Taijipedia

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.

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.