Chi and Internal Martial Arts
If you think of the word “move”, “movement” or “moving” every time you read about chi in the martial arts it will make way more sense than what is usually said about chi.
Specifically, the power in a human body should come from the bones and joints. They need to move. According to kung fu/tai chi there are nine pearls in the body. Three in the legs; ankle, knee & hip. There are three in the back; sacroiliac, 2nd/3rd lumbar (called The Gate or Life by Chinese) and your chest, neck area. In the arms is the shoulder, elbow and wrist. By moving one or more of the bones around these joints you can use the alignment of your skeleton to neutralize and issue force.
I mentioned the Gate of Life. That just happens to be both the middle pearl as well as the attachment point of your diaphragm. When that point moves it sends a wave down your legs through the sacroiliac, hips, knees and ankles. At the same time, a wave travels up to your chest/neck, shoulder, elbow and wrist. Each joint, as expected, moves in a strict natural order. In fact, the force going down from your center reaches your foot at the exact instant the force going up from your center reaches your hand.
Even more interesting, is the fact that as you stand in your still postures, your breathing causes your diaphragm to gently push and pull on The Gate of Life. Thus breathing is the basis of martial art movement. You should feel, not imagine, but actually feel each joint move through your whole body as the diaphragm gently moves the Gate of Life back and forth.
To be clear, I’m not talking about breathing in the sense that air is moving in and out of your lungs. I’m talking about the real, palpable movement that goes from head to toe. There is an ancient text that says, “the men of old breathed down to their heels”. Now if air somehow got down to your feet it would indicate a pulmonary embolism, a hole in your lungs, which is clearly not advantageous to a human being! Instead, the bodies of these men of old actually moved all the way down to their heels. Real movement, not imagined movement.
The classics say, “the body is strung together like a string of nine pearls”, and “when one part moves, it all moves”. Think of yourself as a skeleton and forget the muscles. Just like a bullwhip is used by a simple flick of your wrist, internal energy is used by a simple flick of your abdominal muscles. From there each joint above and below reacts to that flick, such that when it’s reached it’s limit your hand is moving very fast, just like the tip of the bullwhip.
A big part of internal training is “standing on the stake” or some variation of still postures. Why? It’s simple. First, even though you appear to be standing still, your diaphragm is still moving with your breath. Like I said, that same movement is the basis for all movement from the center. This is “cultivating the chi”.
Next you learn to move it to your hands and feet, or to cause “the chi to jump out of your belly”. That requires your body to be in such a state that the wave will move uninhibited up and down through each major joint. If one of those joints doesn’t move correctly it would be called a chi blockage.
That state or quality of body is called “sung” by the Chinese. It is neither flaccid nor stiff. It is like one of those big advertising balloons of Ronald McDonald. He has a definite shape, but if the wind or some other force acts on it, it will move naturally, while still maintaining it’s basic shape. In the same way, your body, specifically your skeleton, has a designed shape. But your skeleton should be willing to change into whatever shape it needs to in order to channel whatever force acts on it, eg. a punch, in such a way that the force is directed “into the void” instead of knocking you down and/or out.
