Forever Young

 

拳怕少壯

The fist fears the young and vigorous¹

少時練得一身勁，老來健壯少生病

A whole body strength trained when young, robust, healthy and rarely sick at an old age.

練出一身汗，小病不用看

Training to sweat all over the body, no need to worry about minor illnesses.

身體鍛鍊好、八十不服老

A body well trained, eighty but not acquiescing to old age.

二五更的功夫

Skills coming from an early sleep and an early wake².

A part of old practices, which is almost lost nowadays, is the training of the organs and its deep transformation of one’s body. To stay fit, for old internal practices, was to upgrade one’s organs, the internal alchemy, which, amongst other things, led to slowing down the ageing process and keep one’s vitality at its best for a long time. 少壯, young and vigorous, stresses on such need.

Hold On

心為令，氣為旗，腰為纛
The heart commands, vapours are the flag and the waist the banner

肛門不提，丹田氣散，内中空虚，元氣*虧損
When the anus is not pulled up, the vapours around the cinnabar field disperse, the inside becomes empty and one's vitality depletes

A lot of Chinese practices consider the waist to be the most important part of the body, 腰为主宰, the waist dictates. For those practices, the waist refers not only to the anatomical part of the body, but can also point out specific vertebras or extend to the whole part below the navel to the crotch, the pelvic area. Since it is not only the centre of one's body, where the legs and the chest connect, but also the most important place for vitality, most of the organs being more or less located around it, keeping a correct structure in the area is key to a fruitful training. Among the many requirements one stands out, the necessity to literally pull up the anus that you find in a lot of practices (or its symmetrical version, to pull up the bladder) and hang the stomach (or its symmetrical version, to pinch the sacrum vertebras).

Rock the Cinnabar

內有丹田，氣之歸宿*

Inside are the Cinnabar Fields, the place vapours return to

勁從足下起，還得丹田足

The strength raises from the feet on the prerequisite the cinnabar field is sufficient enough

掌心力從足心印

The force from the centre of the palms comes from the mark in the centre of the feet

Working on one's vitality flow, as it was explained in the two previous posts, was one of the objectives in the old practices. To do so, apart from mobilising one's organs, one could work on, or enhance, certain parts of the body having an impact on such flow. Of the numerous parts, the most famous are the cinnabar fields, 丹田.

Vitality and Strength

眼無神, 拳無魂

Eyes with no expression, boxing without spirit

氣發若風行, 氣納吞百川*

Vapours are emitted like the wind, vapours receive, swallowing a hundred rivers

夫內勁寓於無形之中，接於有形之表，而難以言傳**

The inside strength is in the incorporeal, connecting with a corporeal expression, thus very hard to convey in words

Chinese arts differentiate strength from just body force. In Chinese, force is 力, which originally was a representation of human tendons or connective tissues***, "筋也。象人筋之形". Strength is 勁, the "underground river", 巠, of force, 力.

Vitality and Force

全神貫注

To concentrate one's attention on

神清氣爽

A clear mind in a calm state

聚精會神

To concentrate one's attention on

心馳神往

One thoughts fly to (a place or a person)

Similarly as to the difference between fascias elasticity and muscle contraction, it may be interesting to try to first determine what belongs more to vitality. Of course, since vitality is mainly invisible, contrary to muscle mass, the noticeable differences lie more in effects than on visible or touchable things on one's body.

The Cross and the Six Directions

沉肩墜肘，含胸拔背

Sink the shoulders and drop the elbows; contain the chest and pull up the back

鬆腰坐胯，開襠膝撐

Relax the waist and sit the hips; open the crotch and have the knee brace

Once the evolutive principles behind the figure of the bow are understood, one has to expand the connectivity of the fascias by connecting different lines together, and their elasticity by going beyond lines into surfaces and volumes.

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.

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.