Risa Aratyr's Open Salon Blog

Yi and Qi

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 03:08:30 -0400

At the core of every artistic effort lies the essential and essentially indefinable interplay of intention and energy, of Yi and Qi. No matter the art (knitting, writing, love-making, acting, cooking, archery), the manifestation of its practice (the sweater, novel, pleasure, performance, feast, bulls-eye) is realized through the creative process of integrating will and action.

The vigorous relationship between Yi and Qi is impossible to quantify in empirical terms, but aesthetically evident in all the arts, and especially in those that are physical in nature, that are movement-based. The aching lyricism of a premier danseur’s soaring tour jetes, a basketball champion’s gravity-mocking hang-time, Bruce Lee’s renowned One-Inch Punch – intuitively we recognize that exceptional art and athleticism cannot be achieved by technique or spirit alone, but only by their union. No matter what skill, craft, sport or art we practice, when the substance of our practice is to engage in the dynamic interaction of Yi and Qi, it is excellent practice that enriches and enlightens. It is real kung fu.

So. The merit of our practice lies in the intention that guides it, not in the style or form we practice, not in its lineage, not in our master’s skill or the abilities of our instructors, not in their methods of instruction, and certainly not in the color of our belt, our rank, or our level of proficiency.

I wanted to get that out there on its own, because one of these days I’ll have something to say about another dynamic balance – yin and yang – and an especially elegant expression of that balance in the Guangping Yang Tai Chi form. But in order to discuss the particulars, I’ll need to tell the tale of Guangping Yang Tai Chi Ch’uan. And once we start talking about our particular forms, styles and schools, once we start getting into our traditions' lineages and histories, a certain amount of cross-system comparison is inevitable – and comparisons inevitably lead to conflict.

The prevalence of school, style, form and personal rivalries in martial arts films isn’t a cinematic trope. It’s a reflection of reality, past and present. Until the middle of the last century, rivalries were settled by combat. Arguments over which form, style, skill, master or student was the “best” were resolved by pitting them against each other – and may the mightiest kung fu win.

Let me pause and relish that phrase, “… the mightiest kung fu.” Something is always lost in translation, and translating from a broadly ideographic, conceptual language (Chinese) to a grammatical, left-brain language (English) only compounds the loss. At the risk of belaboring a point I’ve made many times before, kung fu is a term widely and erroneously understood to be synonymous with “martial arts.” I suspect this misconception is as common in China as it is in the States. Here or there, when people say, “His kung fu is powerful,” they are usually lauding the effectiveness of a fighter’s strikes or the precision of a competitor’s form. In fact, kung fu is an umbrella-term for the entire martial arts package; an artist’s energy, intention, dedication, concentration and spirit, the arts, styles, forms, movements, skills, weapons and techniques s/he has learned or mastered, their lineages, histories and origins and how well the artist executes them in practice and performance. Whatever our intended meaning when we say, “the mightiest kung fu,” the actual meaning of the phrase acknowledges that the outcome of a bout has more to do with the integrity of a fighter’s practice than the inherent superiority of his/her fighting style. The skillful application of intention and energy, of Yi and Qi, is the key to victory.

If a competitive edge is a valid empirical measure of good kung fu – and I believe it is – then the proverbial and ubiquitous rivalries reflect a basic truth about the martial arts; all forms, styles and masters are not created equal. Equality can be found in our ability to take advantage of or overcome the circumstances of our training, but not in the training itself. Different practices were developed to achieve different results, for one thing. For another, arts evolve over time and distance, and martial artists put their individual stamps on the ones they master. Some environments are more conducive to learning than others, some arts better suited to specific body types or temperaments. Our progress is swiftest when our master’s teaching style matches our style of learning. We benefit more by studying the least of the arts from a great teacher than studying the greatest of arts from one less gifted.

When it comes to forms, the modifying influences listed above have enhanced a few and degraded others. If that statement offends, remember; I am not impugning anyone’s kung fu. Intention and energy can turn even the emptiest form into a powerful practice. With proper intention and energy, we could become kung fu masters by practicing the “Hokey-Pokey.” Still, few would argue that the “Hokey-Pokey” will, in and of itself, awaken the Qi or train the Yi. That’s not what the movements were designed to accomplish.

Some forms are powerful in and of themselves. How rewarding our efforts when every movement we practice hones our Yi and cultivates our Qi. How profound our experience when the core of our art is the creative integration of will and action. How excellent our kung fu, when we play Guangping Yang Tai Chi Ch’uan.

Standing in the Stream

Sat, 4 Jul 2009 02:07:35 -0400

I spent most of last month Standing in the Stream.

Searching on-line for an image to illustrate, I came across this descriptive guide to the practice:

Imagine that you are standing in a stream, with the current flowing toward you. Two balls float on the surface. You remain motionless, steadying them in the flowing water, with your fingers parallel to the surface of the stream. Concentrate on holding the balls steady as they try to float away with the current. Your body sinks down so that your feet reach down into the soil of the stream bed and take root.

I snagged the image and text above from a post called “Playing With Balls on Running Water,” an apt and evocative title that captures the essence of the practice as described above. Both are posted here with the kind permission of the author, Walt McAllister – a poetic and profoundly insightful master/ seeker/ artist/ philosopher. As this was the only graphic of the stance I could find on the web, it brought me directly to Walt’s blog. In true “6-Degrees” style, the connection turned out to be a re-connection; Walt was also a Portsmouth Square habitué and student of Sifu Kuo Lien Ying back in the day. Small world. And in a lovely stroke of writer-esque irony, while I’ve grandly labeled my bit-of-froth blog “Stringing Pearls: reflections on qi,” Walt’s astonishingly deep and thoroughly-researched reflections on Qi, clearly born of a lifetime passion for and dedication to the energetic arts, are posted under the modest heading “Froth From Walt.” (http://frothfromwalt.blogspot.com/)

That said – and with all due respect to the world’s QiGong masters, with all due honor to the beauty and power of the practice in question, and in full recognition of the benefits “Playing With Balls on Running Water” must bring the practitioner – that’s not what I’ve been doing. I’ve simply been Standing in the Stream.

Guess I’ve been doing it “wrong.” Fair cop… but is doing it “right” the right goal? Or is the goal excellent, playful practice that brings about its own perfection? Is the worthier goal kung fu?

We give serious lip service to the superiority of learning through discovery, rather than by rote. We acknowledge that we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. We ask that teachers give students the tools to learn, not the answers, because we want our kids to find the answers for themselves. We revel in the “ah-HAH!” experience – that glorious thrill that suffuses our being when we really get something, like fireworks going off in the pleasure centers of our brains – and recognize that our “ah-HAH!”s are intimately, inextricably linked to figuring stuff out on our own. And yet….

Yet, born and bred in a competitive, goal-oriented, fast-lane, consumer society, we are conditioned to crave and expect at least some measure of instant gratification. Aloud we insist, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” Tacitly we judge ourselves and others by where we are, not how we got here; by quantitative standards of individual progress, not qualitative appreciation of an individual’s process. We recite affirmations to help us accept where we are in the moment, but with our self-esteem and status bound up in the number of our achievements and the rate of speed with which we attain them, we can’t resist assessing the “here-and-now” on the basis of whether we’re getting far enough fast enough. If we’re not – if our tallies come up short – we conclude there must be something wrong with our path, our guides, or our method of travel and chuck them all to seek a truer path, wiser guides, and a smoother ride. For most, even stepping onto the path of enlightenment doesn’t mean stepping off the merry-go-round and giving up the brass-ring mentality. Our world boasts a few fully-realized souls who know how not to encumber their goals with ego attachments. Aspiring to swell their sparse ranks may be laudable, but only if our aspirations hinge on the journey. As soon as “enlightenment” becomes a coveted goal, it boomerangs us back to the very value judgments we wish to expunge, turning relative degrees of enlightenment into a criterion of excellence and making our actions and everyone else’s ripe for enlightened/unenlightened comparisons.

If I seem to be saying that we shouldn’t set goals for ourselves – I’m not. I’m saying we often make goal choices blithely, habitually and without conscious intent, conforming to cultural patterns and pressures so ingrained in us, we’re unaware of their influence. I’m saying that unconsciously applying similar goal-paradigms to all the learning we do may, at times, prevent us from learning much at all. Our desire for corroborative evidence of our successes goads us into trading the lengthy, laborious and uncertain possibilities of trial-and-error, intuitive, self-guided education for finite courses with certified instructors who stick to their syllabi, warn us which parts of the lecture are going to be on the test, and give us that all-important “final” grade – glorious proof that we’ve met our goal, or damning proof that we’ve failed to.

Within academia, the system sort of makes sense (though it doesn’t necessarily make for good learning). While the Ivory Tower doesn’t deny us “ah-HAH!” experiences, they are not its primary purpose. The Tower’s degree and credential programs exist to award specific students official documents attesting that said students have successfully jumped through specific hoops. With both the institutions and their attendees in cahoots about goals and prizes, neither dare suffer free-form classes. Equivalency is required, if the paper prizes are to be worth anything: across the board, homogeneous curricula is presented in analogous style within comparable time increments using similar textbooks and resources. Before a course can be added to the schedule, its parameters and learning outcomes must be described and posted and the instructor’s syllabus must clearly outline the exact topics, readings, activities and homework for each session, note dates and times for all quizzes and tests, and explicitly define the grading rubric. Except in very rare cases and very alternative educational institutions, a teacher who deviates from this plan will be castigated by the students and garner perilously poor supervisorial assessments.

Beyond the Ivory Tower, and especially in the areas of artistic or spiritual education and training, there’s little rationale for employing such stringent protocols. We apply them, anyway. The academic model so well suits our ladder-of-success notion of how learning works, we’re skeptical of instruction that doesn’t conform to it. Some believe the lack of hoops and prizes means there’s nothing of value to learn; others may doubt their ability to negotiate a learning path that’s utterly lacking familiar hoops-and-prizes landmarks. We want words, descriptions, explanations. We require ideas, patterns and sequences we can wrap our left brains around, even when we’re attempting to learn a right-brain skill. We don’t want to wander lost, searching our souls for answers. We want practical, easy-to-follow directions to the heart of the mystery. Caught between the reality of their students' time-deprived, activity-cramped lifestyles and the necessity of attracting and retaining sufficient numbers of them to make a living, modern-day masters cater to our desires and yield to our expectations, drawing up the requested maps, replete with legends, keys and glossaries. Hurray. Everybody gets an “A”.

We had been standing in Wu Ji awhile, the posture of primordial emptiness and limitless potential. My attention rested in my lower dan tien; my intention was a quiet mind and senses fully open. Sifu’s arms drifted gently away from his body and to his sides until they floated between heaven and earth, about waist high, palms toward the earth. Drinking in the lesson, I shifted my intention to my dan tien and allowed peng – rising energy – to lift my arms in harmony with his. Opening fully to Sifu’s direct transmission, I let his stance inform my own, cell by cell and without conscious effort. Opening fully to my physical, emotional and energetic sensations, I let the new stance inform my awareness and teach me about itself.

There are as many stances as there are Hindu deities. Some require major kinesthetic re-education to master, some we were born knowing. This stance… this one my heart-mind-body recognized at once. Flowing waters had taught me this stance when I was just a little girl and I’d practiced it all my life. Stepping across a rill, wading into a river, walking into the ocean, our arms naturally drift from our bodies and out to our sides as the water deepens and rises around us. It’s partly about balance; the bottom of the stream-bed, river-bed, sea-bed is invisible to our eyes, but energetically perceptible through our palms and fingertips. We steady ourselves on shifting sands or rolling rocks by centering our dan tiens in a fuller circle of qi and rooting in the wet earth through our arms – and we do so instinctively.

Whether we’re striding out so we can dive in and play like otters, or strolling out to stand in the flow like a boulder and bask in our aqua-centric view of the world, there is a point where we stop – especially if the water is cold. Our legs can take it, but chill waters are a shock to the thin skin over our bellies, ribs, and organs. Naturally, inevitably, we pause with our lower halves submerged, our upper bodies in the air, and the dividing line between water and sky exactly at our dan tiens. Standing in Wu Ji, in Zhan Zhuang, in Crane or Cat or Upholding Heaven, our heads are always anchored in the sky, our feet in the earth, and our dan tiens are always at our center. But standing in an ocean or river, standing in the stream with everything below the waist in one element and everything above it in another, our experience of the world as a balance of yin & yang isn’t limited to the energetic and gravitational. Our experience is brilliantly, blissfully tactile.

I spent most of June standing in the stream. I didn’t bring any beach balls with me, didn’t play with channeling my energy into a dynamic resistance to the current. I stood still in the flow and let it rush between my legs, around my hips, under my arms, through my fingers – accepting all the stream carried to me as the days stretched and the light peaked and the mid-summer tide rose and fell. Broken branches from the wind-torn trees bobbed by or scraped along me, some made slick by the racing waters, some made slimy by their sojourns in stagnant eddies and pools. Twigs stripped of their summer green streaked through the heart of the current like tiny Viking longboats. Breeze-blown blossoms danced awhile, then drank too deeply and sank to the depths. Bedraggled seeds spun downstream, snagging the minnow’s unblinking gaze. Shivers of silver brushed against my legs. Silt swept over my toes. Yellow leaves caught on my fingers, clinging, even in death. I’ve been Standing in the Stream while the moon waxed and the moon waned, while babes laughed and friends cried, while dear ones died and lost cousins returned, and the rivers ran down to the sea.

Junco's Wing

Thu, 28 May 2009 19:05:12 -0400

My mind rebels,
My heart groans,
My limbs ache;
My stance stinks.

Lizards rustle from hiding,
Slithering about their business
Heedless of the human sapling
Looming over them.

Chuffing squirrels return,
Scampering to reclaim the oaks.
One dines careless at my feet,
Content in my leafless shade.

No sign of trust sweeter
Than the wisp of wind
Stirred by the junco’s wing
Against my cheek in brief caress.

My mind calms,
My heart laughs,
My limbs, like tree-limbs spreading;
My stance... blessed by the wild.

The Thirteen Movements

Fri, 15 May 2009 02:05:28 -0400

Tai Chi Ch’uan means “Supreme Ultimate Fist.”

While there’s some disagreement as to whether the double modifier refers to the supremacy of the fighting system, the philosophy that spawned it, or the dynamic, primordial harmony of yin and yang that brought the universe into existence, both the translation and martial connotation are beyond dispute.

Formerly and colloquially, Tai Chi Ch’uan was called Chang Ch’uan, “Long Fist,” a descriptive reference to the sweeping, spacious physicality of this style of boxing. Formerly and formally, it was called Shi San Tse, “The Thirteen Movements,” a reference to the art’s metaphysical origins; “thirteen” being the sum of the Five Elements (Wu Shing) plus the Eight Trigrams (Ba Gua) of Taoism’s oracular Book of Changes, the I Ching (Yi Jing).

The Elements correspond to the body’s possible positions of orientation relative to the earth’s surface (forward, back, left, right, centered), and the Trigrams to the directional orientation of bodies in space (the cardinal and intermediate points of the compass). Positional orientation is expressed through the feet: advance (Metal), retreat (Wood), shift left (Water), shift right (Fire), equilibrium (Earth). The spatial correspondences are realized in the eight hand/ upper body moves used for sparring:

   - ward off – Ch’ien/ Heaven
   - pull back – K’un/ Earth
   - press – K’an/ Water (Moon)
   - push – Li/ Fire (Sun)
   - pull down – Sun/ Wind
   - bend backward – Chen/ Thunder
   - elbow strike – Tai/ Valley (Marsh)
   - shoulder strike – Ken/ Mountain

In concert and in various combinations, the hand and foot motions form the kinesthetic basis of Tai Chi Ch’uan. They also beg the question, is “The Thirteen Movements” a titular tally of the form’s original thirteen moves, or an allusion to its thirteen distinct methods of movement? I’m solidly in the 13-methods camp, but I see no reason it couldn’t be both. Thirteen is a terrifically powerful number – sacred, in fact, to those of us who celebrate the silver cycles of the moon.

Young witches have it easy these days – young witches in my neck of the woods, anyway. Here in Northern California, the paths that lead to the remaining and reinvented old religions are wide and well marked. Seasonal celebrations and lunar rituals are performed openly. Goddess shops sell their Goddess wares from prime retail locations on Main Street. Seekers freely sample from an array of clearly defined neo-pagan belief systems and philosophies or boldly embark on the non-Judeo/ Christian/ Muslim spiritual journey of their choice through an assortment of continuing and easy-to-access classes, programs, retreats, apprenticeships, events, workshops, institutions and tours. Magic abounds.

Back when I was a seeker, the few paths that weren’t buried under the asphalt of progress were overgrown by brambled centuries of persecution and secrecy. About the time I started studying Tai Chi Ch’uan with Sifu Kuo, I also started realizing that my love of nature was religious passion, that my belief in magic was justified, and that the faint, sweet music tugging on my soul was the Mother’s voice, calling my Name. On my own and unguided, I’d begun to discover the hidden, moon-lit tracks to the Goddess’s ancient groves twining through the myths and forgotten tales, the folk songs and fairy stories. I was nowhere near recognizing that the old ways and the Tao shared common ground. I simply recognized that in Tai Chi Ch’uan I’d found a martial art that sated my inner warrior without compromising my anti-war sensibilities. For me, it was all about the moves, and only marginally about the philosophical underpinnings of the movements.

Every morning before practice, Sifu Kuo would stand in front of a calligraphy he had hanging from the Tai Chi Academy’s wall and recite what was written there – a 144-character mnemonic poem of the Thirteen Movements.

My respect for his daily ritual was unrelated to the Chinese/ Taoist or lunar/Pagan significance of the numeric; both contexts were beyond my ken. I simply felt the ritual expressed an admirable dedication to the art, and was inspired to adopt it.

Once in possession of the English version of the mnemonic, inspiration faltered. I was a theatre major at the time, and a quick study, but this “poem” defied memorization. I expect it’s a lovely rhyme in Mandarin, easy to con, easy to conjure, easy on the tongue. The English translation is beautiful in its intention and its sincere adherence to structure and the meaning of the words, but it doesn’t scan, it doesn’t flow, and it doesn’t sing.

    Let no one esteem lightly the Thirteen Movements,
    But bear in mind that your consciousness of them commences in the waist.
    In performance, care must be exercised regarding your transposition from one stance to another, the twists and turns in each movement, and the distribution of blanks and substantives in a given movement,
    While keeping the chi freely circulating throughout your whole body.
    All changes and motions are conceived and touched off in the stillness of absolute quietude,
    Hence motion and action are kindred to rest and inaction, in other words, ultimately indistinguishable from each other.
    Likewise, the mystery of Tai Chi Ch’uan is that
    It is your opponent’s movements that condition your own as adapted by nature to his own undoing.
    Remember to be mindful of every single move by trying to feel its meaning,
    And you will eventually come into possession of the art’s secrets without conscious effort.
    Rivet your attention, without even a moment’s interruption, onto the waist interval, and
    Keep your abdomen free from tension due to food or impurities, so that
    Your vitality flux (chi) may, as it were, boil and rise like steam.
    Keep the lowest segments of your vertebrae central in relation to gravitation all the while, when
    Your limbs and body are gyrating with effortless nimbleness, and your head is held up buoyant as if suspended from above.
    Carefully observe and investigate and convince yourself that
    Your way of bending or straightening, your closing-in or throwing-open should never be as you will them to be, but as Nature wills.
    A novice will require verbal instruction during the initial stages,
    But practice will steer its own course and bring about its own perfection.
    As to the theory and practice, i.e., the constituents and functioning of Tai Chi Ch’uan,
    The spirit is sovereign and the body its servant,
    The end purpose of these exercises is to prolong life and endow it with the youth of eternal spring.
    Oh, sing! Oh, sing! sing this short song of 144 Chinese characters;
    Commit every single word of it to memory without exception.
    Enquiries and researches that deviate from this approach
    Only waste time and leave behind regrets and sighings.

Reminiscent of the Wilhelm version of the I Ching, I'd say. Impressively thorough, unerringly precise, linguistically stilted and appallingly verbose. (Give me the Blofeld every time.) I learned the gist of the mnemonic and could recite pithy bits of it, but never got the whole thing committed to memory, and never missed it. Never till now.

Now my Wiccan-esque world-view and kung fu universe are perfectly, inextricably entwined. Sifu (my beloved teacher, Master Donald Rubbo) purports to be instructing me in martial arts and QiGong, but he knows full-well he’s giving me lessons in practical magic, and delights in doing so. It’s one world, after all, spinning under a solitary silver moon and a single golden star. Whether you prefer your circle of life cross-quartered or with a pentacle inside it, whether you perceive it as a six-direction Medicine Wheel or an eight-trigram Ba Gua, we’re all dancing the ring.

When Sifu re-introduced me to the mnemonic verse, its numeric title thundered in my consciousness, echoing with contexts and connotations. The true name of the physical-spiritual path I’d chosen was The Thirteen Movements? Somewhere between “Well, duh!” and “Hallelujah!” and “Ah, I should have known!” the old desire to emblazon the poem's wisdom on my heart-mind woke in me again… but still the unwieldy words resisted my best efforts.

Older now, and maybe a little wiser, it occurred to me I was perenially failing because memorization wasn't actually my opponent. Perhaps I’d do better to focus my efforts on the unwieldy words.

My inner warrior smiles, accepting the challenge. Finger-strikes on the keyboard; I deliver the first draft.

    Honor the Thirteen Movements.
    Awareness begins in the lower dan-tien;
    Pay attention to the weight shifts, the twists and turns, and the dynamic balance of emptiness and fullness in each stance and transition
    And let the chi flow.
    Every movement is born from stillness;
    Motion and rest, action and inaction are one and the same.
    This is the mystery of Tai Chi Ch’uan:
    Your opponent’s actions and the laws of Nature determine your movements and will encompass his defeat.
    Focus on the meaning of each movement,
    And the secrets of the art will be revealed.
    Never let your attention stray from the lower dan-tien, even for a moment.
    Your belly must be empty,
    So your chi can boil and rise like steam.
    Let gravity straighten your lower spine,
    Let your upper body dance and your head float as if it was dangling from the sky.
    Break it down, test it out, examine each movement until you realize
    That to do it right, you must do it as Nature intends it.
    Beginners need to be told what to do,
    But practice is the best master and will lead to perfection.
    The essence of the art is that
    The spirit is sovereign and the body its servant;
    Its essential purpose, a long life blessed with spring’s eternal youth.
    Oh, sing! Oh, sing! sing this song of the Thirteen Movements!
    Sear every syllable into your memory!
    This is the way. All others
    Are a waste of time, and will bring you nothing but grief and regret.

April's Moon

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 22:04:15 -0400

April’s moon
                  has toppled the Lords of Misrule,
   making rutting Fools of them.

The night breeze
                  pulsing with pond songs,
   rain-washed, blossom-scented,

Sets the rhythm.
              Caterpillar-laden branches dance careless
   in the silver-dusted night

Celebrating
                  the ruthless passions of argent Eostre,
   the fierce advent of Spring.

Her hunger
              forgotten in a glut of eggs and hares,
     sated by the sacred feast,

The Crone
                  veils herself in emerald mists
     and diamond stars

And rises
              from the dead of Winter
     a ravenous, ravishing beauty;

Not reborn,
                  but resurrected – and there Spring’s Mystery,
   writ in blood and sealed with kisses.

Trawling
                  the midnight depths, I cast my woven will
     upon the dark sea of the sky,

Drawing down
                  the moon. A thousand, thousand pale stars
   slip through the web of my intent, but

April’s orb
                  is caught like a silver trout,
     netted between my fingers.