Taiji Experiences In Shanghai
Shanghai has traditionally been the home to some of the country’s top martial artists, with representatives from the Chen, Yang & Wu Style Taiji Families, as well as Xing Yi, Bagua and Tong Bei being based here over the years.
When I came to Shanghai, I had the opportunity to continue training with Master Wang Hao Da, a Wu Style master whom I’d hosted in the UK in 1999 and 2000 and student of the late Grandmaster Ma Yue Liang; and with Master Dong Bin, a Yang Style master and student of Masters Dong Shi Zuo and Yue Huan Zhi, students of Grandmaster Dong Ying Jie.
Both these masters embodied what I believe is the essence of Taiji and martial arts etiquette; humility, kindness, dedication, modesty, generosity, amazing skills and knowledge. Their instruction covered not just physical aspects of the arts, but also moral values: how to be a good person, just as much on how to be a proficient Taiji player.
Both welcomed students and practitioners of all styles to their groups in the park regardless, and both extended a very warm welcome to me as a foreigner, teaching me equally with the locals, treating me as well, if not better than their Chinese students, treating me more like a surrogate daughter and not at all like an outsider.
Therefore, in my own training I have sought to follow their guidance, not just in my practice, but also in my behaviour and teaching, and everyday life.
I have also tried to incorporate that ethos of openness and warmth into the Double Dragon Alliance training camps that we hold in Shanghai, so students can benefit from the generosity and skills of the masters that we invite to teach classes for us.
The emphasis in our camps is on developing internal energy, to allow practitioners to deepen their knowledge of the internal aspects, like identifying and cultivating dantian energy, integrating whole body power, fajing and working on how to apply applications and techniques, and enhancing overall health and longevity, all in a very hands-on, interactive setting in small group classes.
When you stay in China, communicating and interacting with local people and practitioners, the atmosphere of training martial arts is very different. Living and experiencing the society sheds light on the origins of the philosophies that underpin the culture and how it impacts on daily life.
One of the things I have witnessed is the way in which concepts from the Yi Jing, Yin and Yang, Taiji, and Wuji etc, all seem to meld into ordinary life and work; even driving or riding a bicycle in the city requires a perception and understanding of ‘ting jing’ listening energy, and the ability to react rapidly, should you wish to make it across the road safely!
There can also be a lot of cross-training and the opportunity to improve one’s comprehension through learning with a variety of styles and disciplines, which can be vital to tie a few loose ends of a student’s practice together and fine tune their skills.
The kind of classes we run during our camps focus on enhancing and improving practitioners’ knowledge and experience, by working with several key masters on internal skills. Often students are just missing one or two components of how to marry what they have learned and put it into practical use.
For instance, the masters in Wu Style focus much more on the Dantian and how to integrate it with the whole body. We often hear how the dantian is everywhere, ‘every part of the body is a fist’, but what does that really mean in a practical sense?
Master Liu Ji Fa, a student of Master Pei Zu Yin and Grandmaster Ma Yue Liang, is a regular collaborator with DDA.
He is able to maneuver his dantian, so it feels like a cat in a sack; it has tremendous flexibility; sinking inwards, ‘disappearing’ and ‘reappearing’ at will.
Master Liu manipulates his lower dantian so that his whole body becomes one entire dantian, wherever you press he will react. One very interesting aspect to this is his ability to compress and inflate his chest cavity, lungs and abdomen; if you apply force to the left side of his chest, he will let it sink and depress inwards, so it seems to shrink, just like when you apply force to a balloon, the pressed side collapses and simultaneously the other side fills out, and just when you begin to release your force, the ‘air’ bursts back and you are popped out, as he issues the energy back through the original contact point. It’s like being a kid playing on a bouncy castle, being bounced off your spot by somebody bouncing right next to you and shooting you upwards.
This type of dantian work is very particular to the Wu Family, with their emphasis on dantian rotations and small circles within both the form and 13 push hands patterns.
Chen Style taiji on the other hand has a somewhat different flavour to their use of the dantian.
Master Liu Hong Cai, another master who regularly cooperates with DDA at our camps and regular classes, is a Chen Stylist, whose lineage is through Chen Zhao Kui and Feng Zhi Qiang. Master Liu’s father, who is now in his 90’s, regularly invited those masters to his home for ‘private’ classes, and Master Liu explained he was privileged, as a young man alongside his brother, to sit at the dinner table to hear the masters’ stories and discussion of internal training techniques and energy work.
At the house, the masters would train their disciples wearing singlets and shorts, so they could see how the masters’ body and energy was actually moving; how the different fascia and structural mechanics moved and how to apply the techniques correctly.
Master Liu described how he once found out the difference between indoor training and ‘outside’ classes, when at one open class, his observation to Master Feng about how the master seemed to miss out some of the information he’d talked about at Master Liu’s home, when replying to an ordinary student’s question in class, was met with a steely glare, and advice to Master Liu’s father to remind his son to ‘be more careful’ in future!
Master Liu is also a Qigong practitioner and TCM tuina therapist, specializing in joint realignment therapies, similar to osteopathy and for the last few camps, we have arranged some evening classes for participants to learn some of his massage techniques for the back and legs, which they can then practice on family and friends.
The techniques evolve from understanding body mechanics and how the whole body can integrate, and how the joints can work independently from one another or as a unified whole, and are a complement to the silk-reeling exercises that are inherent in Chen Style taiji.
Listening energy, vital to taiji is also an essential element to treating a patient; if you can’t feel which joint or area is blocked, which is too loose or affected by another blocked area, then you cannot treat the patient well. Similarly, how can you lock the joints of an opponent if you can’t feel the subtle changes within their joints, body reactions or movements, or be able to control them?
One of Master Liu’s specialties is being able to teach students to move each and every joint independently from another, so if you grab one part, it has no affect on the remainder of the body. It’s like grabbing only one link of a chain, without allowing the rest of the chain to be controlled.
For many people, they can unify their structure, but this unification can then be a thorn in their side when they cannot empty out or disengage the contact point from the rest of the body structure, and it’s this that allows them to be manipulated by a high-level opponent, as this unity gives an in-road into their whole body, making a person become a block or solid entity that is easily moved and controlled.
Master Liu advises that we need a complementary balance of disengagement and engagement. When the opponent’s force is dissipated, that is when we should unite our structural force so our ‘fajing’ has the unified body power behind it; dissipating incoming force requires us to empty out where we are contacted or grabbed, so that we don’t allow ourselves to be controlled. ‘We know our opponent, but they don’t know us’.
Participants have always marveled at Master Liu’s tremendous power, his dantian is less like a cat in a sack, but more like an elephant bursting through!
But equally his tuina techniques and energy are so soft and gentle, yet penetrating that you will feel immediately relaxed and more open and revitalized after a treatment; his qigong therapy complements his tuina massage and helps to maneuver the patient’s energy to promote recovery.
One of the things we have noticed with running the camps over the last 8 years is how much both the masters and participants have grown and benefitted by this cross-cultural exchange.
For participants, the chance to train with top-flight teachers who are generous and open in their instruction is a fantastic opportunity to deepen their knowledge and have a clearer view of the path they are working towards.
It also means that the masters have a chance to share the knowledge and love of their art with a highly appreciative audience of similarly enthusiastic practitioners.
We may come from diverse backgrounds and hometowns, but our love for Taiji and Chinese martial arts are equally fervent, and with so many of China’s modern youth uninterested in traditional Chinese culture and martial arts systems, these ‘old’ masters are eager and happy to share their hard-earned knowledge with such passionate and dedicated international practitioners, to prevent these arts from disappearing.
I personally have also gained enormously just from translating for the different masters I work with. I love to share the treasure trove of information these ‘old’ masters have with as wide an audience as possible, and as I’ve gotten older, I also appreciate more how important health and peace-of-mind is, and these arts are not just beautiful, powerful and effective forms of self-defence, but also ways to live longer, happier and healthier lives!
Hearing how the masters have trained and built their skills over the years, especially through some of China’s most turbulent and dramatic times, shows how effective these systems really are, and are something we can all benefit from.
Of course, to practice to a high-level, a student needs to be dedicated and persistent, but they also need correct instruction and guidance, so they can pursue the right ways forward and adjust any inaccuracies.
My late teacher, Master Dong Bin used to say “I was just a little wrong”, meaning that I only had to ‘tweak’ what I was doing slightly, in order to correct my application or form moves. The difference in correct practice is sometimes just a subtle, physical adjustment or change in mindset, once we employ those changes, then what we have been trying so hard to achieve, often just falls into place. It seems that the less we ‘try’, the more we will achieve, relaxing can actually bring rewards!
Finally, comprehension comes from doing; and working in this environment with other like-minded, enthusiastic practitioners, with some of these wonderful masters, soaking up the atmosphere of this ancient culture, really is a very special and enlightening experience.
By Rose Oliver MBE