Resilient

夫氣足耐寒，血足耐暑，神足耐饑，精足力綿

One can endure cold when vapours are sufficient, heat when blood is sufficient, hunger when spirit is sufficient, the force is continuous when essential liquids are sufficient.

This passage belongs to the 精神氣息解, “Explaining essential liquids, spirit, vapours and breath¹” paragraph. To the usual trio essential liquids, spirit and vapours, breath has been added, probably to show that it is equally important. In the quote, it is blood which has been added. Internal practices use to pay more attention to what is happening inside the body, the organs and the liquids they produce, the blood… and what is not visible but has an impact on one’s performance, what we call vigour, vitality, which they theorised as vapours and spirit.

This quote particularly stresses on the effects of a correct training, giving a result to achieve being one of the cornerstones of the old methods². As mentioned very early in this blog, health is a very important factor in old practices. If such statement points to one of the main goals of internal practices, endurance, one can wonder how to achieve it. One has to achieve an overall endurance as well as improve specific skills.

I. Endurance

In the quote, endurance deals with two themes, external, cold and heat, and internal, hunger and fatigue.

1.1 Impervious to the Weather

The link between a certain improvement and control of one’s organs and the resistance to cold and heat has already been introduced very early in this blog in Foggy Heart.

In our modern times when rooms are heavily heated in the winter and air conditioning does wonder in the scorching summers, the need to be impervious to the weather is certainly not as dire as it used to be. If one comes back to times when heating was wood fire and cooling just fans, such need may become much more understandable. Needless to say, most fighting was occurring outside and having to stand for hours sometimes, one could really suffer from the weather, hence hindering his/her capacity to fight. Therefore, resistance to the cold and the heat was actually an essential skill.

1.2 Neither Hungry Nor Tired

It seems much more obvious that tiredness and hunger will reduce one’s performance. In developed modern societies, the hunger issue may be reversed. Indeed, in times of opulence, it is overeating which may become an issue, too full a stomach or fat coming from having too rich food too often are things which also have an impact on one’s performance. Hence, enduring hunger may become resisting gluttony.

According to the text, those skills come from a fullness of the vapours, the blood, the spirit and the essential liquids, one can wonder how to achieve such a feat.

II. Becoming Resilient

Whatever is the skill sought, it all comes back to the organs, as far as internal practices are concerned. Still, apart from the fact that strong organs will lead to such feats, breathing is also an essential part.

2.1 Strong Organs

The need to have the organs in good shape and clean has been described over and over in this blog. Basically, organs produce essential liquids which become through heat vapours and then spirit. Holding low postures is one of the favourite way to improve organs for internal practices, but any exercise which does not exceed one’s capacity while breaking a sweat will cultivate , clean or even improve them.

Stronger organs means a capacity to create more heat, against the cold, produce more blood, against the heat, reduces hunger and the coming of tiredness.

2.2 Proper Breathing

Internal breathing, once understood, can serve many purposes. One has to discover the proper breathing to keep warm, cool down and forget hunger. They are all linked to different ways of mobilising the organs. The issue of the continuous force is a bit different and is linked to the capacity of never being out of breath.

Apart from general skills, training can also focus on specific ones, the next post on this subject.

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1 Another translation can consider 精神 and 氣息 as two character words: “Explaining vigour and breath.” As usual, in martial arts both are valid depending on what one does with it.

2 As mentioned many times in this blog, nowadays, quite a few sentences, such as “Sinking shoulders and dropping elbows” or the straight or round back have become principles to be followed while they were just pointing to a result to be obtained. It may seem the same but it actually makes a lot of difference in training, understanding a process or trying to reproduce just the results are often not the same. The training in old practices was all about the process, not the result.