Here are some quotes from this excellent book:
“The body connection, whole body power, qi development, and mind/body harmony that are forged during long standing sessions are vital in the development of xingyi internal power.” p. 24
“To ’sink the waist,’ the coccyx must be relaxed and slightly lifted, the yang qi will ascend toward heaven, this regulates the Du meridian. When ‘relaxing the shoulders,’ they feel as if they are being pulled back. To ‘depress the chest’ is to open the chest so the breath flows more smoothly and the yin qi descends. This regulates the Ren meridian.” p. 47
“The people of this world do not know what te internal power of xingyiquan is. They try to guess from looking at the form, or suppose that we use much effort from the heart, or suppose it is some movement in the belly, these types of things have no effect, this is taking the false for the true… power (qili) is the root of the structure. If you want sufficient power, the qi must be full, therefore, qi is the root of strength.” p. 53
“Internally, train the qi, externally practice the art of the movements.” p. 53
“When using internal power, the power must follow the correct route…The front of the body is the Ren meridian, the back of the body is the Du meridian, the qi follows flowing through.” p. 53
I would like to point out that sometimes things go much deeper than they are portrayed in public. Often what can be discussed only goes so far as the context will allow. The above quotes show that qi and its development are a part of serious xingyi practice, despite words otherwise in certain quarters.
Statements that xingyi is no different from any Western movement or that IMA is exactly like any external martial art run directly contrary to the statements above. Neigong is a very real and necessary stage of development in IMA training. Those who don’t have it or don’t train it will forever be stuck with half the puzzle at best.
Xingyi Neigong is one of the few books I’ve seen that goes into detail about the softer, more subtle side of xingyi. It’s good to see the neigong described from a xingyi perspective rather than the usual Daoist perspective because xingyi artists have a particular flavor and desired goal of their neigong. The mixture of physical movements in the vein of the eight brocades combined with the many hints about the internal cultivation that go with the moves make this a necessity for people hoping to go beyond external movements with their xingyi.
I’ve heard this book praised so many times as being “excellent” on the Internet, but I’m wondering: why do we hear so little discussion about its contents?
6 responses so far ↓
1 Ed // Oct 24, 2007 at 10:49 am
Hmm, I have also heard lots of people in the Internet praise this book, and thus basically imagined that this book was the OPPOSITE of what your quotes portray - i.e. a book that had contents that were much more physical and less “qi.” Interesting that it seems to be the opposite of that!
2 GrahamB // Oct 24, 2007 at 2:10 pm
The problem with the book I think is that it isn’t what it says it is. You expect a book about XingYi. Instead it’s full of Qigong talk and endless warm up exercises.
The only actual XingYi in there is a few shots of somebody with a spear right at the back! There’s also Dai Long Bang’s version of the “XingYi classics”, which don’t actually tell you “how” to do anything. Oh, and there’s discussio of San Ti Shi stance.
If you’re into that kind of thing it’s ok, but where’s the XingYi????
3 Robert A. Figler // Oct 24, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Dave, if you have Jess O’Brien’s book, Nei Jia Quan, take a look under the Cartmell interview, Qi and Yi, pp.36-37:
. . . “Do I think you have to think about your qi and all that stuff to get good at martial arts? No, as a matter of fact I think it will probably slow your training down. Using your mind is plenty mysterious enough. Were you put your intent makes a huge difference on your balance–that to me is mystery enough. I don’t need to complicate things with intangibles.”
Moving your mind in your body is another thing. I call that “intent,” which is the word yi. If every time you head the word qi you replace it with yi, it would make much more sense. They’re talking about intention mostly, and they’re calling it qi because it sounds more mysterious. So, I don’t talk about it in qi gong class. Qi gong is breathing exercises.
Qi means “air.” Qi gong is the same as Pranayama in Yoga. Breathing exercises. Are they good for you? Yeah, they’re good for you. They’ll build up your power and health. That’s mys stand on it, I tend to be a little bit overboard on the negative side because I hear so much nonsense.”
As far as qi gong goes, relaxing and moving are good for you. Does it increase your qi flow? I don’t know–it depends on what you mean by qi. My teacher Luo De Xiu explained qi as the Chinese term for when all your systems are in sync, your parasympathetic nervous system is turned on, you turn off the fight or flight system, your hormonal system is flowing, you have coherent brain waves, you’re moving correctly, your circulation is going and you get this overall feeling of health. If you want to call that qi as an analogy for wellness , fine. But you could call that something else. Are you going to shoot it out of your fingertips at me? Well, maybe, but no one’s done it yet.”
Nei Jia Quan, p. 37
___________________________________________
The book really leaves you with an interesting reflection: I don’t think Miller is really involved in the art, publicly, any long [he may privately train but I don't know]and many of the concepts researched and recorded by Cartmell seem to be “excess baggage.” He may use the techniques for training, but he doesn’t appear to find the Chinese terminology or conceptual framework useful, instead he finds that it obscures rather than enlightens.
Leaves me with an gnawing feeling of a bit of doubt but not enough to entirely reject the Chinese Qi paradigm.
4 Jose de Freitas // Oct 24, 2007 at 7:46 pm
This book is probably one of the best on XY all around, and I do completely disagree with Graham that it doesn’t deliver what it’s set to deliver. Basically it says “XY Nei gong” in the cover, and goes on to subtitle it “Xing Yi Health Maintenance and Internal Strength Development”. You can’t get any clearer than this, and no one can say that it doesn’t have “actual” XY. The major point of this bok, the most important point of this book, is the often quoted but not too frequently practiced classic maxim, which goes : train quan without training gong, and even 20 years will be in vain. And in this, it is sort of revolutionary, since a lot of XY teachers used to not teach the basic foundational exercises (which were frequently dismissed as “just warmups”).
Basically this book includes three major parts: a set of discussions by Tim Cartmell (and Miller), on the training concepts of XY and a “translation” of the qi concepts into western physiological concepts; a “how to” of training San Ti, which includes a second posture that was created by Wang Ji Wu; and a set of sixteen exercises, supplemented by a couple of additional methods, which range from “pure” qigong, breathing and relaxation, etc… to more vigorous or challenging stuff. Yes, these exercises can be used as a warm-up, and they fulfill this function wonderfully, but I would not describe this book as “endless warmups”. Rather, this is a qigong book, but it just uses the old term for it, neigong. Plus, it is qigong that has as its main goal, to build refined strength and an elastic, relaxed type of fitness (and it doesn’t hurt that it helps health) which is in accordance with the body requirements of XY. Much like a boxer wouldn’t think of practicing boxing without rope jumping or doing some sort of strength training (and anyone would think he’d probably be a very ineffective boxer), so a XY practitioner should train his type of strength and energy with adequate exercises.
The point of this book is that you need to complement your “technique” driven training, with “power” driven training, and that XY has developed a theory about this, which accords with some of the TCM paradigm, and that most lineages will include sets of exercises that make a BIG difference to your experience of XY. These exercises, combined with San Ti, will also (for those who believe in the qi paradigm) fill the qi in your body.
Interestingly for me, these exercises closely resemble the ones my teacher gave me when I started training in XY - and they became my personal and daily practice of qigong (although I’ve added a couple of exercises and some bodyweight training to it). I remember my teacher saying that it wasn’t really very interesting to practice XY if you couldn’t at least fulfill a few physical requirements; he was very keen on saying that these physical requirements weren’t only a measure of strength, and could be achieved by anyone and practiced through old age. They were (just examples he gave me of the type of strenght or fitness required for XY):
- to hold a horse stance (or an equally demanding stance) for at least 10 minutes without discomfort;
- to do about 15 cat pushups (the ones that resemble a dive bomber) and hold the end posture for a complete, slow breathing cycle before doing a new rep;
- to be strong enough in the legs to be able to go to very low postures (think snake creeps in the grass) switching from side to side without rising, ten times in slow motion.
He said the exercises would allow me to achieve these goals (even though I added a few exercises and acquired the new goal of being able to do single leg squats). The set we have has two sides: Ten Exercises for Health, and Ten Exercises for Strength. You do the first ten every day (takes about 30 minutes, although more reps can generally take it to about 45), and you select a few (say 2-4) of the second every day, and cycle through the whole ten over a few days (it’s OK to have favorites). Many of the exercises are similar, or very similar to the ones in the book, and I believe they reflect a common origin (although one can say that they also exist in most good qigong sets and thus are part of the common universe of exercises to the chinese arts). The variations probably reflect individual preferences of given teachers, some of the book exercises are better and some are worse than the ones in our set. I bought the tape also and taught myself the exercises, and still retain about 5 of them in my daily practice simply because they are similar, but improved exercises that existed in our set.
Of course, one of the things few XY teachers show is how to use the Five Fists as Neigong. Most good teachers will teach a way of doing the Five Fists for qi cultivation, and the Five fists also serve the purpose of training power (Di Guoyong even goes as far as to say in his book: approach the Five fists as power training and nei gong, not as techniques, and don’t think of applications).
So the entire thing is integrated into the whole practice of XY, and in the end is fused in your practice of San Ti, where you are supposed to be able to reflect all the moves and sensations you get from the rest into a standing, unmoving posture.
Well, I guess you can see that I’m a Xingyi junkie, right?
Best
5 Dave Chesser // Oct 24, 2007 at 8:35 pm
I’ll respond to some of this in a new post.
6 thomas // Oct 25, 2007 at 6:15 am
Several years ago Tim came up to Portland, OR to teach a seminar on Wang Ji Wu’s neigong set for the National Qigong Association. It would have been interesting to see how he presented the set to a bunch of qi-heads. ;- )
Leave a Comment