Movements of Magic

Bob, I think I understand what was going on from you during your strike to my sturnum (class last night) - that is the focus, compression, etc. I certainly FELT it!

But where was I? What was i doing? For it to have impacted as it did, I must have been in complete resistance??? 

Dear Pam,

Just to be clear to anyone reading this, it was not a punch to the sternum.  My hand was placed on her sternum and I sent energy through it into her body, while my hand remained on the sternum.  The point is that when you do push hands (or punching or kicking etc.), the smaller you compress the energy, the more powerful it is "per square inch".  It is the density of the power, not the total amount, that is useful.  It is the same principle as women wearing high heels in airplanes.  Their heels would go right through the floor because at a certain point all their weight was in the one square inch of the heel.  During the 1970's, women were prohibited from wearing high heels in planes.  I don't know if that rule still applies, but I don't think many women wear high heels anymore anyway.

If you compress the energy you can penetrate anyone's defenses.  You train in Tai-chi and Zookinesis to have full control over the dynamics of the energy so that you compress the energy into a needle-like form and  penetrate the defenses.  The energy has been compressed in such a way that once it has penetrated, it immediately expands within the body cavity of the partner. 

To neutralize this force you would need to perceive internal energy and be able to affect it.  To perceive it requires a great quieting of the attention.  The dynamics of internal energy during the "push" or strike is so fast and takes place in such a short time that your attention needs to be like the surface of a quiet lake.  When the slightest breeze blows by, it is revealed by the rippling of the surface of the lake. 

One part of you is still.  This is yin - pure attention.  Another part of you connects to the force and enters into a "playful" relationship with it.  This is yang - pure creativity.  The moment you can remain absolutely quiet in order to perceive and absolutely creative and connected in order to affect, then you "know" yin and yang.  You know how they work together.

Yang (creativity) penetrates the incoming force before the force penetrates your body.  It merges with it, taking on its shape and characteristics.  By doing so, yang "feels" the intention of this force (what it intends to do, exactly what has been compressed into it).  Yang can then alter this intention so that it dissipates.  This all takes place in a small fraction of a second.

 The reason you couldn't dissipate the force is that you haven't yet learned all this.  This is why I say it takes 3 years of push hands practice just to understand what you are doing, another 2 years to be able to do push hands on the most simple level and then another five years to really develop any degree of skill.  I was trying to give you a "feeling example" of a little of what there is to learn. 

It is not that the material is so difficult.  It is that our attention has become so deadened that we don't even have the tools to learn.  And so the forms and Zookinesis begin to develop our attention - to strengthen it, to give it agility and stamina.  It is only when the attention has been "honed" and developed that we can really begin to learn.

You were not in "complete resistance".  You just don't yet operate on that level of energy dynamics, but every lesson you will get closer.

It worked! You gave me a 'feeling  example' of what there is to learn!

Am I to assume that the 'needle' energy could have been focused on any part of my body? The leg, the arm?

 I also heard something at class this week that I don't remember hearing before that I think I'm just beginning to understand (along with a thousand other things!) and that is learning more about push hands for healing. I'd like to hear more about application of push hands to healing as it differentiates from application toward martial arts. As I ask this, I begin to realize what a large topic this is-
 

Dear Pam,

The application of Push Hands to healing is not any different from its application to martial arts.  In each case you need to perceive internal energy ("chi") and the dynamics of attention, and learn to affect them.  One of the principles of Push Hands is that when you are about to receive force from the partner, you must be aware of all the possible pathways within your body that his force can be brought through and returned to his body.  All those pathways must be open.  It is opened by filling the pathways with attention and internal energy.

The pathways are the way these energies travel through the body.  Students of acupuncture, for example, study the meridians and points of chi.  This is a system of channels of energy flow.  Yet this is an oversimplification.  These energies move in much more intricate ways on much finer levels.  In Push Hands you begin with an attention that can only be in one place at one time.  It can jump around quickly but does not occupy volume.  The student's attention must be developed so that the attention and chi fills all the pathways.  Then you can absorb and channel the incoming force throughout the body and re-direct it back to the partner, even magnifying its force.

When you are healing, such as Tai-chi Massage, you can perceive the deadness of the patient's ("client's") body.  You can feel how the pathways of energies are closed and decayed.  The healer's job is to revitalize these pathways, to strenghten the energies of the client, to take the client's pinpoint of energy and expand it into a volume and then to fill the pathways with that volume.  Then you try to make the client aware of these energies within his body and to learn to work with them to keep them healthy.  In this state the body heals itself. 

As to your question about the "needle" of force, you can direct your own force into the partner's body in any way.  You can "program" the force as you compress the energy, to move towards any part of the partner's body you want.  Generally (for martial arts purposes) you direct it to the inside of the spine of the partner because when the force bounces off the spine and expands, it reverberates within the body cavity for a long time.  This has the maximum effect. 

Another point is that you don't need to be in physical contact to affect the energies of the partner.  This is important in fighting as you usually are not in contact except for the actual strike or in grappling.  Yet you need to interfere with his chi and attention to make it difficult for him to function.  In everyday life you need to understand how the people around you are affecting you and protect yourself against that.  You can get worn out just by the chaotic nature of the attention and internal energy inside other people.  Remember that chi and attention are not produced by the body itself (except in a very minor way).  They are natural energies just like gravity, for example, that flows through each of us.  The chaos inside a person can affect that flow and change the nature of the energy around him.  It is like the idea that a body of mass bends space itself.  The way we "bend" chi and attention within our bodies affects the general flow of those energies around us.  Anyone within the affected area is affected.  Part of why we learn Push Hands is to become aware of this and learn to stay so centered and balanced that we do not get affected (unless we want to). 

So, yes, the subject of healing (as well as the subject of martial arts) is a big subject and unfortunately, there is little literature on it from this point of view.  That's why it's good to ask questions in this forum to bring out these points.  As I sit down to think of what to write for each "weekly lesson" on the front page, I often can't think of what specifically to write.  But when you ask questions, I can use that as a starting point.

Thanks,

Bob