ZhengLi

I have been for a long time wanting to improve my diet choices. My big problem is occasional unlimited hunger and strong sugar cravings. If I can quit sugar once and for all, both of these problems I believe would go away. I've considered health problems to be of cause, but in the past of I have been mildly successful on holding out on sugars for a couple weeks at a time. It has just become a lot harder to do it out of sheer willpower with the circumstance of my new job, where I'll be stressed from customer service, on a 10hr shift, infinitely hungry, thus eating my entire lunch and all of the healthy snacks I bring, and still extremely hungry with the only option of food being full of sugars and starches (the "food" in convenience stores). Are there any herbs or OTC natural medicines that can assist me? I think it will be useful for me to exercise "being hungry" more and hopefully cool the cravings that come from that instead of excite or feed them. The only cure I've found so far is my training. I also think taking vitamins and minerals will be of benefit, which I'll start doing today.

Once in a while I'll get into a nightly binge of Dexter. Jet Li's Fearless and then Bruce Lee movies sometimes inspire me to do more conditioning and working on my kicking more.

High intensity is key.

It doesn't just work for me, it worked for the best in I-Chuan and Hsing-I, Guo Yunshen and Wang Xiangzhai, and students. The power that people can gain through this type of standing is phenomenal, the health and vigor that it creates is one of a kind. Professor Yu, my teacher's teacher, is in his 90's and still going strong. His other students I hear are incredible too, and this is the way they stand, do test of power, health dance, anything. They are working their body like this 6 hours everyday. They are relaxed, but still working hard. This internal work is called zheng li (opposing force). Everything you say is correct, but you completely misunderstand zheng li. Zheng Li is a way to unify the body, you are connecting up all your muscles to do these tasks. It exercises the mind and body by the same action, that is mind-body connection. It is elastic, and it keeps the body young. Any tension will render your training useless or harmful. I highly recommend to seek out a teacher that truly understands zheng li. The other teachers I've seen and learned from did not have anything close to the teacher I have now that understands this principal. If kung fu was easy, everyone would be masters.

Before I get into posture I grab a big imaginary weight, and use my body, from the feet up, to lift that weight to my shoulder height... I'm in the classic health stance (or Embrace the ball stance or whatever it's called). From their, without moving my skeleton, I'll grab somebody and try to pull them down towards my feet, but they resist it. I'll keep that activity going while I create resistance between my opposite arms and legs, creating an X (left hand to right foot, and vice versa), and try to separate that resistance with my whole body. So I try to keep those 2 actions going while I imagine a heavy bowl on my head, I try to push up and stretch my spine and breath into my central line. Now I have 3 muscular actions, and no skeletal movement. I go to the first action, and make it heavier by an ounce. Then to the second, then to third. Making each one an ounce heavier. I continue this cycle of making each one heavier. Within a couple minutes, I pretty much reach my body's capacity. The entire time I am trying to work on sung-gann and whole body connectivity. I am trying to reach for example 100 lbs of force, while still remaining sung-gann. It is a trial and error process because you will create tension, but at the same time you need to learn how to not create tension. You start off with one action, but eventually want a dozen. This will require your maximum physical and mental exertion, and you will gain a lot of energy from it. When a student asked Wang Xiangzhai,"How do you stand for at a time?", Wang replied "Only 15 minutes". 15 minutes of doing this type of work, for several dozen different muscular activities, making each one an ounce heavier every second, is going to be an immense amount of work. For the brain, and the body. Also, this means that Wang only considered this hard work to be standing, as opposed to just being in a posture. If you take those 15 minutes, and put them one after another, without breaking from the posture and no time in between, again we are talking about a LOT of work. Another thing you can try to do is walk forward while you are standing, but without actually moving. Engage all the muscles required to pick up your foot, push it forward, put into the ground, pull it back to move the body forward, etc... All without actually moving the skeleton. This will burn quite badly after a few moments, but try it out it's quite interesting. Hopefully this was helpful. PS. I give you a lot of credit for even just playing with this on your own. It is not an easy method.

I suggest becoming physically strong and fit, this with an absolute guarantee will help your problems.

Don't settle.

The thing about Qi is that it takes a lot of physical hard work to even start thinking about it. In the very beginning, it is senseless to concern yourself with it. The meaning of cultivate is "to grow in a prepared culture". Before you can work with Qi, you need to work hard to prepare your body. This is where I'm at right now. At the same time, the student's answer to your question alludes quite strongly to the possibility that he may not know what he's talking about. Another thing to keep in mind, it is a mistake to separate tai chi for meditation, tai chi for health, or tai chi for fighting. Neither of these individually will work, only can somebody gain Tai Chi if his method contains all three of these in one.

Hopefully he will find a good teacher because sadly practicing like that will never improve his health.

Forget classes at school, that is for sure. The classroom is just not ideal for quickly learning a language since the pace is not individual and the material is rarely conversational. Vocabulary lists out of context and the majority of work being written lends to decent written comprehension, but as many of us remember from highschool, the method doesn't lend itself to spoken fluency. I suggest doing 1 month of the Pimsleur Japanese course, just for the sake of pronunciation and basic grammar, as Pimsleur will give you these things quite easily and at a slower pace. After which point, I would explore your options. Assimil programs I hear are amazing. FSI does not have Japanese as I understand, but if you can find something similar they are extremely thorough. This is the forum/site to go to: How to learn any language.

Trees don't have opposing force, aka zheng li. Opposing force basically means that you create two points in your body, and force them apart from each other. In doing this, you actually connect these two points. This is not a metaphor, or a teaching tool, it is true real physical hard work. Sung-gann in I-Chuan is attained and developed upon by every second of standing (or shi li or health dance) you add an ounce to the intensity of your zheng li. Soon you reach maximum load. You start off with one set of opposing forces, and try to add another. Eventually you want dozens of these points. It requires your maximum mental and physical effort. This is a radical idea, to use your brain to push your body to it's physical limits. It took Wang Xiangzhai 15 minutes to push his body to his physical limits while standing. When you can do that to your body, you can do it to your mind. This is where you wake up Yi. I hope I have successfully illustrated to you that there is more out there to be learned about the seemingly same, but radically different methods of standing. Believing that there is nothing more available about Zhan Zhuang than to stand like a tree meditating is to sell yourself short. I believe it is more likely that a man with a lot of time on his hands was able to develop this method, or maybe multiple people over a multiple lifetimes. As to gods and deities, I have no comment. And Durkhrod, I don't think there is a problem with your standing and I think it's clear-minded of you to say you've learned more from standing with trees than with people. My intention is to just encourage people to seek out a teacher with this understanding of zhan zhuang because I believe the benefit is so great.

Anyone who says that you don't need a teacher to learn how to stand, is really just saying that you can learn how to stand the way that they stand, without a teacher. Standing is deceptive in the manner that it is the easiest method to misinterpret, and because of this there are very few that actually know how to do it the way Wang Xiangzhai, his teacher, and so on did. Most people only have a reference point of standing in the correct posture, relaxing, maybe visualizing something, continually correcting their posture, and that is pretty much it. Wang Xiangzhai's method of standing was the opposite of this, as he would use his mind to completely engage his muscles in real physical activities. His standing was completely mobile and moving all of the time, although not always visibly. The physical intensity would grow greater every second, and this is how he gained so much energy and power. Wang understood qi too, despite adopting scientific language for the pragmatic sake of useful teaching. As far as I've seen with my own eyes, Professor Yu Yong Nian's "lineage" is the place to learn zhan zhuang and yichuan for martial power and health. I imagine Lam Kam Chuen is good. There is no way that someone can learn this without a teacher. In the United States we have one of the best, his name is Sifu Gregory Fong. His teacher too was Professor Yu Yong Nian also. I suggest reading his article on Zhan Zhuang. It illustrates some of the essential elements of an advanced standing practice. I plan to visit Lam when I eventually get to London again, I might come here to post something when that happens.

I'm sorry orb, I have not attained a high level of skill in taiji. Although, I work hard and consistently and am a student of a teacher that has. He is Sifu Gregory Fong, here is his website if you are interested in seeing where I in part come from.

Hi all, I train I-Chuan. I do taiji and hsing-i too, but really when me and my classmates are doing these forms, we are truly just doing I-Chuan in a different package. I registered this account because I see a lot of misinformation and poor examples of I-Chuan and the internal martial arts on the internet and I hope to maybe turn people with open ears in the right path. I hope I don't offend too many people, but I believe the decline in the IMA globe is a serious problem for future and current generations alike. ZL

This is the video that made me sign up on this forum! The above video is a picture perfect example in the rapid decline of quality in the martial arts. You can see in his body and movement that he has not even mastered the basics. His neck is depressed and his feet are empty. Without an active neck and feet, the rest of the body can't do it's job. All things internal depend on these two basic requirements.