The Bow, Cornerstone of Elasticity

兩肩垂兮十指連

The shoulders drop, the fingers link!*

兩手垂兮兩肘彎

The hands drop, the elbows curve!**

屈可伸兮伸又屈

Bent but able to stretch, stretched but also bent!**

前開後合天然妙，雙峰對峙

A natural wonder the front opened and the back closed, the two acromions stand facing each other***

To be able to use fascia elasticity, as it has already been mentioned in previous posts, one has to stretch connective tissues to gain elasticity and get the proper alignments to really connect the whole line again. But this combination of stretching with proper alignments goes beyond just transforming the body, it is a mean to get the fascia lines to tense, first indirectly and then actively.

Naturally Contracted or Natural Elasticity

優力無力

No force is the better force

In theory, the difference between contraction and elasticity seems not too complicated. On one hand muscles contract and/or become loose while, in the other hand, facias extend and retract. In practice, and especially nowadays where muscle contraction is the main solution used to generate force for most humans*, it is a more complicated problem, a lot of practices advertising not using muscle contraction, either for marketing purposes or earnestly, while they still do.

Sweet Sweat

汗流浃背

Sweat streaming down and drenching one's back

二、周身發汗：體溫增高，熱能可通達全身，暢及四肢，周身皮膚毛孔開，透出微汗，出汗不宜過多，以汗透毛皮為度，初步可治療傷風感冒，經常煉功者能遍燒全身，汗流如雨，濕透衣褲，可永絕感冒

Second, the whole body perspire: the body heat increases, a heat that can go through the entire body, smoothly reaching the four limbs, all the body pores open, slight sweat passing through, but too much would be inadvisable, just allowing the sweat to penetrate the skin pores, which can in the beginning cure from a cold or the flu, and if often trained shall heat up the entire body, dripping with sweat, clothes fully drenched, keeping away flu for ever.*

In internal practices, sweat is a cornerstone of one's training, a way to check one's practice and general health. It is also quite a complex matter as nervousness or tiredness can often produce the same results as the ones looked for in training.

Bones and the Force

氣沉骨堅

Heavy vapours and strong bones

骨堅筋柔

Firm bones and supple fascias

As far as the body force is concerned, the external part, the most important was neither muscles nor even fascias for the internal arts, but it was the bones. Bones and force are the typical example of how internal arts work, body force was first about a stronger structure and, to achieve it, stronger organs.

Fluctuat Nec Mergitur

Tossed But Not Sunk

Breathing, Complex and Evolving

睡則氣以耳出，名龜息，必大龜壽*

Vapours comes out of the ears when resting eyes closed, what is called the tortoise breathing, for certain the big tortoise lifespan 

人能依嬰儿在母腹中，自服内氣，握固守一，是名胎息**

If one can do like a baby in a mother's womb, taking by himself internal vapours, holding and protecting tenaciously the unicity, what is called the foetal breathing

鼻息無聲神氣守***
Soundless breathing through the nose, guarding vapours and spirit

Breathing is one of the most important things in life, thus the core of internal practices. Whatever he/she would do, an internalist was always about checking the impact on his breathing and heartbeat. Being a key issue made it also a complex one, it was not only about lungs, but also about heartbeat, skin, fascias, organs...

Condensation and The Belt

氣聚丹田

Vapours gather on the Cinnabar Field

息息歸臍

All breathing returns to the navel

龜尾升氣，丹田煉神*

The turtle tail makes vapours rise, Cinnabar Fields refine the spirit

Internal Alchemy is not only about fire, it is also a question of condensation. The places where vapours are supposed to mainly condense are called Cinnabar Fields, 丹田 (down, middle and upper), which will be dealt in another post. Condensation was a question of accumulation in the first place, and compression in the second, the two first skills targeted by internal breathing, 息.

External Comes First

又有三步睡功夫。一曰仰臥，兩腿直，十足指回勾腰控，存想湧泉，雙手搭扣撐住；二曰左偏臥，頭枕左足尖，左手搬左足跟，右換如之；三曰伏臥，雙手抱頭，足跟朝天，十足指尖用力向地，存想泥丸。隨便臥時，頭腰腿要三直*

There are also the three "lying down" skills. First, the one on the back, legs straight, the ten toes hooking through the waist, keeping in mind the Gushing Spring (涌泉, acupoint located in the middle of the foot), the hands locked together to support; second, on the left side, the head lying on the extremity of the left foot, the left hand pulling the left heel, then doing exactly the same on the right side; third, on the stomach, two hands holding the head, the feet arch pointing towards the sky and the ten toes vigorously pointing towards the ground, keeping in mind the Mud Pellet (Upper Cinnabar Field also called sometimes the Third Eye). However one is lying, head, waist and legs have to be kept straight.

External Comes First is also a classic example of the oversight of heavy stretching as first training, because the reasons behind it are forgotten, it is a too strenuous exercise and it usually used to take only a couple of months since the students were normally teenagers.

Transforming First the Body

三年樁，兩年拳

Three years of postures, two years of boxing

百折連腰盡無骨*

A hundred twists linking the waist, a boneless utmost

練形者，又名曰展筋脫骨**
Who trains the shape, also called spreading out the fascias and bones coming off

Different athletes have different bodies. From a weightlifter to marathon runner, because the physical abilities required and the motion imposed are very different, the type of bodies are very distinct. Even for Martists, sometimes one can recognise who is practicing what just by looking at their bodies and how they move.

Train, Refine, Temper

練形術

Art of training the body

煉石補天

Refine the stone to repair the innate

千錘百鍊

After hard work and numerous revisions

練, 煉 and 鍊, are all pronounced liàn. They are all made of 柬, to select, but written with different radicals*. They all can be used as to describe one's training. Even if they seem interchangeable, those three characters actually refer to different parts of training in internal arts.

Foggy Heart

心靜气動

A still heart for moving vapours

二振气，三安和

Second rouse vapours, third calm and at peace*

The two main pillars of internal arts are the heart and the Qi, emotions and vitality. If one was to describe a high internal level, even though martial arts have little to do with meditation, it would be through two lotus postures. The first one would be a Martist at noon in the middle of a very hot summer in a very stuffy room.

Roots

法是功能之基

Method is the base of capability

Most of the Martists come to the practice for the wrong reasons, often attracted by their supposed past glory (after all, nobody was there). If one's aim is to become a warrior, only the army, the police or affiliated can offer the right environment, certainly not practices that cannot be used because the technology has rendered them obsolete and/or legislation illegal.

Ego

十個盤坐九個瘋

Ten sitting in the lotus posture, nine insane

滿則損，謙受益

The full can only deplete, humility is beneficial

Ego is a notion which is meant pop out at a time or another in one's training. It is often seen as a, if not bad, at least something that one should rein in or reduce. Among their many claims, martial arts are supposed to train one's ego.

Health

然而練筋易而練膜難，練膜難而煉氣更難也

However, it is easy to train the tendons but harder to train the membranes; and as hard as it is to train them, it is still harder to train vapours*

If you are to meet two sharpshooters and one comes with a weapon that seems a bit shady and especially not well taken care of while the other person with a perfectly maintained one, you may not know who shoots best but you will definitively know who is the professional. In the old days, the body was an essential machine for a Martist, it had to be kept fit and in perfect health.

气 Where is my Bowl of Rice?

練劍莫先於煉气*

Training the sword cannot be done without first refining the Qi

"Listen, swordmanship is the discipline and training of the Great Vitality. So you begin this study by training the ch'i by means of technique. After your beginning studies, you will discipline your ch'i, but move away from technique; yet, there should be no point where you try your hand vacantly. You should become mature in your discipline of ch'i, and master the mind"**

气 is a notion very particular to the Chinese culture, not only a polysemous word, but also a riddle to solve in the old practices. That makes it a complex and hard notion to deal with. But since it is, in most cases, an integral part of Chinese martial arts, leaving out this notion would be like wanting to make wine in France without taking into consideration the "terroir".

武術 War for Peace

故善攻者，敵不知其所守；善守者，敵不知其所攻*
That is why when one is skillful in attack, his opponent does not know where to defend; one is skillful in defence, his opponent does not know where to attack.

There are many names to describe martial arts 武(舞)技, 武道, 武功, 國術, 功夫... From nationalist pride to some special aspects of the training, they express different views. Still 武術 seems to be the most common denomination, and looking at its meaning beyond the simple "martial arts" translation is interesting because its shows the evolution, the misunderstandings and the ability for some schools to play with Chinese characters beyond their usual meaning.

Method

不二法門

The one and only way

"Do you know what I shall study, I asked?

But... Yourself, who has ever studied anything else, he answered smiling?"*

Before they became obsolete, old martial arts practices were a training leading to a possible good career. Money, fame and glory always being the main motivation for most people, they were high in demand and it was quite hard to get into a school. Until relatively quite recently, people used to queue to try to get a master, coming bearing gifts with no guarantee to be admitted as a student. It was said that to become a student, you had to be gifted, diligent and liked by the master. Nowadays, of course, it's quite the opposite.

The Forest

殊途而同歸*

All roads lead to Rome

They are a lot of ways to call martial arts in China, one of them being 武林, often translated as martial arts circles. 武meaning martial and 林circle(s) of people by extension, its original meaning behind wood, forest. However, because 林 is the combination of two 木 (wood, tree), it has also conveyed the meaning of various, a multitude, as in the expression 林林總總 (numerous, multitudinous). That is exactly what this term, 武林, is also conveying.

Standing

不易乎世

Keeping one's integrity through time

It is always better to understand where we stand before starting anything. This blog is mostly about old practices from China, called before martial arts, and more especially about the internal ones. In modern and developed societies, technology has rendered them almost totally obsolete in their previous professional capacities, warfare, security (police...) and protection (of persons or valuables), but, on the other hand, consumerism has dramatically increased their presence as a hobby for self-defense, physical and mental exercices and even spiritual search.