Uechi-Ryu.com

so for the past 100 days I've been doing an hour of qigong in the mornings. Sometimes it is a series of postures, sometimes it is simply holding a single posture.

When holding a single posture it is much like classical stance work. The muscles fatigue, I realign, something starts to shake, that passes, my thoughts drift and drift back. I've focused on standing in stances where I have good structure, I've tried to let unnecessary tension out of my body, and just stand there and breathe.

And I've been using these two books which I highly recommend:
Way of Energy by Kam Cheun Lam
Chi Kung: Way of Power by Kam Chuen Lam

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Hippy!

Dana-

Have you seen Ken Cohen's book on Qi Gong? I really got a lot out of it and refer back to it still. Another excellent book (with correspondingly excellent material) is the Xing Yi Nei Gong book tranlsated by Tim Cartmell and Dan Miller. It covers Wang Ji Wu's Nei Gong exercises he originally developed for his Xing Yi students...

-wes

qigong/chi gung/chi kung/chi gong

..ping pong....

Wanna know the secret....


What the masters master tells one to do..


Wanna get stronger...




Do more sanchin


Mark

Dana
that guy is in England ...if you do Chi-Kung, most folks seem to think that the classic "standing like a tree" is the base stance and all else springs from that. There are many , many styles of Chi-Kung, and with more knowledge I am less dissmissive of what they do ......the Wing-Chun school that I went to was really a chi-kung school with Kung-fu added
( they all seemed to think that it was very important) and that to do good kung-fu you needed good Chi-kung...I have heard some interesting stories of Chi-kung.although we must be mindful that that is all they are
there was a lot of knowledge in old China, and a lot of it lost .here is a guy who I think highly of
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIpU6S_R ... ed&search=

Tai-Chi is moving chi-kung, all tai chi do chi-kung exercises and they vary dependent on the the style of Tai-chi
look also here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_gmMqzf ... ed&search=

if this is reverance to the old............then it is commendable by itself...but I don't think it is just that.he has done stuff there that I seen and have felt by others and it worked.
Yeah and of course do Sanchin...but I don't know what the guiding lines for that are.......nor do many I think

what I have felt is "AN"..and I was compressed and forced backwards by a guy who was blind and about 100lbs lighter than I am.................really

The qigong I do is done for balance. What is strength? What is health? What is balance? Gigong is proven, like meditation - to increase the good brain waves and help them modulate in more similar patterns while at the same time lowering blood pressure and reducing the amount of corticosteroids in the blood.

Sanchin does build external strength, however - too much external is unbalancing. I went looking for the flipside of sanchin training and the qigong traditions fit well into what I was looking for. I don't expect it to necessarily make my Uechi better, I'm looking to this tradition of training to help me improve other aspects of my body and mind.

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Dana I have to disagree
Quote
"The qigong I do is done for balance".the basic stuff that Kam teaches is from I-Chuan which is a fighting art...and supposed to be very good.
Have you noticed any tangible benefits from your practice

Tangible? Hmmm,
I start my day my warming up my body - and in the 100 days since I began the training, the pain, soreness and stiffness that I used to feel each morning in my hands is 100% gone. I come from a long line of people with arthritis so that is a major benefit for me.
I'm taking less asthma medication
I can do 15 fairly slow-motion dive-bomber pushups on my fingertips where before I could do zero
I can sit down in a horse stance for 15 minutes without a problem and sometimes longer.
I 've improved how well I keep my attention focused on the task at hand
I feel more connected to the ground throughout my day
I feel more relaxed throughout the day and less quick to anger
My blood pressure dropped from 119/68 to 109/59
The chronic neck pain I've been experiencing since 2004 has backed off quite a bit (though it is not gone)

So that's after the first 100 days. At this point I intend to keep up the practice.
It is my understanding that many of the older exercises can be done to one level to promote health and then carried to the next level for martial application. At this point I'm only focusing on the health level. When I feel like I've gotten what I can out of that level I'll see how I'm doing and if I've got enough energy and time to kick it up a notch. Right now I'm spending an hour a day and I'm about to go a little over that. I'm just not sure how much time I can make for it at this point.

So there's a long answer to a short question.
-d

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Dana
That sounds really good.
frequently I notice that what folks think are intangible benefits are really tangible .......but yet to manifest..if you catch my drift, but I can't really put it into words

Thanks Wes - the Xing I book looks fascinating.

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I was showing my son how to do a "bitch slap" on the heavy bag in our garage .it was really quite remarkable how a none telegraphed move with no apparent wind up could send the bag flying far harder than a strong punch ........and this is one of the ways that Chi Kung may help in fighting..........using something that really doesn't use strength, but benefits from body awerness

We show a slap as one of the first techniques when someone walks in the door of the dojo. For people who have never hit anyone or anything (and I think we've got an interestingly high number of those in NW DC) the slap is a good way to demonstrate to them that their body knows how to generate and deliver power. I just use the term "slap" with my students. I don't think the other word adds anything to their understanding. Then we tell them that we're going to work on helping them learn how to do that same thing in different ways.

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That's exactly how it's done in Pekiti Tirsia as well. We tend to focus on the slap because of the ease of use and the directly observable results - as well as the fact that it makes a lot more sense then a punch in alot of cases. Then the same template of the 2 slap sets are shown with different striking surfaces. Always focusing on the core structures and mechanics (footwork, footwork, footwork...).

When my teacher, Tuhon Bill McGrath, was first learning Pekiti Tirsia his teacher would have him do an exercise that looks to me like a type of Qi Gong with very Fujian like footwork that accentuates hip torque and spinal waves.

-wes tasker

hmmm, curious...It seems that the number of fundamental exercises gets larger and larger the more I study - that you have to get your students built up to train your system before you have them train it or the training might break them apart or knit them together too tightly.

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There is an idea floating around that to reap the health benefits of karate, one has to understand martial aspect.

This makes perfect sense to me, because to be effective, one has to know how to move.

The more awareness one has, the more chance there is to move in a natural and healthy manner.

By definition, healthy movement is efficient movement.

I think that the more you practice chi kung for health, the more you will find it bleeding into your "martial" practice.

There is the dichotomy of practice for effect, and pratice for discovery.

The simple truth is that the better you are at performing a movement slowly, smoothly, and without tension, the better able you are to utilize that movement in a time of extreme stress.

Karate shouldn't be some kind of enemy, that one has to grudgingly call upon in time of need, it should be a friend that helps one throughout their daily life, and will be there for you when you call out for a helping hand.