I spent the time in Czech at the end of February priming everyone for the Summer Course in July.  We worked on the importance of studying each bit of advice from the classics in synergy with the others.

“Raise the head as if suspended by a rope from above” goes naturally with “lighten the top of the head”.  There were a few problems with ‘lighten’ in translation, but when everyone realised that they didn’t need a light bulb on the top of their head, (which I would argue with) they realised that when they tried to ‘straighten’ the head they invariably tensed the neck muscles, but when they ‘suspended’ and ‘lightened’ they felt like it was ‘floating’ upward and the entire body moved with a lighter feel.  Add on to that the feeling of tying a weight on to the bottom of the spine and it allowed a gentle opening of every vertebra in the spinal column and access for the bodyweight to the soft tissue of the legs.

This also opened the waist and allowed it to ‘loosen’ and freely drive and manipulate power through the entire body.  The head was the start of the ‘5 bows’ (spine, arms and legs) and the spine itself consists of a separate 3 bows, the upper spine is bowed by the action of the head, the upper back by the ‘sinking of the chest’ and ‘raising of the back’ and the lower back by the softening into the legs and pulling the PC muscle to draw the coccyx forward.  The whole bowing process is driven by ‘peng’, which opens the joints and soft tissue, allowing a free flow of energy and with an action like blowing up a balloon ‘frames’ the entire body with ‘animated’ energy.

We looked at how to put our ‘strength in the tendons’ by angling and rotating the joints to ‘reticulate’ them through the body connecting the power down to the feet.

We finished by working on ‘continuous movement from the waist’ to make the connected, light, framed and spiralling power become actualised into that essential Tai Chi motion that repels all boarders!

By pre framing everyone’s mind for the Summer, it means that as they are already moving in that direction and won’t feel too uncomfortable as we apply these ideas throughout the form!

Don’t forget that on the Instructors Course in April we’re working on the Jian and Dao with a deeper level of skill, so bring your wooden swords!

I’m not what you’d call a body beauty obsessed person and don’t really have any physical features that I’m particularly dissatisfied with.  Don’t get me wrong I’m no Brad Pitt and am under no illusions that I’m one of gods beautiful people being blessed with a busted nose and generously sized ears, but on the whole I can live with the image in the mirror.  The only thing I desperately wish to change about my body is its posture and this is only something I notice when I catch my reflection occasionally in the mirror during tai chi and I get that immediate sense of ‘fugly’….

Over the years I’ve developed what in the structural bodywork world we’d probably term as ‘lordosis of the lumbar spine’ and a ‘anterior tilt of the pelvis’ – which in plain English means I stick my arse out (see the picture to below).  It has a very direct effect of my tai chi performance causing me to lean forwards, jut my chin out and prevents me from really getting into my feet.  This is especially bad during push hands where there is no hiding place for glaring postural problems.  The really annoying thing about this little physical quirk of mine is that I just can’t seem to shake it, no matter how much I try… I mentioned this to Steve and it became the subject for my lesson yesterday.

Steve had me to stand in front of the mirror and we noticed how subtlety but noticeable misaligned my body was.  My head was shifted slightly to the left, my right shoulder was slightly raised and twisted forwards and this cascaded problems down through my body.  Seeing these obvious faults I started to correct myself I shifted my head to the right to realign it and dropped my shoulder.  Steve pointed out that instead of correcting the problems I’d actually created more tension the body.  He said that my problem wasn’t the alignment of my bones but in the excess tension being held in the soft tissues (muscles, tendons, fascia, etc).

I often borrow the analogy the author of the book ‘Anatomy Trains’ Tom Myers uses when describing the structure of the human body.  He likens it to a sailboat - with the spine being the like the mast of a boat and the soft tissues around it as the rigging.  On a sailboat the rigging is there to stabilise the mast – if the mast is pulled to the right the rigging to the left pulls tighter to compensate.  Likewise in the body if the soft tissues of one side pull in one direction on the spine (or any other bone) other soft tissues will need to tighten to compensate.  This process of compensation creates more and more tension within the soft tissues or ‘rigging’ of the body.

For example I rectified the slight tilt to the left with my head by pulling the rigging on the right hand side tighter.  The trouble is in doing so I hadn't conisdered the potential reason for this tilt might have been that the rigging on my left hand side was already pulling too tight to start off with.  So by pulling my head straight I created tension in my right hand side and added even more tension to the already tense left hand side.  At this point my mind was already melting and I hadn’t even got to the shoulder issues yet.   Looking disheartened I asked Steve what advice he could give me help to sort out my posture,

“I’ve given you everything you need.  There isn’t any more advice I can offer.  I’ve told you how to align your body and how to release the tension through ‘softening’ you’ve just got to go away and do it.  The problem isn’t the alignment of the bones it’s the excess tension in the soft tissues that’s pulling on your bones.  You need to take your mind into the soft tissues and out of the bones… otherwise you’ll be chasing problems forever!”

Steve was right and I was making what I consider to be one of the cardinal sins of bodywork, treating the symptom not the cause.  There are a few forms of bodywork that specialise in bone setting whereby you’ll be clicked and cracked back into place.  To me, using the sailboat analogy, this is like snapping the mast back into place without sorting out the rigging.  What I find with many people who go to practitioners like this is that they have numerous treatments having the same adjustments done over and over again.  They have their bones ‘clicked’ back into place without having the very thing that is pulling them out of place considered.  Bones usually do not spontaneously jump out of alignment instead they are pulled by the soft tissues of the body – so if you don’t address the excess tension in the ‘rigging’ the mast is always going to be being yanked out of place.   This same ‘rigging’ was causing my postural issues.

I was reminded of the advice handed down in the tai chi classics on posture, then of how to take my awareness through my body to find excess tension and then release it through 'softening'.  Sorting out the ‘pulls’ in the rigging rather than adding to them seemed a rather sensible option when it was spelled out.  So now I’m going to take my mind away from the mast and place it in the rigging!

“I would consider tai chi to be the ultimate skirmish art” said a night club doorman of 28 years and lifelong martial artist.  “This is exactly what happens on the doors and it gives us the skills to deal with being pushed, pulled grabbed and hit from all directions at the same time, we’re often in a melee and the ability to cope with simultaneous multi directional attacks is essential.”

The mental image that most have of Tai Chi is that of the ‘hippy’ or ‘health’ version and of old age pensioners creaking along to the only range of movement and speed that they can cope with.  Or it may be of the ‘youtube’ version of bodies flying unconvincingly away from an aged masters ‘magic’ light touch or of bad karate or aikido applications to the strange movements.

Tai Chi is a martial art.  It can be taught very methodically.  Those that consider it a martial art often say that you have to practice it for years to be any good, in fact the same can said for any art. Tai Chi starts with the qigong exercises, in the Yang Family these are essential foundation training that releases the body core to allow internal softening, connection and rooting.  They then work methodically through the body, opening the joints, softening the muscle and fascia connections, flexing the spine, correcting the posture and working all the powerful directional movements that a human body can do.  The ‘exercises’ also work the ‘jins’, the energy lines through the body exciting the system to engender a vigorous health and positive, powerful movements and technique.

When skills are taught, they are taught in the exercises first, then put into the hand forms, weapons forms, push hands and finally boxing and grappling applications.

Being taught properly and methodically means that the student is taught what he ‘needs’ rather than what he ‘wants’, this is known as ‘eating bitter’ and can be construed by a part of modern society who want to be ‘entertained’ as boring and painful.  Those people would be attracted to what is known as ‘tourist’ Tai Chi where they are entertained with simple unskillful movements that make them happy and keep the instructors rice bowl full.   This is the popular form of Tai Chi.

To be taught properly, the student needs to learn how to stand, how to breathe, how to think and focus his attention and then how to move.  He must ‘empty his cup’ of whatever he thought martial arts and fighting were to be able to learn the skills from exercise to form in a pure liberated movement free from emotion and wrong intention.  He would then learn how to generate power from the feet, through the legs, manipulated by the core and torso to be fed out through the arms and hands.  Different forms of connected power are used for striking, manipulation, locking, escaping, strangling, choking and throwing.

It takes time and effort (the meaning of the words ‘kung fu’) to work these skills into the body until they become natural and any form of trying to force them will result in unnatural tension and anxiety.

Development is a lifelong process, it’s said that the student will first learn in feet, then inches, then hundredths of an inch, then thousandths… then hundredths of a thousandth of an inch.  BUT….. he is better on day 2 than he would be on day 1, any skill learning is the same process.  ‘Tourist’ technique in any art may work until the student meets a powerful, internally connected fighter, who will simply walk through or disrupt anything he has to offer.

The difference with Tai Chi is that it is a skirmish art; it is a continuous double helix spiral of movement and momentum, during this continuous movement the practitioner remains actively powerful and responsive in all directions for every hundredth of a thousandth of an inch.

The founder of the Yang style, Yang Lu Chan, was the son of a farmer who loved the Martial Arts and had studied Shaolin Hung Quan with a local instructor before studying in the Chen family village under Chen style Master Chen Chang Xin.  Yang Lu Chan was his most talented student and eventually returned to his home village at Yung Nien where he taught for a living.  He was undefeated locally and in his travels where he won many matches utilising his soft and yielding art that as a result became known as ‘mien quan’ (cotton boxing) or hua quan (neutralising boxing).  ‘Cotton boxing’ because for the opponent, it was like putting their hands into soft cotton and finding a needle in the middle!

By the time he was middle aged Yang taught at the Imperial Court and was tested by experts many times and never defeated, this earned him the title ‘Yang the Invincible’.  He became the martial arts instructor to the Shen Ji Battalion and taught in the Royal Households earning the title 'Ba Yeh’ (Eight Lords) because eight princes studied under him.

Teaching at the Imperial Court was a grave responsibility in that he was obliged to teach well or it would be considered treason with a probable death sentence!  It also gave Yang the opportunity to meet with and compare his skills with the best in the land.

Yang was a hard taskmaster to his three sons with one dying early, one attempting suicide and one frequently running away and attempting to become a monk.  Eventually both remaining sons became masters in their own right and both taught at the Imperial Court.

‘Cotton boxing’ is an interesting term because it indicates where the vital secret of Yang Tai Chi Chuan lies.  In combat the mind tends to be coarse and responds only to harsh and sudden movement ignoring the soft and sensitive.  The Tai Chi practitioner develops the skill of  ‘four ounces to move a thousand pounds’ and when the opponents mind is going coarse, his becomes more sensitive and works on a subliminal level neutralizing the opponents force with light touches, sticking, following, redirecting and controlling with power connected from the feet and legs up through the core, manipulated by the waist and out through he hands.  The ‘soft’ strikes carry that same connected power that although deceptively soft, carries the ‘kick’ of a donkey!

It becomes a ‘skirmish art’ because the body moves in that framed, posturally aligned and internally connected manner and is able to repel attackers from any direction at any time.  I remember when I talked about ‘fa jin’ being ‘like a whip’ to Ma Lee Yang she thought about it for a moment and then said that it was more like a ‘pin ball machine’.  This troubled me for ages, as I couldn’t see her point until I grasped the double helix and the ability to bounce or send power to any point of the body and in any direction in an instant.  A whip has vulnerable points in its’ movement and is committed – the pinball isn’t.

It makes the martial aspect of Tai Chi very different to that of most other martial arts.   I don’t think there is a ‘best’ art, only the best art for the character of each student.  It’s never the art, but the person that practices it that makes it efficient.

Good Yang style Tai Chi as a ‘skirmish’ art certainly suits doormen, security personnel and law enforcement officers.  I have taught all 3 categories successfully for over 3 decades.  Sometimes you have to search for the right instructor and art and not be put off or be influenced by others or by the first instructors you meet.  It can take as much time and effort to find the right instructor as the actual training itself!  People have often said to me “I always knew it was there in Tai Chi, it was just not easy to find”…..

Steve Rowe is an International Tai Chi Instructor teaching Presidential Bodyguards, Security Personnel, Police Self Defence Instructors and runs an association with over 15,000 students across Europe.  He is also an 8^th Dan in Karate, 3^rd Dan in Iaido, 2^nd Dan Jodo and 1^st Dan Ju Jitsu.

He is the Chairman of the Martial Arts Standards Agency and Shi Kon Martial Arts International.

You can read his blog and articles at www.themartialarchive.com and his website at www.shikon.com

We’ve been working on the idea of continuous peng in all directions whilst maintaining continuous spiraling motion in the form.

One of the ways we’ve been practicing this idea is with 4 people gently pulling or pushing the form practitioner in all directions making him find his feet and spiral into them, maintaining peng and taking the ‘opponents’ just out of their feet with the first couple of millimetres of movement so that they are still attached, weakened, but not really aware of it.

The skill is in utilising the right-brained ‘spatial’ mind that has the ability to treat all four opponents as one and as one ‘balancing point’ instead of trying to deal with 4 separate people and 4 separate balance points.  This is easier than it reads and it’s the sensitivity that’s the real skill.

The idea of the ‘pinball’ is that it’s the strike that comes from the spiral AFTER the weakening of the opponent and into them on the curve.  This means that it continues to move on the curve and into the spiral from the strike.  The pinball effect also means that the ‘fajing’ can travel quickly from point to point in the body and hit again and again into the weakened opponents with a ‘pinball’ effect.

Bear in mind that many people can’t get their balance in the first place or lose it as soon as they start moving and are therefore vulnerable all of the time.

In Tai Chi the hands are only one option for hitting, more often than not it will be the spiraling, curving forearms or any other part of the body, Dao (broadsword) training helps to understand the spiraling forearm ‘cutting strikes’ to the vulnerable points, breaking the opponent’s structure.

The use of the syncromeshed multi spiraling 'peng' provides the rooted, waist manipulated, spiraling emission of energy that can be powered through the hands with little or no arm extension whilst either first or simultaneously displacing the opponents structure with the other hand or by pulling, pushing, 'nudging' with forearm, shoulder etc.. So this is best practiced on another person with minimum or no padding and either pushing the strike in (to lessen impact) or controlling it, as a hit on a weakened structure is different to hitting a rooted and aligned one. Finding angles through a human body to de-structure joints, hitting vital points, shortening tendons, separating muscle and fascia whilst the body is moving are all hitting skills worthy of a lot of study. As the hit itself is on a curve and therefore will continue in momentum and not lose structure, hitting bags and pads is not always particularly useful.

In summary…. Grasping the ideas of working subliminally, utilizing peng, spiraling from the feet in continuous motion, breaking the opponent’s structure and hitting from the spiral, on a curve, in continuous movement and using the pinball effect of fajin will give us the skills we’re after!

For those that don’t see me too often I thought I’d give you all an update as to what we’ve been working on lately….

The opening of the spine in both directions
To not only stretch the spine upwards, but to also feel like you have a weight attached to the coccyx, pulling it downwards to open the spaces between the vertebrae.  This goes along with the idea of ‘parking’ the spine and you cannot help but ‘loosen up’ through the ankles, knees and hips at the same time.  This also allows you to be more sensitive to gently pulling the PC muscle to create the ‘bowing’ of the spine and limbs.

Using the waist to change the hands.
The hands are always ‘driven’ by the waist.  We never ‘throw’ them. When changing the hand technique it must be ‘spiralled’ into change from the waist displacing the opponent at the same time, we have been paying particular attention to grasp sparrow’s tail (as ever), single whip, shoulder stoke, stork cools wings, cloud hands and fair lady plays at shuttles, but the idea is in all techniques.

Continuous movement from the waist.
The waist never stops and as it’s driving the hands they are always in continuous ‘driven’ movement.  As it’s sometimes difficult for the student to know when the waist and link to the hands has ceased, we have been working in pairs with one student watching the other and by observation and discussion have resolved any problems or anomalies.

Spatial energising of the skin.
Instead of identifying an individual opponent in the mind when performing the form, we have worked on the idea that the performer is being held by many people and pulled multi directionally so that he has to secure the drive from the feet, spiral in motion to displace them and keep peng and frame to maintain power in all directions.  This has the added benefit that the awareness and energy is bought to the surface of all the skin spatially as opposed to just towards one opponent.

That’s enough to kick the New Year off!!  I’ll let you know where we go from there.

Don’t forget the seminar this Sunday 17^th January is on meditation, the chakras, their relevance, and healing.  11am – 3pm at the Chatham honbu £20 for members, £30 for non members.

The Shi Kon training system is mnemonic.  At each grade the ‘form’ is mnemonic for the basics and applications to be practised for the next grade.  The system is progressive from grade to grade. It works from kicking and boxing to close quarter fighting, to power striking and on to the study of the 16 gates of the human body, to the 13 remaining hands of the system, taking those ideas into curves, circles and spirals to the internal system, the method of employing it into the 5 animals, the methods of emitting power and energy and all these ‘minor mnemonic’ forms are eventually rolled up into one mnemonic ‘Taiki’ (for Karate) or ‘Shi Kon Tai Chi’ (for Kung Fu) form that intensifies and compounds all the previous training.

The underlying principles of the system are brought mnemonically into 8 words.  Each word is the doorway to a world of exploration and learning.  This way you can never forget all the most important components of the Shi Kon training system, when working on your own you only have to pick a word and start exploring, never forgetting that the Shi Lon logo is a mnemonic for the entire system and is depicted as a Buddhist dharma wheel, giving the philosophy as well as the practical aspects and reminding you that even though you are concentrating on one mnemonic, you can’t forget the other 7!

The Shi Kon coaches have the perfect method of teaching and assessing the progress of the students. All they have to do is to work their way around the wheel in a cyclic fashion at each grade focusing on the one that is particular for that grade to ensure that everything gets covered and then take each mnemonic to a deeper level at each stage.

Whoever thought it all up was a genius!

Click here to see all the the forms from the Shi Kon syllabus.