Open and Close (开合): A Single Term, Two Different Methods

[windwalker099102]

getting back to solo work, it's still difficult. I think it's easy to want to attach to the "qi" feeling but maybe this is just a necessary phase to link "external" to "internal" whole body and prep to not be "localized" in a very simple push hands cooperative drill.

You might try videoing yourself so you can see your movement, either on your own or with someone you trust. It can be a useful tool, even if it’s no substitute for a teacher.

As for linking “external” to “internal,” Don’t really see it as a phase. What’s there was always there. The qi feeling can be a useful indicator of whether something is correct or not — the problem comes when attention fixes on the feeling itself, rather than what produces it.

some thoughts on this:

Wang Youngquan

Pursue the state of nothingness

When practicing boxing postures, whether it is a health-preserving method or a martial arts method, one must pursue a state of "nothingness". One should have nothing and not pursue anything in mind. Just be loose, scattered, and round, without a goal or an object. There is no intention to meet the enemy. Practice to have nothing, "the whole body is empty", "the whole body is suitable".

When practicing boxing postures, one should not think or do this is peng, this is lu, this is ji, this is an, how peng becomes lu... Practicing boxing postures only requires being loose, empty, hollow, and scattered.

“Pursue the state of nothingness” interesting in itself, to pursue a state of “nothingness” already introduces something.

For nearly ten years I asked my teacher what he felt when he demonstrated on us. His answer was always the same: “I feel nothing.” By nothing, he never meant a lack of awareness, but the absence of anything being singled out.

Yet in training, when partners reacted, a kind of quandary appeared.
Those causing the reactions often didn’t believe the reactions they produced — asking whether the partner was faking — while at the same time fully accepting the reactions our teacher produced in them.

Now, when I work with others and they react, they sometimes ask what I feel.
My reply is the same: “Nothing.”

When I react to what they do, they too sometimes ask if I’m faking it.

 

[everything]

when I did (a very small) something once, accidentally, when practicing with a partner, it felt like nothing. or rather, it felt the same as just standing doing zhan zhuang and qigong. But "trying" to "do nothing" paradoxically sounds much more difficult. As you said, now that's "something" instead of "nothing". It's hard not to, say, focus on contact point or a punch or who knows what. Probably related to why "yi quan" is a very interesting name on various levels for that art.

 

[windwalker099102]

It's hard not to, say, focus on contact point or a punch or who knows what. Probably related to why "yi quan" is a very interesting name on various levels for that art.

Those I used to work with asking about were or what they should focus on..
I would usually point them to this book:


The Unfettered Mind: Writings of the Zen Master to the Sword Master
by Takuan Sōhō (translated by William Scott Wilson)


Takuan addresses this directly:

If you place yourself before your opponent, your mind will be taken by him. You should not place your mind within yourself. Bracing the mind in the body is something done only at the inception of training, when one is a beginner.

The mind can be taken by the sword. If you put your mind in the rhythm of the contest, your mind can be taken by that as well. If you place your mind in your own sword, your mind can be taken by your own sword.

When the mind stops at any one place, you become an empty shell.