Q: With great interest I have been reading some of your recent blog posts. Just would like to run a couple of things past you. I know you're probably busy, but I trust you'll let me know if I'm doing anything off track.
- Lao niu jing - I'm finding it useful to 'feel' the torso twist first, then the hips in opposition to that. It really does feel like wringing a towel in the waist area;
- After some santi shi with the above, then the stepping turn exercise, during QS it felt like the 'throat ball' you've mentioned morphed into a much larger 'chest ball' of energy;
- Bamboo - hanger practice - I'm doing it primarily empty handed, and feel an incredibly strong sensation of expansion. Today it felt like holding two big, sticky clay balls which were growing in size against my fingers and palms;
- In QS after practising the wu xing I felt an extraordinary sensation in my body like a rocket taking off, as if I was about to shoot up into the sky. Does this resonate with anything you've felt?
- In AXE in the paoquan section, there's no mention of any (subtle) fist closure upon completion. I feel the urge to do it, just wondering if it's appropriate or should be avoided.
A: This is all good. (Anybody reading the above reader question won't really understand all the details if you haven't read my books, especialy the latest, AXE, and my blog here a lot). It's what's to be expected from anybody who's read my stuff and actually tried in on the floor before jumping on the net to trash it and me. Rather than comment on any one point in the above, I want to respond more generally. My books and methods are meant to ignite you. In the initial phase it's best to 'work to rule' - for best results follow directions. After ignition however, the energy can take over and you can guide yourself just fine. The energy itself is the teacher, through the powerful feedback mechanisms that you'll feel directly. My job is to get you over the first hump of (i) being way too physically tense and (ii) not really believing the internal energy is real, or wanting to dumb it down with physicalized, philosophized, or psychologized reductive bogus 'explanations'. It is what it is, it is what the old teachers said it was, end of story. End of explanations.
But there's NO end to how much you can amp it with continued work. That's indeed the. never-ending story. However, I'm like a driver's ed teacher who can guide you on basics and give you some practice scenarios which are well worth your attention and investment of time at the start. But there's a time and place for everything. It would be a strange driving student indeed who when asked to give somebody a ride somewhere, were to respond "Sorry, my drive ed instructor never took me on that road or taught me about it, so I can't go there." You'll know when you have basic functional command of the car.
Now that said, you can always do better, and learn more. I will continually offer training points and methods you likely never would have thought of on your own. It's my job to expose you to those new things in a way that makes them easy to at least try and easy to judge the degree of fit to your personal training goals. So that's what I do here in the blog, and in the new books and vids I put out. But in the beginning the point is just to get beyond the narrow 'channels' and pinprick 'points' of civlian health energy methods, and extract at least some of the martial arts legacy, infuse your practice with that.
For example, your question number 5, about the soft fist closure. Yes, that can apply to ANY Xingyi technique in which fist appears. So play with it. I present it in the context of Crushing because it's a physical simple technique to focus on early without distractions. But then try it in comibination with other things. Once you understand it in the simple Crushing context, you'll master it for use in new combinations. Same with the entire idea of full-body generation on each rep, power foot to power (striking) hand - all the way up and out.