Master Hwa tells me that he receives a lot of discussion
after people see his DVD’s and the Youtube videos. During a recent workshop he talked a bit
about this and the question which seems to be central to the discussion: “Can I incorporate internal discipline into
MY form”? I have “incorporated” some
great deal of what he said on that subject in this blog and it is almost verbatim.
“Can I incorporate internal discipline into MY form”? Now
there is a question that shows practitioners want to get into the real “nitty-gritty”
of the movements and not just have ethereal discussions or talk of whether MMA
can beat Tai Chi, etc. He also talked about this with me when we shot
the DVD called “ Tao of Martial Applications”.
The conclusion is one really cannot “incorporate”, like some have asked
this , even those who do Wu Style. At
the time of the initial discussion on the DVD, we really did not pinpoint why
you cannot do this. Why can’t one incorporate internal discipline into other
people’s forms?
He tells me that when he wrote the book
“Uncovering the Treasure” and he
had to rethink this discussion, he found that you really have to have the
correct body structure to incorporate the internal discipline into other
people’s forms. The reason why people cannot do this is that they have the
wrong body structure.
There is also a misunderstanding of not only what is wrong
with their structure but also what is the most important component of the body structure. This most important component is the forward lean and it is really central
to the discussion. It is so important to
your health that one has to constantly insure the body structure is correct.
Outside practitioners do it with the
body perpendicular and the spine is compressed too much.
The correct way is to lean and stretch out the body.
He wants all of us
students to experiment with variations
from this leaning posture. One variation
is certainly bending your back and making yourself perpendicular. Now you do
not have the stretch. Another variation
is to turn your rear foot, like most practitioners do, 90 degrees to the side. You do not have the stretch here either. Another variation is to raise your rear heel.
As I do these experiments (very carefully) myself I am
reminded of my many early days of studying “Yang” Style, “Taoist” Style. In those studies, I recall vividly and
somewhat painfully how my knee pains were a result of turning that rear foot 90
degrees to the side. It seems now as it did then that this conclusion was not a
result of “rocket science”. Yet, there
seemed to be no teachers who would agree with me. Perhaps it did not bother those teachers who
had started Tai Chi when they were 6 years old. One wonders how long they can continue down
that path however. Like the great
dancers who started (turning out the feet) when they were young and speak now in
their middle age of aches and pains in the joints. I have met a few who tell me they are
grateful for this body structure where
one does not turn out the back foot.
Sorry, I digress but
the second point besides the stretch is that the body weight has to really
be on the front foot during the forward lean.
If you shift back a little bit, you lose some of the stretch. So with all of these slight body posture
variations, you will not achieve the result.
Also, we usually
start going to this posture from a sitback posture. If we do not lead into the leaning posture
correctly, we do not achieve the stretch.
To lead correctly, the front foot pulls with the abdomen pushing in to
itself, the “internal discipline” of the movement. Once you reach the endpoint, you naturally
have that stretch. A variation of this is
to do it incorrectly by pushing from the back foot and you will not reach the
“endpoint” correctly. The corollary is
when you have the stretch, you feel like your body is connected as well as
stretched from the top of the neck to the heel. You feel that you have no break in the
stretch, when you stand perpendicular, you have a break in the small of the
back.
Now when you are
stretched like this and there is a force coming at you that force will go down
to the ground without absorbing in the middle of the body. If you are perpendicular, the force will
absorb in the middle of the body and likely hurt your back. Also, if you hit
someone from leaning and stretched, the rebound force will go through your body
and into the ground, not so if you stand perpendicular. So the stretch becomes/is the indicator that
your body is the right posture for both delivering and receiving the force.
This is really more
important for the health viewpoint, this forward stretch. If you give more work through stretching
thusly, lower back problems will gradually improve. If you tuck your chin in , you also stretch
your cervical vertebrae. It is good for
cervical spine problems to stretch in this manner.
So this is almost a
central theme that you will be able to have your energy transfer from the neck
down to the heel. The energy can flow through
the middle of the body without stopping at the spine. This will just transmit
all the force to the ground. Do you see how this
lean is such a very important component of the body structure?
