kevin_wallbridge

Hi CC555, if I may call you that. 肝鬱 Gan Yu is the usual term that is translated as "liver Qi stagnation." When we talk about Qi stagnation we usually say 氣滯 Qi Zhi. I mention this because 滯 Zhi is really a word that is similar in meaning to stagnation. 鬱 Yu means something like lush and overgrown. The image is that so much is growing there it has become impassable. I mention this because of the word "stagnation" creates an image of a lack of movement while the reverse is actually the problem. I prefer to translate 肝鬱 as "liver profusion." The main function of the liver in Chinese medicine is 疏泄 Shu Xie coursing and dredging. It is the basis of all movement of Qi in the body. There is no rising, descending, entering or exiting (升降入出) of the Qi that does not involve the influence of the liver. Rather than thinking of liver as stuck like a fly in a spider's web, consider it more like a beast in a cage that occasionally shakes the bars and screams (outburst of anger). Your liver is pacing its cage desperate to run free and course. While it is possible for liver profusion to lead your mind astray it far more likely (by great orders of magnitude) that it is your mind creating the profusion that is disordering your liver. This means that treatments that seek to relieve the profusion will have limited success without being linked explicitly to the mind. The beginning point for this is for you ask yourself with brutal honesty "what is my relationship to frustration?" When you experience things in life that exasperate you, you are presented with an opportunity to ask "who is it that holds the offence? Where lies the desire that is unsatisfied?" Where is humility in the anger? When we are angry or disappointed in another person then were is our compassion? If I can lay my judgement upon the world, what does it reveal about ego?

I have to say I really like where are coming from Steve and I completely agree with you. If your understanding is not grounded in actual practice you will always be in the "maybe/maybe not" world of uncertainty. My Qigong teachers in China talked with me one time about a perspective on the 三寶 San Bao or three treasures. They explained that there were several, perhaps uncountable, lists of things that were San Bao. They said the San Bao of philosophy are Daoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. The San Bao of existence are 地人天 Earth, man and Heaven. They then explained that the San Bao of the self were 精氣神 Jing Qi Shen/essence qi and spirit. They drew a diagram with each of the first of the lists at the bottom rising through the others to the top, like this: 佛 天 神 孔 人 氣 道 地 精 They said Daoism relates most to the Earth and its practices are the most focussed on essence. Confucianism is focussed on the world of men and their relationships and so is the most focussed on the cultivation of the Qi between things. Finally Buddhism looks to Heaven and so is most concerned with cultivation of the spirit. They explained that each practice has its place and purpose. They are like the roots trunk and leaves of a tree, none is better or more useful than the other. That being said they then smiled and explained to me, "Still it is the study of Dao in the natural world which is the basis of all of our practice (not everyone's practice, the practice that they were teaching me at that time), so first you must cultivate the Jing and never leave it behind for pursuits of the mind. Always carry it forward to provide an earthly grounding upon which your practice stands." I received this lesson at Clear Sound Pavilion 情音閣 on 峨眉山 Emei Mountain in 1991. I'm not saying its any kind of standard or truth in Daoist practices, it is simply a lesson I was taught over a cup of tea. As for the topic of Weiqi 衛氣 and energy bodies... I could go on quite a bit about Weiqi but I it won't be any more on topic than my above digression. Perhaps it needs another thread?

The diseases identified and the models of the body (along with the mind!) are will never be exactly the same due to some fundamental differences. If we look at how bio-medicine has used reduction as a method of understanding the body we can see the incredible power of the approach. Identifying the individual components, whether organs, cell, hormones, biochemical processes, whatever, has enabled some stark clarity about many aspects of the body previously hidden. Chinese medicine looks more at how the systems of the body, together with the mind, function and dysfunction. It is vastly weaker when it comes to understanding the individual parts, yet it is able to see interrelationships between systems that continue to elude the reductionist approach. That being a said I always try to point out to students of the medicine that the ancient Chinese were not looking at a different kind of human than modern biomedical researchers. They were trying to reconcile the same symptom pictures that present to modern doctors; to understand the same etiology and pathogenesis as modern observers. This is why a modern practitioner of Chinese medicine must avail themselves of the fruits of biomedical research and learn what the structures are that are hidden under the skin. There a truth to be found in anatomy and physiology from the biomedical perspective, its just not the truth. Where a profound difference lies is in the role of mental emotional aspects of the self. We in the modern world are beginning to give some lip service to idea of integrated consciousness, but to be honest our cultures and languages are dominated by mind-body dualism and most of the time we talk, think and behave as if it is a simple fact of nature. This is were biomedicine falls flat. Despite all of the truly incredible advances of medical science they cling with almost a child-like fear to the separation. There is nothing intrinsic to the methodology of double-blind experimentation, so beloved in biomedicine, that suggests it will ever be suitable for experiments that involve recognition that the mind and body are integrated. Because the experiments cannot be devised (at least without profound ethical issues) that include integration, it gets treated as if it isn't important. If we use the pulse taking as an example of how different the perspectives are we can see something of the differences in style. In biomedicine do they really take the pulse? Its usually called "measuring heart-rate." The only space for it on a patient's chart read "BPM" for beats per minute, which is then compared to a statistical "normal". This is completely reductionist thinking as if the rate was the only relevant factor, and statistical norms applied to everyone. If there are any other issues (tachycardia, arrhythmia, atherosclerosis...) then it falls into the realm of a different test and a different examination to derive what other issues are present. In all this is an underlying assumption the the various aspects may or may not be related. In Chinese medicine when the pulse is taken we compare the rate of the beats in usually the wrist (although throat, ankle and abdomen are also used) to the patient's own breathing rate. Then we decide if the rate is fast or slow for them. As well we are feeling for qualities that are being shown by the arteries themselves. One problem with mechanistic views of the body as used in biomedicine is that short-hand references sometimes take over consciousness. The view of the heart as a pump and the arteries as pipes dominates thinking in the modern world. This ignores the fact that arterial walls are smooth muscle and some of the most bioelectrically active tissue in the body. When the heart beats it begins as an electrical event at the base of the heart which is propagated from there throughout the whole body. You can feel the effects of each beat in the most distal places of the body and this can show a great deal of information about the state of, not just the heart and its system, but the whole body as well. Its not that the ancient Chinese knew about electrical conductivity in the heart, yet they did recognize that the pulse was showing changes that accompanied disease states. They were seeing that there was consistency to these changes and some predictions about physical and emotional states could be made from these changes.

I suppose General is the way to go. Easier to stay on topic. and Kevin is just fine we are all just trying to work out how to live well

I've been doing standing practices for 20 years. Vomiting blood? Insidiously damaged internal organs? If that is happening then you are up to some pretty crazy stuff in your standing. No offence to Wong Kiew Kit, yet I find the warning almost histrionic. In my experience in the fire-chasing world of Qigong standing is one of the safest things we can get up to, especially if you are JUST STANDING. Rather than "deforming body structure" standing tends to align it. Direct supervision and transmission is by far the best, but if you want to try a basic standing routine, like Lam Kamchuen's "The Way of Energy," how wrong could you go? The biggest risk is that you start to do things with your head, like worry about your energy or whether or not your Dantian is filling up. If you can spend 10 min a day just feeling the weight of your flesh hanging from your bones your whole world will change with a deep authentic experience that all the visualization in the world can't bring. I often tell my students when they begin to stand to be aware of how they are arriving into the posture once they begin. Say "embrace the tree" a simple classic easy Zhanzhuang. Get calm and relaxed settle the breath and then sink into your legs and allow the arms to wrap like you are holding a big ball. As you arrive at the posture notice the feeling of settling in.... now keep paying attention to the sense of settling in for the next ten minutes. Don't ever really get there or your mind will become bored and start looking for something to do, if it drifts away into monkey thought you simply need to arrive again. I promise, you will not vomit blood because of this.

I actually came into it through anthropology, then I started a Chinese medicine school so I could study it. Chinese medicine is based almost entirely on empirical observation, so it depends on what you mean by science. In bio-medicine there is a bias that says if it isn't based on a double-blind experiment it isn't science. However, empirical observation is also science as we can see by such things as the study of plate tectonics and cosmology. There is the impression on the outside of Chinese medicine that it involves a lot of magical beliefs, however, you will find that modern people are actually much more fantastical in their thinking about the world that the ancient Chinese were when it comes to health. Chinese medicine is based on very pragmatic observations of pathological changes in many body systems. Even though the language may be colourful doesn't mean the thinking is vague. Take "heart fire" for example, the classic Chinese were not stupid, they were not talking about literal fire in the heart. Instead they used the imagery of fire to convey the circumstances of a series of inflammatory processes in the body that centred on heart function and showed in a series of interrelated symptoms that form a recognizable syndrome (red tip of the tongue, increased cognitive agitation, insomnia, frequent and relatively rapid speech, increased heart rate, palpitations, and so on). This is the pattern of diagnosis in Chinese medicine and the treatments are based on the same kind of observation. Acupoint and herb selection isn't based on magical formulae, its based on predictable changes based on observation. A person who argues for a more "scientific" approach may say "so (the acupoint) 内关 Neiguan may reduce symptoms of nausea, but if you can't tell me what the exact mechanism of action is its just magic thinking." In Chinese medicine we say, "how will understanding the mechanism make it better for the patient?" Its not that it wouldn't be useful to understand it, but there no reason not to use the acupoint to treat nausea before that is understood. If it were merely a placebo effect of the patient's belief in getting cured the results would not be so consistent, nor would it work on animals. So to answer your question, I probably know as much biomedical pathology as your average MD, and I also know a pragmatic and highly practical medicine that has been clinically tested for over 2300 years and still stands up today. Not much faith needed.

Quite a story! I've had orphans in my life and have always considered myself lucky to have come a good family. I began learning Chinese at Uni and then lived in Sichuan for year after my degree was done. I'm in Chinese medicine as a profession so now I mostly just use medical language.

Haha, ChiDragon. It may be just me yet I still don't think you get where I'm coming from. I was only referring to usages of terminology "iron-shirt" that I heard in Chinese by native Chinese speakers. Not google searches or other research. When I heard the terms used in actual discourse I never heard anyone say 铁布衫. I'm not saying its not the correct way to say it, I'm just saying I never heard a Chinese practitioner who talks about iron-shirt say it. I wasn't talking about its use in translation, only in Chinese as I heard it. Now I suppose you could say the 铁布衫 that I train from Xinyi Liuhequan is not true 铁布衫 because it does not follow the Qigong-first method that you outlined above. The body banging training is not preceded by any Neigong, its hard gong from start to finish. I see this as being related to your assertion (and part of the point I was trying to make) that different parts of China use different terms for the same thing. I would add that they sometimes use the same terminology for different things. Just because something means one thing in one place it does not always means that is what it means to someone else.

Oh I understand the various terms, I've been working on my Chinese for 25 years. What confused me was your reference to "the official Chinese term." What authority would that be? Do you refer to one of the Standing committee resolutions of the Chinese congress? Is this a term outlined by the 国家体育总局/state sport authority? I have never encountered a term used in Qigong and martial arts for which there is an "official Chinese term." I guess I just never heard a Chinese practitioner of the method of iron-shirt, or however we call it, use the "official term." (I hope that it comes across that I am teasing you back, yet this is not always clear in text. So I'm saying it ) I'm still uncomfortable with saying "the iron-shirt" Qigong, since my own experience has shown me so many different, even contrary approaches have been referred to as being of that method. Mantak Chia's method is very much of the type used by Shaolin, yet the Xinyi Liuhequan style is quite different. If 铁布衫 is a desired result there seem to be some diverse roads to achieve it. Many roads to the same destination.

I see. I have never heard anyone call it that. In my experience it was just 铁杉 tieshan or 铁杉功 tieshangong. Though I did meet a soldier in China who called it 铁身功法 tieshen gongfa or iron body training method. Everyone who I have trained with who also trains iron-cloth-shirt has treated in as 外功 Waigong rather than 内功 Neigong. I have never heard anyone before discuss it as Neigong before. My Qigong teachers in China did do quite a bit of 硬功 hard gong and there was certainly a great deal of cultivation that they undertook to practice it, yet they still considered it "external." I think one point I was trying to make is that in my experience there are many different practices that fall under the umbrella of Iron-cloth-shirt, yet they do not all take the same approach. The Xinyi Liuhequan method for example is not a Qigong-first method. Certainly breath control is a key component, yet there is no preparation other than hitting softer at first. Can we really talk about THE iron-shirt Qigong or is it AN iron-shirt Qigong?

Sorry for the thread necromancy. I was browsing the back pages and when I saw the topic I thought "oh goody, something up my alley!" I was surprised and amused to see that it was my own outline (and thanks to MithShrike for posting it in the first place). I figured it was time to become a member of the forum and not merely a lurker. I can see that this didn't really spark a discussion yet I thought perhaps if I made myself available to question/justify, someone may take the bait.

This is a very enjoyable thread. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to it over its life (looks like nearly a year now). This is an area that I have had some experience with. When I began martial arts training I hoped for some spiritual awakening to come from it. As a boy I watched the "Razor's Edge" (Darryl F. Zanuck's 1946 classic) and was floored by the line the Saddhu speaks to Larry in the high Himalayas, "The trouble with you my son is that you are a deeply religious man who does not believe in God." It dusts my feet to this day. When I did encounter an aspect of spirituality in my practice it was in a very unexpected way. It came from 推手 push-hands. Like most beginners I was stiff and anxious and when I tried to relax I just got more vulnerable to my partner's push. My teacher at the time (the very generous Sam Masich) pointed out that I would become more tense and my movements sharper and a little more frantic the closer the push came to the centre of my chest (膻中 middle Dantian). He pointed out that the push there was no different from the push on my shoulder and that it was only me that was making it different. He said "why do you feel that the push is more of a threat there than elsewhere?" Much like the "Razor's Edge" moment, I then had an epiphany about how I was engaging spiritually with the world. I feared for my heart to be broken so I was pulling it away, both physically and energetically, from fully engaging in my life because of my anxiety about potential threat. I began to use the practise of push-hands to challenge that part of myself. I began to guide my partner's pushes towards the centre of my chest where I would then resolve the push from deep in the midst of my own vulnerability and weakness. I like to think I began to be a clearer and more compassionate human being from that lesson and it is one that I continue to explore and enjoy to this day. When I teach the martial arts it is this lesson that guides how I assess and evaluate a student's needs. I have no interest in conquering demons, I bring them salves and poultices for their wounds so that their cries do not disturb the peace of the night.

I confess to have a fairly strong aversion to Mantak Chia's publishing empire. I find him to be like the "Anarchist's Cookbook" of the Qigong world. There is nothing intrinsic to a recipe for home-made thermite that is evil, but is it really responsible to just put it out there? I know two people who had trained Qigong with me at one time who ended up at (different) HT workshops and damaged themselves as a result. One was able to get treatment from my colleague in Chinese medicine and recovered from the heart-fire (insomnia for weeks, palpitations that put her in fear for her life, etc.), but the other was homeless on the lower east side of Vancouver the last time I saw him. A full blown 走火入魔 fire chasing demon. There are some lessons that cannot be grasped without the foundational context, and showing up and paying is not necessarily enough background. Neither is sincerity. Without guidance it can be very hard to distinguish sensation from symptom, especially with Qigong. As for 铁衫 iron shirt, I have trained Bagua and Xinyi Liuhe versions of it. I often prescribe one of the lighter solo versions for stimulating immuno-response during seasonal changes (I teach my martial arts outdoors all year long in the Canadian mountains). The versions I know all involve quite vigorous physical blows to the trunk, so they fall into 硬功 hard Qigong. Some are done with the hands on your own body, some are done by hitting yourself against a wall or pillar, and one (the Xinyi version) is all two person drills with you and your partner slamming into each other. While standing can be a part of the training it is not necessarily a part of all iron shirt traditions. I also train a "soft" iron palm that is largely standing which includes two iron shirt postures at the end of the set. As for its connection to Taijiquan, there is no mention of iron shirt in the classics and any association probably comes from boxers of other systems who trained Taijiquan later in their careers and added it in.

Welcome STW, I'm new here as well. So what martial arts did you (do you?) study? HK is a big Wingchun town, ever beat up a 木人桩?

You need to live where I live. The basis of of fiscal survival here is the "Green Economy." Nelson BC is known for the quality of its cannabis and it is the largest cash-crop of the region, far outstripping the logging industry. We often treat the effects of its overuse in the clinic associated with the Chinese medicine school I teach at. Keep in mind that there are no panaceas in Chinese medicine; nothing can be used all of the time without some consequences. The dictum "don't smoke too much, don't smoke too little; don't drink too much, don't drink too little," comes to mind.

I have been here several times to read posts and discussions. Today I found some of my writing quoted from a martial arts site (and nicely credited, thank you) so I thought perhaps I would finally start an account. As a professional in the field of Chinese medicine and many other aspects of Chinese physical culture I prefer to use my real name. I'm an anthropologist, and helped found a school of Chinese medicine in Canada in 1995. I have been practising martial arts since 1985. I lived in China for a year studying Qigong with two masters of Emei Qigong (Tang Xiaomeng and Xie Jianguo), and have been keenly interested in Neigong since then. My primary study has always been Baguazhang. I hope we can be friends.

Thanks Rene, we did get it all sorted, and cheers.

Thanks BKA I see you have a set of keys to the place. If I need help I will probably ask you first.