Firmly Elastic

魄門亦為五藏使*

The Mortal Soul Gate is also of use for the five organs  

下收穀道，上提玉樓**

Down holding the Grain Path, up lifting the Jade House

As it has been already mentioned many times in this blog, adapting professional training made for physically and mentally strong teenagers to leisurely adults raises a lot of issues. It is interesting to notice that one of the first issues is actually the basic training for any style focusing on fascia elasticity: flexibility. As it was mentioned in the posts concerning such elasticity, flexibility for those old practices is not meant to acquire acrobatic skills, even when the results seem quite similar. Indeed, as acrobatic postures may look, they still have to follow a set of rules concerning body alignment, like tucking in the butt for example.

Comparing how adults and teenagers shall train flexibility makes actually a very good example of the versatility of old practices, their capacity to change drastically the training according to the age, the build, the mental... of each and every student. Indeed, if for teenagers the rule is to first reach extreme flexibility without caring about the angles the body will take, it is quite the opposite for adults. 

Still, before describing how and why adult and teenager training are opposed as far as training flexibility is, it seems necessary to remind the reader about the particular goals of fascia training in the old practices. As far as the external, the body, is concerned in internal practices, elasticity and insulation are the main goals.

I. Elasticity

Extreme flexibility in internal practices is meant to deeply change one’s tissues in order to make them as elastic as possible in order to fully exploit the power coming from one’s fascias.

a. Stick or Rope

A stick and a rope, due to their nature, know very different motions, so different that it is impossible to force a stick to move like a rope and vice-versa. Hence, one of the aims of old practices is to deeply transform the body in order to give it the natural qualities for the preferred motion. Therefore, using fascia elasticity is aimed at moving more like a rope, using muscle contraction leading close to stick motions. Indeed, tender and slack muscles allow nimbler movements than hard ones.

This simple difference has more effects than one could think, first because flexibility becomes an added product of elasticity and second because stretching, the means to reach flexibility and improve elasticity, also pursues different goals.

b. Prioritising

Internal arts work with trends, hence they prioritise. If elasticity and flexibility are so intertwined that they seem to be the same thing, for the purpose of knowing exactly what one trains for, internal practices differentiate them. Indeed flexibility shall then be capacity to twist one’s body in all directions like being able to touch the knees with the head, do the splits, arch so much the back one’s head can go between the legs... All those skills can be reached through regular stretching stressing on the tendons and partly the fascias. Hence, a person still relying on muscle contraction can also be very flexible, like most professional dancers and acrobats. There comes elasticity, which is seen as the capacity to stretch in a relax close to laxness way all and any tissues, including and especially the muscles. Therefore, one can be more elastic than a professional dancer without being as flexible as he/she is.

In a way, one could say that flexibility is external because you can judge it by the posture one is taking while elasticity is internal because you have to touch the body to feel the quality of its tissues***. 

Still, at their extremes, which professional training aimed at, extreme flexibility brings more elasticity to one’s body and to become even more elastic one has to go through flexibility. Hence, the basic skills for teenagers seem very close to what acrobats or dancers do. Their difference lies in the main aim, flexibility for acrobats and dancers and elasticity for internal Martists.

c. Stretching and Firmness

Furthermore, in regular training workout is usually one thing while stretching another, two different types of exercises. In internal practices, since all the motions are done through stretching the muscles, there is no such difference. Hence, there is no need to warm up for example in internal practices, moving is a warm up in itself. No need either to stretch after exercise, exercise did the stretch. Furthermore, some of the aims are also different. As a counterpart to muscle contraction, stretching is often seen as a way to relieve, avoid stiffness, soreness in the muscles... In internal arts, the aim is actually to keep the body firm or make it firmer****, no soreness or stiffness shall come from training. In short, stretching is meant to bring softness to muscles used to contract as a main motion in regular workouts while it is meant to bring firmness to muscles used to relax and stretch as a main motion.

Yet, firmness using fascia elasticity is not just a question of flexibility, it is also a body alignment issue. Therefore, training fascia elasticity is both a question of flexibility and posture, the issue for each exercise being what shall come first, be prioritised, flexibility or alignment.

Apart from elasticity, flexibility is also a way to reinforce the pelvis area in order to improve insulation.

II. Insulation

As far as one’s internal alchemy is concerned, the idea is to insulate as much as possible the place where heat shall be produced. Furthermore, there is a link between closing the pelvis area and emotions for old practices, insulation also being from emotions.

a. Heat

A great part of internal alchemy comes by warming up the organs. As mentioned before , the issue is that urinating and defecating are two openings that heat, hence pressure, will naturally cause to open. Internal arts use posturing, like tucking in the butt, and flexibility to reinforce the sphincters in order to keep them from doing so. A better insulation, more heat. One of the areas trained to do so is what is known now as the perinea. The idea is to reinforce such place to always keep the position it has when it closes the sphincters.

There, also, comes a great difference between internal practices and muscle contraction. Indeed, working with muscle contraction, this area is either relaxed hence in a normal position or opened according to one’s pelvis alignment, or contracted hence closed. Opened when urinating or defecating (actually by doing the “tucking in the butt” opposite motion), contracted when one wants to firmly stop these and relaxed the rest of the time. 

If working with fascia elasticity works in an almost similar way in the beginning, opened, tensed and relaxed, when one finally reaches the locking skill, one shall become either opened or tensed, hence closed most of the time*****.

Working on the perinea and tucking in the butt raises the matter of the back arch, a natural but problematic part of one’s body. Indeed, insulation and alignment require to tuck in the butt while flexibility, hence improved elasticity, to work on improving the arch. Hence, again, comes the question of what comes first, flexibility or alignment.

Finally, the second quote is a reminder that connection matters when using fascias, hence the Grain Path (or more simply the anus) holding is also a matter of one’s head alignment through the Jade House (to be found by the reader ,-p).

b. Emotions

There is an enigma in old practices which states that the Confucian five virtues are located in one’s sex. Apart from the moral issues it may describe, it is also an indication of the importance of the pelvis area for those who want to reduce their emotive state. And since internal practices try to reach an emotive void....

Heighten emotive states can give an example of a connection between emotions and the sphincters. Indeed great fear or great joy can lead to soiling oneself°. Furthermore, those practising flexibility training meant to “open the pelvis” where one arches even more the back, hence opening the sphincters, may have found that they often lead to an increase in one’s sexual drive. For old practices, all this is an indication of the direct or indirect link between this area and one’s emotions. In other words, emotions make, directly or indirectly, the sphincters open. Using the reverse method, keeping one’s sphincters as closed as possible and making the perinea stronger may temper one’s emotions. A bit like keeping one’s mouth shut to avoid saying something stupid coming to mind.

Such link can be found in the enigma of the first quote. Briefly, 魄門 is also another way to refer to the anus while 魄 in itself refers to what Chinese call the mortal or animal soul. The use of such terminology is rightly seen as homophony to avoid writing a less poetic term, 粕, lees or a short version of 糟粕, dross. Indeed, the text goes on “水穀不得久藏”, water and grain shan't lay by too long. Basically, it simply says that the anus allows the body to get rid of its waste. Still, as there is always more in the Chinese riddles and it is not only a matter of poesy, especially in a medicine manual, the use of 魄 for animal soul shall be more than just the reference to its homophony. Indeed, as virtues are located in one’s sex, so are vices. Closing the anus is a physical way to keep them out.  

Finally, another issue described earlier in this blog is that to keep a stomach as flat as possible, one also has to control the alignment of the pelvis area, having the sphincters closed being actually a important key to such control.Therefore all the “arching the back” or “opening the hips” poison is the relaxation of the sphincters which leads to putting the stomach forwards and then to a certain form of belly if not checked correctly. Indeed, even for teenagers, such flexibility exercises would be followed by postures with a strict alignment in order to strengthen the stomach fascia lines.  

The two main goals and their respective issues known, what adjustments shall then be made when going from professional training for teenagers to leisurely adults? The next post will deal with the first one, elasticity.

*黃帝內經·素問·五臟别論, Yellow Emperor Inner Classics, Simple Questions, Five Organs Different Issues.

**內功真經 , Real Canons on Internal Skills.

***Touching the muscles of a cat or a dog can give a pretty good idea of which kind of muscle internal practices search for.

****This is quite obvious with the ageing process. Hard muscles tend to make the body become more and more stiff with age, stretching being a means to curb such issue. Using fascia elasticity, hence soft muscles, has actually a reverse ageing effect: the muscles tend to become slack. Therefore, stretching becomes a way to curb the ageing slackness of ageing muscles, quite the opposite. 

*****The trick being to modulate such tension, i.e. if one does not need it, it shall remain a light one (back to the bow principle, just as when it is not used, the right angles will naturally tense the perineum fascias without having to use any force, no force being the better force). Furthermore, being closed does not mean, contrary to contraction, being motionless, elasticity allowing motion by being more or less closed.

°Modern science has a neurobiological explanation for such reactions.