is a Tool

Taiji form is more than just a sequence of healing movements. It’s a tool that has certain properties. Just like you can use a knife to cut vegetables, slice meat and so on, your Taiji form can also be used in a variety of healing ways, it’s a tool that, if used in the right way can yield great results.

Well, some of you might know that we’re back from a bit of a long absence, the last post was in September 2009! That’s a long time away but we do have a good excuse. Really, we do.

The excuse is babies. We’ve both had a baby each, and those of you who are parents will know and understand our rather tenuous excuse for not posting here. It’s Greeny’s second and Tannage’s first.

First I introduce you to Mackenzie Green, second born of the Greeny and already nearly as tall as Tannage.

Mackenzie, the first McGreen, and supakewt!

Next but not least, is Jin, Tannage’s little boy, born New Year’s Eve and truly the ruler of his household!

There have been numerous posts recently on how to do fajin, and we’ve received quite a few emails about how the fajin can be used in a more self-defense and combat context. So in answer to all the questions:

1) Yes you can use fajin to issue power, but doing it in a combat context is a different avenue of study to that of cultivation. When you’re learning it you can use it to cultivate both but there comes a point when you have to decide within your training session either to train power issuance, or train cultivation.
2) No it is not a method to crush bone and smash all and sundry in just 7 days. Crushing said bone is just a by product of being able to generate power. Proper fajin, in that I mean, fajin that isn’t going to injure you or your training partner is the result of careful training. Power as they say, is nothing without control and developing just the power bit is not going to help you to crush aforesaid bone. You also need to develop accuracy and control to deliver the goods where and when you want to
3) Yes, cultivation and self defence are two different avenues of study, both have many common elements to begin with but quickly branch off. You can specialise in one or the other or spread yourself over the two depending on your own training goals
4) There is a two man form in taiji, and parts of it are what you see in the video above. If there is a way to perform it for health we don’t know it, for us, cultivation is mainly done via forms and qigong, we save the paired exercises for trying to bat each other senseless.

Following on from the Fu Zhongwen Fajin blog post, we thought we’d add a bit more to the pot. Faijin isn’t just for martial arts or self-defense. Fajin can also be used to help the body heal itself, and keep itself healthy. A bit of impact every now and again helps the bone density, apart from the fact that you just feel good after practising fajin for a bit.

So, we’ve filmed a short video on how to practise basic fajin, which, at its heart is just a quick shake of the hips. The trick to it is to be relaxed enough so that the weave of power produced by the hip shake flows all the way into the limbs and fingertips. The feeling is not unlike a bounce. You’ll feel the wave of power bounce out from your core and into your extremities.

Now, you don’t need to have complete mastery of fajin to garner health benefits from it, and we believe the tradition of needing fajin being absolutely perfect stems from the self-defense days. Fajin was (and still is) used as a method of generating massive power over short distances, e.g. striking over a couple of inches. At high levels, this power would be lethal power over such short distances. In the days when there was no police force in China, mastery of fajin to this level of martial effectiveness was the difference between life and death, so it would obviously be emphasised. Fajin was after all what gave martial Taiji it’s edge, it’s what made it different and was the thing that it could do that not everyone else could.

Fast forward a few hundred years, our priorities are not so much “Am I going to walk away alive” but rather “How can I fix my back?” and so on. So, the emphasis of Taiji, and of fajin is now different. We’re all about the healing, and fajin, just like any other exercise in Taiji, will assist with that.

Just around the time we both dropped off the face of the earth with assorted life-events, we were talking about breathing, and more importantly, how breathing can help you with your Taiji practise ,stress control etc. etc. etc.

Greeny mentioned that we should answer the rather obvious question of how you should actually breathe. Now, there are lots of ways to breathe, and different schools will tell you many different things and go through lots of different techniques. There’s to name but a few, tonic breathing, reverse breathing, abdominal breathing, burst breathing, the list goes on. What we’re going to focus on here is abdominal breathing, the simplest and most natural way of breathing.

If you’re fortunate enough to have a young child or baby available, just watch them when they’re sleeping. They breathe abdominally. We can all agree that babies have not had the opportunity to develop bad breathing habits, so their bodies are just going to breathe however they want to, i.e. abdominally. If you hearken back to the post on just letting your body breathe, that’s what your body will do if you just let it do the breathing, but for you all who find this difficult (and we had quite a few emails from those of you who found letting go and letting your body breathe) this is the exercise that can help you bridge the gap between breathing consciously and breathing naturally.

A little while back whilst Greeny and I were in the throes of getting married and moving house (I got married to Annie (again) and he moved house) @ezduzit777 on Twitter posted a note on Snake Creeps Down that inspired a short conversation on how this posture should really be done. As I was in Malaysia at the time and Greeny had packed the camera we couldn’t do a short post on what you should be looking out for in this posture.

Snake Creeps Down usually conjures up images of lithe and limber ladies literally slithering along close to the ground. Now that’s not something that everyone can do, not that I was ever a lithe and limber lady. My point is, that the whole point of a good Snake Creeps Down is not how low you can go, it’s not a limbo competition. What you’re trying to do is to stretch all the yin meridians that pass through the inside leg, and if you’re practising for health and cultivation, this should be your main focus when practising this posture. So, you should go as low as you need to to feel the stretch on the inside leg, which may be higher or lower than you might think.

If you really want to do a low Snake, then you’ll have to work the posture down to a low level over a period of time like Greeny did. It’s not strictly required for health cultivation but if you want to impress the girls and stay healthy at the same time I’d say go for it.

One speculation as to why Fajin was not emphasised in the modern syllabus of Taijiquan is because elderly people may find it more difficult to do. Well here’s a counterexample. Fu Zhongwen, Yang Chengfu’s student doing Fajin at the ripe old age of whatever he’s at when this was shot.

Notice how springy his arms and body are. This Fajin may not be for martial purposes, but you can see that it’s keeping him supple and limber despite his age. Taijipedia believes that you need to have some fast and hard movement to balance the soft forms that are practised so often, and practising Fajin softly like in this video is certainly the way forward.

Fajin doesn’t always have to be the big issuance of energy to destroy everything in your path. Fu Zhongwen clearly isn’t out to kill anyone with what he’s demonstrating here, although I’m pretty sure that it’d hurt if he went for you. It’s very clear how the power is manifesting in his hands, and the core is moving, even though you may not be able to see it easily because of his clothing and, er… chi belly.

The great thing about this clip is that anyone can take a look at it and start to practise Fajin by themselves. My advice is not to do too much of it, don’t exhaust yourselves. Practise maybe 5-10 minutes of it if you’re new to it. Increase the time as part of you Taijiquan practise as you get better at it. The key to good Fajin is relaxation, you have to be relaxed enough for the power to flow.

The other key is being gentle. There is no need to go hell for leather if you’re doing this for health. Gently, softly, easily is what you should be aiming for.

My last bit of advice is that it feels a bit like a sneeze. It’s a sudden shake of the body that produces a wave into the hands.

Loosely translated, Fajin means “to issue power”. There are lots of explanations for this phenomena, from relatively simple to rather mystical.

Practically speaking, Fajin is a way of generating power, more specifically short power for striking or grappling applications in the martial aspects of Taijiquan. Training Fajin can allow you to generate tremendous amounts of power over short distances, something first popularised by Bruce Lee’s one inch punch. If you’ve been studying Fajin for martial purposes for any length of time, you’ll probably have realised that that sort of power is your bread and butter power for martial Taijiquan.

This doesn’t mean to say that Fajin does not have its applications in the healing discipline within Taijiquan or any internal martial art. “Soft” Fajin is a way of practising Fajin that allows the body to experience gentle impact to stimulate the bones and allows the body’s Qi to circulate more freely. Practising Fajin is also a useful way for the Taijiquan practitioner to “self-diagnose” areas of tension or Qi blockage within his or her own body, as the wave of power will travel and stop at any points of tension or blockage. The practitioner can then practise to relax these areas in his normal Taijiquan form practise. Fajin for health is not often taught these days, and it is a point of interesting historical speculation as to why it was not emphasised in the modern teachings of Taijiquan.

Biomechanically, a Fajin is nothing more than a vigorous shake of the hips, allowing the wave of power to move up through the body and then out through the hands, much like the force travels through the hanging ball bearings on a Newton’s cradle. Whilst this principle is very easy to describe, the practise of it is slightly more tricky because the body has to be relaxed enough to allow the power to flow.

Much of the initial practise of Taijiquan is aimed at relaxing the body, because this relaxation is required for effective Fajin to take place. Once the body has achieved a baseline of relaxation, then meaningful Fajin practise can begin, and each posture of the Taijiquan form can be used as a short Fajin drill.

If Taijiquan is all about balance, the soft, slow movement of the form has to be balanced by quicker, harder movement, which we believe is the role that the practise of Fajin in the cultivation of health fulfils. In the next post, we’ll talk a bit more about why Fajin is so good for you.

Photo by exfordy

There’s a blog post over at martial development on The Four Paradoxes of Standing Meditation.

The post describes the philosophy of Wang XiangZhai, a master of Yiquan boxing and a hard as nails dude in his time.  Yiquan’s training syllabus is based completely around standing meditation, and practitioners do hours and hours of standing as it is the heart of the system.

I’d like to draw your attention to two things in the blog post:

1) Perspectives: Chris gives a different perspective to what happens when you do standing meditation.  What happens to all of us when we practise standing is essentially the same thing, but we all perceive it in different ways.  Chris’s perspective on what happens is different and you may find it useful as it’ll give you another way of looking at the experience to the Taijipedia, and different perspectives are always helpful.

2) Comment: There’s a small argument that goes on in the comments section.  A reader asks about whether we can “objectively verify a state of relaxation”.   Comments 2 and 7 are the ones I’m referring to.

You can’t really objectively verify a state of relaxation.  Our senses and perceptions are relative, and thus, our perception of relaxation is relative, and by inference, all relaxation is relative.  You may feel really relaxed today, more relaxed than this time last week.  However, you may be MORE tense than last week because you had one of those days yesterday and was stressed to the eyeballs.

Your state of relaxation is much like your sense of smell.  If you step into a room with a bad smell (read tension) hanging around, sooner or later you get used to it and don’t notice it any more.  Go into a room with the same smell, but not as bad and you’ll hardly notice it (tension less than before, but still tense).  It’s only when you come out of the room (totally relax), then go back in (tense up again) that you’ll notice the tension again.

So, what does this mean for your Taijiquan practise?  The training and practise will, over time relax you even if you cannot yourself always perceive this relaxation.   It’s a proven method that’s worked for hundreds of years, so you can trust it to deliver the benefits, all you have to do is practise.