palmchange bagua zhang

I remember a story a friend, Steve told me many years ago, which perhaps will give a taste for what I’m writing about. We were at University, Steve started studying Karate, mostly because there was a cute girl in the club whom he wanted to get to know better. He didn’t last long as a Karateka, and explained what it was that turned him off.

Often as not in the changing rooms he would overhear conversations between his fellow (male) students. Though the exact contents differed, the form of them went something like this.

‘ Last night I was in the pub, yeah’
‘ Yeah.’
‘ And there was this bloke, and he was out of order, yeah’
‘Yeah, and what happened’
‘Well nothing, but if it had happened I’d have....( fill in with the technique of choice)’

After hearing this plenty of times he decided that he‘d had enough macho martial wannabeism and stopped training.

Now that’s a story that comes from Karate, but the overheard conversation could just as well have happened within any other martial arts style, or taken place my own imagination too if I’m honest.

I offer the story as an example of how I don’t want to develop in martial arts. So much of what I see seems like a battle against fear. Fear that someone else is going to beat the *%$£ out of you. Fear that age is stealing strength. Fear that someone else knows more, or moves better or...

When I was training hard for competition, though I enjoyed the training a great deal, it also had an addictive quality, which I think came from a basic insecurity. Since I pretty much lived training I was so used to this that I didn’t notice it, like forgetting the air that we breath.

After getting injured and being out of training for a while and coming back into this hidden quality became clearer. Though the atmosphere in the clubs was friendly, there was an undercurrent of competition that was based on a fear of other people being better in some way, overtaking you in strength. Of course in contact competition other people being better has painful consequences, so it’s normal to feel something like this. I think what I object to is the degree to which the emotion is unnoticed, denied, hidden.

I find the same thing in Taiji and internal martial arts, where the students look down there noses at ‘external’ practitioners with some strange sense of superiority. Here you won’t find people trusting in the strength of their arms to keep them safe from fear, but rather the mythology of their art, the tales of immortals and near magical power as a shield against passing years, and the grip of the mighty wrestler called time.

I don’t want my training to be driven in this way anymore. It’s not that I don’t want to be strong, or skillful, rather I want to train for the pleasure of training, for the joy of moving, for the fun of testing myself.

I still have moments of fear like this, more than moments, but my relation with them has changed, a little. I still look at people training in other styles, and think, in a slightly superior way ‘ I’m so glad I practise Ba Gua, its so much more...’
the aches in my body still act as an incentment to work out ( except when they don’t act as an incentment to stay in bed). When I see particularly skilled and violent practitioners, or hear stories of horrible attacks on the street my stomach still turns over.

The difference is when these things come now I’m beginning to catch myself. Rather than training feverishly harder, or berating myself for the weakness of my mind, I prefer to greet them as old friends. ‘Oh, there you are again,’ and instead of shutting the door on them like unwelcome salesmen, to invite them in for tea. The house of martial arts is one of fear’s favourite places to enjoy a cuppa, so much so in many it rules the entire kitchen.

Training for me has become part of who I am, rightly or not. There is some part of me that unfolds in training and I love the experience. It changes my state and lets me see, lets me move in a world beyond winning and losing for a while. Just the appreciation of events as they happen.

This is the value of training for me, and it’s that state that comes from training that lets me get there. I still value clarity of detail, or efficacy of technique. It’s the refinement of technique that creates the concentration through which the change of state can take place, as much as a way to keep myself safe from an attack that will probably never come.

It’s in this new state where I can take my fear and change it back into an appreciation of what’s important.

It reminds me of a Cheng Man Ching talking about qi, that qi is like water with a little depth of water you can float a match stick, but it takes a greater depth to float a boat.

Practise is a way to create more depth, more expansiveness, a way to surround and embrace the fear, to saturate it dissolve it and reveal the shape of the message it holds. I‘m not sure exactly what that message is, I’m not sure how to write it down, except perhaps as the wonder of opening to life, to find the truth of something deep inside, and allow life to move through me.

If you’re wondering whether Steve got the girl, he never told me. But I like to think he did, and that life moved through them both.

 

If you're reading this you're probably interested in martial arts, and more specifically if you're reading this on palmchange.com you're probably especially intrigued by internal martial arts. I'm also guessing that one of the subjects in martial arts that may attract you is the use of the mind in training.

If I'm right then read on, as this is an essay about that, from perspective of the relation between martial arts and trance, and you never know what part of it you'll find the most useful.

Milton Erickson, one of the most influential hypnotists of the 20 th century described, if not defined, trance as a ‘special learning state.' His student, Stephen Gilligan talks about trance as a natural state that happens whenever our identity is threatened, and at times of our life when our identity undergoes a natural change. A quality trance, in his opinion, is one where the intellect is dropped down into the body, the body connected into the ‘field' and where the person remains present in some way. Stephen Gilligan also describes trance as the ability to think without physical tension, and makes distinctions between ordinary intellectual logic, and trance logic.

Normal intellectual logic is linear, and follows linear rules. Normal logic follows a designated cause and effect, meanings are fixed, and if things cannot be their opposite it is either/or.

Trance logic is the logic of dreams, you can go from anywhere to anywhere, meaning is fluid, or suspended, and something and be it's own opposite, and contradictions can sit comfortably together. Trance logic is characterised by including both/and.

If you look at the spiritual literature that make up part of the cultural landscape in which internal arts evolved, you find plenty of references to the virtue of not knowing, the limits of knowledge and some lovely descriptions of trance logic.

Within the martial arts themselves you can find references to putting attention down into the lower abdomen and relaxing the body – both are techniques, or components of techniques for inducing trance. The founders of many martial arts were also known for their eccentric ways, their ability to think outside the normal intellectual and social rules of the time.

The intellect alone is pretty limited when it comes to martial arts – which of does not stop many people from theorising endlessly about the way martial arts should be. When people are training well, or fighting I've never known them to be intellectualising. On the other hand there is often a state of detached observation mixed with a sense of total involvement both/and rather than either/or.

In Gilligan's model he also says that trance is a state we naturally go into to reorganise our identities, our sense of who we are. It allows us to escape the social and intellectual strictures which contain what we expect of ourselves, how we should behave, what we can do or not. These kinds of trances are especially important at turning points in our lives, and faced with various kinds of trauma, loss and change.

Within the slow rhythmic practises of internal martial arts there is plenty of scope for depth of trance. What do these trances serve?

Purely in the context of the martial arts they allow a suspension of intellectual activity, the not stop labelling of right or wrong, good or bad that can stop us observing what is actually going on. When this is suspended then the body, which knows itself much better than our thinking mind knows it, can then begin to do things in new ways. It is the strait jacket of ‘knowing' what's ‘right' that is one of the greatest obstacles to learning.

So from a western point of view you can look at the some of the mental focussing techniques as a way to improve the learning process, both in being open to ways of improving use of the body, and developing states of mind that are martially useful.

Of course if you spend a lot of time going into deep trances you'll probably have some pretty strange experiences sooner or later - strange sensations when practising, intuitions, perhaps even visions. It's the nature of trance experiences that the boundaries between the imagination and ‘reality' blur or disappear altogether.

Most people take these experiences in their stride. Some people on the other hand do not. Perhaps due to emotional imbalance, difficult circumstances in external reality, lack of maturity, preparation or context they take the strange experiences as the goal of practise, or literally. These people often turn their martial arts into bizarre religions, and spend their training time chasing the dragons of their imagination then constructing elaborate intellectual cages to contain them.

Unfortunately this doesn't necessarily make them happier, healthier, or better at martial arts. I think much of the advice to find guidance from a good teacher is an attempt to stop people going off on these kinds of trips.

Outside of the martial arts the ability to go into this kind of trance can be very helpful too. It allows us to hold contradictions without going insane, and to stay fluid in the face of seemingly solid problems.

For example in a situation filled with strong emotions, anger perhaps, or sadness then the ability to remain physically present. That is keep part of the attention in the body, or as we end to practise in martial arts, low in the abdomen allow an appreciation that things are bad (the emotions), and at the same time there's something else (the calmness of the abdominal attention). So rather than being caught up in the emotions, and the thinking about them (which will tend to run in loops justifying the negative emotion) then reacting blindly, it becomes easier to see a variety of possibilities, and with that the possibility of choosing wisely between them (or not!!!).

 

An internal martial arts practise that has scope for developing trance is also useful as training to enter states where we can learn from what life gives us. States that can help us mature in the face of the universals of age, love and loss rather than having to resist them because they affront some aspect of a rigid identity.

So if these states are useful, how do we access them? The first answer is of course practise!

Luo laoshi emphasises a few very simple ways to develop these states. Many of the methods are common to other martial arts styles, and once you've caught the concept, you'll see it repeated in all sorts of places.

The main idea is to harmonise the mind and emotions at the start of practise. The way Luo recommends is through slow repetitive movement.

Slow because fast movement tends to excite the emotions, and because slow movement allows the attention to go deeper into the body. It's possible to substitute no movement for slow movement, but the mind tends to calm more easily when it's give a simple repetitive task like repeating a gesture.

One of the vehicles Luo uses for this is ba duan jin ( eight pieces of brocade) , because it's so simple and when practising people don't get caught up in all the emotions involved in learning super deadly martial arts.

Another important idea is to create a context where there isn't pressure to perform in the practise. In circle walking Luo suggests simply walking a certain number of steps. Doesn't matter if you do it well, just walk the steps. This releases the mind from the need to perform, and allows it to pay attention to what's happening. After a period of walking then the mind and body tend to settle naturally and then the walking can become deeply absorbing.

Parallel to this attitude of not really caring what's happening in the body, you can develop an equally abstracted attitude to your thoughts. The eyes look, but don't really see. The thoughts come and go without the emotions getting aroused, and if the emotions start to move you can observe them with vague and benign curiousity.

While doing this simple repetitive task you can choose one or two specifics to focus on. For instance you could choose an overall relaxation of the body, or some specific part of the body, how the hips torso and spine connect, the footwork, the alignment of the arms. With time and a deepening of attention you get to the state where ‘the body teaches you'. It ceases to be necessary to try and fix the posture to some rules in a book or rely on the corrections of a teacher, but it becomes evident what needs to happen.

Over a longer timescale the same applies. Not to approach practise with the idea of attaining some goal by a fixed date. Happily by releasing the pressure and the intellectual stricture in training, progress is quite likely to be faster. It's also likely to be non linear – rather than improving a little bit day by day for stretches of practise it seems like there's no improvement, then suddenly there's a jump in ability or quality.

Once you've found a way into it this state it gets easier to access. Part of the key to making the access easier is to finish practise well. Rather than stopping practise and running off to do the shopping spend a little more time in stillness, with the attention absorbed internally, before making the transition back to ordinary life and consciousness.

This is something that often becomes ritualised in martial arts. Lifting the hands up and out from the body, then down along the centreline are examples of this, a movement common to the end (and start) of many forms is used for this purpose.

Along with the movement there is also the idea of gathering the energy back to the dan-tien. This refers to the placement of attention, it also includes the idea of stilling the emotions that may have become aroused during practise, and realigning parts of the body that may have become disturbed/tense during practise. This way the body is well prepared to continue daily life, and a good state is associated with the movement for the beginning of the next practise.

Of course martial arts aren't only simple movements, interesting states, and comfortingly blurry statements like ‘your body teaches you'. There are complex movements too, though the interesting states can help you appreciate their relation to the simple ones. There is also rigour, conditioning, and the test of whether a movement can actually work.

Equally within the context of special learning states there is more to it, in terms of possibility and depth than I have described above. What I hope that this article has done is to help appreciate the value in the ritual that goes with martial arts. This way rather looking at it with distrust, confusion or religious incomprehension you can approach it as a tool that can aid your development as a martial artist and as a human being.