Thoughts on Double Weighting

A friend of mine from my original NYC Taiji class was in the Bay Area and stopped by TToPA for a visit. Lincoln came on a night where we had Taiji instruction in the first class - covering Cloud Hands - followed by an open class where we did some basic two-person drills and a bit of free-style. It was great to have Lincoln visit and he seemed to have enjoyed himself as well.

While he and I were discussing some of the differences between the way the form is taught at the two schools, Lincoln observed that at TToPA, our archer stance is not nearly as front-weighted as taught by Master Chen and he asked if that caused any problems with double weighting.

Double weighting is discussed in the Taiji classics - students are admonished to avoid it otherwise they will not progress beyond the beginning stages - but it's never actually defined clearly, which leaves it open to interpretation. When I first heard the term, I thought it simply meant that you should never have weight on both legs at the same time (and I have read a number of interpretations that say just that) but that definition avoids the points that 1. you almost always have weight on both legs as you move from posture to posture (i.e. a large percentage of the time) and 2. even in styles that do have their archer stance weighted more towards the front, the distribution is still 70/30, which means that a non-trivial amount of weight is on the back leg.

My current understanding of double weighting is based on the following analogy: consider one of the postures where you are on one leg (e.g. White Crane Exposes Wing) - at this point think of that leg being filled to the top with water. As you transition from that leg to the other, it's like the water is pouring from the first leg to the second (it feels this way as the weight shifts). As long as you keep moving from posture to posture, the water keeps flowing from leg to leg.  Double weighting occurs when the flow of the movement is interrupted, which causes the water to collect separately at the bottom of each legs and makes you feel like your legs feel heavy - it takes effort (and time) to get them started moving again. That doesn't mean all movements have to occur at the same speed - you can speed up and slow down as long as the water continues to flow.

So, in response to Lincoln's question, my answer was that the weight distribution of the stance doesn't matter as long as the movement flows. That's my understanding at this point but I'm open to hearing other interpretations.

A Taiji Christmas

Most years, I visit my family in Sarasota over Christmas. While visiting last year, I tried a simple 2-person exercise with a friend of mine to see if my training was paying off. The exercise was a very basic form of push-hands - we faced one another with feet shoulder width apart, hands contacting each other's shoulders with one arm on the inside and the other on the outside, making everything symmetric. The game was to simply try to off-balance each other. I wasn't sure what was going to happen but, with just a bit of energy, my friend's upper body locked up and over he went - several times.

This year, I was at my sister's on Christmas day and that same friend dropped by for a visit. After a while, I suggested that we try the same exercise again and this time, rather then locking up, he stayed completely loose, which was an improvement. Still, he was a bit too loose so I was able to take the slack out of his arms and over he went - several times.

After doing this for a while, he convinced my nephew to give it a try (since my nephew was laughing at him). While my nephew is only 15 (closing in on 16), he's taller than I am and outweighs me by a fair bit. When we commenced, he leaned on me and pushed with all his strength (did I mention that he also lifts weights). Normally, I would have just twisted a bit and let him slip by but, with all the energy he was putting into it, I knew he would go flying across the room so instead I redirected his force back into him and twisted him off his base - again, several times. I think he was impressed because he later asked about how it all worked.

Finally, after seeing me push her son around, my sister decided she wanted to give it a go as well. She's only 5' tall and 110lbs but she does triathlons and is very competitive. She wasn't satisfied with the horse-stance we were using and instead got into an archer's stance. When we commenced, she lunged at me with all her strength and I sent her flying across the room before I had the chance to think. She thought it was pretty hysterical and, once she stopped laughing, came back and started pushing with all her strength again (completely oblivious to the fixed-step nature of the exercise). I had enough time to react so I didn't send her flying across the room again - I just tried to keep relaxed and channel her energy back into her - she's impressively strong and aggressive and it took a lot of my skill to handle her.

In the end, this exercise was interesting for two reasons. First it showed that I have gained skill through my training and that skill can be applied to vastly different opponents/energies. Second, it showed that I still have a lot to learn yet. Despite their lack of training, it was much harder for me to control my friend, nephew, and sister than I expected and I expended a lot of effort to do so. This points to a number of weaknesses in my own skill that I need to think about and figure out how to improve. That way, I'll be ready for next Christmas.

The Whole Foot

I've previously discussed the importance of keeping the body weight in the center of the foot for maintaining proper body alignment and balance. I was concentrating on this principle the other day while doing the form and noticed that when in the bow stance, the weight in my back foot was mostly concentrated in the heel of my foot.

After thinking on this for a while, I realized the problem arose from the stance. In the bow stance, as taught by TToPA, the back foot forms about an 80 degree angle with the front foot (other styles go with 45 degrees but the issue is the same). Since the front foot is pointing forward, it is easy to shift the weight along that line and keep it in the middle of the foot. With the back foot, the middle of the foot is off to the side so it is easy to just let the weight follow the line of the leg and end in the heel. In order to get the weight to the center of the foot, you have to open the hip of the back leg so that the back knee can also move in line with the foot (i.e. knee towards big toe) - then you can shift your weight to the center of the foot without torquing the knee.

Once I made this correction, I noticed that keeping the weight in the center of the rear foot resulted in keeping the whole foot connecting to the ground - i.e. the weight is absorbed by the whole foot not just the center. I further noticed that this same principle applies to the front foot as well. The result is that while the weight is still directed to the center of the foot (i.e. 'the bubbling well'), it can be distributed across the entire foot, which makes the whole foot the contact point and the stance more stable.

Not that I should be surprised by this - in ILC, one of the basic tenets is that of '9 solid 1 empty', which is all about keeping the entire foot connected to the ground. In Taiji, it is less actively done than in ILC but it is the same principle.
 

Class with Alex Dong

I was visiting New York City last week and decided to drop in on a Taiji class with Alex Dong - http://www.alexdongtaiji.com/ - the grandson of Dong Huling, the same lineage that TToPA derives from.

In this particular class, Master Dong was emphasizing keeping roundness and energy in the arms when transitioning in the postures in order to maintain balance.

He first demonstrated this principle with 'brush knee and press forth palm'. During the transition from 'brush left' to 'brush right', after turning the left foot out to 80 degrees, you sink all of your weight onto the left foot as you twist left and upright your torso, at which point you are fully weighted on the left foot and vertical. At the same time, your arms are also in motion with your left arm circling back, around, and up while your right arm slowly sinks down. And this was the point of the exercise - as the arms are in motion, you need to keep them rounded and energized in front of you (like holding a big ball) in order to keep everything balanced throughout the transition. This transition has always been tricky for me - which is frustrating since it seems so simple - but, as we did the exercise, I realized how disconnected my arms were (particularly my left one) and that keeping them rounded/energized made everything much more stable.

Master Dong went on to demonstrate how the same principle applied to 'step back and repulse monkey'. In this case, when your transition from right foot forward, you move backwards by sinking all of your weight onto the left (back) leg while twisting to the right as you upright your torso. During the transition the left arm circles around and up while the right arm rotates clockwise. Again, during this transition, you need to keep the arms rounded/energized (like holding a big ball) to keep everything balanced. And again, I realized how disconnected my arms (particularly the left one) were throughout the transition and how much more stable everything became once I was mindful of the arms.

As we subsequently went through various parts of the form in class, I realized how much this principle applied throughout the postures, which I had completely missed (not that I haven't been shown this same principle before but it finally resonated with me). Towards the end of class, Master Dong showed how it even applied to 'crossing wrists', which put that movement in a new light.

Overall, it was a great class and I really enjoyed meeting Master Dong and his students - I hope I get the opportunity to work with them again sometime soon. It was striking how similar their approach to the form is as compared to what I've learned at TToPA - I felt very much at home in the class and was able to apply what I learned directly to my own practice. I had been curious about this because, while we're from the same lineage, things do tend to change over time. Not to say that there aren't any differences - there are - but they're minor compared with taking a class from a different Yang-style lineage (e.g. Cheng Man Ching).

Twisting and Internal Strength

Early on when I started at TToPA, I asked one of the instructors about internal strength. He had me stand in a horse stance and told me to relax as he put his hands on my shoulders and gently pushed with one hand and pulled with the other - this caused my torso rotated to the left. He then told me he was going to do the same thing again but that this time I should resist being turned - he applied increasing pressure and I resisted without allowing my torso to be turned. He asked if I felt the twisting feeling throughout my torso and I acknowledged that I did. He explained that this was internal strength - it was clearly internal since I wasn't moving and yet there was something going on inside that was keeping me from being turned.

While this demonstration gave me my first inkling of internal strength and its connection to twisting, it certainly didn't open the flood gates of understanding about internal energy and it's application and this is a concept that I continue to struggle with.

But I got a little closer recently.  I was in class - with the same instructor - and we were going over the transition from 'white crane exposes wings' to 'brush left thigh'. For this transition, you start off facing square to the east and bend a bit forward to get your arms moving and - this is the important bit - then you then simultaneously twist your torso to the right as you step out to the left - what struck me this time through was just how much internal twisting occurred in my torso as I twisted to the right and stepped out to the left - like a big rubber band being stretched from the right shoulder to my left hip and letting that rubber band snap back (albeit slowly) gave the power to transition into 'brush left thigh' - this was the first time I was able to use internal twisting to power a move and it was pretty amazing.

The other amazing thing that I noticed was that as I sunk into my left leg and continued twisting left (to face forward), the rubber band was loaded again - this time from compression from my shoulders down into my hips. When I subsequently shifted my weight from the center of my left foot to the heel (to transition into 'brush right thigh'), my foot turned out without any intention on my part - once the contact point on the foot was small enough, the compressed rubber band just pushed it open. 

Having this internal rubber band loading/unloading while transitioning from posture to posture is a key part of internal martial arts but this was the first time I recognized it. I recognize it a lot more now as I go through the form - particularly with 'white crane', 'brush thigh', 'single whip', 'cloud hands', and 'part wild horses mane'. When I don't feel it in these postures, it's an indication that I've done something wrong - e.g. I haven't sunk down entirely into my foot or I've let one of my hips pop up or I've tensed up somewhere - and this helps me correct those problems. But there are still moves where I don't recognize this feeling at all - e.g. 'serpent creeps down' and 'separate thighs' - and I realize that these are moves where I have the most work to do.

Final Note: a spring may have made for a better analogy than a rubber band but a rubber band is what came to mind at the time so I'm sticking with it for now.

Pivoting on the Heel

Since my previous post, I went of vacation for 2 weeks during which time I took a break from training. This was a conscious decision on my part - partly to give my body some time off and partly to give my mind the chance to mull things over in my unconscious for a while. Seems to have worked because, once I returned, it felt like there was a spotlight on a number of sticking points in my practice.

One sticking point was the issue I discussed in my previous post, where I described how to do a weighted pivot (on the left foot) by closing the (left) hip - this allows you to pivot without having to shift your weight back first.

While practicing this movement, I noticed I was still shifting my weight back slightly, although much less than previously and that my balance still felt a bit off. I finally realized that I've been pivoting on the extreme back edge of my heel. Based on my experiences with push-hands/spinning-hands, once your weight is in the back of the heel, you can be pushed right over - if you're weight does move to your heel, it can't move past the center of the heel and I realized this applied to the pivot as well.

I've adjusted my pivots now by moving the pivot point to the center of the heel and it has made things a lot easier. As a bonus, I find that I am also able to move my foot further along the arc of the pivot before torquing my knee, which gives me better mobility.

The Weighted Pivot

In my practice recently, I have been focusing on distributing my weight across my entire foot - while still simultaneously keeping the weight centered in the middle of the foot - which allows me to be more stable. Applying this to the form has meant that I have had to become more aware of the weight transfer as I transition from one posture to the next and allowing that weight to settle into the entire foot.

Where I have found this to be particularly challenging is with weighted pivots. For example, in the first part of the form, when transitioning from 'brush left thigh and press forth right palm' to 'brush right thigh and press forth left palm', you start by pivoting on the left (front) foot.

To do this as a weighted pivot, you first shift the weight in your left foot back to the heel and then twist to the left, pivoting the left foot on the heel and keeping energy in the right foot so that you remain balanced. The net result is that the pivot opens up both hips.

My problem is that, with my weight initially spread across the entire left foot, in order to shift my weight to the heel, I have had to shift my entire body weight back - essentially doing an unweighted pivot. After talking it over with Mike, it turns out that you actually can do this without shifting your weight back - how you do it is during the initial twist to the left, you let your left hip close, which allow you to shift the weight in your left foot to your heel without shifting the rest of your body.

This is an important point because its a manifestation of what we are training in both the form and push-hands - explicitly how the joints work together so that you can redirect your energy/weight where you want it.