In my latest book AXE on Advanced Xingyi internal training, I wrote a lot about the classic 'static' stance method of XYQ called 三體勢. Please refer to that book for all details. In this post, I'm refining and clarifying one insanely crucial aspect of that. Old Ox power is thick layering of reverberant energy surging through your torso specifically - sourced from your feet and legs coming up (Rebound!) and extendile on mental command through your arms and hands.
In many past books and films (not only newest AXE book), I've talked about the 'counter-rotation' process that takes Santishi from being just another static 'standing post' pose - of which there are dozens in any branch of Yiquan system, and hundreds in the wider world of qi-gong and nei-gong. Santishi emphasizes and amplifies and facilitates this process and boosts the experiential result to the stratosphere. This post goes more deeply into one key aspect of it.
I've covered this point in many past books and films (both free YouTube and paid Vimeo tutorials). But I realized when working with some privates recently that I still haven't really conveyed the experiential essence of it. So I'm going to try again here. If I feel this (deeper, even more explicity and detailed) explanation seems to 'work' at conveying it, I will consider upgrading the relevant section of AXE manuscript and putting that out as a 2nd edition (which will almost entirely overlap with the 1st edition but maybe this one part will be improved). The current mention of this 'counter rotation' protocol for Santishi is on page 57 of the current print edition, with subtitle 'Transmission: MUX'. It's just one page. Maybe I can do better (based on what I observed in recent private sessions).
Caveat: it's possible that some details I'm going to go through below may seem to contradict some things I may have specified about Santi in either AXE and/or the other books and films where I've covered this same. Sorry! This here is the most advanced and detailed instruction on this point. I advise if you are more of a beginner or intermediate, if you haven't begun to already feel the internal power experience pretty strongly through your whole body, or if you can't project at least some of the power explicitly and tangibly through your hands, fingers and fist, then stick with the basics, solve any (perceived) contradiction in favor of the original, earlier AXE teachings. But if you really ARE advanced in your practice, if you already feel the surge or stream or even the 'state' - in that case, go with the detailed specs here and you'll be blown away.
1. Set up your stance, on either side, as directed in AXE. Note: You must do the foot thing that I talk about a lot in the chapter as the key to Santi foundation.
2. Let's call your right/rear foot as 'support', your left/front foot as 'extension', your left/long arm as 'lead arm' and your short right/rear arm as 'support arm'.
3. Here's the (very simple really) key to the kingdom: you must set up a 'counter rotation' in your torso. That's the whole point of this pose. That's what brings it to life. To do that is simple, if you can just commit to it and remeber to always set it up on every standing session. You must generate a "feeling" that your pelvis / lower torso "wants" to rotate (for this side's setup) to the right. Basically, "away" from the lead hand side.
4. Meanwhile! Your upper torso "wants" to rotate in the opposite direction. That's about it, but let me explain each sub piece in more detail below.
MUX: This is taking the following as one energetic and conceptual unit: lower abdomen, including dantian point and qihai area; hips, pelvis, sacrum, perineum, upper femoral joint area - all as a single unit.
Upper Torso: Everything from the bottom of your rib cage to your collar bones, including rib cage, mid and upper back, top of shoulders, sternum, etc.
Now here's the kicker: what is between your MUX and your Upper Torso? Between the tops of your hips/pelvic bones and the bottom of your rib cage? It's basically your waist line running right in the soft tissue juncture area there. That's where the two big units must have a border, and some kind of interaction or counter action or reaction. And they will! As long as you don't go nuts and get all tensely physical with this. This work must be constant, sustained throughout the posture hold, and intense mentally and energetically but NOT PHYSICALLY TENSE. Keep shape not tension.
If you can do as above, at some point you feel what I'm talking about here kick in. The count-rotation effect on your torso energy. IT'S FREAKING AMAZING. If you aren't feeling something totally amazing you aren't doing it right yet but just hang in, keep going.
In my books, I have compared this whole setup to a rip tide configuration off the coast or a beach. There are two current at odds with one another and where they join a third zone, a totally different effect is generated. These rip tide water patterned zoned can be seen clearly from the air (photo in one of my books, I think its Tanden Revolution, or maybe Aiki Singularity). But to make that new 3rd area, both of the competing source patterns must be active together.
This overall concept was known to other arts, not only Xingyi but its kind of lost. Take Ba Gua as an example. The above protocol is embedded in the Ba Gua circle walk, when you understand it correctly. It was called 'wringing the towel'. However that phrase is now widely misunderstood to mean basically trying to flex or stretch your arm tendons, which in practice usually devolves into ordinary physical tension. So the point is now obscured. But it's the same. I have tried to convey that in my one Ba Gua video on YouTube.
But even if you knew about the Ba Gua or other embodiments of this protocol, still the XYQ/Santi configuration is the best way to practice it. Other versions of this (if people even understand how to try them) are like a lite beer up against 100+ proof Kentucky whiskey. It's because in the Xingyi/Santi version of this practive you have the 'just right' amount of physicality (to support the setup, I mean this comes from martial arts, it isn't sedentary mentalistic Dao Yin) without it devolving into ordinary martial calesthenics.
The MUX's rearward (mostly mental with just a touch of almost-physical impulse) is fairly straight forward to learn and maintain. The counter-rotation of maintaining the upper torso as a feeling of counter rotation in the opposite direction isn't so obvious. I realized from the privates I taught recently that there's been a slight misunderstanding, which is mostly my own fault. In previous work, I thought the most understandable and accessible way to describe that was to say "feel that your support hand is pushing forward 'resisting' or 'countering' the rearward rotation of the MUX". That will give you some idea. But it doesn't really lead directly to the most powerful engagement of the torso power experience.
So now instead of that formulation, centering the hand action, I want you more advanced people to try this way - keep your arm feeling just static. DO THE ROTATION FEELING WITH YOUR UPPER TORSO ITSELF as the 'active' agent, not the support hand.
Keep your arms static. Keep them in the proper shapes and orentations of course, but don't have any idea of them 'doing' anything on their own. Yes, not even the idea of the support hand or arm counter pushing 'against' the (mostly mental) action of the MUX's rotation. Don't do it that way any more. From now on, try the following mental (and very slightly physical) protocol instead:
Imagine that your UPPER TORSO (see above), as a single piece all of it, is doing the (mostly mental) counter rotation (opposite to the rearward rotation of your MUX. In practice this won't look any different from the previous way, which in turn shouldn't really look much diffrent from just standing in an empty, wooden (normal lol!) version of Santi. But if you can do it as above, using the upper torso (as defined in this piece), the energetic response will eventually be off the charts.
Your waist is the juncture. It's caught in-between the two mentally and very slightly physically opposing forces. It's soft, it can't really physical participate in either direction of the active components above and below it. But right here is where the OX power experience will begin and quickly permeate your entire torso: MUX, waist, and Upper Torso - all. And will then blast energy out in torrents to your entire body.
But you must work to maintain the rotational 'action' and balance throughout the entire stand on a given side. It looks still and quiet but internally you are actually actively (but not frantically) maintaining a very specific configuration and state. It's work. That's why I say in all my books that, contrary to appearances, Santi is not a stance. It's a process.
It's like driving a car. Most people's Santi practice (if they bother with it at all) is empty and wooden - like sitting in a car, for a certain number of minutes perhaps timed lol, hands on steering wheel, car in park on the driveway, pretending to drive like a kid does. Next level is you do feel some energy, but you haven't got the active foot/leg foundation that I describe in AXE. That's like you are still in park, sitting in the driveway, but at least you've turned the key in the ignition. The next is you've got your foot on brake/clutch (foot action for foundation, see AXE). Finally you put the car in gear, and accelerate out of the driveway. Now you're on the road. That putting the car in gear, the idea of gears meshing perfectly, engaging each other where they meet, generating energy at the mesh point - that's kind of the sense of this practice. The car won't go anywhere until you've engaged those gears.
But once you have holy shit, it's totally amazing. And XYQ's Santi is, to my fairly extensive lifetime experience, the purest, most stripped down, most perfectly tuned and compressed version of this general protocol. The graphic above is not a visually perfect representation, but combined with all this text should make the basic concept clear enough to those who are advanced enought to attempt this.