Recommended book by Michael DeMarco

My former teacher has a new book, an inspiring dissertation on things Martial Arts, presented in an entertaining and compelling way. Here's a review article from the Santa Fe New Mexican:

 

Embrace Tiger, Return to the Mountain

 

January 2022. Covid year three. At least we have Zoom, Google Meet, Facetime, and Duo. I may have mentioned that I studied the Yang Long Form (Xiong Style) when I lived in New Mexico near Santa Fe. Moving to the Midwest, I found no one nearby teaching the 103 Long Form. I have nothing against the Professor’s Short Form or the Beijing 24 Form, both provide the Essentials and have the advantages of a shorter execution time in less space than the 103 Form. But, as a former teacher said to me after watching me perform a newly learned Sun Style Form, “That's nice but it won't help you with your form.” This month begins instruction in Parts One, Two, and Three of the Yang Family Traditional Long Form using Zoom (including Qigong, Essential form, Straight Sword and Saber) by Yang Chengfu Seattle  http://yangtaichiseattle.com/classes. The classes are free (with registration) and videos of previous Zoom sessions can be viewed on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/user/ycfseattle/videos.

So I am finding myself Returning to the Mountain to refresh the form I think of as “my form.” I’m starting in the middle with section two as I am fairly proficient in section one. I have practiced section one often but have not remembered much of section two (short term memory loss extends to muscle memory, I suppose). Last night the class began with Embrace Tiger, Return to the Mountain.

This follows from Cross Hands, the ending of section one and involves turning, circling the hands as they open, a brush knee and palm strike. If you think of the Cross Hands position as facing north, then this movement turns you toward southeast. Your weight, evenly distributed in Cross Hands, ends in a Bow Stance with about 70 percent on the right foot which has stepped out during the movement.

 

Sounds simple, but there is a lot of subtlety here. To quote Yang Cheng-fu, “Coordinate the upper and lower parts of the body. The T'ai Chi Ch'uan Classics say ‘the motion should be rooted in the feet, released through the legs, controlled by the waist and manifested through the fingers.’ Everything acts simultaneously. When the hand, waist and foot move together, the eyes follow. If one part doesn't follow, the whole body is disordered.”

 

From Kungfu Magazine’s forum thread on Embrace the Tiger, this snippet:

 

“The move is applied as if someone is attacking from the rear with strike and/or kick.The description of application offered in Yang Cheng Fu's 'Essence and Application of Yang Style Taijiquan' explains that the opponents hand and foot attack is fast and you can only brush them off which is followed by their counter-attack. As they counter, you move into Lu (Roll Back) which is stable and secure.”

http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?44081-Embrace-Tiger-Return-to-Mountain

 Lineage:

Chen

Changxing

(1771~1853)

Yang

Luchan

(1799~1872)

Yang         Yang

Banhou      Jianhou

(1837~1890)    (1839~1917)

Yang           Yang

Shaohou      Chengfu

(1862~1930)      (1883~1936)

 The Four Energies

Our International Tai chi Alliance has been doing a hybrid form possibly called “The Four Energies.” I asked if there was a source video for this. There was, once upon a time, on a Turkish web site no longer inexistence, I guess. For me, it is an interesting as a way of concentrating on some of the essentials without the distraction of learning the whole form…even abbreviated versions like Yang 8. However, I have to keep asking myself, why not just practice getting “Grasp the sparrow’s Tail” right. All these “energies” are in it except a shoulder strike (which follows in Yang forms such as the Long Form or the Short Form. The Four Energies are Peng (ward off), Lu (roll back), Ji (press), and An (push). There is also Kao (shoulder strike). Yes, I know, that’s five, but ward off happens in this form as part of roll back and press. As I said before, Grasping the Sparrow’s Tail has most of this but in a sequence: ward off, roll back, press, push. The Four Energies separates each energy as individual moves and adds lateral movements between each, turning the person 180 degrees in a square. Sorry I can’t point you toward a video of this. I did find a nice explanation of the Thirteen Postures (8 energies and 5 steps) on Cathryn Lai’s Tai Chi & Qi Gong Studio web posting: http://cathrynlai.com/pdf/13%20Tai%20Chi%20Essentials.pdf

Of ward off Lai says, “the nature of this movement is expansive. It seeks to occupy space and bounce off obstacles.” Concerning roll back we learn from her that, “It creates a vacuum or an absence. It can draw the opponent in, or with very little effort, parry, yield and disappear from the opponent’s attack.” With press, “It is best used close in, as a way to gain some space from an opponent who is smothering you.” And, “ ‘Push’ grants you more physical space than press, often resulting in your opponent hurtling out of your space while losing his or her footing....It also reminds you to yield in the midst of tension, so that you can neutralize negative energy and turn it around for your betterment.” Of the shoulder strike Lai says, “It is the energetic pair of the ‘elbow’ gate. It is used for the tightest of spaces, when you have no room to chamber for a hand strike or kick.”

More of interest on the energies can be found on Tim Cartmell’s Shen Wu Martial Arts web site, http://shenwu.com/taichi.htm. Quoting him on the energies of the Eight Techniques: ward off, roll back, press, push, pluck, split, elbow and body stroke (peng, lu, ji, an, cai, lie, zhou, kao), we read that:

“In its broadest sense, ward off energy can he applied to the whole body. It is the energy resulting from proper alignment and relaxation which gives the Tai Ji Quan fighter the elasticity and springiness necessary to fight. In a stricter, technical sense, ward off is the energy which supplies buoyancy and supports weight (as soft and flexible water is able to support a massive ship). Roll back is energy which moves incoming force past one's body toward the rear (as a revolving door gives way and pivots around its center). Press is the force which rebounds from the ground up in a pulse and bounces the opponent away from the body (as a rock bounces off the taught head of a drum). Push is a force which puts pressure downward (like the force used when you lift your body out of a pool by pressing the palms down on the outside deck).”

Of Kao (shoulder strike) Cartmell says, “Body stroke is whole body ward off power channeled through some part of the torso, usually the shoulder (think of breaking a door down by leaning into it with your shoulder).”

That is what I have found in writing about the Four Energies as we practice in this hybrid form. Perhaps we will move on to practice cai, lie, zhou,  and kao in a further version.

 

Essential Books on the Tai Chi Classics

I’m recommending some published works on the Tai Chi Classics: early writings about the essentials of Tai Chi Ch’uan. These have been translated various times by different authors and can be taken as poetry, as inspirational sayings, as a guide to the essential elements of the form(s), or as an introduction to Chinese literature, especially to the Tao Te Ching and the I Ching. I have referenced one of these before, The T’ai chi Classics, translated with commentary by Waysun Liao. This is one of my favorite books, giving historical background on Tai Chi, explaining in detail the concepts of Qi and Jing, translating and commenting on the classics, and finally illustrating and describing the Yang Long Form with emphasis on breathing and meditation while moving.

 

Recently I picked up a copy of The Essence of T’ai Chi Ch’uan, The Literary Tradition by Benjamin Lo. Lo was a student of Cheng Man-ch’ing and gave many workshops in the Professor’s Short Form. His translation is presented as poetic and includes a chapter by Cheng Man-ch’ing called “Song of Form and Function”. The Professor’s writings are always worth delving into and here, talking abut the Thirteen Postures, he is both poetic and eloquent, for instance, “The body is like a floating cloud….The whole body is a hand and the hand is not a hand. The mind must stay in the place it should be.”

 

On my want list is The Taijiquan Classics: An Annotated Translation by Barbara Davis and Chen Wei-Ming. The blurb says, “…this book explores the fundamental ideas and what they mean to practitioners, students, and scholars. It also incorporates newly discovered sources that address the history of taijiquan and newly translated commentaries by Chen Weiming.” Sounds like a must-read to me.

 

What are the classics? There are three treatises by Grand Master Chang San-feng, Master Wong Chung-yua, and Master Wu Yu-hsiang. The first dates to around 1200 CE, the second to around 1600 CE, and the third to the 19^th Century. In addition, in Lo’s book are “Song of the Thirteen Postures” and “Song of Hand-pushing”, both by unknown authors, and two treatises by Li I-yu and one by Yang Cheng-fu.

It is from these classics that the 13 essentials are derived. More about that is the next blog entry.

 

 

Tai Chi in the Age of Covid

Well, this being Wisconsin, our sessions in the park along the lakefront have been curtailed by weather and the earlier setting of the sun. Still, in the age of covid, close quarters are not recommended for group practice even though we all (all of us, right?) have been vaccinated against the virus. Therefore, embracing the current age of technology, we meet as dancing electrons on computer screens. In a word, Zoom. As covid closed in on us many venues for Tai Chi found solutions in online instruction. A quick search via Google will yield for you various links. While not as desirable as in-person teaching, it has the advantage over videos which do not allow for two-way conversations. Our group, The International Tai Chi Alliance, is small enough for all of us in our little boxes to fit on the screen simultaneously. The teacher can watch the progress of each student and, with the aid of the more advanced students, split off beginners into “breakout rooms” for individual training. The only difficulty I have found is my own lack of indoor space; my living room is too small to allow for a full-length image of myself. I have my laptop hooked into my large screen television monitor so I get a nice sized view of the class. Yet I wish for a larger space and I am considering rejoining our local health club where there is a big room used for workout classes. They do have wifi and a large monitor. Stay tuned to this blog to follow my future adventures.

I read several facebook groups on Tai Chi Cuan and have noticed a recent trend toward analyzing photographs of past Tai Chi masters. This sometimes entails the drawing of lines over the photos to show alignments and to determine weight distribution. I am obsessed as much as the next person with “doing it right” but I have to question the process of ferreting out the “rightness’ of a three (four?) dimensional event using two dimensional tools.

Photography has a history of being used to analyze position and motion that is as old as photography itself. The classic example is Eadweard Muybridge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridge (1830 - 1904) who was an English photographer working in the American West. He is most famous for producing numerous studies of people and animals in motion using a series of cameras to capture successive stages of the body in motion through space.

In 1981 I wrote a book on animation called The Shoestring Animator, in which I used one of Muybridge’s motion studies, one called “Man Walking at Normal Speed,” as an aid to developing a hand-drawn animated “walk cycle.” It is thought that several early animation artists studied Muybridge to originate their own techniques. I pointed out that Thomas Eakins, a painter contemporary to Muybridge who used photographic studies in his own work, felt Muybridge’s panels were flawed since each successive camera viewed the action from slightly different position. I went on to say that the photos were close enough (for government work).

Animation is not Tai Chi, although there is a relationship in that both involve bodies in space and motion. The facebook posts analyzing Tai Chi reminded me of my own use of photos to create animated films. I often utilized a technique called “rotoscoping” in which live action cinema frames are traced and then rephotographed. To paraphrase one of my fellow filmmakers, Mary Beams, you can learn a lot about the universe by tracing live action. One thing you learn is that motion picture film doesn’t accurately reproduce motion. Here is why.

Because film is a series of still pictures taken one at a time, there is movement in between each exposure that is not recorded. Also, the frame rate of motion picture photography is 24 frames per second allowing a certain amount of blurring of the moving subject. Animators know this and exaggerate key positions of their drawings to make them more “life like.”

I think I blogged previously about the difficulty in using videos to learn Tai Chi. I remarked that the camera angle often hides or distorts some of the action. Since videos are not the best way to study motion, how can it make sense to use a still picture to learn Tai Chi? Photos of Cheng Man Ching and others were not taken as they moved. They were posed. Perhaps they were posed to display an emphasis on weight distribution or alignment at a particular time during the form, but I suspect these illustrations have to be taken as instances of the spirit of the movement and not written-in-concrete icons of the art. Can you photograph Chi? Can you diagram it? I think exploring the examples of the great masters through photographs is rewarding and enlightening but should be approached cautiously. I think of the book, The Da Vinci Code, and how searching for hidden code in the painting of the last supper really distracts from the ascetic enjoyment of a great work of art. I hope we don’t over analyze Tai Chi in the same way.

 

Grasp the peacock's Tail

I read somewhere that when Cheng Man-Ch’ing (the Professor) was asked which movement or posture he felt was the most important he answered that it was Grasping the Peacock's Tail, which consists of Ward Off, Roll Back, Press and Push. It is the most frequently occurring movement in the Yang Style Long 108 Form and is found in the 37 posture short form, the Yang 24 Bejing form, and is included in the Yang 8 form which we have been studying lately.

The Chinese name for the movement is Lǎn Qùe Wěi. Its parts are called Peng, Lü, Ji and An. In the Yang Long Form and in the Professor’s Short Form this follows the Beginning, starting with forming the so-called Tai Chi ball. The is a Ward Off with the left hand (except in Yang 8), then a turn to the right with a Ward Off with the right hand while the left follows. To visualize the next part, the Roll Back, imagine an opponent is throwing a punch at you; your hands are in a position now to guide the blow away from your body, and using your opponent’s momentum, to “pull” them forward. This is followed with the Press, placing the palms together and facing directly to the right. Shifting the weight back again, sinking, rooted, the hands spread apart and push outward, roughly at the height of the opponent’s chest. In the Yang 8 Form we execute Grasp the Peacock’s Tail to the left and to the right and then proceed to the Closing.

T’ai Chi Ch’uan, a Simplified Method of Calisthenics for Health & Self Defense by Cheng Man-Ch’ing, North Atlantic Books, Berkley, has a nice section of photos of the significant postures and explanations of the movements. Here is an interesting article on stress reduction using this movement: Grasping the Sparrow's Tail. A 5th - 6th Grade Lesson Plan by Michael P. Garofalo. http://www.egreenway.com/taichichuan/gtst.htm