[IMPORTANT TRAINING POST - PAY ATTENTION]
If you've read my book JUICE Radical Taiji Energetics, you should know that the whole internal energy thing is based on what I call the ARC model. That is: Accumulate Rebound Catch. The details are in the book, too much to review here, but basically you concentrate the energy below the navel, let it drop to your feet, from there it bounces up your legs, trunk, head, then down and out to your hands and fingers. To accomplish this, you need to relax. That's the ARC in a nutshell. Please (re?) read JUICE for details.
Just as there are many 'accelerants' that can improve your overall internal energy experience, there is something, really more than just another 'accelerant', a fundamental component of the ARC process/protocol that I did not cover in Juice, or any of my other Tai Chi books. It is an extremely important and effective add-on or plug-in to your Tai Chi training.
So then the usual two questions arise: why isn't it in Juice or the other books; why is it here now?
Why it is Not There:
It isn't in Juice or any of the other books for several reasons. First, I'm kind of a secretive, paranoid type of person. smile But seriously, it's because I've felt there's just no point. Though I have about a dozen or so really nice and intelligent readers, I get all kinds of shit from people who, instead of just quietly sticking to their own methods and teachers, go out of their way to dump on my radically energetic approach. And from both sides! Combative types who ridicule the lack of cagefight emphasis/mastery and then quietistic types sniggering that after all it's not the expected super-exotic nei dan so it can't be worth shit.
So I get sick of hearing that kind of thing. The other reason, perhaps on a loftier plane :) is that this is something so simple to do, so subtle in its initial effect, that I doubt very many people will appreciate it's immense, transformative power. They'll do it once for a minute, get nothing, shrug and never look back. So why toss a pearl to a swine? This something extremely 'advanced' not in the sense of being physically or mentally difficult move in and of itself, but requiring an advanced, committed practice, deep understanding of relaxation, good awareness of energy rooted in real experience, and some mastery of the mechanical foundation as the essential practice framework. Up until recently there just haven't been many qualified to appreciate this.
Why it is Here:
So then why am I writing this post now? One thing is that lately there actually do seem to be a few readers who write me accounts that unmistakably clue me there are starting to get experienced. But maybe I still wouldn't have written about this, because it's still too subtle and advanced even for most of them. However, another thing today has pushed me over the line to the point of dishing this out. That is, Prince died today. Yeah, and he's 57 years old that is my exact age! We have almost the exact same birthday: I am May 7th 1958, he is June 7th 1958. So when I read that I thought: Fuck it! Wouldn't it be a shame if I drop dead next month leaving this unsaid? Somebody out there can make use of it. So here goes.
But wait - one more thing: though this add-on is incredibly deep and profoundly powerful, it will not result in instant street combat effectiveness nor a UFC belt. I know there's a big contingent that judges everything by that. If you fit the description, could you do me a favor and kindly fuck off? Reading this post is just going to leave you incredibly bored, baffled and belligerent and I've had enough of that. Thank you.
The other point I need to make, for the good people still reading now, just a reminder that cool stuff starts small. Who among the people seeing crumbly dirty raw uranium ore in the field for the first time 100 years ago would have had the vision to imagine a softball-sized concentrate of uranium distillate (plutonium) could, in 21st century deployments, level a large city into a green glass parking lot? It's not that obvious is it? Now even at it's best, this internal power thing isn't quite that strong but it's the same principle - something seems really weak and marginal and dinky initially can if nurtured and concentrated properly, become something more. It will rock you.
This add-on extension to the ARC training is a way of 'catching' the energy at your feet, so that it bounces up your body like a superball, massively intensifying the final power in your arms. So it's a foot thing. Now I'm sure anybody reading this is well aware of foot ideas in martial arts. The most common thing you hear, especially in Xingyi, is to 'grip' the ground with your toes, curling or retracting them tensely. Another common thing is the well-known Tai Chi 3 Nails or 9 Nails, whatever the Nail count, where the teacher expounds which parts of the foot need to press strong into the ground for stability, torque and power. Then from yet another direction, there is the more specifically 'internal' thing about somehow concentrating on the mid/centerline sole point called yong quan in acu-theory.
So there's all that pre-existing stuff. What I'm telling you in this post isn't any of those things. Those things (above list) are OK as far as they go. But their overall effect will just be to tense you up even more than you already are, either mentally or physically or most likely both. I'm going to take you literally in an entirely different direction, consistent with the ARC model and everything I've already written about.
This add-on or plug-in should be worked within my Tai Chi framework for now. It actually comes from my Xingyi teacher. But it's harder to really appreciate this in the Xingyi context, because Xingyi is fast and frankly because in its Xingyi implementation there are a few other complementary things you need to work with it for full effect. So what I'm presenting here is the stripped-down straight-forward version that applies directly and instantly to the Tai Chi ARC practice. What that means at first is just that you can take any of the sample static standing Zheng/Lo Tai Chi standing poses (the are fully described and illustrated in PENG book) and just work this right away from any of them.
So you do need to know at least one of the Tai Chi poses, at least the Tai Chi Quiet Standing but preferably one of the 70/30 poses, just to get the basic idea going. Later you can generalize to the other poses, and then into the moving form, all the same.
Let's say you work it in Tai Chi Quiet Standing, to begin with. Blah blah you should already know all the considerations for correct Tai Chi Quiet Standing, or you shouldn't have read this far in this post. So now, having got into your QS frame, all you are going to do is:
SLIGHTLY ELEVATE YOUR TOES
Yeah. I know. Too simple right? Boring, Dumb. Pointless! So you can stop reading now and forget I ever said anything. ...crickets...
To those still here, yeah both of you, I will offer a few more instructions:
- First thing is, this is NOT ADDING TENSION. You only very slightly elevate your toes. Only your toes alone, not the rest of your foot which remains relaxed and flat on the floor. When I teach Tai Chi, I see lots of useless and obstructive foot tension, when people do the Crack Step and Cat Step (see books for details). They really arch back the foot itself, tensely, at the ankle and instep, but really forcefully curl their toes up and back. And then once they put the foot down, it's totally out-of-sight-out-of-mind. First too tense, then too slack. So that's double-bad. You do NOT put that kind of tension into any part of the foot, whether in Crack/Cat Step or this new add-on. Never! Didn't I say 'relax' is the first principle? And then, for the ARC model to really work its magic, you need to keep just a light trace of 'mind' in your feet. So this add-on accomplishes both goals: you learn to keep your mind at your feet and you learn to moderate and reduce the unconscious tension there. If you did this with bare feet, somebody watching should barely notice the slightest elevation, so the skin of bottom of your toes is just barely off the floor (or more commonly, the inside shoe surface). Minimal movement, hardly any tension. It's just a very soft engagement and slight 'feeling of lift'. Remember that Tai Chi is a game of four things: Mind, Extension, Relaxation, Grounding. This is an example of advanced 'extension' with 'relaxation' and 'mind'. Work it accordingly, don't tense up.
- This fulfills the ARC idea of 'rebound' better than passive foot. By doing this, I know how crazy it sounds, but it has the effect of 'catching' the energy at your feet and strongly bouncing it right back up.
- Key thing is, this will actually fill your ARMS with internal power. Yeah weird right? Wait a second! If you think that's weird you aren't qualified to practice this in the first place. You should know by now that arms have no independent power in the ARC model. They are entirely 'filled from below' and that's what this protocol will accomplish for you. So don't get into the arm-waving fetish of normal Qi Gong. Don't suddenly start trying to do anything special with your arms, just follow the regular relaxed/attentive static standing Tai Chi protocol. Hold your arms relaxed but gently mindful of the Fair Lady's Hands and they will just whoosh - fill right up from below. It's really fun. But it may take you a while to understand, simple though it seems on the surface. Again I emphasize: if you haven't at least begun to experience the internal power from all the more basic ARC stuff in my books, please - seriously - don't bother with this because you won't have the internal softness and awareness yet to make head or tail of it, no matter how many decades of Tai Chi you may have studied or taught. Don't waste your time, there are better things you could be doing with yourself.
I call this the L/ARC Protocol. The 'ARC' part of that is same as regular ARC upon which all this is based. The 'L' stands for "lift" and also the shape of the capital L shows the little toe raise, so that works.
You can play with this using any of the Zheng/Lo static training poses below. Just stand in the pose, do the soft to lift thing. Do feel even a minor baby surge upward from your feet? If so keep working it gently. Over time you'll learn how to instantly trigger that, and how to maintain it as a 'stream' coming continuously from your feet and flowing into your arms and finally catching it in your hands. After a good session of standing this way your arms will be incredibly full of the internal energy and it will start to accumulate there.
All these poses are fine to work with the L/ARC, but to begin I'd suggest the Ward-Off Left pose, upper left corner of second panel below.
OK now I've spilled the beans on the L/ARC, so I can go out and get run over or shot down like a dog in the street with no regrets.